Pre-modern England viewed the Ottomans as equals, not inferiors

Evidence

Orientalism as a colonial discourse could reach maturity only after England had acquired the military and technological capacity to dominate the world. Its actual ability to build a vast empire that stretched the globe created the conditions for a form of racialization that had previously existed as stereotypes in the literary sphere to become a dominant ideology of colonization. … While the “savage” Indian was interchangeable with the “savage” Muslim going back to the seventeenth century, as Matar argues, late eighteenth and nineteenth century racialization acquired a more capitalist gloss, with commercial needs eclipsing the drive to conversion, a hallmark of early modern imperialism. The eighteenth century English author, Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe fame, captured this shift in his call for British domination of Muslim lands based not on Christian zeal but market needs. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 153 (#complicates, via linked claim)

To Busbecq and his contemporaries it may well have seemed that Europe was doomed. Yet how wrong they were. Though the Ottoman power was still to survive for some time, it had already passed its peak. The Turks did not in fact settle with Persia but continued to fight wars against them until the eighteenth century, after which both Turkey and Persia ceased to pose a serious threat. The great age of the Eastern empires was past; the great age of Christian Europe was just beginning. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 721 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europeans regarded Ottomans as equals before Orientalism’s hierarchy emerged — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 110; Stereotyping of Muslims was constrained by England’s inability to challenge the Ottomans — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 140; British views of Ottomans mixed fear and awe without colonial designs (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• English attitudes treated Ottomans as equals before Orientalism’s emergence #corroborates (0.97)
• English empire turned literary anti-Muslim stereotypes into dominant colonization ideology #complicates (0.78) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 153
• Contemporaries overestimated Ottoman strength even as the empire was declining #complicates (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 721