Knowledge of the Orient requires conceiving it as ruled by Europe

Evidence

I spoke earlier of incorporation and assimilation of the Orient, as these activities were practiced by writers as different from each other as Dante and d’Herbelot. Clearly there is a difference between those efforts and what, by the end of the nineteenth century, had become a truly formidable European cultural, political, and material enterprise. The nineteenth-century colonial “scramble for Africa” was by no means limited to Africa, of course. Neither was the penetration of the Orient entirely a sudden, dramatic afterthought following years of scholarly study of Asia. What we must reckon with is a long and slow process of appropriation by which Europe, or the European awareness of the Orient, transformed itself from being textual and contemplative into being administrative, economic, and even military. The fundamental change was a spatial and geographical one, or rather it was a change in the quality of geographical and spatial apprehension so far as the Orient was concerned. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 522 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality; European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 522; European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience (+5 more)

Related

• European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation (similarity 0.94)
• European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty (similarity 0.92)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.91)
• European knowledge about the Orient served domination rather than truth. (similarity 0.89)
• British control of the Orient depended on constantly refined knowledge of it (similarity 0.89)
• Europe’s literary repertoire of the Orient half-imagined settings and figures. (similarity 0.88)
• Western scholarly handling turned the Orient from alien into colonial space (similarity 0.88)
• Europeans claimed to possess the Orient’s souls beyond territorial power (similarity 0.88)
• Eighteenth-century comparative history confronted the Orient partly to know Europe itself (similarity 0.88)
• British imperial presence was conceived as permanently transforming the Orient (similarity 0.88)
• For imperial discourse, knowledge of the Orient constitutes power over it (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial expansion widened geographic knowledge but kept Europe at the privileged center (similarity 0.87)
• Modern Orientalism is defined by expanded representational range, not greater accuracy (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist scholarship expanded in tandem with European imperial conquest. (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• European knowledge of the Orient shifted from textual contemplation to administrative and military appropriation #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 522
• European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience #corroborates (0.75)