Highbrow European thinkers characterized Orientals as lazy, irrational, and historyless.

Evidence

To such relatively popular accounts of the Orient as Chirol’s, we can add a testimonial by Élie Faure, who in his ruminations draws, like Chirol, on history, cultural expertise, and the familiar contrast between White Occidentalism and colored Orientalism. While delivering himself of paradoxes like “le carnage permanent de l’indifférence orientale” (for, unlike “us,” “they” have no conception of peace), Faure goes on to show that the Orientals’ bodies are lazy, that the Orient has no conception of history, of the nation, or of patrie, that the Orient is essentially mystical—and so on. Faure argues that unless the Oriental learns to be rational, to develop techniques of knowledge and positivity, there can be no rapprochement between East and West. A far more subtle and learned account of the East-West dilemma can be found in Fernand Baldensperger’s essay “Où s’affrontent l’Orient et l’Occident intellectuels,” but he too speaks of an inherent Oriental disdain for the idea, for mental discipline, for rational interpretation. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 651

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Orient has no conception of history/nation/patrie’ claim is a direct ancestor of contemporary tropes about Muslims lacking modernity — key scaffolding literature. — connects to: Cromer characterized Orientals as inherently deficient in logic — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 337; Balfour denied Orientals any history of self-government
• QUESTION: Baldensperger’s argument about ‘inherent Oriental disdain for rational interpretation’ seems to be doing heavy lifting here — worth chasing the original essay.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 651