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Orientalism and Imperialism

i
 Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought

Series editors: Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone

This series interrupts standardized discourses involving the Middle East

and the Islamicate world by introducing creative and emerging ideas. The
incisive works included in this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning
canons of theory, theology, philosophy, literature and criticism through
investigations of vast experiential typologies – such as violence, mourning,
vulnerability, tension, and humour – in light of contemporary Middle Eastern
and Islamicate thought.

Other titles in this series include:

Gilles Deleuze, Postcolonian Theory, and the Philosophy of Limit, Réda Bensmaïa
Against Moderate Islam, Farhang Erfani
The Qur’an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: From Taha to Nasr,
Mohammad Salama
Hostage Space of the Contemporary Islamicate World, Dejan Lukic
On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman
The Writing of Violence in the Middle East, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism, edited by Lucian Stone
Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question, by Zahi Zalloua
Sorcery, Totem and Jihad, Christopher Wise
Traces of Racial Exception, Ronit Lentin
Revolutionary Bodies, Kristin Soraya Batmanghelichi
Plural Maghreb, Abdelkebir Khatibi

ii
Orientalism and Imperialism
From Nineteenth-century Missionary
Imaginings to the Contemporary
Middle East

Andrew Wilcox
University of Exeter, UK

iii
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP, UK

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2018

Copyright © Andrew Wilcox, 2018

Andrew Wilcox has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this

copyright page.

Series design © Catherine Wood

Cover image © Before Light, Walid Siti

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret
any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB : 978-1-3500-3379-5
ePDF: 978-1-3500-3378-8
eBook: 978-1-3500-3380-1

Series: Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.

iv
 Contents

Series Foreword vi
Acknowledgements vii

1 Introduction 1
A spiritual conflict 1
The Orientalist Critique 9
Imperialism: an ambiguous concept 19
Missionaries and their imperialist credentials 25
Methodology 29
Use of sources 32

2 A Lack of Consensus 37
Agents of the Great Powers 37
Individual agents of personal conscience 44
Missionaries as ambiguous actors 48

3 Orientalism Through a Lens 61

An Oriental realm of Mohammedan domination 62
Restoration and Essential Difference 81
Proselytization and Circumstantial Difference 97

4 Agents of Imperialism? 119

Cultural quarantine – the Anglican mission 120
Sharing the message – the American mission 145

5 Conclusion 165
Summary 165
Impressions 175

Notes 185
Bibliography 223
Index 231

v
 Series Foreword

Poets, artists, theologians, philosophers and mystics in the Middle East and
Islamicate world have been interrogating notions of desire, madness, sensuality,
solitude, death, time, space, etc. for centuries, thus constituting an expansive and
ever-mutating intellectual landscape. Like all theory and creative outpouring,
then, theirs is its own vital constellation – a construction cobbled together from
singular visceral experiences, intellectual ruins, novel aesthetic techniques,
social-political-ideological detours, and premonitions of a future – built and
torn down (partially or in toto), and rebuilt again with slight and severe
variations. The horizons shift, and frequently leave those who dare traverse these
lands bewildered and vulnerable.
Consequently, these thinkers and their visionary ideas largely remain
unknown, or worse, mispronounced and misrepresented in the so-called
Western world. In the hands of imperialistic frameworks, a select few are deemed
worthy of notice and are spoken on behalf of, or rather about. Their ideas are
simplified into mere social formulae and empirical scholarly categories. Whereas
so-called Western philosophers and writers are given full leniency to contemplate
the most incisive or abstract ideas, non-Western thinkers, especially those
located in the imagined realms of the Middle East and Islamicate world, are
reduced to speaking of purely political histories or monolithic cultural narratives.
In other words, they are distorted and contorted to fit within hegemonic
paradigms that steal away their more captivating potentials.
Contributors to this series provide a counterpoint to the reigning canons of
theory, theology, philosophy, literature and criticism through investigations of
the vast experiential typologies of such regions. Each volume in the series acts as
a ‘suspension’ in the sense that the authors will position contemporary thought
in an enigmatic new terrain of inquiry, where it will be compelled to confront
unforeseen works of critical and creative imagination. These analyses will not
only highlight the full range of current intellectual and artistic trends and their
benefits for the citizens of these phantom spheres, but also argue that the ideas
themselves are borderless, and thus of great relevance to all citizens of the world.

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Lucian Stone

vi
 Acknowledgements

Many people have helped me in the process of turning an initial idea into a
coherent theory and then of turning theory into a book, but there is one person
without whom this simply would not have come about and I would like to
express my sincere gratitude to Ilan Pappe for his encouragement, support and
insightful criticism in the long process of writing and re-drafting my manuscript.
My thanks also go out to Professor Christine Allison of the Centre for Kurdish
Studies at the University of Exeter for her guidance and criticism. Equally, the
tireless efforts of Lizzie Sherwood at the Disabilities Resource Centre in proof
reading my manuscript seem to me to have been the least of her contribution,
whereas the encouragement she gave me and the opportunity she provided to
bounce ideas around had a far greater constructive effect upon all of my work
while at Exeter. I need also to add that without the support of the Centre for
Kurdish Studies, in providing me with a grant and a world class environment in
which to conduct my research, I would never have been able to have achieved
the first step in this long process; thanks to Professor Gareth Stansfield for his
understanding and in holding the award open when the whole project seemed to
me to be on the rocks. Finally, I need to thank my good friends Sue and Phil for
providing a calm working environment at a difficult time and for their patient
tolerance in endlessly listening to my ideas as they took shape, and similarly to
Marc and Evie for their input during the earlier phases of the process.

