3rd Read Through of the Scope of Orientalism
10/20/22
Reading the Scope of Orientalism, Chapter 1, for the third time, allowing for me to obtain a better understanding of the text. Reading a third time through allowed me to use context information from the text to identify the meaning of unfamiliar words. In the first few pages, rereading made me realize just how much power Britain had over colonial Egypt. Britain not only had total control over the Egyptian government, but it controlled the way Egyptians thought about themselves. Britain made themselves appear to be some kind of savior for Egypt and believed that their people and government needed saving. I had an even bigger realization of how much Balfour gets made fun of in the text by Said. The entire chapter depicts Said analyzing the poorly formulated claims of Balfour. He goes into detail about how Orientalism became widespread and interpreted in different ways. Europeans were all developing their own ideas on how the East is inferior. The west used Orientalism as a mirror to see how they were more powerful than the east. People like Cromer wanted to disguise themselves as scholars who were simply studying easterners, but really they were trying to find ways that the West could become superior.
