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According to Edward Said, orientalism was a culturally constructed 'other' designed by Europeans to give expression to their claim to be 'the West'. The East was torpid, despotic, libidinous and static. The West was self governed, law governed, progressive and dynamic. Said located this figuration of modernity in the heyday of European global empires, specifically in British and French writings of the nineteenth century. But it is much older, and this article discusses orientalism in ancient Greece, renaissance England, Enlightenment Scotland, and colonial and contemporary New Zealand. Specifically it identifies a key geographical component which has been neglected.
