Oriental studies

Oriental studies is a subject that looks at the people, cultures, languages, history, and old ruins of places called the Near East and Far East. Today, people often use the names Middle Eastern studies or Asian studies instead.

In Europe, old studies of this area mostly looked at Islamic studies. The study of China, especially ancient China, is often named sinology. In the United States, learning about East Asia is usually called East Asian studies.

People in Europe first started studying this area because of religion. The Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—all began in the Middle East. Learning from old Arabic books about medicine and ideas helped Europe a lot during the Middle Ages.

At first, people learned languages before they studied cultures and history. As Europe grew more powerful in the area, politics and money also helped more people study it. In the late 1700s, finding old objects helped make the subject famous in Europe. These objects were shown in museums.

History

Before Islam

The idea of a difference between the "West" and the "East" started with the Greco-Persian Wars in the 5th century BC. Back then, writers from Athens compared their way of governing to the rule of the Persian kings. It wasn’t until the late 3rd century AD, under Roman Emperor Diocletian, that this East-West split became more organized in the Roman Empire, which was divided into parts that spoke Latin and Greek. While the Romans knew a lot about their neighbors from Ancient Persia, they had less clear information about places farther east, like the land of the "Seres" (which means China). However, there was steady trade between Rome and India, even if China’s connections were not as strong.

Middle Ages

When Islam spread and Muslim groups conquered large areas in the 7th century, it created a strong feeling of difference between the Islamic world, stretching from the Middle East through Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia, and the Christendom of Europe. During this time, Europeans didn’t know much about far-eastern cultures and often relied on exaggerated stories, like those told by Sir John Mandeville or the legends of Prester John. However, the writings of Marco Polo were longer and more reliable.

Scholars in the Middle Ages mostly studied languages linked to religion, such as Biblical Hebrew and Syriac, which were tied to early Christian literature. They were also interested in learning from Arabic writings about medicine, philosophy, and science. Efforts to translate these works, known as Studia Linguarum, happened from time to time. The Renaissance of the 12th century saw a big boost in translating Arabic and Greek texts into Latin. People like Constantine the African and Herman of Carinthia were important in this work. The first Latin translation of the Qur'an was done in 1143 but wasn’t widely used until 1543 when it was printed. Gerard of Cremona and others went to Andalusia to use its libraries and meet scholars there. But as the Christian Reconquista moved forward in the Iberian Peninsula during the 11th century, these connections became rarer in Spain. After a church meeting in 1312, universities like Oxford started teaching Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic for a short time.

There was a growing, though still unclear, awareness of the rich cultures of China and India, from which Europeans imported valuable goods like cotton clothing, silk, and ceramics. Even though the Crusades didn’t lead to much sharing of learning, the rise of the Mongol Empire affected the Crusader kingdoms and Europe, leading to more diplomatic meetings. During the Age of Exploration, Europeans became very interested in mapping out Asia, especially sea routes, though much of this work happened outside of universities.

Renaissance to 1800

Oriental studies became more organized during the Renaissance, still mostly focused on languages and religion at first. There was also a political side to it, because translations were needed for diplomacy, even before Europe got more involved with areas beyond the Ottoman Empire. A big moment was in 1514 in Spain, when the first Polyglot Bible was published. It included the full texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. Cambridge University has had a special teacher of Hebrew since 1540, and a teacher of Arabic since around 1643. Oxford also started a Hebrew teacher position in 1546. One famous scholar, Edmund Castell, published a big dictionary in 1669. Others, like Edward Pococke, traveled to eastern lands and wrote about their societies.

In France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert set up training for young language experts for the government’s use, such as François Pétis de la Croix. Studying far-eastern places was led by missionaries, especially Matteo Ricci and others during the Jesuit China missions, and missionary goals stayed important, especially for language studies.

During the 1700s, Western scholars began to understand the basic geography and history of many eastern areas, but details about places hard for Western travelers to reach, like Japan and Tibet, were still scarce. Thinkers of the Enlightenment sometimes said good things about eastern pagan ideas compared to Christian Europe, as in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes and Voltaire’s support of Zoroastrianism. Others, like Edward Gibbon, praised the open religious attitudes of the Middle East compared to what they saw as narrow-mindedness in Christian Europe. Many, including Diderot and Voltaire, spoke well of the respected place of learning in Mandarin China.

