Oriental studies were reconceived as instruments of national policy toward postcolonial nations

Evidence

In the nineteenth century, various European nations set up centers for the study of the Orient from which there emerged a huge body of Orientalist scholarship integrally tied to imperialism and colonization. In this chapter, and throughout the book generally, I focus mainly on the Middle East and North Africa, because it was these regions, due to their proximity to Europe, that largely informed the development of an elite Western vocabulary about “Islam.” After World War II, the United States took over from France and England, both literally and metaphorically. It began to exercise its hegemony in the region through the borrowed language of Orientalism, but also through the vocabulary of capitalist modernization, which was better suited to the new form of imperialism initiated by the United States. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

While it is true to say that the United States did not in fact become a world empire until the twentieth century, it is also true that during the nineteenth century the United States was concerned with the Orient in ways that prepared for its later, overtly imperial concern. Leaving aside the campaigns against the Barbary pirates in 1801 and 1815, let us consider the founding of the American Oriental Society in 1842. At its first annual meeting in 1843 its president, John Pickering, made the very clear point that America proposed for itself the study of the Orient in order to follow the example of the imperial European powers. Pickering’s message was that the framework of Oriental studies—then as now—was political, not simply scholarly. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 745 (#expands, via linked claim)

The role of the early Orientalists like Renan, Sacy, and Lane was to provide their work and the Orient together with a mise en scène; later Orientalists, scholarly or imaginative, took firm hold of the scene. Still later, as the scene required management, it became clear that institutions and governments were better at the game of management than individuals. This is the legacy of nineteenth-century Orientalism to which the twentieth century has become inheritor. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 501 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalism adapted to decolonization by rebranding itself as interdisciplinary area studies; American Oriental studies were founded to emulate European imperial frameworks — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 745; Orientalism evolved from personal observation into institutional and governmental management — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 501 (+3 more)

Related

• American Oriental studies were founded to emulate European imperial frameworks (similarity 0.92)
• European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus (similarity 0.91)
• Empire shifting to the US carried Orientalist scholars across the Atlantic with it (similarity 0.89)
• American Orientalism persists fragmentarily but ideologically coherently (similarity 0.88)
• Oriental studies were reframed as instruments of national postwar policy, not scholarship (similarity 0.87)
• Postwar postcolonial critiques transformed Orientalism’s meaning from scholarship into ideology of empire (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism expanded from scholarly practice to signify imperialist ideology (similarity 0.86)
• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. (similarity 0.86)
• Institutional Orientalism, not all Orientalist scholarship, served colonial power (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism functioned as fuel for colonial conquest before American independence. (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism rose as colonial-control ideology under British capitalist imperialism (similarity 0.85)
• British, French, then American Orientalism follows the rise and fall of colonial empires (similarity 0.85)
• Post-1945 critics transformed Orientalism from scholarship into a concept of imperial institution (similarity 0.85)
• Without a philological tradition, America reframed the Orient as an administrative matter for policy (similarity 0.85)
• Academic study of Islam only began with Orientalism’s language training (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. #corroborates (0.95) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28
• American Oriental studies were founded to emulate European imperial frameworks #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 745
• Orientalism evolved from personal observation into institutional and governmental management #expands (0.70) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 501