vii
viii
 1

Introduction

A spiritual conflict

Throughout the nineteenth century and up until the outbreak of the First World
War, a protracted struggle was fought between two Protestant missions over the
fate of a supposedly Oriental people. This was not a conflict of guns and swords
but of words and ideas the import of which was the anticipated spiritual
transformation of an Oriental realm. The protagonists in this dispute were two
organizations, each articulating its own understanding of this Oriental space
and each imagining the nature of the Oriental soul in relation to their own
beliefs. On one side were the American Presbyterians of the West Persia Mission
whose millennialist calling impelled them to teach and convert others to their
understandings of the world. On the other were the Anglicans of the Assyrian
Mission whose aspiration to protect and nurture an Oriental people from the
ravages of Westernization led them to oppose the activities of the American
missionaries. It is true that the rhetorical battle is itself of interest but its
true importance to this book lies in the opportunities it offers to examine
attitudes towards the Orient. Through their justifications of method and the
denouncements of their opponents these missionaries express in some detail
how they perceive the Orient to exist. As a textual body, therefore, the archives of
these two missionary organizations present a treasure-trove of data illuminating
the study of Orientalism. Of particular interest to this work is the juxtaposition
of these opposing missionary portrayals of the Orient which allow for a closer
examination of Orientalism as a critique. In this way, the divergence of their
contradictory explanations of Oriental nature reveals the scope available for free
thought within Orientalist discourse and thus permits an examination of how
we should consider Orientalism to operate when considered as a textual practice
governed by discursive forces. Furthermore, as Orientalism is considered within
the Orientalist critique to be intrinsically related to aspects of power, the
conflicting world views of these two missions present an ideal opportunity to

1
2 Orientalism and Imperialism

interrogate the relationships which may exist between these missionaries and
imperialism. More generally, the ambiguity of the missionary objectives of both
missions with regard to the formal interests of empire and the projection of state
power offers an interesting exploration of an old conundrum – that of the
ambiguous position of missionaries with regard to the consolidation of imperial
interests. Before outlining my understanding of Orientalism as a critique, it will
be helpful to specify the particular boundaries of the Orient of this study and to
introduce the two missions that form its context.
It is true to say that, in the parlance of nineteenth-century Europeans and
Americans, the idea of the Orient could allude to so broad a concept as all of
those lands which were conceptually not the West. The Orient of this particular
missionary conflict, however, was constituted more specifically by those lands
and peoples governed by the Islamic states of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, a
conceptual space which these missionaries systematically referred to as a
‘Mohammedan’ realm.1 The importance of this Orient is that it represented to
the missionaries an opposite to the symbolic realm of Christendom which at
that time seemed to them to be in the ascendant due to the grace of God’s
approval. The two missions of this study were united by an underlying goal, the
spiritual overthrow of this realm through the conversion of its peoples to
Christianity, but the burning question which formed the centre-piece of their
disagreement was by what means should the local populations be converted. On
the one hand, the Presbyterians asserted that the ‘light and truth’2 of their Gospel
message should be directly administered to the ‘dark minds’3 of every Oriental.
While on the other, the Anglicans eschewed such direct proselytization claiming
that, in order to avoid the creation of some dreadful chimera, one had to respect
‘the genius and sympathies of the Oriental mind’.4 This latter idea meant that, in
the view of the Anglican mission, an Oriental mind required an Oriental form of
Christianity and only an Oriental Christianity had any chance of achieving the
conversion of the Muslim majority. Where these opposed Orientalist views
collided most forcefully was in the struggle over who had the moral right to
assist the Christian communities of the Old East Syrian Church; communities
known to the missionaries by the interchangeable epithets of Syrian, Assyrian or
Nestorian. This people, who were often conceived of by the missionaries as a
nation, comprised a loose coalition of communities affiliated by their religion
and, to varying degrees, under the leadership of the Patriarch Mar Shimun. These
communities were, however, dispersed into both tribal and non-tribal groupings
across a wide territory which straddled the border between Persia and the
Ottoman Empire, an area which these missionaries knew as Kurdistan.
 Introduction 3

The definition of Kurdistan in academia has been and remains a notoriously

difficult and highly politicized issue. In the present day, there exist within the
borders of the four nation-states of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, geographical
regions where the majority of the population identify themselves as Kurdish. This
geographical region is frequently, although not without contestation, considered
to be Kurdistan.5 What is of primary significance to this book, however, is the
usage of the term by the missionaries themselves and, importantly, during a
period before the crystallization of these nation-states.6 To the missionaries of
the Assyrian and West Persia Missions the term ‘Kurd’ referred to a Muslim
people, described usually but not always as tribal and semi-nomadic, and
frequently used as a synonym for wildness and lawlessness. It might be added
that the missionaries frequently projected themselves into the role of advocate
for the welfare of Christian communities in the region, and that this regularly put
them in a position of antagonism towards the Kurds, whom they consequently
perceived as raiders and oppressors. To the Anglican and Presbyterian missionary
writers, therefore, the region where the Kurds predominated was Kurdistan. This
also correlated with their understanding of official Ottoman and Persian usage of
the term to indicate the largely mountainous provinces of the border regions
between the two states. This rather fluid definition leads to an indistinct
delineation of the region in geographical terms, but for the purposes of this work
it certainly included the regions within the Ottoman Empire known as Bohtan,
Bahdinan, Hakkiari (Hakkari) and as far north as Lake Van. On the Persian side
of the border this area included the mountainous regions which surrounded the
fertile plains enfolding Lake Urumia (Urmia7) with Soldooz (modern-day
Naghadeh) to the south and Salmas to the north.
The sole target of Anglican missionary effort was, as its name implies, the
Assyrian Church and its people to whom they generally referred as Syrian, but
the latter term should in no way be confused with the nation-state of Syria. This
modern political entity, the name of which derives from the Roman province,
was the creation of the Great Powers after the First World War and has little
historical continuity except as a Roman and later as an Ottoman administrative
district. The name Syrian applied to the Christian community on the other hand
refers to their usage of Syriac as a language and it should be noted that their
demographic distribution in the nineteenth century in no way corresponds to
the boundaries of the modern nation-state.8 The aim of the American mission,
by contrast, was the conversion of all Orientals to their particular form of
Christianity. However, in the words of the American missionary Robert McEwan
Labaree ‘no other nationality in this part of the world has furnished more loyal
4 Orientalism and Imperialism

