ABSTRACT
The results of an investigation into the portrayal of the Orient in British detective stories seem quite foreseeable: Renouncing conspicuous violence, a detective solves mysteries by the power of his reasoning. He thus shows his readers that there is a rational explanation for everything and that it is possible to dominate the world through superior knowledge. The Orient, one might assume, would symbolize the world's mysteries, which at first resists rational explanation, but then shows its triumph all the brighter. By the mass production of the detective story and its consumption also by readers from a lower middle- and working-class background, it simultaneously serves as an introduction into dominant middle-class standards. A touch of new imperial history may be added, showing one stance of the entanglement of metropolis and colonies and the centrality of the Orient for the creation of British middle-class identity.
