German Orientalists led the field despite Germany having no Arab empire.

Evidence

To Said’s way of thinking, since Britain was the leading imperial power in modern times, it follows that it must have been the leading centre for Oriental studies and, since Germany had no empire in the Arablands, it followed that Germany’s contribution to Oriental studies must have been of secondary importance. But, as we have seen, the claim that Germans elaborated only on British and French Orientalism is simply not sustainable. Consider the cases of Hammer-Purgstall, Fleischer, Wellhausen, Goldziher (Hungarian, but writing and teaching in German), Nöldeke and Becker. It is impossible to find British forerunners for these figures. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 516

Categorization

• XREF: The core counterexample to Said’s imperialism-text equivalence, already suggested earlier in the book.

Related

• German Orientalism was purely scholarly because Germany lacked imperial presence in the Orient (similarity 0.86)
• German Orientalism stayed textual because Germany held no colonial presence in the Orient (similarity 0.84)
• Sustained national imperial interest was required for Orientalist scholarship to thrive (similarity 0.84)
• Britain neglected Oriental studies while France and Germany led the field (similarity 0.84)
• Sympathetic German Orientalism also enabled anti-imperialist critique of Western academia (similarity 0.84)
• British, French, then American Orientalism follows the rise and fall of colonial empires (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist scholarship includes anti-imperialist activists, not only empire-serving scholars (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism is chiefly a British and French cultural enterprise (similarity 0.82)
• American Orientalism recruited many prominent Arab-born scholars (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalism is only the visible tip of a larger modern structure. (similarity 0.81)
• German Orientalists favored text editing while German readers sought broader popular accounts. (similarity 0.81)
• Many Orientalists wrote directly for Muslim and Arab audiences (similarity 0.81)
• German Orientalism’s weak colonial ties show interests did not drive sovereign thought (similarity 0.81)
• British leaders explicitly framed Oriental studies as necessary imperial infrastructure. (similarity 0.80)
• Post-war British Orientalism was dominated by right-wing patricians skeptical of Arab nationalism (similarity 0.80)