hegemony, such as the British colony of India (1858–1947) and Russian colonies in Asia (1721–1917), but he did not, because, as a public intellectual, Edward Said was more interested in making political points about the politics of the Middle East, in general, and of Palestine, in particular. Moreover, that by unduly concentrating on British and French Orientalism, Said ignored the domination of 19th century Oriental studies by German and Hungarian academics and intellectuals, whose countries did not possess colonies in the East. He frankly states that the “book seems to me to be a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations.” Irwin's book was later reviewed by Amir Taheri, writing in Asharq Al-Awsat. He listed certain factual and editing errors, and noted a number of prominent Orientalists were left unmentioned, but says that he believes it to be "the most complete account of Orientalism from the emergence of its modern version in the 19th century to the present day." He also describes it as "a highly enjoyable read both for the specialist and the broadly interested reader." American scholar of religion Jason Ānanda Josephson has argued that data from Japan complicates Said's thesis about Orientalism as a field linked to imperial power. Not only did Europeans study Japan without any hope of colonizing it, but Japanese academics played a prominent role as informants and interlocutors in this academic discipline, providing information both on their own practices and history and on the history of China. Moreover, Josephson has documented that European conferences on East Asia predate European conferences on the Middle East described by Said, necessitating an alternative chronology of Western academic interest in the Orient. Professional In the article "Said's Splash" (2001), Martin Kramer says that, fifteen years after the publication of Orientalism (1978), UCLA historian Nikki Keddie (whom Said praised in Covering Islam, 1981) who originally had praised Orientalism as an "important, and, in many ways, positive" book, had changed her mind. In Approaches to the History of the Middle East (1994), Keddie criticises Said's work on Orientalism, for the unfortunate consequences upon her profession as an historian: Literature In the article, "Edward Said's Shadowy Legacy" (2008), Robert Irwin says that Said ineffectively distinguished among writers of different centuries and genres of Orientalist literature. That the disparate examples, such as the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) who never