laborers in Christ’s vineyard than the Syrian’.9 Therefore, to both the Anglican
and the American missions, the Syrian community was of prime significance
and thus a focus of their disagreement as to the nature of the Orient.
The term Syrian, therefore, is used throughout this book as an adjective to
describe the Syriac speaking Christians inhabiting the Kurdish region.10 More
specifically, it is used to refer to those Christians who adhere to the form of
worship and social organization known as the Old East Syrian Church or Church
of the East.11 Although this dispersed community was essentially ecclesiastical
in origin, Heleen Murre-van den Berg suggests that there is good reason to
suppose that by the nineteenth century they had for some time begun to think
of themselves as an ethnic group distinct from their neighbours in race and
culture.12 Broadly speaking they dwelt in tribally organized communities in the
mountains of Hakkiari in Ottoman-governed Kurdistan and as non-tribal
agriculturalists or town dwellers in the fertile Urmia Plains of Persia. This
division of communities is often referred to by the missionaries as that between
ashiret (tribal) and rayat (non-tribal). The Anglican missionary Rev. Wigram
explains the terms as follows, ‘ashiret is a word that strictly means “tribe” or clan;
but as descriptive of status it is contrasted with rayat or subject, and means that
the bearers of the name [ashiret] pay tribute [. . .] and not taxes.’13 This distinction
usually correlated with those Syrians living on one side of the border or the
other, with the ashiret largely on the Ottoman side and rayat on the Persian side,
but this was not without exception. The missionaries would also refer to this
divided people as separated into mountaineers and plains dwellers, with the
majority of the former on the Ottoman side of the border and the majority of the
latter on the Persian side; there is thus a certain correlation between ashiret and
mountaineers and between rayat and plains dwellers.14
Anglican interest in the Kurdish region took its missionary form in the shape
of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission to the Assyrian Christians and can be
traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Following an 1835 Royal
Geographical Society (RGS ) expedition to the Euphrates valley,15 a second
expedition was organized in 1838 funded by a coalition of the RGS and the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK ).16 The SPCK ’s interest was
in expanding knowledge about the hitherto almost unknown Mountain
Nestorians,17 while the RGS pursued a more political/economic interest in the
discovery of alternative overland routes to India.18 This material fact points to
the heart of the debate on the ambiguity of the missionary relationship with
imperial power. On the one hand, the religious mission was directed and funded
by private subscription and interest, but on the other, it was a political interest
 Introduction 5

which opened that possibility in the first place. It points to the fact that missionary
activity did not take place in a vacuum but was to some extent a by-product of
growing Western dominance, and this is a subject I will explore in detail in
chapter four. The initial foray was followed, in 1842, by the Rev. George Percy
Badger’s expedition to assess the feasibility of a permanent mission.19 The
mission was curtailed, however, by the 1843 Bedr Khan rebellion (where certain
Kurdish tribes were responsible for the widespread massacre of Syrians) and the
controversy this caused in terms of perceived missionary culpability in these
events.20 It was thus not until April 1876 that a subsequent expedition of enquiry
led by the Rev. Cutts was dispatched in response to a petition purporting to be
from ‘the Nestorian people’.21 Formal mission was tentatively commenced in
1881 with a single missionary worker and was later put on a more permanent
footing in 1885 with the dispatch of additional missionaries.22
The overarching aim of the Anglican mission was to achieve some degree of
ecumenical union between the Church of England and the Church of the East as
associated branches of a broadly conceived apostolic Church.23 This sentiment
was in line with the High Church tone of the mission and embraced the Oxford
Movement’s hope that the various branches of the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church would be united in ecumenical union.24 Perhaps the most
significant obstacle in the pursuit of this objective was the perceived heretical
status of the Oriental Church which was known to the Anglicans, among other
names, as the Nestorian Church. The particular point at issue was that Nestorius,
the fifth century bishop of Constantinople, was considered by the Western
Churches to have been anathematized, whereas within the Old East Syrian
tradition Nestorius was held as one of the fathers of the Church.25 Furthermore,
two particular forms of address attributed to Nestorius and condemned by Cyril
the Archbishop of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus 431,26 were in common
usage in the Old East Syrian Church at the time of the mission. Within the
Western Churches, Cyril is considered to have been victorious at the Council of
Ephesus and is thus held as one of the doctors of the early Christian Church
while Nestorius was branded a heretic. The form of words championed by
Nestorius which refer to the Virgin Mary as the Mother of Christ was also
condemned, and in its place the epithet Mother of God became the required
doctrine. Furthermore, in terms of the nature of Christ it has been assumed that
Nestorius proclaimed Christ to have been possessed of two distinct persons with
two separate natures (one human and one Divine) instead of one person with
two natures. To put the case in rather simplistic terms, the position of the Western
Churches is that Christ should be considered as one Person but with two Natures
6 Orientalism and Imperialism

– Divine and human – whereas, according to Paul Clayton, the Nestorian

theological speculations which are ascribed to the Patriarchal seat of Antioch led
to the idea of Christ as two Persons. Clayton says this of Nestorius and Antioch,
‘Its fundamental philosophical assumptions about the natures of God and
humanity compelled the Antiochenes to assert that there are two subjects in the
Incarnation: the Word himself and a distinct human personality.’27 It is not the
object of this book to discuss the rights and wrongs of these two apparently
opposed formulas, but it is necessary to state that the Anglicans perceived the
Nestorian heresy as endemic within the Old East Syrian Church and that this
heresy was a serious obstacle to ecumenical union.
Throughout its period of service, the Anglican mission remained a small-scale
endeavour, with around half a dozen unmarried male missionaries and five nuns
from the Sisters of Bethany in Urmia at its most numerous, until it was disbanded
at the outbreak of the First World War.28 The official Anglican archive web-site
describes missionary work as ‘intended to regenerate and reform the Assyrian
Christians, focusing on the education of both clergy and laity. A college for priests
and deacons was established, as were five high schools and forty village schools.’29
A further aspect of the Anglican mission was that the missionaries dispensed
medicines and humanitarian aid, particularly in times of crisis, and so when
considering imperialism one should not overlook the charitable spirit which
formed a large part of the mission’s ethos. This is also true of the educational work
which was the principal aim of the mission and which, according to Archbishop
Tait, sought to ‘influence them for good and to promote such progress, educational
and other, as shall conduce to them real advancement & Christian Civilisation’.30
As for American missionary interest in the Kurdish region, this can be traced
back to the exploratory efforts of Eli Smith and Harrison Dwight in 1829.31
These preliminary sorties were then consolidated in 1834 through the creation,
by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM ), of a
mission to the Nestorian Christians of Urumia in northwest Persia.32 A formal
mission was established that year by the Rev. Justin Perkins who was joined, a
year later, by Dr and Mrs Asahel Grant.33 The mission remained a relatively small
affair until it became, in 1871, a solely Presbyterian endeavour after which it
underwent a vigorous expansion to include the whole of Persia within its remit.34
The focus of this book falls upon the West Persia Mission35 and its main mission
stations of Urumia and Tabriz which, lying on the eastern edges of the Kurdish
region, had the Syrian and Armenian Christians as its main targets but also
attempted the proselytization of Persian and Kurdish Muslims.36 The size, in
terms of missionaries, of these two combined mission stations was usually
 Introduction 7

