The eighteenth-century Orient was often idealized, not seen as a savage Other

Evidence

Jesuit accounts of Kaifeng Jews, together with their extensive, laudatory writings about neo-Confucian China provided an essential ingredient for the Western construction of the Orient. During this time, a growing romance was developing in Europe between many of its literary figures and the seductive Orient, “that distant land of obscurity.” Contrary to conventional perceptions, the oriental in texts from the period of eighteenth-century absolutism was not always perceived as a “savage Other.” Voltaire, for example, imagined China as a land of statesmen, philosophers, literary men, physicians, and astronomers who studied cosmic matters literally around the clock. His Lettres d. M. Pauw had very little to do with the Jews of Kaifeng or China. It reflected the spirit of his time, the aspirations of Enlightenment thinkers themselves. It was about a journey in search of promise, a battle of good and evil. China was for Voltaire what the New Jerusalem was for Blake. The Jesuits’ descriptions of a glorious neo-Confucian China likewise fitted their own model of an ideal European society and their vision of Utopia. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 350

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls Edward Said’s Orientalism thesis that the Orient was always a degraded foil; this passage complicates that by showing utopian idealization of China alongside denigration of Jews.
• QUESTION: How does Voltaire’s China idealization square with his anti-Jewish writings? The juxtaposition of idealized China vs degraded European Jews seems to be the structural logic, worth tracing.