Western orientalism constructed a global civilizational break that served colonial rule

Evidence

In the same period as the construction of divided colonial capitals, a similar separation was being made on a global scale, in the form of a cultural and historical ‘break’ dividing the modern West, as the place of order, reason, and power, from the outside world it was in the process of colonising and seeking to control. ‘As long as we know anything that deserves the name of history’, declared the President of the International Congress of Orientalists held in London in 1892, ‘that break exists.’ Professor Tylor, in his inaugural address as the President of the Congress’s new Anthropological Section, explained more precisely that ‘in the large definition adopted by this congress, the Oriental world reaches its extreme limits. It embraces the continent of Asia, stretching through Egypt over Africa, and into Europe over Turkey and Greece …’ The proceedings of the Congress were reported in the local periodical press in Egypt. Professor Tylor’s definition of the Orient was reproduced in full, and an astonished Egyptian editor added his comment: ‘It is as if the world were divided in two.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 517

Categorization

• SEED: The spectacle of an astonished Egyptian editor reading Tylor’s map of ‘the Orient’ — Asia to the East, Egypt sweeping through Africa, Turkey and Greece pulled in from Europe — could anchor an essay on how scholarly cartographies write empires into being.
• XREF: connects to: Orientalism rose as colonial-control ideology under British capitalist imperialism