App, Urs: "The Birth of Orientalism."(Book review)

• Author: Ha, Hyun Jeong

App, Urs. The Birth of Orientalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Swiss historian Urs App, a Religious Studies scholar at the Swiss National Research Fund, has written extensively about Asian religions and the history of Orientalism, with particular interests in intellectual interactions between the East and the West. The Birth of Orientalism, is an important addition to the literature of the histories of religious ideology and Oriental studies. Although first released in hardback form in 2010, it was not until 2015 that the book was offered in paperback form, which allows for its dissemination to a larger audience at a more affordable price. In this book, App argues that Orientalism, the formation and the development of the Western perspectives of the Orient, has its origins in the fifteenth century through Europeans' intellectual correspondences with Asians on their religions. With a large focus on Buddhism and Hinduism, App draws his primary data from archival research that includes analyses of original religious texts and images drafted by European intellectuals and missionaries.

App starts his book by comparing it with Edward Said's Orientalism (1997), emphasizing how his approach and scope of research is different from Said's groundbreaking contribution. For an effective review of App's The Birth of Orientalism, it is thus inevitable to compare how they differ in many ways. There are differences in terms of space, time, and analytical focus. First, the regions that each author focuses are different. While Said focuses on the Middle East, particularly Egypt, App expands Said's geographical scope to extensive areas of Asia, such as India, China, Japan, Tibet, Central Asia, North Asia, and Southeast Asia as the regions where the West first encountered and developed their views on Asian religions. Second, Said focuses on the West's Orientalist accounts since the eighteenth century, while App journeys further back to the fifteenth century to find out the beginning of the historical encounter. In particular, App utilizes several sets of literature that have not been paid much attention thus far, which include Voltaire's analysis of Veda, the most ancient Hindu scriptures, Ziegenbalg's and La Croze's findings on Buddhism, and De Guignes's Chinese Vedas. Finally, Said points out political relationships between the West and the East, specifically British and Egyptian, as the colonizer and the colonized.

Said's critique...