somewhat larger than that of the Anglican mission, but was never much in excess
of around twenty individuals.37
The object of the Presbyterian mission was essentially evangelical, to bring to
all who would listen to their message a personal knowledge of the Gospels in
the belief that such a knowledge would bring forth the action of the Holy Spirit
upon the individual. Prior to 1871 it was hoped that the American missionaries
could work within the Old East Syrian Church but the activities of the Americans
and their converts soon met with hostility from the Old Church hierarchy and a
new policy of proselytization out of the Old Church was deemed expedient.38
The hostility generated by the missionaries was perhaps unsurprising given
the Presbyterian tradition of deemphasizing hierarchy and patriarchy.39
Amanda Porterfield suggests that these ideas disrupted traditional cultural
assumptions about authority and aggravated the relationship between indigenous
Christians and Muslims.40 On one level, she explains, the representation of
Muslim repression ‘struck many Muslims as offensive and combative, and [itself]
contributed to their persecution of the Nestorian community’.41 But perhaps
the most contentious issue was that of gender differentiation and the role of
women, a cause which was promoted by the mission and in particular by the
activities of the Female Seminary set up in Urumia by Fidelia Fiske.42 Porterfield
explains that ‘the American ideal of Republican Motherhood nurtured
fundamental changes in Nestorian concepts of womanhood, and these changes
figured centrally in the increasingly strained relationship between Nestorian and
Muslim culture as well as in the polarization of Nestorian culture’.43 These
ideological standpoints elicited hostility from the traditional institutions of
authority within the Nestorian Church and ultimately led the missionaries to
abandon their original policy of working to ‘restore’ the Church from within.
It should be added that the expanded scope of the West Persia Mission,
which included proselytization from other groups such as the Armenian and
Muslim communities, required a separate local Protestant body to accommodate
proselytes from outside the Old Syrian Church.44 Consequently, the method of
proselytization to a new Evangelical Syrian institution became mission policy,
and it is this approach which the Presbyterians inherited in 1871.45
The archive of the Presbyterian Historical Society describes missionary work
in Persia as ‘three-fold in nature: evangelical, medical and educational’.46

Numerous local churches were organized and placed in the hands of native
ministers within the central Evangelical Church of Iran. Medical work began as
early as 1835 and was extended in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
8 Orientalism and Imperialism

Formal hospitals were built in Kermanshah in 1882, in Teheran in 1890, and in

Tabriz in 1913, followed by similar openings in Meshed, Hamadan, and Resht.47

For some reason this overview ignores a hospital which was already well
established in Urmia by 1913, but it does nonetheless emphasize the enormous
humanitarian work which was being performed by the Presbyterian missionaries
for no apparent ulterior motive other than service to mankind and the visible
example of virtue that might perhaps lead to voluntary conversion.48 Equally, the
educational work performed by the missionaries provided the sole means of
formal education available to many Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the
region, and formed the basis for future schools. The Presbyterian Historical
Society states that schools were initially established for the children of
missionaries but that ultimately ‘these grew into multi-national institutions such
as the Alborz Foundation (Armaghan Institute), Iran Bethel (Damavand)
College, the Community School of Teheran, [and] the Mehr Jordan Schools’.49 In
Urmia, the missionaries established a seminary school for the training of native
pastors, a higher school for both Muslim and Christian students, and sponsored
numerous village schools administered by native teachers. So, while these
educational activities may have included religious, ethical and even political
principles which would prove to be contentious and even divisive, we should not
overlook the apparent altruism of the missionaries’ intent.
In terms of doctrine, American Protestant missionaries during this period
tended to hold to a millennialist hope that looked towards the second coming of
Christ and the establishment of a thousand-year reign of peace on earth. This was
true of the Presbyterian missionaries of this study whose aspirations conform to
what Hans-Lukas Kieser refers to as Postmillennialism.50 ‘Postmillennialism was
millennialism plus modern Enlightenment; it entrusted missionary America
with the task of preparing the Kingdom, in inter- and transnational cooperation,
using to this end all pacific means: science, technological progress, and historical
opportunities’.51 Postmillennialism is contrasted to Premillennialism in which
the arrival of Christ presupposes the transformation of the world. In the
postmillennialist imagining, therefore, the preparation of the world preceded the
coming of Christ and consequently necessitated a vision of Orientals as
redeemable and equally imagined the geographical Orient as perfectible.
Beyond the activities of the Anglican and American missionaries in the
region, their work had a broader effect upon the culture of their home countries.
Throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, the Near East
presented a source of fascination to the supporters of mission back home.
 Introduction 9

Therefore, part of the importance of missionary narratives lies in their role in

presenting an image of the Orient which fed back into a broader societal
discourse. Couched in a biblical framework, the region seemed, throughout the
nineteenth century, to provide evidence for many Orientalist fantasies such as
the lost greatness of biblical civilizations which were presented as newly
accessible through the application of new scientific methods. The sciences of
philology and archaeology were seen to be decoding the remnants of an ancient
past, and the fate of the lost tribes of Israel was a popular theme of ‘scientific’
speculation.52 Within the context of a nineteenth-century popular European and
American understanding of the Orient these enquiries tended to look beyond
the contemporary cultures of the East, which were perceived to be largely
irrelevant to the grandeur of past civilizations. Alternatively, the contemporary
cultures of the Holy Lands were seen as a means of decoding the Bible as a
historical document.53 This treatment of Oriental cultures nonetheless reduces
the region and its peoples to something of a living fossil whose only significance
lies in its value in illuminating the past within a Christocentric world view.
Robert Irwin, in his repost to the Orientalist Critique, gives an account of the
predilection within academic Orientalism for studying early Islam and classical
Arabic as a vehicle for approaching subjects of biblical interest rather than
representing a particular interest in the Orient itself.54 Thus a dominant public
perception was that what remained in the East was a degeneration from past
glories which had left the Orient in a state of decline and with an ethical and
moral spirit which seemed to deny the very possibility of redemption.55 It is
noteworthy, however, that missionary endeavour is predicated upon the
redemption of the Orient and thus their narrative productions must surely
present the Orient and Orientals in a different light to this common perception.
This in turn demands questions as to how missionaries could defy the pressures
of Orientalist discourse and how their own textual output might have disrupted
stereotypical images of the Orient. This, therefore, is the context of the study
contained within this book, but before turning to an analysis of the missionary
texts themselves I need to explain in more detail my understanding of the
Orientalist critique as a theoretical model and of imperialism as a concept.

