ABSTRACT
Teaching on Asia, which was split between different institutions and divided according to discipline, virtually represented ‘a veritable “Faculty of Orientalist studies”’ 1 as Alfred Foucher and Marcel Granet wrote during the inter-war period. Nonetheless, domains of Oriental culture were not equally provided for in terms of academic institutions, 2 and when they were, it denoted first the strength of the concerned scholars within the world of higher education. These institutions objectivised the specific interests of the most legitimate groups within Orientalist studies, they contributed to give them an existence and to represent them, mainly with regard to all those who participated in cultural issues debated within this intellectual space. By their very existence, these institutions thus exercised an effect of official representation on the whole of the field considered; but their power varied depending on the position each of them occupied within the Orientalist space and the credit 150the agents who shared a belief in this universe were willing to accord to them.
