Before Islam The original distinction between the "West" and the "East" was crystalized by the
Greco-Persian Wars in 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 Roman Emperor
Diocletian in the late 3rd century AD, and the division of the
Roman Empire into portions that spoke
Latin and
Greek. The classical world had an intimate knowledge of its
Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies) but very
imprecise knowledge of most of the world farther east, including the "
Seres" (Chinese). However, there was a substantial direct
Roman trade with India, unlike that with China, during the Roman Empire.
Middle Ages remits his report on the
Mongols to
Pope Clement V in 1307. The
spread of Islam and the
Muslim conquests in the 7th century established a sharp opposition or even a sense of polarity in the
Middle Ages between European
Christendom and the
Islamic world, which stretched from the
Middle East and
Central Asia to
North Africa and
Andalusia. Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther east was poor and depended on the widely-fictionalized travels of Sir
John Mandeville and the legends of
Prester John, but the equally-famous account by
Marco Polo was much longer and was 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 there was also a wish to understand Arabic works on
medicine,
philosophy, and
science. That 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 and Greek 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, but little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543. It was later translated into other
European languages.
Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Andalusia to take advantage of its Arabic libraries and scholars. However, as the Christian
Reconquista in the
Iberian Peninsula began to accelerate in the 11th century, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford and in four other universities after the
Council of Vienne (1312). There was a
vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilisations of
China and of
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 the
Crusader kingdoms and for Europe itself, which led to
extended diplomatic contacts. During the
Age of Exploration, European interest in
mapping Asia, especially the sea routes, became intense, but most was pursued outside the universities.
Renaissance to 1800 (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 university's
chair in Arabic was founded in about 1643. Oxford followed for Hebrew in 1546 (both chairs were established by Henry VIII). One distinguished scholar was
Edmund Castell, who published his
Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum in 1669, and scholars like
Edward Pococke had traveled to the East and wrote on the modern history and society of the Eastern peoples. The
University of Salamanca had Professors of Oriental Languages at least in the 1570s. In France,
Jean-Baptiste Colbert initiated a training programme for
Les jeunes de langues (The Youth of Languages), young linguists in the diplomatic service, like
François Pétis de la Croix, who, like his father and his son, served as an Arabic interpreter to the King. The study of the
Far East was pioneered by missionaries, especially
Matteo Ricci and others during 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, but knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travelers, like
Japan and
Tibet, and their languages remained limited. The
Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West in
Montesquieu's
Lettres Persanes and
Voltaire's ironic promotion of
Zoroastrianism. Others, like
Edward Gibbon, praised the relative
religious tolerance of the Middle East over what they considered the intolerant Christian West. Many, including
Diderot and Voltaire, praised 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 in 1732, is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental Studies of
Continental Europe. The late 18th century saw the start of a great increase in the study of the
archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field in the next century.
Egyptology led the way and, as with many other ancient cultures, provide linguists with new material for decipherment and study.
19th century , in
Calcutta, founded by
William Jones in 1784 With a great increase in knowledge of Asia among Western specialists, the increasing political and economic involvement in the region, and particularly 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 the developments occurred in the context of
Franco–British rivalry for the 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 was particularly central to the field since most people living in the geographical area that was termed as the Orient were Muslims. The interest in understanding Islam was fueled partly by economic considerations of the growing trade in the
Mediterranean region and by the changing cultural and intellectual climate of the time. During the course of the century, Western archeology 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), which was the first systematic excavation of the site. The expedition resulted in a pioneering publication,
Ninevah and Assyria, which jointly authored by
Victor Place and
Felix Thomas and was published around 1867. New national museums provided a setting for important archaeological finds, most of which were then bought back to Europe, and they 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. The academic
study of Islam also developed, and by the mid-19th century, Oriental studies had become a well-established academic discipline in most European countries, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Although scholastic study expanded, so did
racist attitudes and stereotypes of Asian peoples and cultures, however, which frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities since they were also of Oriental origin and widely recognized as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions to which the new
biological sciences tended to contribute until the end of the
Second World War.
20th century 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 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. The
end of the Cold War caused an era that has been marked by discussions of
Islamist terrorism framing views on the extent to which the culture of the
Arab world and of Islam is a threat to that of the West. The essence of the debate reflects a presupposition for which Orientalism has been criticized by the Orient being defined exclusively by Islam. Such considerations were seen to have occurred in the wider context of the way in which many Western scholars responded to international politics after the Cold War, and they were arguably heightened by the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001. Symbolic of that type of response to the end of the Cold War was the popularization of the
clash of civilizations thesis. That particular idea of a fundamental conflict between East and West was first advanced by
Bernard Lewis in his article "The Roots of Muslim Rage", which was written in 1990. Again, that was seen as a way of accounting for new forms and lines of division in international society after the Cold War. The clash of civilizations approach involved another characteristic of Orientalist thought: 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 P. Huntington in his 1993 article in
Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations?" == Orientalism ==