The Orientalist Critique

Two basic questions have driven the research of this book; one relates to
Orientalism as a textual practice, the other focuses upon the relationship between
10 Orientalism and Imperialism

missionaries and imperialism. The first question asks whether the knowledge
production of the missionaries studied exhibits an Orientalist style, and if so
what form does it take? The second asks whether they can be considered as
agents of imperialism in one form or another? It is crucial therefore that, before
trying to propose an answer to these questions, I state clearly what constitutes an
Orientalist style within the terms of my analysis.
The concept of Orientalism is absolutely central to this study but the term is
potentially ambiguous. On the one hand the word itself can be taken as indicating
the esteemed profession of those who simply study the Orient, and whose work
does not necessarily conform to the dictates of discursive pressure. On the other,
it can be taken as indicating the presence of a discursive tradition which controls
or influences the representation of the Orient in a manner that supports the
underlying thesis of Western superiority. It is this latter point of view which
constitutes the starting point of my theoretical model and to which I shall refer
as the Orientalist Critique.
So, what is meant by a discursive tradition? Jäger and Maier, who have written
on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA ), define a discourse as ‘an institutionalized
way of talking that regulates and reinforces action and thereby exerts power’.56 A
discursive tradition by extension indicates something more attenuated over time
and constituting a practice that perpetuates a particular status quo. Orientalism,
as an institutionalized way of talking about the Orient, is thus a discursive
tradition which regulates and reinforces thought and action on the subject of the
Orient. To develop this idea further I need to turn to the seminal work of Edward
Said who, building upon Michel Foucault’s concept of the discursive formation,
popularized the notion of Orientalism as a discourse.
While Edward Said has stated that ‘Orientalism is a partisan book, [and] not
a theoretical machine’57, it is nonetheless possible to extrapolate a theoretical
model from his work. Firstly, it is my understanding that Said himself would
have frowned upon rigid and dogmatic definitions of Orientalism as a
phenomenon, for it is not to be conceived of as an ideology or project but rather
as an operating force or process active in society. An idea that is most helpful as
a starting point in understanding this process is that ‘Orientalism is a style of
thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made
between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.” ’58 This style of
thought takes as its basis the a priori notion that both East and West are in some
real sense homogenous geographical units which differ from each other in their
very nature. Consequently, the rules and standards which govern the
representation of the Orient, it is argued, differ from those which are used to
 Introduction 11

represent the Occident. The Critique further suggests that this double standard
is a crucial tool, though not necessarily a conscious one, in both creating and
maintaining the ‘otherness’ of the Orient. Orientalist textual style frequently
results from the reification of an abstract concept into a supposedly real object
the nature of which embodies Oriental inferiority: for example, perceived
Oriental dishonesty is seen to be something rooted in an Oriental nature. A
striking feature of this process of ‘othering’ is that, not only does it allow for the
easy compartmentalization of a diversity of individuals and groups into a single
homogenous and malleable unit, but it also facilitates the consolidation of a
Western self-image. Through comparison with the ‘otherness’ of the Orient, the
Occident is itself defined, and this style of thought is in part a way of looking at
objects of knowledge and talking about them in terms of the value system of the
narrator’s own culture.59 In this sense, the focus is less upon what the Orient is,
than upon what the Occident should be. This is, however, not to say that either
the Orient or the Occident actually exist in terms beyond the realm of ideas, but
neither should it be dismissed as purely imaginary.60 Orientalism as a system of
representing the ‘other’ has real effects, not least in the justification of inequality
by recourse to a perceived essential difference between the Oriental and the
Occidental.61
This brings us to a concept that I would like to emphasize, that of essential
difference. This is a style of representation which portrays the differences
separating the narrator from the object of description by suggesting that they
result from the presence of an intrinsic nature that is forever fixed.62 In this way,
the Oriental is rhetorically rendered irrevocably different from, and usually
inferior to, the Occidental. The word irrevocable is central to the notion of
essential difference: not only does this style of representation imagine an
essentialized Oriental but this essence is perceived as immutable. The importance
of highlighting essential difference in Orientalist narratives is that it represents
the point at which meaning is attributed by the narrator to the perception of
difference, where difference ceases to be mere observation and acquires an
altogether more judgemental character. In the context of missionaries, the
problem arises, however, that when one considers the desire to convert the
Oriental, one is also faced with a belief that such a distinction can be eradicated.
This suggests perhaps that something outside the essentialism of the Orientalist
discourse is at play in the construction and maintenance of a distinct proselytizing
missionary world-view. It begs the question as to whether proselytizing
missionaries could see and articulate a view of the Orient from the perspective
of another discourse.
12 Orientalism and Imperialism