The University of Naples "L'Orientale" was founded in Naples in 1732, and it is the oldest school for studying eastern cultures and languages in Continental Europe.

The late 1700s marked the beginning of more focus on studying the ancient history and artifacts of eastern lands, a part of the field that became increasingly important in the next century. Egyptology took the lead, providing new materials for scholars to translate and understand.

19th century

As Western experts learned more about Asia, their political and economic ties with the area grew. This included realizing the close links between languages from India and Europe, thanks to William Jones. Some of these changes happened while France and Britain were competing to control India. Economists such as James Mill described eastern civilizations as unchanging and weak. Karl Marx talked about the "Asiatic mode of production" as stuck because of small village economies and the government’s strong role in making things. The idea of "Oriental despotism" was often seen in Europe as a reason eastern societies didn’t develop as much. Studying Islam was very important in this field because most people in these areas were Muslim. Interest in learning about Islam grew partly because of trade in the Mediterranean and changes in Europe’s cultural and intellectual world.

During this century, Western archaeology expanded across the Middle East and Asia, with amazing discoveries. For example, in the 1850s, the French government sent a team led by Victor Place to excavate the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II in Khorsabad, also called Nineveh. This was the first careful dig at the site. The team’s work led to a major book called Ninevah and Assyria, written together by Victor Place and Felix Thomas and published around 1867. New museums in Europe displayed many of these important finds, putting experts studying eastern cultures in the public eye more than ever.

The first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were done by scholars like Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. The academic study of Islam also grew, and by the mid-19th century, Oriental studies had become a regular part of university learning in most European countries, especially those with interests in the area. Even though learning expanded, unfair and harmful ideas and stereotypes about Asian peoples and cultures also increased. These attitudes sometimes spread to Jewish and Romani communities because they were also seen as coming from eastern origins. Much of the learning was mixed with unfair and biased ideas, which the new biological sciences helped support until after the Second World War.

20th century

When scholars from the areas being studied began taking part in the learning, the field changed a lot. New areas of study like post-colonial studies and Subaltern Studies appeared. The way people thought about the Middle East was influenced by ideas put forward by Edward Said in his book of the same name, especially after the end of the Cold War. Some believed this was because there was less focus on fighting between the West and Soviet communism, leading to new concerns about Islamist terrorism and whether the culture of the Arab world and Islam was a danger to the West. These ideas were part of a bigger change in how Western scholars looked at world events after the Cold War, and they became stronger after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

A popular idea after the Cold War was the “clash of civilizations,” first talked about by Bernard Lewis in his 1990 article “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” This idea suggested a deep conflict between East and West. It was later famous through Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, called “The Clash of Civilizations?” This way of thinking often treated the whole region as one same group, instead of recognizing its many different cultures and groups.

Orientalism

Main article: Orientalism

The word Orientalism can mean something negative. Some think it talks about how Westerners studied Eastern cultures when Europe was building empires in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this idea, the term shows unfair and too-simple thoughts about Eastern people and cultures.

A famous book called Orientalism by Edward Said, from 1978, talks about these ideas. Others use the word Orientalism for writers from empire times who respected and liked Eastern cultures.

From "Oriental studies" to "Asian studies"

The words "Orient" and "Orientalism" come from old languages, like Latin and Greek, meaning "the rising sun." For a long time, people in Europe called themselves the "Occident," or the West, and thought of lands far to the east as the "Orient." But these words are not used as much today, especially as connections between Asia and places like America and the United States have grown.

In many universities in North America and Australia, the study of Eastern lands is now called "Asian studies" instead of "Oriental studies." This change happened because the "Orient" is not one single place but many different areas, like the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. Some universities changed their names to match this newer way of thinking. For example, the Australian National University changed its Faculty of Oriental Studies to the Faculty of Asian Studies in 1970. In 2007, Cambridge University renamed its Faculty of Oriental Studies to the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and Oxford University did the same in 2022. In April 2023, the University of Chicago changed the name of its Oriental Institute to the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa.

Some places still use the old name, like the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, often called "SOAS," and the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

There are a few reasons for this change. More scholars and students studying Asia today come from Asian backgrounds themselves. Also, some people feel the word "Oriental" can be upsetting to people from those regions. This shift also reflects a broader change in how we think about different cultures and identities around the world.