Eighteenth-century comparative history confronted the Orient partly to know Europe itself

Evidence

Unlike the Americans, the French and the British—less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss—have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality; Colonial expansion widened geographic knowledge but kept Europe at the privileged center; Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52 (+1 more)

Related

• Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient (similarity 0.89)
• Knowledge of the Orient requires conceiving it as ruled by Europe (similarity 0.88)
• Europe’s literary repertoire of the Orient half-imagined settings and figures. (similarity 0.88)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial expansion widened geographic knowledge but kept Europe at the privileged center (similarity 0.87)
• European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty (similarity 0.86)
• European modernity defines itself through relation to alien past cultures. (similarity 0.86)
• British imperial presence was conceived as permanently transforming the Orient (similarity 0.86)
• Europeans claimed to possess the Orient’s souls beyond territorial power (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist scholarship expanded in tandem with European imperial conquest. (similarity 0.84)
• Western scholarly handling turned the Orient from alien into colonial space (similarity 0.84)
• Europe’s doubt about Oriental novelty serves as its cultural weapon (similarity 0.84)
• British, French, then American Orientalism follows the rise and fall of colonial empires (similarity 0.83)
• European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation (similarity 0.83)
• Europe’s self-formation against an Other does not require an actual Orient (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient #corroborates (0.90) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52