Does the Orient exist? At first this may appear as stupid a
question as asking if there is such a place as China
or Japan.
However, whereas countries are undoubtedly specific landmasses, the concept of
‘the Orient’ does not fit nearly so neatly onto one particular place. Indeed,
it could even be argued that there is no physical place called the Orient at
all; Edward Said, author of controversial 1978 book Orientalism, argued
that the Orient was a concept held in the West’s collective imagination that
helped to quantify unknown cultures and peoples in the East and, by extension,
to subjugate colonial subjects. Whilst I agree the Orient exists in collective
consciousness, its value is not in its capacity to subjugate but in its attempt
to gain understanding, albeit it sometimes partial or misinformed, of others.
In the 18th century, ‘the Orient’ was used to
refer solely to North Africa and the Middle East; India
and the Far East were added later. Well into
the 20th century, those who came to study the Orient did so predominantly
from a background of Classics and Biblical studies. It is perhaps, therefore,
of little surprise that when these early orientalists quantified, codified and
described their oriental topics, they did so with reference to what they
already knew. Thus, languages such as Sanskrit and Persian were studied in their most
archaic forms, enabling comparison with Latin and Greek, Islamic odes were compared
the Odyssey and the Iliad, and the main use of learning Arabic
was believed to be in understanding biblical Hebrew.
The West’s preoccupation with Classics impacted on nascent
studies of the Orient in a number of ways. Firstly, as the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome
were seen to represent Europe’s pinnacles of
achievement, similar ‘golden ages’ were sought in the ancient past of the Orient.
Egypt
of the pharaohs and the Achemenid, Assyrian and Sassanid civilizations were
consequently of particular interest to early orientalists.
The problems of this approach were two-fold: firstly, study
of ancient civilizations and languages was pursued in preference to study of
their modern counterparts. The 19th century Arabist, Reynold
Nicholson, was typical of oriental academics in that he was unable to speak
either Arabic or Persian, despite teaching both.[1]
Secondly, if the summit of a society’s cultural achievement was in some
long-forgotten age, it made sense to orientalists that the subsequent period
had been one of stagnation or decline. Since the indigenous population had never
regained their former glory, or so the argument went, it was the responsibility
of orientalists to educate them about their history so that they might be
inspired to strive to achieve such heights once again. The exact nature of this
‘golden age’ was to be defined by western philologists, poets, theologians,
archaeologists, numismatists etc., regardless of any flaws in their conclusions
and, at times, extreme creative license. Colonial powers could take advantage
of the orientalists’ work because, they argued, only westerners held the key to
knowledge about the past. The guiding, benevolent hand of the all-knowing West
was, therefore, in the best interests of the East.
Europe’s obsession with
biblical study simultaneously spurred on and restricted the development of
oriental studies. The learning of oriental languages, translation of texts and comparative
philology certainly benefited from the financial support of the church and the
interest of clergyman as, during the 17th and early 18th
centuries when orientalism was in its infancy, priests were among the small
minority of people who were both educated and able to gain access to
manuscripts. The orientalist ‘projects’
of these individuals were numerous but commonly related to the following
topics: proving that Hebrew was the primordial language; establishing the
authority of Exodus; discrediting the views of the Eastern Orthodox
church; and portraying the rise of Islam as both a punishment for the sins of
Christians and the downfall of once great civilizations. Pursuing these themes
gave scholars exposure to diverse texts and ideas and sparked in some genuine appreciation
of oriental literature and art, curiosity about religious practices and
theological concepts, research into manners and customs etc.
The trouble with these orientalists’ work was the context of
religious bigotry in which they worked. Reliance on church patronage and the
general public’s ideas about what was acceptable both influenced which ideas
gained currency; indeed, when the Arabist George Sale translated the Qu’ran
into English in 1734, even his slightest praise of Islam was thought too favorable
and was derided by his colleagues. Far more popular, and therefore more widely
circulated, were tracts that derided Islam and portrayed the Prophet as a
fraud. Writings often outlined the dichotomy between the supposedly superior,
Christian West and the inferior, Islamic East. Every characteristic of the
Occident had an opposite in the Orient: rationality contrasted with
spirituality, liberal democracy was compared to despotism, and sexual morality
was juxtaposed with the erotic sensualism believed to result from polygamy and a
penchant for harems. The need to pigeon-hole ideas into this framework of
opposites restricted the scope of orientalist ideas in circulation.
The value in orientalists’ ideas is not their accuracy, for
they were often flawed, but the influence that they had on creating the idea of
a place called ‘the Orient’ in public imagination. The concept clearly sank
deep as, despite the fact that few Europeans even now have personal experience
of countries considered ‘oriental’, orientalists’ ideas have been incorporated
into today’s popular thinking; an association of the East with exoticism, fascination
with figures such as Tamerlane, Genghis Khan and Marco Polo, and even a fear
of Islam rising on Europe’s doorstep originated or were developed in
orientalist writings. The greatest impact of orientalism, therefore, is the
instantaneous way in which ‘the Orient’ conjures up a thousand images without
the need for further explanation. Whether or not the Orient exists, or indeed
has ever existed, as a physical place is irrelevant; ‘the Orient’ as a concept
is ingrained in the minds of people across the world, influencing not only how
they see others, but how they understand themselves.
[1] Irwin, R. For Lust of
Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (Penguin: London, 2007) p. 208
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