This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. The on-going debate on the legacies of modern European Orientalism has yet to fully consider its Italian context.
Italian Orientalism is an interdisciplinary and transnational study both of the reception of European Orientalism in Risorgimento Italy, and of the development of an Italian Orientalist expression in the post-unification and fascist periods.
Fabrizio De Donno analyses the relationship between Orientalist scholarship and literary aesthetics in their related European and Italian contexts, mapping their interaction with linguistic, racial, religious and colonial thought. They provide the rhetorical tools of identity politics which, it is argued, are central to notions of Italian nationhood, cosmopolitanism and Euromania. This edition of the eBook can be cited.
To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book.
This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker. Orientalism versus Classicism? I would like to thank my supervisor, Zygmunt Baranski, for his support and guidance throughout those years. I am also very grateful to Javed Majeed and Sir Christopher Alan Bayly may he rest in peace for their interest in this project, and for providing inspiration, illuminating conversations, and insightful feedback on my work over many years.
I would like to thank my colleagues at Royal Holloway, University of London, for their encouragement and support. For their extensive comments on chapters of this book, I am deeply indebted to Robert S.
My deepest thanks go to Valeria Ceccarelli for her love, patience and companionship. Some material has already appeared, in a different form, in the journal California Italian Studies. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , 8. I am grateful for their permission to re-print some parts of this article. Finally, the translations from the Italian, unless otherwise stated, are mine. The translations from the French are by Michael Garvey. In his piece, Abdel-Malek mapped the systematic way modern Western nations had developed a network of Orientalist institutions, learned societies and university chairs throughout Europe and the United States, while also pointing out that such practice had emerged out of the study of classical antiquity through the science of philology and the historical method.
Interestingly, Abdel-Malek makes particular mention of Italian Orientalism under fascist disctator Benito Mussolini in order to address how such study had been accompanied by humiliation and occupation. Among these Orientalists, Gabrieli mentions the Italian orientalist Leone Catani who, for instance, was against the Italian colonisation of Libya.
Was Italian Orientalism, then, a cultural phenomenon as harmless and uncontroversial, or anti-colonial as in the case of Caetani, and legitimately ethnocentric as Gabrieli claims it to be in relation to Orientalism at large? This book attempts to reconstruct the modern Italian cultural engagement with European Orientalism and the Orient. It focuses on a central aspect in the cultural and intellectual history of Western and Italian Orientalism: the emergence and impact of the discipline of Indology and the way in which it gave way to a revival of the European interest in the Orient, and to the cultural politics of Indo-European identity in relation to European nationalisms.
Raymond Schwab, in his famous book, La renaissance orientale , has described the enthusiasm of nineteenth-century Europeans for all things Indian. Ideas influence actions, and Europe was highly active in the Orient throughout the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th century. Orientalism both reflected and reinforced a fundamental power relationship between Europe and the Orient.
Indeed, the very existence of a field like Orientalism, in which one could claim to be an expert in the history, languages, culture, social system, and religion of a vast and diverse region on the basis of having studied ancient texts and artifacts, demonstrated the inequality of the relationship between the Orient and the West.
Orientalism revealed itself to be a potent force in world politics by the late 19th century. By this time, the British and French governments had come to view the cultivation of experts in Oriental studies as necessary for the survival and expansion of their Middle Eastern empires.
The mobilization of academic knowledge in service of imperialism became a hallmark of Orientalism during this period. Orientalist tropes about Western superiority and Eastern passivity played a major role in justifying and legitimating the imperialist project. Orientalist scholarship was not merely confined to the ivory tower of academia. The political results of these Orientalism-inspired actions were profound, with Europe coming to fulfill its imagined role as the rightful ruler of the Eastern world.
This was a great triumph of Orientalism. Orientalists were no longer just analyzing history; now, they were actively making it. If they were not subjugated, the unwashed, teeming masses of the Orient could one day overwhelm the West. Accordingly, to preserve and defend their own culture, Western powers had a positive duty to extract what they could from the Orient, while keeping its people in a perpetual state of political disorganization. As bringers of capitalism, technology, and civilization, imperialist whites expected to be shown a high degree of deference and obedience by the Asian and African peoples they came to dominate.
Orientalism had to react to historical developments in the 20th and 21st centuries, when the peoples and nations of the Orient began resisting European imperialism , forging their own political identity, and competing with the West on more equal terms.
The Orientalists strove to maintain the barrier between East and West in the postwar years. For scholars like H. Gibb , keeping this wall of separation intact was paramount. The West had defined itself since ancient times in opposition to the East. If these lines were to become blurred, the West might find itself without an identity of its own. The growth of national independence movements and organizations like the League of Nationalist Action in Lebanon and the Arab Independence Party in Mandatory Palestine which was administered by the British threatened to knock down the barriers between East and West and possibly even put the East on equal footing with the West.
