“Sakhnini’s impressive and original study of late eighteenth-century British travelogues illuminates both imperial history and Enlightenment ecology. Anxious to establish the fastest routes between England and India, intrepid agents of the East India Company charted itineraries between Aleppo and Basra, but, becoming fascinated by the Syrian desert and its inhabitants, projected agricultural improvements at every turn”— Gerald MacLean, Emeritus Professor, University of Exeter. “This is a study of unexpected enlightenment. Exploring land routes to India in the eighteenth century, Briton could find in the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia spaces of civility and sociability. Rather than importing improvement to the desert, they were themselves improved. Original, compelling, this book opens a window on alternative cosmopolitanisms” — Professor Donna Landry, School of English, University of Kent. “A meticulously researched study with unpublished archival material, Sakhnini’s is both a source book and an intriguing analysis of how British travelling merchants, civil servants, military and medical men not only recorded Syrian-Mesopotamian sites and experiences but, en route, also engaged in Enlightenment debates about history, aesthetics, the individual’s perfectibility, the improvement of the human condition and national versus global tactics” — Julia Kuehn, University of Hong Kong.