Orientalist scholarship reframed itself as disinterested after the commercial rationale faded

Evidence

As for the diffusion of such work as Lane’s, there were not only the various societies of useful knowledge but also, in an age when the original Orientalist program of aiding commerce and trade with the Orient had become exhausted, the specialized learned societies whose products were works displaying the potential (if not actual) values of disinterested scholarship. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 417

Categorization

• QUESTION: When exactly did the commerce-and-trade rationale exhaust itself, and what replaced its legitimating function in the societies’ public rhetoric?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 417