Abstract
AbstractSince its publication in 1978, Edward Said's Orientalism has had a significant impact on postcolonial studies in a range of fields. This paper assesses his impact on the historiography of Anglophone travel writing concerning Ottoman Empire during the early modern period. Said's analysis of the relationship between representational power and colonial authority remains relevant to our understanding of early modern travel texts.Said's epistemology raises significant issues for historians of early modern intercultural encounters. This article summarises recent debates surrounding early modern travel narratives. It contrasts doctrinaire applications of Said's theory with more recent, particularistic studies. It provides a much‐needed survey of travel writing historiography that considers the continuing impact of Said's postcolonial thought on the study of early modern travel narratives relating to the Ottoman Middle East.In so doing, it explores the lack of fit between early modern travel narratives and Said's methodology. I explore the methodological problems thrown up by conventional applications of Said's epistemology to precolonial travellers' texts. Based on a wide‐ranging survey of Said's oeuvre, the article demonstrates that, more than 30 years on, Said's work remains relevant to the historiographical challenges presented by early modern English travel writing about Islam.
Highlights
Said’s epistemology raises significant issues for historians of early modern intercultural encounters
Said established his critique of scholarly Orientalism in relation to Anglo-French colonialism in the Middle East in subsequent centuries
Orientalism was composed as a polemic and has become a serious manifesto for historical method
Summary
Before Said, Orientalism referred to the study of the history, language and culture of ancient and modern Asiatic societies. Orientalist studies sought to square Asian societies’ historical traditions with their own Christian origin myths.4 Said challenged this cosy academic consensus by arguing that such endeavours were fundamentally connected to the literal and epistemic violence of colonialism. European writings about the ‘Orient’ were the product of actual and imagined power relations that re-present the Oriental/Eastern/Asian as subservient to the Occidental/Western/European. This applied to those forms of representation directly implicated in the process of colonial domination (such as administrative, legal and governmental discourses) and to academic and imaginative works, including those by ethnographers, religious scholars, writers and artists who use the Orient, or individuals, ideas and institutions pertaining to it, in their works.. The relationship between power and knowledge is at the heart of Said’s theory, a compelling combination that has ensured its enduring inf luence over postcolonial studies
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