Oriental studies

The original distinction between the "West" and the "East" was crystallized in the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC, when Athenian historians made a distinction between their "Athenian democracy" and the Persian monarchy. An 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 at the end of the 3rd century AD, and the division of the Empire into Latin and Greek-speaking portions. The classical world had intimate knowledge of their Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies), but very imprecise knowledge of most of the world further East, including the "Seres" (Chinese). However, there was substantial direct Roman trade with India (unlike with China) in the Imperial period.

Hayton of Corycus remitting his report on the Mongols, to Pope Clement V, in 1307

The rise of Islam and Muslim conquests in the 7th century established a sharp opposition, or even a sense of polarity, between medieval European Christendom and the medieval Islamic world (which stretched from the Middle East and Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia). Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther to the East was poor, dependent on the wildly fictionalised travels of Sir John Mandeville and legends of Prester John, although the equally famous, and much longer, account by Marco Polo were more accurate.

Scholarly work was initially largely linguistic in nature, with primarily a religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac with early Christian literature, but also from a wish to understand Arabic works on medicine, philosophy and science. This effort, also called the Studia Linguarum existed sporadically throughout the Middle Ages, and the "Renaissance of the 12th century" witnessed a particular growth in translations of Arabic texts into Latin, with figures like Constantine the African, who translated 37 books, mostly medical texts, from Arabic to Latin, and Herman of Carinthia, one of the translators of the Qur'an. The earliest translation of the Qur'an into Latin was completed in 1143, although little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543, after which it was translated into other European languages. Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Al-Andaluz to take advantage of the Arabic libraries and scholars there. However, as the Christian Reconquista in the Iberian peninsula accelerated in the 11th century and subsequent centuries, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford, and four other universities following the Council of Vienne (1312).[1]

There was a vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilisations in China and India, from which luxury goods (notably cotton and silk textiles as well as ceramics) were imported. Although the Crusades produced relatively little in the way of scholarly interchange, the eruption of the Mongol Empire had strategic implications for both the Crusader kingdoms and Europe itself, and led to extended diplomatic contacts. From the Age of Exploration, European interest in mapping Asia, and especially the sea-routes, became intense, though mostly pursued outside the universities.

Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (徐光啟) (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements (幾何原本) published in 1607

University Oriental studies became systematic during the Renaissance, with the linguistic and religious aspects initially continuing to dominate. There was also a political dimension, as translations for diplomatic purposes were needed, even before the West engaged actively with the East beyond the Ottoman Empire. A landmark was the publication in Spain in 1514 of the first Polyglot Bible, containing the complete existing texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, in addition to Greek and Latin. At Cambridge University there has been a Regius Professor of Hebrew since 1540 (the fifth oldest regular chair there), and the chair in Arabic was founded in about 1643. Oxford followed for Hebrew in 1546 (both chairs were established by Henry VIII). Distinguished scholars included Edmund Castell, who published his Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum in 1669, whilst some scholars like Edward Pococke had travelled to the East and wrote also on the modern history and society of Eastern peoples. The University of Salamanca had Professors of Oriental Languages from at least the 1570s. In France, Colbert initiated a training programme for "Les Jeunes de langues", young linguists with the diplomatic service, like François Pétis de la Croix, who like his father and his son served as Arabic interpreter to the King. Study of the Far East was pioneered by missionaries, especially Matteo Ricci and others in the Jesuit China missions, and missionary motives were to remain important, at least in linguistic studies.

During the 18th century, Western scholars reached a reasonable basic level of understanding of the geography and most of the history of the region, though knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travelers, like Japan and Tibet, and their languages, remained limited. Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West, in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes or Voltaire's ironic promotion of Zoroastrianism; others, like Edward Gibbon, praised the relative religious tolerance of the Middle East as opposed to the intolerant Christian West, and many, including Diderot and Voltaire, the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China. The Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" (English: University of Naples "L'Orientale"), founded in Naples, Italy, in 1732, is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental Studies of the European continent.

The end of the 18th century saw the beginnings in the great increase in study of the archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field through the next century. Egyptology led the way, and as with many other ancient cultures, provided the linguists with new material for decipherment and study.

