The term ‘Orientalist’ initially meant a proponent of local rule in India

Evidence

The word ‘Orientalist’, in the sense of one versed in Oriental languages and literatures, entered the English language as early as 1779. (The French equivalent appeared twenty years later.) In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘the Orient’ tended to refer to the Near East and Ottoman North Africa, rather than Asia more generally. In India, however, ‘Orientalist’ had, for a while, quite a specialized sense, as it referred to a Briton who not only studied Indian culture, but also advocated governing in India in accordance with local laws and customs. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 284

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that the pre-Said, original meaning of ‘Orientalist’ in India was political — favoring indigenous law — not merely scholarly.
• XREF: Directly troubles the Said-inflected usage of the term that the reader elsewhere engages with — the word once meant the opposite of what it later connoted.
• SEED: Article angle: how the word ‘Orientalist’ flipped meaning — from pro-native-rule advocate to Western-imposition — between the 1770s and Said’s 1978 book.

Related

• The word Orientalist changed meaning repeatedly over two centuries (similarity 0.82)
• Said defines Orientalism as a Western instrument for dominating the Orient (similarity 0.79)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.78)