Anti-Black Racism, British Orientalism, and the Ottoman Empire: Rereading The Turkish Embassy Letters.

This article examines Mary Wortley Montagu’s *The Turkish Embassy Letters* (1763) as a lens to explore the intersection of British anti-Black racial consciousness and orientalist representations of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. While Montagu’s depictions of Ottoman women challenge some British imperial patriarchal norms, her narratives simultaneously reveal entrenched racial hierarchies, particularly privileging whiteness and expressing hostility toward Blackness. The analysis situates Montagu’s work within broader British orientalist literature, highlighting how racialized imagery and anti-Black racism permeated portrayals of the Ottoman Empire. The article calls for a critical reassessment of British orientalist texts to acknowledge their complicity in racializing and marginalizing Ottoman subjects within imperial and colonial contexts.