Post-war British Orientalism was dominated by right-wing patricians skeptical of Arab nationalism

Evidence

British Orientalism was less radicalized than the French. Middle Eastern studies, particularly in London, were dominated by a rather grand patriciate of scholars who espoused what can loosely be described as right-wing positions. These scholars (among them Bernard Lewis, Elie Kedourie, P. J. Vatikiotis (Taki) and Ann Lambton) tended to be sceptical about the declared aims of Arab socialism and nationalism, defensive about Britain’s role in the Middle East and sympathetic towards Israel. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 463

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the Saidian picture of Orientalism as a monolith; ties to the right-wing vs left-wing East-west divide in Irwin’s larger argument.

Related

• Said’s critique of Orientalism also suppressed Arab scholars and drew on Arab precursors (similarity 0.81)
• German Orientalists led the field despite Germany having no Arab empire. (similarity 0.80)
• Bernard Lewis’s politics obscured his genuine sympathy for Arab culture (similarity 0.80)
• American Orientalism recruited many prominent Arab-born scholars (similarity 0.80)
• Oriental studies were reframed as instruments of national postwar policy, not scholarship (similarity 0.80)
• Many Orientalists wrote directly for Muslim and Arab audiences (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalist scholarship mounted political and ideological edges rather than neutral knowledge (similarity 0.80)
• Postwar hostility to Orientalism grew from political conflict, not scholarship defects (similarity 0.79)
• Said defines Orientalism as a Western instrument for dominating the Orient (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism is chiefly a British and French enterprise, later American. (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism is a differentiated analysis, not a blanket attack on the West (similarity 0.79)
• British, French, then American Orientalism follows the rise and fall of colonial empires (similarity 0.79)
• Tibawi saw Arab scholars of the Orientalist mode as culturally alienated (similarity 0.79)
• Arab critics attacked Said for stereotyping Orientalism and misrepresenting Islam (similarity 0.79)
• UK-based scholars founded modern Middle East ethnopolitics as a break from Orientalism (similarity 0.79)