“The other” has always held a fascination: people who come from a different culture, who dress differently, who wear their hair differently, who have different attitudes and values.

This curiosity about those who are different feeds the arts and culture. Artists, playwrights and novelists all explore the question of how different we are from each other.

In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the Moor of Venice is such a deep mystery because he is black. But the passions of life that he experiences are common to all mankind. He is different, but oh so the same. From the time of Shakespeare, up to the age of television and international travel, views about lands afar were shaped by the arts. Canaletto’s paintings brought Venice alive for generations of Europeans who had never traveled there.

With the age of Victorian exploration, the museums in London became full of ethnographic exhibits that would fascinate the public who had not seen such extraordinary objects as an American Indian totem pole, an Eskimo anorak, an African witch doctor mask or an Arabian scimitar. These objects, everyday to the people who had made them, would arouse awe and wonder, and this, in turn, fueled imaginative stories about the world outside of Europe.

Only a very few were rich enough to travel to these exotic lands, and the stories they brought back would make them very popular on the speaking circuit. The temptation to exaggerate the difficulties they had faced in their travels, or the customs they had seen, must have been great, for no one would be invited to a dinner party to tell a bland and simple tale. So, the 19th century European view of the world beyond its borders became one of savage cannibals and heathen tribes, all of whom were a danger to the European traveler.

Those who are friends and allies are more easily understood. We take time to learn how they think and act, and easily forgive their foibles. But it is human nature to do the opposite with those whom we perceive as a threat. The Ottoman Empire, although a useful ally of Britain against Russia at the time of the Crimean War, was a rival to British interests in the Middle East. This rivalry fed misunderstanding and mistrust, much of which can be seen in the portrayal of Turks and the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the arts and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

These stereotypes hung on into the 20th century, too. For example, in Lawrence of Arabia’s memoirs, the depiction of his enemy is most unflattering. Very few visitors to Turkey today have actually watched the film “Midnight Express,” but we have all heard about the scenes depicting cruelty. All these images have seeped into the public psyche. When I first visited Turkey in the 1980s, an English lady I knew who was in her 90s was amazed. “My father fought against the Turks at the end of the last century,” she said. “He always said he would rather be killed than captured by a Turk, and now here you are going there… times are changing.”

It is just this very issue of perception and reality that makes Andrew Wheatcroft’s book a vital addition to the study of the Ottomans. The first six chapters are a fairly standard, clear and informative overview of Ottoman history and life, from the fall of Constantinople through to the end of World War I.

But in the course of his research, Wheatcroft discovered that the image of the Ottomans that we have in the West was skewed. The fall of Constantinople was termed “the darkest day in the history of the world,” and from then on, Europeans regarded the Turks with a mixture of horror and fascination. “Only a few writers did not make the Turks out to be subhuman,” according to Wheatcroft.

As he discovered that his own view of the Ottomans, shaped by the culture he had been raised in, did not stand up against the evidence, Wheatcroft addresses head on his prejudices. In the final two chapters, he calmly and succinctly, clearly and incisively, challenges the twin stereotypes of the Lustful Turk and the Terrible Turk.

Much of this misunderstanding came from ignorance. The harem was misunderstood by Western travelers because, as men, they were not admitted! Much of the misunderstanding also came from willful distortion to make a rival into an enemy. The Turks were seen so much as the antithesis of all Western values that the phrase “turning Turk” was coined to mean renouncing the social codes of the West.

The city of Stamboul became irresistible to travelers from 1800 onwards. They expected to find the city of their imagination: exotic, Oriental, full of mysterious veiled women. Artists and engravers had, after all, discovered what sold best! “European visitors, inflamed with Romantic notions, came expecting to discover the imaginary Orient” — and were disappointed.

But the Ottomans were not only misunderstood by the West. To their eastern neighbors, they were an alien and occupying force.

Wheatcroft recognizes that just as Europeans disdained the Turks, educated Ottomans repaid the compliment, accusing Westerners of ignorance and insensitivity. It was too easy for Western men to imagine scarlet lusts and violent passions of the hidden harem. But many Ottoman officials took offense at the way Christian men and women mixed together at parties. One visitor to London wrote, “We returned to our lodgings and prayed to God to save us from the wretched state of these infidels.”

As Westerners worked with Turks on government projects during the Tanzimat era, an Ottoman and a Western European would look at the same event and see things differently. Wheatcroft concludes, as the Ottoman Empire and the West came closer together in economic and political terms in the 19th century, the depth of understanding broadened.

A clear contrast is seen between the attitudes of two great British prime ministers: Gladstone and Disraeli. Disraeli was in the camp of “enthusiasts who find fulfillment in contact.” He described even the meanest merchant as looking like a sultan. Gladstone was one who “abominated every aspect of the alien world.” He described the Turk as an abomination.

In recognizing that contact did little to modify the stereotypes so deeply rooted in the West, Wheatcroft raises the question of how much power the images of art and literature create. The Ottomans are, he notes, the focus of fear and hatred in literature and portraits with remarkable consistency. Even though he comes from a bygone era, the Byronic mix of lust and cruelty continues to color European attitudes.

That contemporary Europeans rated the Ottomans as far as they did or did not measure up to Western standards is the main premise of “Dissolving Images.” Following peace with Russia, the Ottomans ceased to be feared for their warlike virtues, and this was replaced by envy and despising. Newly reformed Western Europe expected the same, at a quicker pace, in Turkey.

These were Wheatcroft’s conclusions in 1993. But some 15 years later, they are just as relevant for a European Union and Republic of Turkey trying to draw closer together. Everyone involved, on both sides, in Turkey’s EU ascension talks needs to read the last two chapters of “Dissolving Images” honestly and question in their heart whether they are viewing reality through Orientalist tinted lenses.