The manner in which discourses operate, both within society and upon the
individual, is an important point which must be addressed in any discussion of
Orientalism. In this respect, Said recognizes his debt to Michel Foucault and the
notion of the discourse as both a constraining and a compelling pressure, in the
realm of culture, upon what can and cannot be said (and by whom) concerning
a field of knowledge.63 These rules of inclusion and exclusion should not be
confused with overt censorship but rather understood to exist as a kind of,
frequently unconscious, self-censorship. Furthermore, Said states that ‘so
authoritative a position did Orientalism have that [. . .] no one writing, thinking,
or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on
thought and action imposed by [the discourse of] Orientalism.’64 This assertion,
however, seems to suggest that discourses in general and the Orientalist discourse
in particular are deterministic in the regulation of thought and action within
society. Robert Irwin, one of Said’s most formidable critics, suggests that this is a
central flaw in his theory. While Irwin’s refutation of Orientalism focuses upon
some indisputable factual errors contained within Said’s book, his criticism also
attacks its theory.65 Irwin argues that Said could not seem to choose between
Michel Foucault’s ideas of the Discourse as an irresistible force which determines
the narratives produced by Orientalists, and Antonio Gramsci’s notion of
hegemonic narratives which are the conscious product of elites to regulate the
thought and action of subordinates.66 Irwin accuses Said of playing fast and
loose with these two theoretical positions to make his point. The weakness of
Irwin’s attack, however, is that it is not an illegitimate activity to make use of
some aspects of a particular theory while selectively dropping others. Jeffrey
Guhin and Jonathan Wyrtzen argue that throughout Said’s seminal work ‘one
sees a constructive tension between Foucault, who argues that the authoritative
power structure is unavoidable, and Gramsci, who is more optimistic about the
possible uses of positive knowledge’.67 Their evaluation of this tension is that in
‘Foucault’s model, culture of any sort is fed into a sausage factory of power-
knowledge, allowing an ever-deeper consolidation of power. In Said and
Gramsci’s model, the sausage factory still exists, and culture can contribute to it,
but it doesn’t have to.’68 They conclude by asserting that within the Saidian model
a producer of knowledge does have the potential to stand ‘outside of power’.69
Later scholars have adopted and adapted the Foucauldian concept of
discourse, and the discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA ) has emerged
in recent decades. In the field of CDA , definitions vary but that elaborated by
Jäger and Maier corresponds closely to my own understanding and is worth
quoting in full at this juncture. To reiterate, they state that ‘a discourse can be
 Introduction 13

defined as an institutionalized way of talking that regulates and reinforces action

and thereby exerts power’.70 Furthermore, this definition ‘can be illustrated by the
image of discourse as a flow of knowledge throughout time. Different discourses
are intimately entangled with each other and together form the giant milling
mass of overall societal discourse.’71 The image of culture as a milling mass of
autonomous discourses which interact with one another through the agency of
the individual allows one to break free from the determinism implicit in a
shallower reading of Said’s discourse theory. Said himself is reported by Guhin
and Wyrtzen as saying that while he was writing Orientalism he ‘was already
aware of the problems of Foucault’s determinism’ in which ‘everything is always
assimilated and acculturated’.72 Said continues by stating that the ‘notion of a
kind of non-coercive knowledge, which [he came] to at the end of his book, was
deliberately anti-Foucault’.73 To emphasize this point and to highlight the
importance of individual volition in the spirit of Said’s work one need only point
to the introduction to Orientalism in which he states that ‘unlike Michel Foucault,
to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of
individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts
constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism’.74
The idea of agency is further extended by Abdelmajid Hannoum who
demonstrates that not only do individual authors leave their personal impression
upon a discourse but that discourses can be co-opted to further the objectives of
competing social groups within a heterogeneous culture. Speaking of the French
colonization of Algeria in the mid to late nineteenth century, Hannoum relates
how the knowledge production of the Arab Bureau with its specific political
agenda was co-opted by opposing groups with differing ideas as to the nature of
colonization. He relates that:

for those who later changed their political position, it was already too late, for
they established a discourse that they no longer controlled. In fact, it is this same
discourse fabricated by the Arab Bureau that was soon appropriated by their
opponents, namely the Church and the settlers. The first sought to justify an
agenda of religious conversion; the second sought to defend that same policy of
containment that the members of the Arab Bureau had once defended so
vehemently.75

This account suggests that a discourse, while canonizing certain data and
representations as authoritative, is nonetheless open to modification and
redirection. It also underlines the agency of individuals and groups who can use
and redirect an existing discourse for their own purposes. On an allied point, in
14 Orientalism and Imperialism

the field of cultural psychology, Hubert Hermans argues that cultures are neither
homogeneous nor externally distinctive.76 They are instead, he argues, a dynamic
network of individual identity positions which are in a state of constant
negotiation. I would add that, as a consequence of this, the influence of discursive
pressures cannot be uniformly exerted throughout a culture and must give rise
to individual variance both between and within various discourses. Here can be
seen, in the disciplines of discourse analysis, cultural psychology and historical
analysis ways of explaining the collective phenomenon of culture in a manner
which also emphasizes the agency of the individual; and this, whilst not
eliminating, must nuance the discursive pressures latent within society, culture
and the group.
Therefore, throughout this book I consider a discourse to be a collective
influence, both constraining and creative, which is exerted unevenly throughout
a culture upon the production of knowledge within a particular domain. It is
not, after all, possible for human beings to make socially meaningful statements
about anything without situating those statements within an accepted framework
of understanding, and importantly these frameworks are not neutral in terms of
the values they promote and prohibit. While a discourse in this context can be
understood as a system of rules which govern the creation of mental objects
from the raw materials of the world we experience, these rules themselves should
in no way be considered as fixed or immutable. In a somewhat organic sense, the
very rules constituted by a discourse can be envisaged as being constantly
renegotiated, through acts of communication, with the changing environment in
which individuals find themselves. The agency of the individual thus negates to
some extent the determinism implied by discursive pressure (which has a merely
influential presence in my view), and what is of prime significance to this work
is that access to alternative discourses can facilitate divergence from dominant
norms and so produce considerable variation within the textual output of
Orientalists.
As an example of the collision of discursive pressures through the agency of
the individual, the work of Daphne Desser provides a useful insight. In her
article ‘Fraught Literacy’, which concerns missionary involvement in the
education of the colonized population of Hawaii during the nineteenth century,
she speaks of the inconsistencies produced by a confusion of discourses.77 Her
thesis focuses upon the ‘dynamic of competing desires for connection and
separation’78 felt by female missionary educators towards the Hawaiian objects
of their mission. This tension is expressed as a conflict between an ideology
based upon biblical texts, which ‘foster real and imagined Christian communities
 Introduction 15

