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Arthur James Balfour
Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, was a British statesman and colonial administrator who lived in the last 19th and early 20th centuries. Cromer initially served the British colonial administration in India and later became the controller-general and consul-general in Egypt in the years immediately before and during the British occupation of that country. Like James Balfour, his contemporary and fellow politician, in Orientalism, Lord Cromer exemplifies the marriage of Orientalist discourse to political power. Cromer often wrote and spoke about “subject races” (Oriental subjects) whom he claimed needed to be studied by Orientalists so that Western governments could understand and control them better.
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Lord Cromer Character Timeline in Orientalism
The timeline below shows where the character Lord Cromer appears in Orientalism. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1, Part 1
...(East and West) and excuses the subjugation and exploitation of Oriental subjects. Like Balfour, Lord Cromer’s accounts of his years as a colonial authority in India and Egypt (written around the...
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The Orientalism of Balfour and Cromer, which Said classifies as “modern Orientalism” takes older ideas, repackages them in the scientific and...
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Chapter 2, Part 4
...so “low, barbaric, and antithetical as to merit reconquest” by enlightened, liberal Europeans—the same ideas Cromer will articulate a century later. Thus, from the arrogant and self-assured height of the 19th-century...
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