These developments raised the alarming prospect of the Arab world throwing off the shackles of Western political and economic domination and asserting its own right to self-determination. If the Orient could successfully push back against the West, what else might they be able to do?
Thus, despite the changes taking place within other academic disciplines during this era, Orientalism remained insular and backward-looking in its outlook and core assumptions. Thus, as late as , a figure like Gibb could still be found asserting that the politics of the Arab world could not possibly be motivated by modern political ideologies like communism, nationalism, or anti-colonialism.
Figures like Gibb saw these complex movements toward self-determination as unorganized outbursts of enthusiasm. The Arabs may have been capable of political agitation, but it would typically be short-lived and, ultimately, self-destructive. The Arab temperament was incapable of conceiving, let alone acting upon, a collective political program for the benefit of their nation or society as a whole.
Their innate parochialism and loyalty to tribe or clan would inevitably trump the formation of larger political identities or coherent ideologies.
In the postwar world, the United States would emerge as the preeminent Western power, particularly as the Cold War began to take shape. The United States also took a leading role in driving Orientalism, which would be inextricably linked to Cold War geopolitics. Think tanks and university cultural relations programs in Islamic or Middle Eastern studies were routinely funded by the United States Department of Defense, the Ford Foundation, and the RAND Corporation, as well as major banks, oil companies, and other pillars of the US national security and business establishment.
Under American influence, the Orient remained an object to be shaped, manipulated, dominated, and defined by Western interests. This was little more than neo-Orientalism, with crude and reductive analyses of Arabs and Muslims still finding a welcome audience in prestigious academic journals.
This theory posits that there is a fundamental and unbridgeable division between the progressive, liberal, secular West and the traditionalist, reactionary, and orthodox Islamic world. Huntington argued in that these two religious and cultural traditions formed distinct blocs organized around irreconcilable values and worldviews.
This view gained many adherents in the West, as it seemed especially prescient following the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
We also see the lingering effects of Orientalism in the way Arabs are portrayed in Western popular culture. In political cartoons in American and European newspapers, Arabs have been represented using racist caricatures featuring hooked noses, mustaches, and leering expressions. The Precepts incident, along with other controversial applications of Vedanta and Islam, show Ray raking advantage of comparatist interactions - interactions ushered in by the late eighteenth century collab- orations amongst British Orientalists and various literary communities in Bengal as well as other regions in Sourh Asia.
During the final ten years of his life, accounts of the Precepts controversy appeared in most prominent European periodicals - including some of Ray's defences against Marshman and the Serampore critics.
In the period following the Precepts incident, Ray increased his contacts with adherents of British Unitarian liberal theology. The Unitarians were amongst the most reform-oriented Christian groups in England, agitating for the abolition of slavery and greater rights for women.
Eventually, through such contacts, various segments of society in Bengal and England with extensions into the United States became linked by their core doctrinal belief in a universal theology. Not long after his battles with the Baptists over his editing of the Go,pels, Ray, along with Dwarkanath Tagore grandfather of Rabindranath and William Adam established a meeting ground for promoting Unitarian religious belief, Christian and Hindu.
In early , the Calcutta Unitarian Committee was established, becoming an important space of dialogue between Unitarians and Vedanta-oriented Hindus. During the following years, as the Unitarian Committee gradually morphed into the Brahmo Samaj, the shared underlying motivation between these two bodies - Brahmo Hindus and Unitarian Christians - was a view of universal theology common to all 'civilized' peoples.
While impressed by the achievements of Christendom, Ray felt that the attacks on Hindu and Indian tradition were fundamentally unsound, particularly in light of Trinitarian consubstantiality. In the 'Preface to the Second Edition' of The Brahmunical Magazine, a publication Ray started in order to address missionary criticism of the Vedas, he attacked the apparent hypocrisy in the Trinitarianism of missionaries: 'Yet if while he declares God is not man, he again professes to believe in a God-Man or Man-God, under whatever sophistry the idea may be sheltered, And does he expose himself to censure, should he, at the same time, ascribe unreasonableness to others?
David Kopf claims that Ray gained his Unitarianism from early century Unitarian writings. Lynn Zastoupil a ldresses these Unitarian ties also. Like Kopf he argues that Ray derived much from Unitarianism's radical history.
This is a very credible observation. But both minimize the impact of Shankaran Vedanta on Ray's thought 46 Robertson's study makes a very specific attempt to remedy this oversight with an excellent chapter on Ray's use of Vedanta, as well as on the credibility of his claims as a Vedantin. Robertson validates Ray's Sanskritic claims but points out his specific defi- ciencies as well - those schools with which he showed little or no familiarity. His conclusion is that Ray was firmly grounded in the non-dualistic tradition ofVedantic interpretation established by Shankara 47 However, Ray's deployment of Vedanta could vary depending on which language community he was addressing.
