Balfour framed Oriental civilization as incapable of self-government

Evidence

First of all, look at the facts of the case. Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government … having merits of their own.… You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries—and they have been very great—have been passed under despotisms, under absolute government. All their great contributions to civilisation—and they have been great—have been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. That is the fact. It is not a question of superiority and inferiority. I suppose a true Eastern sage would say that the working government which we have taken upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere is not a work worthy of a philosopher—that it is the dirty work, the inferior work, of carrying on the necessary labour. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 108

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates the template of Orientalist common sense: a supposedly factual empirical claim (‘never find traces of self-government’) doing the ideological work of justifying occupation while disclaiming any prejudice.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 108
• XREF: connects to: Balfour denied Orientals any history of self-government; Balfour claimed Orientals never developed capacities for self-government; The natives-unready-for-democracy frame bridged Balfour’s empire directly to War on Terror occupation — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 377