that supposedly would transcend race and nationality’,79 and the racist
ethnocentrism of nineteenth-century American culture.80 An intriguing
observation made by Desser is that the competing and often contradictory
values of the two discourses are not necessarily neatly and logically divided. She
argues that a ‘clean binary between connection and separation does not exist. A
desire for connection, for example, can be shot through simultaneously with a
desire for separation’.81 This suggests that individual missionaries were actively
negotiating, not necessarily consciously or coherently, the conflicting dictates of
different discourses through their ability to choose between divergent sets of
norms in the construction of unique identity positions (to use Hermans’ phrase).
Therefore, in the presence of competing discourses, individual narratives may
not necessarily conform to the collective voice of the group. What is important
in methodological terms is to attempt to gauge a consensus but also to reflect the
seemingly aberrant, partly because the very presence of divergent thought goes
a long way to erode the notion of discourses as hopelessly deterministic.
To turn to the question of the domain of competence over which the
Orientalist discourse is theoretically supposed to exert its influence, it can be
stated that within the Saidian model this domain is not simply knowledge of
the Orient but also the relationship between the Orient and its seemingly natural
opposite the Occident. This relationship takes its most concrete textual form as
pronouncements upon the nature of the Orient made by those believing
themselves to be Occidentals (most of the time) whose authority is emphasized
by the disequilibrium of power between East and West. This is not to say that
authority is always dictated by the use or even the threat of force, but rather that
the association between the locus of power and the institutions of knowledge
production asserts the authority and veracity of the discourse itself. In this way,
the power of the West is seen to demonstrate the veracity of its knowledge about
the East. In a sense, that is the central point to Orientalism, that the moral and
intellectual qualities of the West are understood to have brought about the
disequilibrium of power in the first place, and thus it is evidently useless to
envisage the equality of the Oriental when it comes to explaining the realities of
their existence. These pronouncements upon the Orient frequently take the form
of a ‘true’ understanding of the East which is presented as being beyond the
capacity of the Oriental to articulate. This perceived incapacity for logical self-
representation not only allows for but demands that the Orientalist must speak
for the Oriental. This in turn produces a style of representation of the ‘other’
which Said calls exteriority, a technique in which the Orientalist narrator must
speak for the Oriental as the only acceptable interpreter of an otherwise illogical
16 Orientalism and Imperialism

and emotional realm. An interesting corollary of this expression of Orientalism

is that the Oriental is depicted as being incapable of the kind of self-reflection
which defines the Westerner and so rational self-knowledge becomes the rightful
property of the West. Consequently, the threat of contestation by the Oriental is
neutralized by its status as irrational, illogical and emotional knowledge;82 and
this neutralization of the Oriental voice is one of the most obvious phenomena
in which the connection between knowledge production and power can be
observed.
In recent historiography, the Critique of Orientalism, though by no means
universally accepted, has been useful in exposing the myth of the supposed
neutrality of knowledge production associated with imperialism.83 The Critique
has identified a relationship between what could be termed the ‘Orientalizing’
of certain parts of the world and justifications in the application of unequal
power. What is less clear, however, is just how consistent and predictable this
relationship between knowledge production and power might be. A frequently
observable feature of the process of Orientalizing has been the organization of
observations into binary categories of opposition which support the principal
notion of the ontological difference between East and West. However, to assume
that all Occidental authors writing about the Orient did so in a uniformly
predictable manner is to create one’s own binary category in which the Occident
itself becomes a homogenous and generalizable entity in opposition to the
Orient.84 If due care is not taken for the specificity of the particular case we risk
presenting a picture of the Occident which is as much of a caricature as the
Orientalism that Said originally critiqued. While it seems reasonable to suppose
that the discourse of Orientalism undoubtedly exerted an environmental
pressure upon those who operated within it, the existence of alternative
discourses whose domains of competence may have overlapped in the lives of
individuals must surely have influenced the narratives expressed by them
concerning the Orient. What I am proposing here is the existence of a plurality
of discourses whose domains of competence are not necessarily discretely
delineated but which, as in a Venn diagram, overlap in the experiences pertaining
to the individual; this concept can also be found in CDA under the title of
discourse position. On this point, Jäger and Maier suggest that individuals
‘develop a discourse position because they are enmeshed in various discourses.
They are exposed to discourses and work them into a specific ideological position
or worldview in the course of their life.’85
In the case of proselytizing missionaries, it seems reasonable to suggest that
they belonged to a culture which was given to an essentialist Orientalism, but it
 Introduction 17

is equally clear that they were enmeshed in a Christian egalitarian world-view

which contradicted some of these assumptions. Andrew Ross notes that before
the 1850s ‘a belief in the oneness of humanity was widespread’86 amongst
Protestant missionaries due to a religious conviction as to ‘the essential equality
of all human beings irrespective of race’.87 Ross refers to this egalitarian attitude
as ‘conversionist’ because of its focus upon proselytization.88 He argues, however,
that this situation changed with the rise to popularity of ‘scientific’ racial theories
throughout the nineteenth century and the hegemony of a ‘racial understanding
of history and culture’.89 What is particularly interesting in Ross’s illustration of a
changing cultural and intellectual climate, from an egalitarian to a hierarchical
explanation of the nature of humanity, is the resistance to popular racism which
can be observed by those with an interest in proselytization.90 This would seem
to be evidence of competition between opposing discourses (one egalitarian and
inclusive, the other essentialist and exclusive) through the agency of individual
volition. The interpretation of the Orientalist critique that I have outlined so far
emphasizes the notion of a discourse as a compelling pressure as opposed to a
determinative force, and the textual output of missionaries can be seen as a
reactive process which encompasses a diversity of experiences. These experiences
can be woven into any number of discursive ‘strands’ which may compete with
and contradict each other without necessarily undermining the core principle of
the discourse; which in the case of Orientalism is the reification of the idea of the
Orient as the natural and inferior opposite to the Occident.
To round off this summary of the Orientalist critique I would like to add a
concept of my own, that of circumstantial difference. While essential difference is
on occasion described by Edward Said as a definitive component of Orientalism,
it does not seem reasonable to suggest that there were no alternative Orientalist
views. Within the textual output of proselytizing missionaries, for example, one
may expect to see the articulation of sentiments which while being Orientalist,
in the sense that they represent the East as a monolithic entity in opposition to
an equally monolithic West, nonetheless ascribe an alternative meaning to the
nature of those differences perceived to separate the two. An alternative mode of
representation, and not necessarily the only alternative, would be to attribute
these perceived differences to the environmental circumstances of Oriental life.
Hannoum identifies just such an articulation within the French colonial
discourse which he terms colonial heresies, and which he describes as being less
essentialist than orthodox representations.91 Speaking of Pellissier de Reynaud,
Hannoum explains that this officer of the Arab Bureau felt humanity to be one
unit and that ‘the differences between societies [were] caused by the differences
18 Orientalism and Imperialism

