From Cairo to Baghdad: British Travellers in Arabia

'In From Cairo to Baghdad, James Canton offers an important account of the British travels in Arabia since Britain's occupation of Egypt in 1882. Canton provides historical depth to British involvement in the Middle East with a nuanced discussion of how travel writing is implicated in colonial relations of power. The book will be a required reading for scholars of travel writing and postcolonial studies.' - Ali Behdad, John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature, UCLA, and author of Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution From Cairo to Baghdad: British Travellers in Arabia is a major contribution to our understanding of British interest in, and understanding of, the Middle East between the occupation of Egypt in 1882 and the in vasion of Iraq in 2003. James Canton deftly probes into ways that travel writing produced during this period was unavoidably caught up and complicit in the twin developments of mass tourism and imperialism. Organised chronologically and thematically, this study reveals a much richer and more complex range of cul-tural interactions and mutual engagements than the still powerful notion of a clash between civilisations.' -Gerald MacLean, Professor of English, University of Exeter