Noel Malcolm read History and English Literature at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was a research student at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Thomas Hobbes. He began his career as Fellow of Gonville and Caius Colleege, Cambridge; he was then political columnist and, subsequently, Foreign Editor of the Spectator, and then chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He gave the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford in 2001 and, since 2002, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Trinity, and Gonville and Caius. He has published books and articles on, among other subjects, early modern philosophy (with a particular emphasis on Hobbes), and the history and culture of the Balkans, especially during the Ottoman period. He was knighted in 2014 for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.

Noel Malcolm has provided a masterpiece in the history of ideas...

• Preface 1: The Fall of Constantinople, the Turks, and the Humanists 2: Views of Islam: standard assumptions 3: Habsburgs and Ottomans: 'Europe' and the conflict of empires 4: Protestantism, Calvinoturcism, and Turcopapalism 5: Alliances with the infidel 6: The new paradigm 7: Machiavelli and Reason of State 8: Campanella 9: Despotism I: the origins 10: Analyses of Ottoman strength and weakness 11: Justifications of warfare, and plans for war and peace 12: Islam as a political religion 13: Critical and radical uses of Islam I: Vanini to Toland 14: Critical and radical uses of Islam II: Bayle to Voltaire 15: Despotism II: seventeenth-century theories 16: Despotism III: Montesquieu Conclusion List of manuscripts Bibliography Index

Noel Malcolm read History and English Literature at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was a research student at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Thomas Hobbes. He began his career as Fellow of Gonville and Caius Colleege, Cambridge; he was then political columnist and, subsequently, Foreign Editor of the Spectator, and then chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He gave the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford in 2001 and, since 2002, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Trinity, and Gonville and Caius. He has published books and articles on, among other subjects, early modern philosophy (with a particular emphasis on Hobbes), and the history and culture of the Balkans, especially during the Ottoman period. He was knighted in 2014 for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.

Noel Malcolm has provided a masterpiece in the history of ideas...

• Preface 1: The Fall of Constantinople, the Turks, and the Humanists 2: Views of Islam: standard assumptions 3: Habsburgs and Ottomans: 'Europe' and the conflict of empires 4: Protestantism, Calvinoturcism, and Turcopapalism 5: Alliances with the infidel 6: The new paradigm 7: Machiavelli and Reason of State 8: Campanella 9: Despotism I: the origins 10: Analyses of Ottoman strength and weakness 11: Justifications of warfare, and plans for war and peace 12: Islam as a political religion 13: Critical and radical uses of Islam I: Vanini to Toland 14: Critical and radical uses of Islam II: Bayle to Voltaire 15: Despotism II: seventeenth-century theories 16: Despotism III: Montesquieu Conclusion List of manuscripts Bibliography Index

Noel Malcolm read History and English Literature at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was a research student at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Thomas Hobbes. He began his career as Fellow of Gonville and Caius Colleege, Cambridge; he was then political columnist and, subsequently, Foreign Editor of the Spectator, and then chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He gave the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford in 2001 and, since 2002, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Trinity, and Gonville and Caius. He has published books and articles on, among other subjects, early modern philosophy (with a particular emphasis on Hobbes), and the history and culture of the Balkans, especially during the Ottoman period. He was knighted in 2014 for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.

Noel Malcolm has provided a masterpiece in the history of ideas...

• Preface 1: The Fall of Constantinople, the Turks, and the Humanists 2: Views of Islam: standard assumptions 3: Habsburgs and Ottomans: 'Europe' and the conflict of empires 4: Protestantism, Calvinoturcism, and Turcopapalism 5: Alliances with the infidel 6: The new paradigm 7: Machiavelli and Reason of State 8: Campanella 9: Despotism I: the origins 10: Analyses of Ottoman strength and weakness 11: Justifications of warfare, and plans for war and peace 12: Islam as a political religion 13: Critical and radical uses of Islam I: Vanini to Toland 14: Critical and radical uses of Islam II: Bayle to Voltaire 15: Despotism II: seventeenth-century theories 16: Despotism III: Montesquieu Conclusion List of manuscripts Bibliography Index