Orient Studies of Roman-German-Imperials in China/Corea/Japan/Islands

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 ofprogress of Eastern societies. The study of Islam in particular was central to the field since the majority of people living in the geographical area termed 'the Orient' were Muslims. Interest in understanding Islam was partly fueled by economic considerations of growing trade in the Mediterranean region and the changing cultural and intellectual climate of the time.[2]In the course of the century Western archaeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. The new national museums provided a setting for the finds, most of which were in this period bought back to Europe, and 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. In that time, the academic study of Islam also developed, and, by the mid-19th century, Oriental Studies was a well-established academic discipline in most European counties, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Yet, while scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of "inscrutable", "wily" Orientals. This frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities, who were also of Oriental origin and widely seen as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions,[3] to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the middle of the following century.Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during theSecond International Congress of Orientalists in London, 1874The Women of Algiers, 1834, by Eugène Delacroix is one of the earliest paintings from Western painters in the "Eastern world".Supporters of "Oriental Studies" counter that the term "Asian" is just as encompassing as "Oriental," and may well have originally had the same meaning, were it derived from an Akkadianword for "East" (a more common derivation is from one or both of two Anatolian proper names). Replacing one word with another is to confuse historically objectionable opinions about the East with the concept of "the East" itself. The terms Oriental/Eastern and Occidental/Western are both inclusive concepts that usefully identify large-scale cultural differences. Such general concepts do not preclude or deny more specific ones.Bernard Lewis' own department at Princeton Universitywas renamed a decade before Said wrote his book, a detail that Said gets wrong.[8] By some, the term "Oriental" has come to be thought offensive to non-Westerners. Area studies that incorporate not only philological pursuits but identity politics may also account for the hesititation to use the term "Oriental".Like the term Orient, Orientalism derives from the Latin word oriens (rising) and, equally likely, from the Greek word ('he'oros', the direction of the rising sun). "Orient" is the opposite ofOccident. In terms of The Old World, Europe was considered The Occident (The West), and its farthest-known extreme The Orient (The East). Dating from the Roman Empire until the Middle Ages, what is now, in the West, considered 'the Middle East' was then considered 'the Orient'. However, use of the various terms and senses derived from "Orient" has greatly declined in the 20th century, not least as trans-Pacific links between Asia and America have grown; nowadays, Asia usually arrives at the USA from the West.The first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by the scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. In that time, the academic study of Islam also developed, and, by the mid-19th century, Oriental Studies was a well-established academic discipline in most European counties, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Yet, while scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of "inscrutable", "wily" Orientals. This frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities, who were also of Oriental origin and widely seen as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions,[3] to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the middle of the following century.With a great increase in knowledge of Asia among Western specialists, increasing political and economic involvement in the region, and in particular 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 these developments occurred in the context of Franco–British rivalry for 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 ofprogress of Eastern societies. The study of Islam in particular was central to the field since the majority of people living in the geographical area termed 'the Orient' were Muslims. Interest in understanding Islam was partly fueled by economic considerations of growing trade in the Mediterranean region and the changing cultural and intellectual climate of the time.[2]In the course of the century Western archaeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. The new national museums provided a setting for the finds, most of which were in this period bought back to Europe, and put Orientalists in the public spotlight as never before.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 firstPolyglot 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 chair in Arabic was founded in about 1643. Oxford followed for Hebrew in 1546 (both chairs were established by Henry VIII). Distinguished scholars included Edmund Castell, who published his Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum in 1669, whilst some scholars likeEdward Pococke had travelled to the East and wrote also on the modern history and society of Eastern peoples. The University of Salamanca had Professors of Oriental Languages from at least the 1570s. In France, Colbert initiated a training programme for "Les Jeunes de langues", young linguists with the diplomatic service, like François Pétis de la Croix, who like his father and his son served as Arabic interpreter to the King. Study of the Far East was pioneered by missionaries, especially Matteo Ricci and others in 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, though knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travellers, like Japan and Tibet, and their languages, remained limited.Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West, in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes or Voltaire's ironic promotion of Zoroastrianism; others, like Edward Gibbon, praised the relative religious tolerance of the Middle East as opposed to the intolerant Christian West, and many, including Diderot and Voltaire, the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China.The end of the century saw the beginnings in the great increase in study of the archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field through the next century.Egyptology led the way, and as with many other ancient cultures, provided the linguists with new material for decipherment and study.Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (徐光啟) (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements (幾何原本) published in 1607.There was vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilizations in China and 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 both the Crusader kingdoms and Europe itself, and led to extended diplomatic contacts. From the Age of Exploration, European interest inmapping Asia, and especially the sea-routes, became intense, though mostly pursued outside the universities.The rise of Islam and Muslim conquests in the 7th century established a sharp opposition, or even a sense of polarity, between medieval European Christendom and the medieval Islamic world (which stretched from the Middle East and Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia). During the Middle Ages, Muslims and Jews were considered the "alien" enemies of Christendom. Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther to the East was poor, dependent on the wildly fictionalized travels of Sir John Mandeville and legends of Prester John, although the equally famous, and much longer, account by Marco Polo was a good deal more accurate.Scholarly work was initially very largely linguistic in nature, with primarily a religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac with early Christian literature, but also from a wish to understand Arabic works on medicine, philosophy and science. This 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 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. Theearliest translation of the Qur'an into Latin was completed in 1143, although little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543, after which it was translated into other European languages.Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Al-Andaluz to take advantage of the Arabic libraries and scholars there. Later, with the Christian Reconquista in full progress, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford, and four other universities following the Council of Vienne (1312)[1]Hayton of Corycus remitting his report on the Mongols, to Pope Clement V, in 1307The Western world's original distinction between the "West" and the "East" was crystallised in theGreco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC, when Athenian historians made a distinction between their "Athenian democracy" and that of 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 the Emperor Diocletian's Roman Empire at the end of the 3rd century AD, and the division of the Empire into Latin and Greek-speaking portions. The classical world had initimate knowledge of their Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies), but veryimprecise knowledge of most of the world further East, including the "Seres" (Chinese). However there was substantial direct Roman trade with India (unlike with China) in the Imperial periodAncient Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum. In the 19th century the placing of spectacular antiquities in the new museums brought unusual interest from the general public to Oriental Studies.Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Easternsocieties and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies, although the primary focus and aims of traditional Oriental Studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of academic Islamic Studies. European study of the region, formerly known as "theOrient", had primarily religious origins, which has remained an important motivation until recent times. Learning from Arabic medicine and philosophy, and the Greek translations from Hebrew and Arabic, was an important factor in the Middle Ages. Linguistic knowledge preceded a wider study of cultures and history, and as Europe began to encroach upon the region, political and economic factors encouraged growth in academic study. From the late 18th century archaeology became a link from the discipline to a wide European public, as treasures brought back filled new European museums. The modern study was influenced both by imperialist attitudes and interests, and also the sometimes naive fascination of the exotic East for Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers, captured in images by artists, that is embodied in a repeatedly-surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West, called "Orientalism". In the last century, scholars from the region itself have participated on equal terms in the discipline