“Orientalism - Western Conceptions of the Orient”

Seite 41 From 1815 to 1914 European direct colonial dominion expanded from about 35 percent of the earth’s surface to about 85 percent of it. For much of the nineteenth Century, as Lord Salisbury put it in 1881, the common view of France and England of the Orient was was : “if you are bent on meddling in a country in which you are deeply interested —you have three courses open to you. You may renounce—or monopolize—or share. Renouncing would have been to place the French across our road to India. Monopolizing would have been near the risk of war. So we resolved to share.“ What they shared, however, was not only land or profit or rule; it was the kind of intellectual power I have been calling Orientalism. 42 If…