European powers could not effectively colonize vast domains until the mid-nineteenth century

Evidence

The jacket blurb of Said’s Orientalism (2003 edition) announces that the author “traces the origins of ‘orientalism’ to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East.” To any historian of the modern Islamic world, this is a puzzling pronouncement, since students of Dutch, British, and French colonialism in such regions as the Malay Archipelago, India, and North Africa would know that these European powers could not widely control, much less effectively or systematically colonize, these vast domains until the middle, if not the later parts, of the nineteenth century. It would be hard to say that modern colonialism became effective (which is to say, performative) earlier than two centuries ago, and thus the unqualified use of “centuries” in the blurb must be traced back to the body of the book where it receives ample clarification. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 53

Categorization

• QUESTION: Useful to pin down exactly which Dutch, British, and French territories Hallaq means — the claim is broad and worth verifying against specific colonial timelines.
• XREF: connects to: European rulers could not impose Roman law wholesale on fragmented polities. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 130; Nineteenth-century European imperialism often worked through debt rather than direct rule; The Ottomans, not England, were the expansionist imperial power in the 1500s-1600s (+2 more)