You should be ashamed of yourself, as I would be had I thought of that - which I wish I did.
I think that’s the whole point: “Oriental,” “Eastern,” etc. presume that the entire people are named in relation to white people. Calling people “Asian,” on the other hand, is saying where they live, not where they live in relation to someone else.
Of course, that just raises the question of the West and Westerners, especially since (as I understand it), Japan and Australia are just as much a part of the West as France or Oregon.
This is the first time I have heard anyone refer to Japan as part of the West and I’m practically an international relations, history, language and cuisine junkie on YouTube.
Seconded. Japan is a developed modern First World country, and was virtually unique in becoming so on its own terms, in the era of high European colonialism.
Odd how places get names in relation to dominant other places.
Case Western Reserve University is in Cleveland, Ohio; nobody’s idea of the American West. But the original Western Reserve was the Connecticut Western Reserve, back when the Eastern states planned on running strips based on their north and south borders as far as they could go. Conceivably someone in San Francisco would have to travel to Richmond, Virginia if they had business in the state capital.
Though every bit as Eurocentric as “Oriental,” “Middle East” is still acceptable according to journalist stylebooks. Time was, the lands of the Turk was the Near East, and the Chinese the Far East. With the completion of the Suez Canal, American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan um… christened the previously unimportant but now vital zone as the “Middle East.”
Oregon is 3K miles from the Equator. A further 2K miles north is Little Diomede Island. But who is known as “the Pacific Northwest,” and not the nonexistent Pacific Midwest. What would a Pacific Midwest even look like? Teriyaki hot dish?
For that matter, Europe as a whole is usually regarded as “the West”, or “the Western Hemisphere”, even though the 0º longitude line runs through the middle of Europe.
The original root of “Orient” was Latin “oriens”, for “rising” (and “occidens” is “setting”) From there it came to mean the direction of the rising (or setting) Sun, and then the lands in that direction, and then the navigational meaning came from the fact that the eastern lands were often the target of navigation.
And chimpanzees are “Pan trogolodytes”, even though they’re not at all cave-dwellers (what “trogolodyte” means).
I think gorillas (scientific name Gorilla gorilla gorilla) might also mean “forest people” in some African language-- Not sure of that one.
It is simply faulty nomenclature. I live so far west that Japan is west of here. Everywhere is west of everywhere else.
Obligatory xkcd.
It still does in many languages. Neither Spanish nor French have no other word for “eastern” except “oriental”. Should you ever visit the South of Frace I recommend a visit to the lovely Pyrénées Orientales. I promise they are not in Asia.
The term Oriental makes sense if you think of it from the perspective of those who coined the word, the Romans. In particular the late Roman Empire. Everything East of Constantinople is Oriental, West of Constantiople is Occidental.
But as coordinates are relative and can be changed, I present the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. It is quite Meridional, if you ask me.
Actually only most of England, Ireland, Wales, Scottland, Portugal, most of Spain (except Catalonia) and part of France are West of the Main Meridian. Most of Europe is in the East.
What I claim is that the rules about the use of language, in particular prohibitions, are even less logical.
I think the backlash against the term “Oriental” in English is to do with the Eurocentric mindset of “Orientalism”, lumping together various cultures and societies as an undifferentiated “exotic” at best, at worst “wily” or “barbaric”.
And something can be oriented to the West (or any direction).
On Long Island, there’s Orient and Orient Point, the far eastern end of the North Fork.
Eurocentric? I doubt it. I fear the backlash is due to the rampant racism against Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the USA in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th Century. There is no such backlash in Europe, acording to Wikipedia not even in the UK. In the UK, it seems, the term Oriental is not used disparagingly, they have plenty of other words for that. And in the rest of Europe the Asian presence is very small, way below the level that triggers racism, we have plenty of other minorities for that. Of the top of my hat I would guess that only the Netherlands have a significant Asian minority.
Ah! And don’t forget: Ex Oriente Lux!
