Orient
Over time, the common understanding of "the Orient" has continually shifted eastwards, as European people travelled farther into Asia.Travellers may again take the Orient Express train from Paris to its terminus in the European part of Istanbul, a route established in the early 20th century.During the 1800s, India, and to a lesser extent China, began to displace the Levant as the primary subject of Orientalist research, while the term also appears in mid-century works to describe an appearance or perceived similarity to "Oriental" government or culture, such as in Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace, in which Napoleon, upon seeing the "oriental beauty" of Moscow, calls it "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow![7] As late as 1957 Karl Wittfogel included Rome and the Incan Empire in his study of what he called Oriental Despotism, demonstrating the term still carries a meaning in Western thought that transcends geography.Today, the term primarily evokes images of China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, and peninsular Southeast Asia.In 1978, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism, and used the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the Arab and Muslim worlds that has been shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and the 19th centuries.[10] In British English, the term Oriental is sometimes still used to refer to people from East and Southeast Asia (such as those from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Mongolia, Philippines and Indonesia).[11] Judges in the United Kingdom have been issued with guidelines to encourage political correctness where oriental should be avoided because it is imprecise and may be considered racist or offensive.[14] "Orientals" refers exclusively to people of East and Southeast Asian origin, who constitute approximately 0.7% of the UK population as a whole.[17] John Kuo Wei Tchen, director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York University, said the basic criticism of the term began in the U.S. during a cultural shift in the 1970s.In contrast, regions of Asia further East, outside of the cultural domination of Abrahamic religions, do not share these same historical associations, giving way for the term "oriental" to have different connotations.
Orient (disambiguation)Roman EmpireCouncil of ChalcedonEuropeEastern worldOccidentWestern worldmetonymSouthwest AsiaSoutheast AsiaSouth AsiaCentral AsiaEast AsiaCaucasusNear EastFar EastDiocese of the OrientArmenianLevantAnatoliaHebrewArabicKazakhTurkishPersianChinesepinyinThe Land of the Rising SunMashriqpagan templesHindu templesBuddhist templesJain templescarried on in Christian churchesOrientalismDiocletianPraetorian prefecture of the OrientEastern Roman EmpireThraceregion of SyriaOrient ExpressIstanbulhistoriographyTolstoyWar and PeaceNapoleonWilliam Prescottconquest of the Aztec EmpireKarl WittfogelOriental DespotismWestern thoughtSiberiaOriental studiesOrientEastern cultureEast AsiansCentral AsiansSoutheast AsiansMongoloidWashington StateMorocco's Oriental RegionRomance languagesMindoroNegrosdépartementPyrénées-OrientalesOxford English DictionaryLord ByronEdward SaidMuslim worldsimperialismBritish EnglishBritish AsiansAsia MinorAssyriansArmeniansYezidisMandaeansTurkeyOriental rugOrientalistJean-Léon GérômepejorativeJohn Kuo Wei TchenNew York Universityanti-war movementOriental Orthodox churchesOriental Catholic ChurchesGrace MengOriental Art CenterOriental Movie MetropolisChina Eastern AirlinesUruguayUruguay RiverdemonymBanda OrientalIsraelArab worldGreater PersiaOrientalizing PeriodHooke, RobertIndependent.co.ukThe HillPacific CitizenSpringer NatureWayback MachineModel MinoritycultureCradle of civilizationOld WorldSinic worldIndic worldSilk Road transmission of BuddhismIslamdomAncient historySilk RoadPost-classical history (Middle Ages)Modern periodEarly modern periodIndustrial RevolutionWorld War IAsian and Pacific TheatreMiddle Eastern TheatreInterwar periodWorld War IIPacific War