American Middle East studies depended on recruited British and European Orientalists
Evidence
From the 1930s onwards the United States was acquiring extensive interests in the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia and from the 1940s on, with ambitions to supplant Britain as the leading power in the Middle East, the US was expanding its provision of teaching of Islam, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. In order to set up the new institutes and departments, it relied heavily on recruiting established Orientalists from Britain and the rest of Europe. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 437
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the political-economy angle of how scholarly fields are built on geopolitical demand, echoing the milgrom material on institutions arising from need. — connects to: Empire shifting to the US carried Orientalist scholars across the Atlantic with it
- SEED: An angle: how Cold War funding (National Defense Act 1958) shaped which ‘Eastern’ languages got taught and which were left out.
Related
- US universities produced Middle East knowledge specifically to serve imperial needs. (similarity 0.83)
- Postwar US Middle East studies was born as a national-security policy apparatus (similarity 0.83)
- American Orientalism recruited many prominent Arab-born scholars (similarity 0.83)
- Middle East area studies served US government needs until 1970s liberation struggles spurred critique. (similarity 0.83)
- Empire shifting to the US carried Orientalist scholars across the Atlantic with it (similarity 0.83)
- Postwar American Middle East studies were born from national-security concerns, not pure scholarship (similarity 0.82)
- The Second World War transformed academic Orientalism in Britain (similarity 0.82)
- Foundations and state built area studies to serve Cold War empire (similarity 0.81)
- US interventions in the Middle East needed moral justifications rooted in anti-Islam narratives (similarity 0.80)
- Cold War language programs reframed Arabic study as a propaganda and policy tool (similarity 0.80)
- German Orientalists led the field despite Germany having no Arab empire. (similarity 0.80)
- American empire inherited and reformulated European Orientalism after World War II (similarity 0.80)
- US Middle East research institutions retained the European Orientalist outlook (similarity 0.80)
- European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus (similarity 0.80)
- Cold War legislation mobilized US universities to produce imperial knowledge (similarity 0.80)