American postwar Orientalism descended from army language schools, Cold War competition, and missionary zeal.

Evidence

For there is very little in what academic experts on the Near East do now that resembles traditional Orientalism of the sort that ended with Gibb and Massignon; the main things that are reproduced are, as I said, a certain cultural hostility and a sense based not so much on philology as on “expertise.” Genealogically speaking, modern American Orientalism derives from such things as the army language schools established during and after the war, sudden government and corporate interest in the non-Western world during the postwar period, Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, and a residual missionary attitude towards Orientals who are considered ripe for reform and reeducation. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 739

Categorization

• DEFINE: Genealogy is the key method here: tracing modern expertise back to its institutional origins rather than taking it as neutral science.
• XREF: Genealogical method echoes Foucault’s genealogy and the biopolitics readings; also foreshadows how policy ‘expertise’ later constructs Muslims as security objects. — connects to: Postwar US empire relied on missionary children and oilmen for regional knowledge
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 739