Summary
Evelyn Baring, England’s representative in Egypt and, in Said’s phrase, Egypt’s master from the occupation of 1882 to 1907, whose essay “The Government of Subject Races” (1908) and whose Modern Egypt supply Orientalism with its canonical statement of how knowledge of the Oriental made ruling him easy and profitable (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.44-48 / printed p.35-39).
Details
- Cromer ruled subject races first in India, then for twenty-five years in Egypt, emerging as the paramount consul-general in England’s empire; his Edinburgh Review essay of January 1908 made subject races its topic (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.45 / printed p.36).
- His doctrine as Said presents it: knowledge gives power and more power requires more knowledge, in a profitable dialectic of information and control; the empire must be wise, tempering cupidity with selflessness, deciding each issue by what Western knowledge and experience think best for the subject race, and finding in the subject race’s contentment a bond of union between rulers and ruled, with imperial might behind the pacification (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.45-46 / printed p.36-37).
- He opposed Egyptian nationalism totally and asserted that the real future of Egypt lies not in the direction of a narrow nationalism but in that of an enlarged cosmopolitanism; his last annual report from Egypt proclaimed Egyptian nationalism an entirely novel idea, a plant of exotic rather than of indigenous growth (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.46, 48 / printed p.37, 39).
- Chapter thirty-four of Modern Egypt gives his canon of Orientalist wisdom, opening with Sir Alfred Lyall’s maxim on accuracy and the Oriental mind and setting the European close reasoner against the Oriental mind wanting in symmetry; Cromer describes himself as a diplomatist and administrator whose proper study is man from the point of view of governing him, and defers to Ernest Renan and Constantin de Volney as authorities (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.47-48 / printed p.38-39).
- His essay’s central authority and local agent, and its harmonious working of the imperial machine, are Said’s rudimentary answer to how Orientalism works: the specialist translates Oriental matter into useful substance for the authority at home (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.53-54 / printed p.44-45).