The old building of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, founded by William Jones in 1784

With a great increase in knowledge of Asia among Western specialists, increasing political and economic involvement in the region, and in particular the realization of the existence of close relations between Indian and European languages, by William Jones, there emerged more complex intellectual connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures. Some of these developments occurred in the context of Franco–British rivalry for control of India. Liberal economists, such as James Mill, denigrated Eastern civilizations as static and corrupt. Karl Marx, himself of Jewish origin, characterized the Asiatic mode of production as unchanging, because of the economic narrowness of village economies and the State's role in production. Oriental despotism was generally regarded in Europe as a major factor in the relative failure of progress of Eastern societies. The study of Islam in particular was central to the field since the majority of people living in the geographical area termed 'the Orient' were Muslims. Interest in understanding Islam was partly fueled by economic considerations of growing trade in the Mediterranean region and the changing cultural and intellectual climate of the time.[2]

In the course of the century Western archaeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. In the 1850s, for example, the French Government was determined to mount large-scale operations in Assyria and Mesopotamia to showcase its dominance in the region. An archaeological team led by Victor Place excavated the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II in Khorsabad (formerly Nineveh), would become the first systematic excavation of the site.[3] This expedition resulted in a pioneering publication entitled Ninevah and Assyria, jointly authored by Victor Place and Felix Thomas and published in around 1867.[4] New national museums provided a setting for important archaeological finds, most of which were in this period bought back to Europe, and put Orientalists in the public spotlight as never before.

The first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by the scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. In that time, the academic study of Islam also developed, and, by the mid-19th century, Oriental Studies was a well-established academic discipline in most European countries, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Yet, while scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of Asian peoples and cultures. This frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities, who were also of Oriental origin and widely recognized as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions,[5] to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the end of the Second World War.

Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during the Second International Congress of Orientalists in London, 1874

The participation in academic studies by scholars from the newly independent nations of the region itself inevitably changed the nature of studies considerably, with the emergence of post-colonial studies and Subaltern Studies. The influence of Orientalism (in the sense used by Edward Said in his book of the same name) in scholarship on the Middle East was seen to have re-emerged and risen in prevalence again after the end of the Cold War. It is contended that this was partly a response to "a lacuna" in identity politics in international relations generally, and within the 'West' particularly, which was brought about by the absence of Soviet communism as a global adversary.[6] The post–Cold War era has been marked by discussions of Islamist terrorism framing views on the extent to which the culture of the Arab world and Islam is a threat to that of the West. The essence of this debate reflects a presupposition for which Orientalism has been criticized - that the 'Orient' is defined exclusively by Islam. Such considerations as these were seen to have occurred in the wider context of the way in which many Western scholars responded to international politics in the post–Cold War world; and they were arguably heightened following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.[7]

Symbolic of this type of response to the end of the Cold War was the popularization of the 'clash of civilizations' thesis. This particular idea of a fundamental conflict between East and West was first advanced by Bernard Lewis in an article entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage", written in 1990. Again, this was seen as a way of accounting for new forms and lines of division in post–Cold War international society. The 'clash of civilizations' approach involved another characteristic of Orientalist thought; namely, the tendency to see the region as being one, homogenous 'civilization', rather than as comprising various different and diverse cultures and strands. It was an idea that was taken on more famously by Samuel Huntington in his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, called "The Clash of Civilizations?".[8]

Orientology postal stamp published in India

• American Oriental Society
• Oriental Club of Philadelphia
• Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art

• Tōyō Bunko in Tokyo

• Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University

• School of Oriental Studies at Universidad del Salvador, Argentina
• Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
• American Center for Oriental Research
• The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University

• The Institute of Oriental Culture at Tokyo University
• Institute for Research in Humanities at the Kyoto University

• The Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw
• Asiatica Association, Italy
• Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford
• Oriental Collections at Bulgarian National Library
• Uppsala University in Sweden
• Ancient Indian & Iran Trust, London UK

• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: China in Western Thought and Culture
• John E. Hill, translation in his e-edition of Hou Hanshu
• Edward Said's Splash The impact of Edward Said's book on Middle Eastern studies, by Martin Kramer.
• Frontier Orientalism — an article by Austrian anthropologist Andre Gingrich
• Edward Said and the Production of Knowledge
• Orientalism as a tool of Colonialism
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Oriental Study and Research" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.