 I doubt if it is controversial , for example , to say that an Englishman in India , or Egypt , in the later nineteenth century , took an interest in those countries , which was never far from their status , in his mind , as British colonies . To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with , violated by , the gross political fact — and yet that is what I am saying in this study of Orientalism . 