Wilhelm Halbfass describes Ray's polyvalent use of Vedanta: 'the "Veds" which were thus presented to two different audiences, serve as vehicles for receptivity and reform as well as self-assertion in the face of the West'. In his English translations, Ray was consistently evoking the linguistic and Christian notion of 'person'. As pointed out earlier, the notion of deity systematized by Shankara was monistic. But in Ray's English-language texts, the God he depicts is a 'personal God'. Thus, as Halbfass cogently summarizes it: Even in those places where the Sanskrit text of the works translated and para- phrased by Rammohun uses the term brahman in the neuter case, he consistently I uses the masculine form 'he' in his English works, in effect replacing the monistic principle of reality with the God of monotheism.
Such translational! By utilizing the masculine instead of a non-gender-specific term, Ray made the text amenable to a reader seeking a personal god rather than the more abstract, deistic notion provided by a long line of Advaita adherents. Ray's textual interventions were arising out of an extremely dynamic milieu. In terms of his place within the literati of Calcutta, Ray shared much with the early British Orientalists.
He had read their work and was aware of the European and Christian traditions in which they were grounded. He was familiar with orientalist assessments of various aspects of Indian antiquity, including Colebrooke's trea- tise, and it would be reasonable ro identify him as the first Indian scholar to be widely acknowledged beyond Asia during his own lifetime. Ray's eventual affiliation with the Unitarians provided a forum from which he could espouse the idea of an ancient textual monotheism to declare a reformist, modernized Hindu identity.
Halbfass II writes that because of the work of Ray, and later the Brahmo Samaj movement he founded, 'the framework and potential for the encounter and reconciliation of the traditions Western and Christian is now sought within the Hindu tradition; recep- " tivity and openness themselves appear as constituents of the Hindu identity and as principles of self-assertion'. Robertson's study has a detailed chapter on the matter, pointing out how Ray establishes a precedent, via Vedanta, for Indian self-assertion in the face of the superior organization and technology of the European colonizers.
Advaita fits into a reading of human religious phenomena as arising out of a universal theology. The discussions of various theologians and scholars in the wake of European colonial expansion and the greater awareness of various non-European cultures helped to initiate what we might today call a 'sociological' perspective on the function of reli- gious belief in societies.
This can be seen as an inevitable outcome of the 'scientifi- cizing' tendencies catalyzed by industrialization and modernity - the fairly recent historical movement towards 'rationality' and away from 'metaphysics'. I am certainly not trying to say that Ray represents an initial moment or movement.
What I am pointing out is that Christianity was being reconceived throughout Europe due to some powerful nineteenth-century 're-districting' forces - particularly the increasing moves away from religion and towards secularism as the European nation- states began to industrialize.
The re-invigorated debates over Trinitaria::ism being fought out in both the United States and England constituted but one small segment of this growing fissure between church and state. In debates such as these, the East entered into metropolitan conversations, forging spaces for germination and growth I in the newly industrializing colonial powers. In early colonial India, Anglicization provided a utilitarian tool for Ray to speak with institutions of power in the language of power.
In the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy, Ray did not clearly align himself to either position. Ray's reliance on indigenous print culture showed how important it was for him to interact with I F various literate communities in Bengal and throughout India. But the Brahmo Samaj did begin to make distinct nationalist over- tures to the British ruling authorities around the middle of the century. The initial terms of the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy were organized around the issue of how best to rule Bengal - to 'Orientalize' certain British East India Company employees or to 'Anglicize' indigenous literati.
I do not believe the native 'Hindu' elites were against the idea of becoming educated in English. They saw it as an avenue to European power, a means of Western Enlightenment. The effort to de- sanctify Brahmins as a divinely sanctioned social class who would administer ritual and who held sacred purity was supplemented by Ray's development of an egalitarian version of Advaita, accessible to anyone who sought out such knowledge.
My larger aim is to suggest that India, during the nineteenth century, became central to westeln liberal theology. Efforts to sociologize religion - to study religion as relativistic, comparative and contextual - occurred in no small part due to the I 'discovery of Hinduism'.
Religion came to be seen by various liberals and intellectuals as a human as opposed to divine phenomenon. In light of this recognition, India came II i l to represent spirituality for a Western imagination that saw its own lifeworlds being evacuated of the once-dominant metaphysics of Christian theology and cosmology.
