Orientalism is the way Western scholars and media interpret and describe the Eastern world , from a supposedly objective point of view. It is a concept that is associated with the criticism of how the West came to create a story about Asia that legitimised its invasion and colonisation.

In this article we will see what Orientalism has consisted of and how it has been the cultural arm with which the West has dominated Asia, especially the Near and Middle East, according to theorists such as Edward Said, famous for making this concept known .

The origins of Orientalism as an idea

Authors linked to the Asian continent and Arab culture have actively denounced both the perspective on Asia that is disseminated in first world educational establishments and the stereotypes associated with the East transmitted by the media. Edward Said, theoretician and activist, expressed these criticisms in his famous works-essays Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism .

According to Said, Western society has learned to refer to the inhabitants of Asia by appealing to a concept of “the other”, the unknown, something that establishes a moral and empathic border between these people and the direct heirs of the European culture . Unfortunately, this is the position that has been taken by most of the European Orientalist scholars.

Missionaries, explorers and naturalists who went into the East to examine it did many new works, but they also imposed an external vision on the cultural heterogeneity of Asia. Even those called by curiosity for the strange, made it easier for the boundary between us and them to turn Eastern societies into an enemy to be defeated and conquered , either to protect the West or to save Asians and Arabs from themselves.

The Civilizing Story

In a way that escapes any reason, since the time of Roman rule, there has been a certain need on the part of the great empires to “civilize” the eastern peoples, to help the barbarians to develop in order to survive in optimal conditions. The story that has been built up since the 18th century in the history books regarding Orientalism has been, sadly, one of domination.

No matter the author or the intellectual condition of the writers or narrators who talk about Asia through Orientalism, they all comply with the same descriptive pattern: associating everything that is done there with the bad habits of the foreigner, the savage, the infidel, the underdeveloped… In short, a simplistic description is made of the people of Asia and their customs, always using the characteristic concepts of Westerners, as well as their scale of values, to talk about cultures that are unknown.

Even if the exoticism of the orient is praised , these peculiarities are spoken about as something that can only be appreciated from the outside, a phenomenon that is not so much a merit of the orientals as a feature that has appeared in an unwanted way and can only be appreciated from the outside. In short, Orientalism separates the Orientals from what they could be proud of.

It could be said that the binary account of the Western view of the Eastern world, the “us” and the “others”, has been at least negative for the people of Asia, especially if another race is associated with it. The western view, which proclaims itself as the possessor of truth and reason, nullifies any possibility of replication by the observed . It is this imaginary strip between the West and Asia imposed by Orientalism that has allowed a distorted vision of the strange, of the unknown, so that this simplification makes it easy to conclude that it is an inferior culture.

The legacy of the Orientalist story

For scholars specializing in Orientalism such as Edward Said or Stephen Howe, all the analysis, exploration and interpretation that emerged from the Western encyclopedias, especially the English and French ones, meant a clearing of the ground for the legitimization and justification of the colonialism of the time . The expeditions to Egypt, Syria, Palestine or Turkey served to produce reports in favour of a potential political-military intervention in the area: “we have a duty to govern them for the sake of the civilization of the Orient and the West above all else”, said Arthur James Balfour in 1910.

This was one of the discourses that represented England’s role in the colonial era of the 19th century, when its influence in the Maghreb and the Near East was endangered as a result of the growing local nationalism (Arab, African, Ottoman) and the tensions over the economic resources of the area such as the Suez Canal. What was supposed to be a dialogue between the West and the East, turned out to be a political tool of occupation by the European powers.

Eveling Baring, the so-called “master of Egypt”, crushed the nationalist popular rebellion of Colonel Ahmed al-Urabi (1879-1882) in the name of the British Empire, and soon after, he gave another speech of dubious impartiality: “according to Western knowledge and experience, tempered by local considerations, we shall consider what is best for the subdued race”. Once again, it is incurred without any kind of shame or remorse.

The review by Edward Said

A fully orientalist debate would not be understood without mentioning the Palestinian scholar and writer Edward W. Said (1929-2003) for his work Orientalism . This essay meticulously describes the clichés and stereotypes that have been built up over the past centuries about everything oriental, Arab or even Muslim. The author does not make a study of the history of the East, but he does uncover all the propaganda machinery of “ideological clichés” to establish a confrontational relationship between East and West.

In both the 18th and 19th centuries, the dichotomy of “us and the others” was coined, the latter being the inferior civilization that needed to be controlled by a central power from Europe. The era of decolonisation meant a setback for the interests of the historical powers , leaving them without arguments to perpetuate the interference on the interests of the East.

Consequently, conservative Western propaganda once again confronted two cultures with an unequivocally warlike term: “the clash of civilizations”. This clash responds to the heritage of orientalism to endorse the geostrategic plans of the United States superpower, especially to legitimize the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq .

According to Said, once again a distorting and simplifying element of a whole set of cultures was at work. The value given to the perspective of Orientalism was well recognized by his fellow Europeans, who supported any “civilizing” action towards those lands that are so far away. The Italian writer Antonio Gramsci makes another assessment of this whole “western truth” and proceeds to deconstruct his theories. For the transalpine, American anthropology seeks to create a homogenizing narrative of culture, and this has been seen time and again throughout history.