oa Onbeschaafd en gevaarlijk

Uncivilized and dangerous. Euro-Orientalism in the Belgian image of Russia between 1848 and 1861

Tracing the history of Euro-Orientalism remains somewhat problematic. Not in the least because Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe from 1994, the supposed basic book on the subject, remains widely criticized because of its chronology and interpretations. In addition, research has been dominated by the perspective of the European Great Powers and the eighteenth century. This article attempts to break with this tendency by analyzing the Belgian image of Russia between 1848 and 1861. The main goal is to ascertain how Euro-Orientalism was present in the Belgian Russia-image between 1848 and 1861. Drawing on a vast number of sources including travelogues, newspapers and parliamentary proceedings, it is argued that the Belgian Russia-image did indeed show clear signs of Euro-Orientalism. Russia was portrayed as being temporally, spatially and geopolitically different from the European and Belgian ‘Self’.