Maarten Overeem
471326
Tutorial E
Dr. Chris Niersatz
Global History
Tools of dominance
What role played Orientalism in Western colonial rule over non-Western civilizations
27
th
september 2019
‘A Friendly Power in Egypt’ W.C. Horsley 1906 f
rom The Century Edition of Cassell's History of
England, published c. 1900
Since the beginning of time different people have come in touch with each other. Usually these
contacts were very little and brief. This has always caused for people to form ideas about each other,
to create views of each other. Probably the most view of one people towards another is that of
Western-Europeans towards the East, Middle-East, India and the Far East. This is mainly due to book
written by Edward Said
Orientalism
. However Orientalism had already been around for a large
amount of time. In this essay a closer look will be taken into what role Orientalism played in Western
colonial rule over non-Western civilizations.
As a starting point a definition of Orientalism should be given. Orientalism is the Western world
creating an image of what different societies ought to be identified as. All the lands that lay to the East
of Europe used be called Orient, this means East in Latin. This shows that creating an image of alien
societies started with depicting Asian countries. But the term can also be used for countries that are
not in Asia and do not lay to the East of Europe. Naturally this image has not always been the same.