And are there any Lesser Apes, you ask? Yes, The Great Apes include 8 species - 3 of Orangutans, 2 of Gorillas, 2 of Chimpanzees/Bonobos, and 1 of Humans. The 20 species of Gibbons are Apes, but are not Great Apes.
Nowadays perhaps, but originally to orient something is derived from the medieval practice of building cathedrals so that the apse, the part of the building that contains the altar, would be on the eastern side, pointing towards Jerusalem (as seen from Europe, where cathedrals were built. Mostly Southern Europe, they were not so far off their geography).
Maps in the Middle Ages were also commonly (but not exclusivly) drawn (i.e.: oriented) with the East pointing upward, so Jerusalem was on top. See for instance the Beatus Map:
You see the word “Oriens” on top, “Septentrio” (North) to the left, “Meridies” (South, from which we get il Mezzogiorno for the South of Italy and le Midi for the South of France) to the right and “Occidens” (West) at the bottom.
The sea in the middle is the Mediterranean, on the top right side of it you can read “egipt superior”, above that is “iudea” and then, above that dark square that looks a bit like the Brandenburg Gate without the charriot you can read “galileasuperior”. There is Jerusalem. The dark square at the top, just below the “ENS” of the word Oriens is the Garden Eden: if you squint you can recognize Adam and Eve, both naked, and a tree with fruits and a snake.
Nowadays the meaning has changed, of course: to orient oneself means to find the right direction, which must not necessarily be eastwards.
And all that to say and reiterate once again that the word “Oriental” is not peyorative where I come from, rather the opposite. If you push me I will find even more arguments.
The Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral in England (which I’ve visited) is similar. East is on top and Jerusalem is the center. It is supposed to be the map of all of Europe, Africa, and Asia. In other words, it’s all of the world that most Europeans knew of in 1300. It’s surrounded by ocean. They knew the world was round and its approximate size. They didn’t know about the existence of North and South America.
You’re correct in ascribing Orientalism to European intellectuals and militarists, who railed against the Russian and Ottoman Empires, independent trading powers like the Chinese and Japanese, and especially the inhabitants of their numerous colonies.
A must read for those interested in history is Edward W. Said’s Orientalism.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term “Orientalism” as a critical concept to describe the West’s commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
America inherited much of its fear, hatred, and intellectual and racist contempt of Asian cultures from British imperialist thought, adding its own special brew back when Chinese workers were brought in for the railroads, displacing Irish and other white ethnic workers. Chinese - and then other Asian - immigration was nearly wiped out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constituting less than 1% of the total population, but that didn’t stop the fear, which coalesced into the theme of Yellow Peril. The Chinese were wily and powerful but simultaneously stupid and inferior.
We forget how overarching a cultural and political influence Britain was on America prior to WWI. Imperialism and racism make for a bad mix, one that all the other European powers promulgated as well. We since learned how to hate others without need of prompters but the roots lie in Europe.
With the usual caveat of click for the full image, here half of Me is in the east, and the other half in the west.
Trivial point - there are several (at least) of these sorts of markers around. This one is in Lewes. I’ve also seen one in East Grinstead.
Correct and correct.
j
While Europeans were hardly gentle pacifists, it does seem as if the traditional cultures of Asia were distinctly non-liberal and that the more European society liberalized the more glaring the divide became.
You may have heard of the profane and scatological reply the Zaporozhian Cossacks gave to Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV after he demanded their surrender, but you might not remember the wording of the original surrender demand:
- “As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, undefeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; steward chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians – I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.”
I mean, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt might have been embarrassed to have put on airs like this. The phrase “oriental despot” has a substantial basis in history.
i misread that…
As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, undefeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; steward chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; cofounder of Microsoft – I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.”
Of course, in the UK, “Asian” is more likely to mean South Asian, or the Indian Subcontinent, since there are a lot more immigrants from there than from East Asia.
Another fun tidbit: Everyone knows that there’s a rail line called the “Orient Express”. Nowadays, I think that goes to somewhere in China, but the original Oriental Express had as its eastern terminus Istanbul.