Orientalism : History of Orientalism

History of Orientalism
The precise, original distinction between the "West" and the "East" is difficult to ascertain. Because of the Graeco-Persian, Athenian historians drew a sharp, distinguishing line between their civic culture and Persian despotism, but the institutional distinction, between East and West, did not exist as a defined polarity before the Oriens- and Occidens-divided administration of the Emperor Diocletian's Roman Empire, however the ascension of Christianity and Islam established a sharp opposition between European Christendom and the Islamic cultures in the East and in North Africa. During the Middle Ages, Islamic peoples were the "alien" enemies of Christendom. European knowledge of cultures farther to the East was poor. Nevertheless, there was vague knowledge of the complex civilizations extant in China and India, from which luxury goods (woven silk textiles, ceramics, et cetera) were imported. As European exploration and colonisation occurred, the distinction between illiterate peoples (i.e. in Africa and the Americas) and the literate cultures of the East became entrenched.

In the Eighteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers characterised aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West (e.g. Voltaire promoted studying Zoroastrianism, supposedly supporting Deism, over supernatural Christianity), others praised the relative religious tolerance of the Islamic East as opposed to the intolerant Christian West, and others the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China.

Upon the translation of the Avesta, by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron, and discovery of Indo-European languages, by William Jones, there emerged complex connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures. Yet, these developments occurred in the context of Franco–British rivalry for control of India, with the understanding that said knowledge was used to understand cultures in order to effectively colonise and control them for effective exploitation. Liberal economists, such as James Mill, denigrated Eastern civilizations as static and corrupt. Karl Marx characterised the Asiatic mode of production as unchanging, because of the economic narrowness of village economies and the State's role in production, hence, British colonialism unconsciously prepared future Indian revolutions by destroying that mode of production.

The first, serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. In that time, the study of Islam also emerged, and, by the mid-nineteenth century, Oriental Studies was an established academic discipline. Yet, while scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of "inscrutable", "wily" Orientals. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions.

Moreover, Eastern art and literature remained "exotic" and inferior to Classical Graeco-Roman art, literature, and social ideals. Eastern political and economic systems were thought to be feudal oriental despotisms, and their alleged cultural inertia was considered resistant to progress. Many critical theorists regard this Orientalism as integral to the larger, ideological colonialism justified in the White Man's Burden concept. So, from the Western European perspective, colonialism is not perceived as a process of domination for political and economic gain, but is figured as a selfless endeavour executed to recuperate the Orientals from their own political backwardness and economic mismanagement, to save them from themselves.