Britain’s ‘Other’ for self-definition was France, not the Orient

Evidence

Britain’s rivalry with France spanned the continents. This was to come to a head in the Seven Years War (1756–63) in which European and global territorial ambitions were thoroughly muddled. As Macaulay put it in a famous essay on Frederick the Great: ‘In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coramandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.’ If the British did define their own identity by distinguishing it from some notional ‘Other’ that was corrupt, despotic and licentious, then France was certainly that Other. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 196

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the Orientalist thesis that the Orient served as Britain’s defining Other — anticipates Said’s argument later in this book.