[James Ellsworth De Kay]: Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832. By an American, New York 1833. First edition, large 8vo,contemporary leather over boards, trimmed,joints replaced,original spine laid down,library stamp at title,ex libris,some scattered spotting and foxing,overall in almost very good condition. The anonymous American was James Ellsworth De Kay (1792-1851), a distinguished naturalist and physician. This work is a cornerstone of American travel literature because it provided the young United States with its first high-resolution, scientific look at the Ottoman Empire, independent of the traditional British or French colonial gaze.The Sketches were born from a unique diplomatic and industrial moment. De Kay traveled to Constantinople with his father-in-law, Henry Eckford, a world-renowned naval architect. After the Ottoman fleet was destroyed at Navarino (1827), Sultan Mahmud II secretly hired Eckford to rebuild the Turkish Navy using superior American shipbuilding techniques. He spent a great deal of time analyzing the plague. He was skeptical of the theories of the time and provided detailed notes on the sanitary conditions of the Bosphorus. He famously criticized British and French writers of the 1820s for their prejudices. He portrayed the Turks as more dignified and capable than European accounts usually allowed, while remaining realistic about the Empire's administrative decay. He visited the ruins of Athens and the Peloponnese just as the War of Independence was concluding. His sketches of the Greek leadership are some of the most candid American accounts of the era. De Kay’s perspective is distinct from the European travelers of his time or the American ardent Philhellenes.As they were official guests of the Ottomans, the Turkish government tried to present them the best aspects of the traditional Turkish hospitality,without of course disclosing the harsh despotism on the Christians. Research on Philhellenism the recent years has advanced in deep, but the involvement of the Ottoman official government in the sporadic Turkophile publications of this period, a tentative that started in the late 1820s and developed in the 1830s, is not yet clearly investigated.These publications tried desperately to form a counter propaganda in the prevailing Philhellenism.A very important and rare account