Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia > Status Update

The Universalist theory & history of the civilisation of the Enlightenment became in the 19th century a tool for slotting every society on Earth into a hierarchy based on how far they had progressed- or failed to progress- on the path to modernity

Over time, the concealed normativity of the concept of civilisation free ever more apparent. The relativism of Sir William Jones who in 1787 proclaimed that everyone took civilisation to mean only ' The habits & prejudices of his own country' had already gone out of fashion by 1800.

The enlightenment's underlying conception of history & social evolution was universal & unitary. It was based on the idea that people of all nations & races...we're endowed with the same basic faculties. It was therefore inconceivable that particular nations should be excluded from global processes.

In the light of the new evolutionary thinking, stasis could no longer be justified & stability was a moral defect...while the history of Europe was described in a language suggestive of active, strong-willed subjecthood, mechanical or biological metaphors were increasingly applied to Asian societies that appeared to European observers as backward or inert.

In his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums(1764) Johann Joachim Winkelmann opposethe progressive development of Greek art to the stagnation and uniformity shown by the Egyptians & Persians particularly in their representations of the human form. Changes in style became a further index of Western superiority. Style was the ennobled version of fashion.

The wonderment provoked at the beginning out our epoch, around 1680, by the grand mughal's fabulous splendour had been replaced at its and, around 1830, by a sophisticated theory of underdevelopment. From now on the key phenomenon calling for explanation was Asia's relative backwardness not its wealth.

When Carsten Niebuhr or even Johann Ludwig Burckhardt travelled in Arb dress, they did because they found it both practical & courteous towards their hosts. Their 19th century successors like Richard Burton turned this into costume & masquerade...The superior white master mixed incognito with the natives.

Taking advantage of booming European demand, Asian producers dramatically expanded their volume of trade in goods such as tea & cotton ware. Towards the end of the 18th century the economies of entire regions of China & India were geared towards the European export market.

From serious travel accounts all the way to exotically veiled pornography thetheiterature abounds in fantasies of lust & longing need in the hothouse atmosphere of harem intrigue...behind them lay the view that climate, strong libido, & weakness of character condemned westerners to a life of sexual excess.

Linguet (1767) sketched a theory of the subjugation of women by men in the course of societal evolution...The basic thesis was simple: everywhere the progress of society was built upon the subjugation & misery of women & the toiling lower classes.