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Since scholars first began to critically examine the history of Western knowledge of the East, the predominant paradigm, inspired by Michel Foucault and Edward Said, has focused on power. Studies have been largely limited to French and British scholarship despite the substantial German Orientalist academic tradition, which has often been considered exceptional. Explanations for this German exceptionalism include the lack of a German colonial project in Asia and--connected with this--the German preference for philology in the classical tradition. Philologists have often regarded the social realities of the contemporary "Orient," as well as the European scholars who study such realities, with contempt.
With German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, Suzanne Marchand fills an important and long-lamented gap in the historiography of the field, not only by telling the stories of German scholars who contributed to the study of Asia between the Enlightenment and World War I but also by challenging the underlying methodology of previous scholarship. Instead of offering a general discourse analysis, she focuses on the careers and studies of the Orientalists "who invested time and effort in actually learning to read and/or speak at least one 'oriental' language" (p. xxiii). The author seeks to know "what it was actually like to be an orientalist. Why did some well-educated Germans choose this field of study, especially when it was largely unfashionable, and usually unprofitable, to do so?" (p. xxxii).
The book's ten chapters are arranged in roughly chronological order. One of its most important conclusions is that there was no single German discourse about the Orient; different periods are marked by distinctive features. In each chapter, a number of individuals are presented with their biographies and works. Their careers often exemplify general features of cultural life in the period, in particular insofar as they are connected with the development of academic institutions, media forms, and intellectual tendencies. One important observation concerns the rise of Orientalism. While in the...