British Oriental imagination was constrained by actual colonial possession

Evidence

Not Lewis. He proceeds by distorting the truth, by making false analogies, and by innuendo, methods to which he adds that veneer of omniscient tranquil authority which he supposes is the way scholars talk. Take as a typical example the analogy he draws between my critique of Orientalism and a hypothetical attack on studies of classical antiquity, an attack which, he says, would be a foolish activity. It would be, of course, but then Orientalism and Hellenism are radically incomparable. The former is an attempt to describe a whole region of the world as an accompaniment to that region’s colonial conquest, the latter is not at all about the direct colonial conquest of Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; in addition, Orientalism expresses antipathy to Islam, Hellenism sympathy for classical Greece. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 860 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Said’s Orientalism is not a book about the Orient per se. It is a book that analyzes Western discourse about the Orient, including Islam and Arab peoples, and how this discourse relates to Western domination over the Orient in light of the colonial projects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: French Oriental imagination compensated for absence of colonial sovereignty; Orientalism differs from Hellenism by accompanying colonial conquest — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 860; Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206 (+1 more)

Related

• Orientalism differs from Hellenism by accompanying colonial conquest (similarity 0.90)
• British occupation was seen as killing the imagined Orient (similarity 0.89)
• Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination (similarity 0.88)
• Europeans claimed to possess the Orient’s souls beyond territorial power (similarity 0.87)
• British control of the Orient depended on constantly refined knowledge of it (similarity 0.87)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial expansion widened geographic knowledge but kept Europe at the privileged center (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial administrator attitudes toward the Orient formed a shared consensus (similarity 0.85)
• Colonization was not Islam-specific but Orientalism shaped its distinct form (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism is chiefly a British and French enterprise, later American. (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist scholarship expanded in tandem with European imperial conquest. (similarity 0.85)
• The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it. (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial interests saturated nearly all Western texts on the Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s survey concentrated on British and French varieties of Orientalism that supported the British and French Empires as commercial enterprises constructed from colonialism. (similarity 0.85)
• Western scholars controlled the academic study of the Orient even as late as 1927. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• French Oriental imagination compensated for absence of colonial sovereignty #complicates (0.90)
• Orientalism differs from Hellenism by accompanying colonial conquest #corroborates (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 860
• Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination #qualifies (0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206