Notes 1 P. Marshall, 'Introduction', in P. Marshall ed. Franklin points OUt the differences amongst the early Orientalists regarding the issue of divinity and Indian antiquity. In contrasting Halhed and Jones, Franklin notes, '[wlhereas Halhed, looking back to a pristine, monotheistic, and classical Hinduism, had subscribed to the contemporary prejudice against popular Hinduism, Jones appreciated that this theory of historical deterioration was somewhat simplistic', in M.
Colebrooke, T. Caleb rooke, and E. Cowell, Miscellaneous Essays, London: Triibner, , p. Chapter 5 of King's Orientalism and Religion, 'The Modern Myth of Hinduism' is a particularly useful overview, linking the rise of Hinduism to the nineteenth-century advent of comparative religious studies.
With time. The process of 'cataloging' culture encouraged the advent -of what we now call ethnography and anthropology. See C. Breckinridge and P. See note William Jones is the perfect example of someone shaped by this amorphous and contradictory formation.
He was rooted, simulta- neously, in deep religiosity, deep empiricism and deep skepticism - simultaneously seeking empirical textual sources on the nature of the 'Divine,' yet always careful to pull his insights back into the safe harbor of a particular brand of Christian faith in the Bible. Macaulay illustrates the kinds of anxiety displaced onto this 'constructed' genealogy of Western civilization in his now infamous Minute on Indian Education.
Pollock, 'Deep Orientalism? This instability and contestation continue through to the present day as evinced in recent critical work, see Robertson and Zastoupil. Killingley's collected and expanded version of the Teape Lectures addresses the multiva- lent qualities of Ray's writings and influence. See D. Killingley offers up a comprehensive, detailed and subtle comparative study of Ray and his multiple and multiplicitous engagements.
As he puts it, '[t]o follow the sources used by Rammohun himself, and what has been written on him by his contemporaries and 4"ter, requires a knowledge of English, French, Sanskrit, Bengali, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian' p. In assessing these. This question of authorship was of regular concern throughout the early history of all emergent print cultures and is itself a continuing prob- lematic for several fields of srudy, particularly in light of the emergent digital phase of human media history.
Robertson's excellent srudy begins with a discussion of Ray's biographies and other miscellaneous documents that give evidence of his life and work. In addition, there exists a controversial autobiographical letter published posthumously in the English Athenaeum. See pp. The behavioural mores of those in power all too often ttanslated to the 'ground' - consider the upper caste Bengali ghenna disgust for pork, almost certainly adopted in deference to Islamic customs and tastes.
The term came up in a brief conversation we had and his suggestion began to resonate in my thinking. He also published tracts in Hindustani that circulated via the developing vernacular print discourse, as well as the various English- language newspapers and journals circulating within and around British centers of power in and outside India. The hiscory of print in Bengal is a fascinating study UntO itself and Ray plays a large role in its development. See A. The new system was modeled after English property laws.
Under the Mughal zamindari system, the zamindar not only collected taxes on the land but also functioned as the magistrate for the area. With this new system, revenue collection was often auctioned off to the highest bidder. Often the person buying the rights to the land had little knowl- edge of local conditions.
Speculative practices under such conditions became even more prevalent as absentee landlordism became widespread. This was, in many ways, an event engineered by British Orientalists, administrators and evangelists.
The Orientalists were providing a view of Hinduism that privileged the later texts and commentaries of the Vedic tradition; the written records and commentary based upon the manuscript records were maintained by. With the changing face of British control in India, these efforts would eventually turn antagonistic. Roy and J. Abid U. Ghazi argues that Ray's writing displays characteristic Islamic training. Ghazi writes: He uses Persian couplets, Qur'anic verses and Arabic and Persian idioms to embellish his expression.
Such would be acquired over years of study training and acquaintance with all aspects of Muslim culture See S. Sarkar, Calcutta: Papyrus, , p. This quote evinces a trait that, over the nineteenth century, has increasingly come to be associated with India and Hinduism; namely, the syncretic quality of Indian tradition. Ninety six earlier, H. Colebrooke's characterization of the Vedas emphasizes a similar point. This observation is made in a discussion on the intertextual nature of Vedic scripture and Indian scientific develop- ments, particularly astronomy and medicine.
The simple gist of the passage is that Vedic scriptural authority permeates India's multiple religious communities. Yet, he argues, scripture is attuned to the historical and scientific developments of the present, even if such developments are at odds with scripture's motives. Towards the latter period of Great Britain's colonial involvement in India, Nehru and Gandhi, as two chief architects of Indian nationalism, will both echo the cultural syncreticism of Indian religious tradition and authority.
Dhar, Vedanta, p. The first appearance in Europe of a portion of the Upanisads appears to be the work of A. He published four UPanisads in France in In and , Duperron published the influential Oupnek'hat, which included the entire fifty-one Upanisads of the Sirr-i Akbar.
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