Disappointed travelers used unmet Orientalist expectations as proof of Christian superiority

Evidence

The disappointment that Americans felt at coming across local populations who failed to live up to the mediated images of the Holy Land, as American studies scholar Melani McAlister argues, lent “proof to the superiority of Christianity.” The economic underdevelopment was viewed as both a failure of the Ottomans and a weakness in Muslim character. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 220

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: is there a parallel ‘they failed to live up to our image of them’ logic at work in contemporary tourism, development discourse, or migration reporting?