Orientalist scholarship shifted with native independence struggles and economic recession

Evidence

His earlier solicitation of Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur notwithstanding, Gibb’s call for humanistic interinanimation between East and West reflects the changed political and cultural realities of the postwar era. European suzerainty over the Orient had not passed; but it had evolved—in British Egypt—from a more or less placid acceptance by the natives into a more and more contested political issue compounded by fractious native demands for independence. These were the years of constant British trouble with Zaghlul, the Wafd party, and the like. Moreover, since 1925 there had been a worldwide economic recession, and this too increased the sense of tension that Gibb’s prose reflects. But the specifically cultural message in what he says is the most compelling. Heed the Orient, he seems to be telling his reader, for its use to the Western mind in the struggle to overcome narrowness, oppressive specialization, and limited perspectives. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 663

Categorization

• XREF: Political and economic pressure reshaping academic discourse parallels how anti-Islamophobia scholarship tracks geopolitical events — connects to later readings on how Islamophobia discourse responds to real-world crises.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the 1925 recession’s specific mechanism in reshaping European scholarly tone toward the East — how exactly did economic strain translate into a more conciliatory cultural message?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 663