Colonial administrators directly funded and patronized the scholarly construction of the Orient

Evidence

The world’s division into two was an essential part of the larger process of its incorporation into the European world economy and the European political order. The President’s audience included, among the vice-presidents of the Congress, William Gladstone, whose government had carried out the invasion and occupation of Egypt, Lord Dufferin, the first architect of Britain’s colonial policy in the country, and many others – ‘so many practical men,’ as the President warmly remarked, ‘so many statesmen, and rulers, and administrators of Eastern countries’. It was to these colonial administrators and policy makers that the ordering of Orientalism was addressed. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 518

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism thesis and to the law-merchant/champagne-fair literature on how scholarly and administrative elites co-produce regimes of knowledge. — connects to: Napoleon’s 1798 invasion inaugurated the systematic use of scholarly knowledge to serve empire; Said distinguished governing-oriented study of the Orient from broader definitions