Europe and its orientalisms

Assessments of Europe’s engagement with the Orient have customarily drawn upon Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, an approach that has critically examined the discursive relationship between East and West. While Said’s theoretical framework has been innovative in understanding concepts of identity and the language of cultural difference that underwrote global power relationships, it too often fails to recognise the multiple discourses and traditions that shaped European perspectives on the ‘East’. This chapter proposes a more nuanced understanding of the ‘East’ in modern European cultural and intellectual history. It assesses the various grammars of European Orientalism in the long nineteenth century, covering French and British colonial ideologies, Austro-Hungarian perceptions of the Balkans, and the ambiguities that characterised the Russian and Ottoman empires. By highlighting the multiple registers of European Orientalism, it argues for a reassessment of the Saidian framework that persists to see Orientalism as a static, trans-historical epistemology. It examines various Orientalist typologies and situates them within their specific historical contexts to re-conceptualise the ‘East’ as a fluid and pluralist category within nineteenth-century European culture. Ultimately, this chapter investigates the complicated dynamics that characterised Europe’s many Orientalist cultures and urge a greater appreciation for the historical experiences that conditioned them across the continent