Nineteenth-century Orientalism claimed every Asiatic civilization as its object

Evidence

The most thorough of its kind is Jules Mohl’s Vingt-sept Ans d’histoire des études orientales, a two-volume logbook of everything of note that took place in Orientalism between 1840 and 1867.21 Mohl was the secretary of the Société asiatique in Paris, and for something more than the first half of the nineteenth century Paris was the capital of the Orientalist world (and, according to Walter Benjamin, of the nineteenth century). Mohl’s position in the Société could not have been more central to the field of Orientalism. There is scarcely anything done by a European scholar touching Asia during those twenty-seven years that Mohl does not enter under “études orientales.” … Moreover, Orientalist studies apparently cover everything from the editing and translation of texts to numismatic, anthropological, archaeological, sociological, economic, historical, literary, and cultural studies in every known Asiatic and North African civilization, ancient and modern. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Evidence for the totalizing scope of Orientalist discourse — connects to later readings on how the field’s inclusiveness made it a master framework for describing the Orient. — connects to: Nineteenth-century theory defined every civilization in relation to a singular Western ideal — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 169; The nineteenth-century composite Oriental lumped North Africa to India together; Nineteenth-century claim-making became cosmopolitan, modular, and autonomous — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 348 (+10 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Nineteenth-century theory defined every civilization in relation to a singular Western ideal — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 169; The nineteenth-century composite Oriental lumped North Africa to India together; Nineteenth-century claim-making became cosmopolitan, modular, and autonomous — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 348 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism’s scope was total, spanning every discipline and civilization #expands (0.93) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150
• Nineteenth-century Orientalists routinely collaborated with Arab and Turkish scholars #complicates (0.74) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 292