ABSTRACT
It is diffi cult today to read European texts concerning Asia from the period of European empires in Asia without considering their conformity to the discourse of Orientalism delineated by Edward Said.1 Important texts may be illuminated by this exercise; at the same time, Said’s argument may be confi rmed or disconfi rmed by seeking its application to texts other than those on which he relies for evidence. In this chapter one of Edmund Burke’s most famous Indian texts, his “Speech on Fox’s India Bill,” is subjected to examination in light of Said’s claims. I argue that certain aspects of Burke’s speech conform to Said’s model and presumably refl ect Orientalist stereotypes or attitudes that were available in traditional European views of Asia. On the other hand, Burke’s explicit aims in this speech were to condemn British imperial rule as it was being practiced and to urge respect for the culture and the rights of Indians. These aims make this text anomalous, in some degree, with respect to Said’s Orientalism as well as other forms of “post-colonial” analysis. Indeed, Burke’s position on India, which draws on the universalist values of the Enlightenment, expresses a humanist approach to cross-cultural relations that Said himself endorses but argues is absent from Orientalism in its main post-Enlightenment phase.2
