Heirs to Rome

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which the Ottomans claimed Alexander the Great and saw themselves as heirs to Rome. More specifically, it examines how diplomatic and literary engagements with the Ottomans helped structure both British and Southeast Asian engagements with each other, coalescing around their competitive imitatio Alexandri. The chapter begins with a discussion of the flourishing diplomatic and trade relations between the peripheries and the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and how such engagements framed trading ties that the British began to establish with Southeast Asians toward the end of the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth. It then considers how early modern Ottomans borrowed from the Roman heritage of the Byzantines to forge a culturally-hybrid imperial identity. It suggests that Alexandrian imitations in the peripheries were possible responses to Ottoman claims to universal empire.