Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French Summary and Analysis

Westerners reduce Oriental life into a series of detailed items when they write and study them and try to portray them in Western prose. They try to base their work on their actual experiences while they are in residence in the Orient. All of the work of the time takes its shape from the author traveling to the Orient. Many of the threats perceived have to do with sex and hygiene. All of these are perceived as threats by the West whether they were actual threats or not.

At this time in the nineteenth century, the Orient consisted of India for the British subject because Indian was a British possession. For the Frenchmen, there were no Oriental possessions, only a string...