The image of the Orient as empty desert justified imperial conquest.

Evidence

And it was the desert that best symbolized the alleged unproductive, fossilized nature of the Arab and Muslim world. The ruins in the desert have interested most visitors (from Napoleon to our own time) more than the crowded urban marketplace. The Orient as an empty wasteland was easily imagined as a space inviting conquerors. For orientalism as an imperialist discourse, which it became in the nineteenth century, no other simile of the Orient could surpass the desiccated, empty desert. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 188

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s thesis in Orientalism about how representing the Orient as vacant wasteland licensed Western domination.