Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies

Abstract

In recent times Orientalists have been accused of imperialism, colonialism and distorting history. Here Robert Irwin powerfully overturns this view and makes the case for the Orientalists, reassessing their legacy from Ancient Greece to the present day. He finally banishes the ghosts of Edward Said's Orientalism and shows that, whether setting up Arabic print presses or translating the Qur'an, this extraordinary group of scholars, eccentrics, free thinkers, madmen, pedants and romantics were unified not by ideology, but by their shared interetst