Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture,Used

Product Description The central argument of Edward SaidsOrientalism is that the relationship between Britain and its colonies was primarily oppositional, based on contrasts between conquest abroad and domestic order at home. Saree Makdisi directly challenges that premise inMaking England Western, identifying the convergence between the British Empires civilizing mission abroad and a parallel mission within England itself, and pointing to Romanticism as one of the key sites of resistance to the imperial culture in Britain after 1815.Makdisi argues that there existed places and populations in both England and the colonies that were thought of in similar termsfor example, there were sites in England that might as well have been Arabia, and English people to whom the idea of the freeborn Englishman did not extend. The boundaries between us and them began to take form during the Romantic period, when England became a desirable Occidental space, connected with but superior to distant lands. Delving into the works of Wordsworth, Austen, Byron, Dickens, and others to trace an arc of celebration, ambivalence, and criticism influenced by these imperial dynamics, Makdisi demonstrates the extent to which Romanticism offered both hopes for and warnings against future developments in Occidentalism. Revealing that Romanticism provided a way to resist imperial logic about improvement and moral virtue,Making England Western is an exciting contribution to the study of both British literature and colonialism. Review [A] highly accomplished study. . . . Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said'sCulture and Imperialism. Claire Chambers Times Higher EducationMakdisi has emerged as one of the most incisive and influential surveyors of British literature and empire in the Romantic age. . . . Mov[es] seamlessly between discourses of social reform and inventive close readings of literary works, illustrations, and maps to chart the terra incognitaand tempus incognitumwithin the borders of England. . . . Makdisi finds new critical possibilities available once one moves away from the EastWest binary. American Historical Review[An] invaluable study. Victoriographies[An] elegant work of literary theory that also has much to teach historians of race and class. ItinerarioSaree Makdisi has written a book that in its central line of argument and its detail is thoroughly original and compelling, deeply learned and detailed, erudite and entertaining. His skillful accounts of key Romantic writers and detailed knowledge of English social history and place create a vivid picture of social life and conditions that few literary analyses can boast.Making England Western could do for understanding the profound impacts of imperializing culture on the home front what SaidsCulture and Imperialism did for understanding the role of culture in the imperializing and colonizing imperatives of the period. David T. Goldberg, University of California, IrvineSaree Makdisis incisive and insightful reading of Mayhew, Place, Wordsworth, Byron, Blake, Austen, Dickens, et al. brings into view a process of Orientalism internal to nineteenthcentury English history that has remained largely unnoticed. His argument that the consolidation of the English view of themselves as a civilized nation necessarily entailed, not just the process of Orientalizing others but also a targeted othering of significant sections of the countrys own populationa veritable civilizing mission at home that made England Westernunsettles received narratives of race and class in industrial England. This book will make it difficult for scholars henceforth to take the idea of Englishness for granted, or to think that Orientalism pertained to the Orient alone. Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of ChicagoSaree Makdisis fascinating and necessary book suc