European projects justified themselves by framing the Orient as incapable of self-improvement.

Evidence

Despite its immemorial pedigree of failures, its outrageous cost, its astounding ambitions for altering the way Europe would handle the Orient, the canal was worth the effort. It was a project uniquely able to override the objections of those who were consulted and, in improving the Orient as a whole, to do what scheming Egyptians, perfidious Chinese, and half-naked Indians could never have done for themselves. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 252

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates the Orientalist stance that renders non-Europeans as passive objects needing European intervention — a core mechanism for the scaffold.
• XREF: Connects directly to the racialized hierarchy of ‘scheming Egyptians, perfidious Chinese, half-naked Indians’ that later Islamophobia readings build on.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 252