Knowledge of the Orient served to extend European suzerainty over Asia

Evidence

For Hurgronje the distinction between Orient and Occident was no mere academic or popular cliché: quite the contrary. For him it signified the essential, historical power relationship between the two. Knowledge of the Orient either proves, enhances, or deepens the difference by which European suzerainty (the phrase has a venerable nineteenth-century pedigree) is extended effectively over Asia. To know the Orient as a whole, then, is to know it because it is entrusted to one’s keeping, if one is a Westerner. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 659

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core Orientalism-knowledge-is-power mechanism that later Islamophobia readings build on; connects to Foucault’s power-knowledge and to the companion reading on colonial psychology. — connects to: European knowledge about the Orient served domination rather than truth. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 262
• SEED: The ‘entrusted to one’s keeping’ formulation — knowledge as trusteeship — angles toward how modern expertise on Muslim societies claims custodianship of its subjects.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 659