"With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases. European, especially British Indian, officials also feared that lengthy sojourns in Arabia might expose their Muslim subjects to radicalizing influences from anticolonial dissidents and pan-Islamic activists. European colonial empires' newfound ability to set the...

"Long before the Barbary pirates challenged Thomas Jefferson, English merchants traveled to Marrakesh to trade gunpowder for sugar. Islam and the West crossed paths much earlier than we think--and originally the Muslims had the upper hand. When Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated by the pope in 1570, she found herself in an awkward predicament. England had always depended on trade. Now its key markets were closed to her Protestant merchants, while...