of their soil and climate’.92 Nonetheless, Hannoum explains, Reynaud was writing
within the colonial discourse and the ‘postulate shared by all the members of the
Arab Bureau was that the natives lacked civilization. Divergence occurred in the
ways the natives as objects were constructed, seldom in the political solutions
offered.’93 In a similar fashion, I am proposing that there exist two opposed
styles of Orientalism which have contradictory ideological explanations as to the
ontological state of the Oriental.94 As with Hannoum’s colonial heresies, the
conversionist missionaries do not portray the native as the negation of civilization
but rather as perfectible. In Hannoum’s interpretation, it is the Oriental’s ‘social
organization that causes him to be “plunged into a state of barbarism”, but in any
case not because of some “inherent nature”. In other words, the heretical discourse
contains the dichotomy “us” and “them”, an anthropological one that, ultimately,
presupposes the unity of humanity.’95 He argues that this dichotomy is not
Orientalist because it does not ‘pose the opposition “West” versus “East” – two
entities that mutually exclude each other’.96 I would, however, argue that it does,
though not in an ontological sense but rather in an anthropological one. In this
view, it is not the Oriental that is the negation of civilization but the Orient (as a
social and religious unit) that opposes the civilization of the West. In the case of
the conversionist missionaries, these two opposed styles of representation
(essential difference and circumstantial difference) support diametrically opposed
methods of engagement with the Orient but do not undermine the underlying
principle that the Orient exists as an oppositional unit to that of the Occident.
While I have used the concept of circumstantial difference as an analytical tool
in examining the textual output of nineteenth-century missionaries, it is striking
that one can observe examples of such a style of thought in today’s world. Images
of the Middle East as a region desperately in need of the tutelage of the West in
terms of freedom and democracy have formed a vital part in justifications for
the invasion of Iraq in recent years. Equally, the Clash of Civilizations narrative
attempts to paint a picture of the Muslim world as unambiguously representative
of a single civilization in opposition to the West.97 In this theoretical model,
Samuel P. Huntington divides the world into seven or eight civilizations in
an attempt to explain the emerging global politics of a post-Cold War world,
but by choosing such vast groupings he unavoidably falls foul of the pitfalls
of generalization which, as will be shown, beset the narratives of nineteenth-
century missionaries. Equally, the mainstream media representation of the
Middle East as a land of terrorism and extremism exemplified by the Islamic
State organization is a trope which seems to pervade the popular imagination
whilst disregarding the diversity of experience and points-of-view which make
 Introduction 19

up the lives of those who live in the region. What makes these ideas and images
potentially Orientalist is their tendency to take specific examples and to
generalize them into pronouncements as to the nature of the Islamic East as
a reified whole. There is no doubt that examples of terrorism, extremism,
religious turmoil and governmental repression exist, but their presentation as
representative of Islam is a distortion which seems to be a direct descendant of
the Orientalism which is so prevalent in the textual output of the missionaries
studied in this book. Today, essentialist portrayals of a putative Orient and its
peoples are largely discredited as inaccurate racist stereotyping, and this seems
to lead people to believe that Orientalist views are thus a thing of the past. A
contention of this book, however, is that Orientalism is not necessarily based
upon an essentialist and racist view of the world and that other more egalitarian
perceptions of humanity can give rise to narratives which are nonetheless
Orientalist in their reductive representation of the region and its peoples.
Therefore, throughout this book I will refer to this alternative mode of
representation as an Orientalism of circumstantial difference: circumstantial
because it explains difference as the result of environmental influences upon an
essentially common human nature, Orientalist because it nonetheless represents
the idea of the Orient as a real geographical space in which one can legitimately
generalize about customs and mentalities which are intrinsically opposed to
those of a putative West. Furthermore, unlike Hannoum’s colonial heresies, the
Orientalism of circumstantial difference exhibited by the proselytizing
missionaries of this work does give rise to practical solutions to the ‘problem’ of
Oriental difference which are opposed to the methods of the more essentialist
Anglicans.

Imperialism: an ambiguous concept

Much has been written in recent decades about the ambiguous nature of
missionaries with regard to imperialism but a point which is often lacking in
such discussions is the ambiguity of the term itself. Many scholars have insisted
that imperialism is the primary issue at stake in Edward Said’s critique of
Orientalism, that the most significant aspect of the production of knowledge by
Orientalists is its effect upon the development and maintenance of Occidental
empires. In an article exploring the meaning of Said’s work in relation to his
political engagement, Nadia Abu El-Haj speaks of the different levels on which
the critique can be read. On a very general level, she explains, Orientalism is
20 Orientalism and Imperialism

concerned with what might be termed representation, a broad engagement

with ‘the question of how human societies distinguish between selves and others
and with what consequences’.98 This is precisely how I have outlined Orientalism
in the preceding section of this chapter, and such a reading is not chiefly
concerned with locating the connection between representation and imperialism
but with exploring the characterization of the Orient and its peoples. Abu El-Haj,
however, argues that such an interpretation misses the point of Said’s work,
explaining that:

The problem of representation as elaborated by Said in Orientalism is, thus,

better understood as inseparable from the context of empire and the relations of
power and subordination entailed therein. He sought to understand how, in the
context of specific historical encounters between Europe and the Arab Middle
East, representing Otherness – demarcating the difference between East and
West, between Christianity and Islam – generated imperial power in the West
and helped to elaborate the patterns of thought and culture that made that
imperial endeavor imaginable, sustainable, and quite centrally, (morally) ‘good.’99

I would venture, however, that we need to be cautious as to what message is taken

from the statement that Orientalism generated imperial power. While Orientalist
representations can be seen to support imperial projects and even to facilitate the
underlying thirst for imperial power, it should not be assumed that imperial
power is simply the product of Orientalist ideas alone; the will to power is surely
also the result of other personal and collective interests. To assume that the
Orientalist discourse alone determines the power of an empire would be to
invoke a Foucauldian determinism quite at odds with the individualism explicit
in Said’s theory. There are in fact good reasons to suspect that such a direct causal
link between representation and imperial power cannot be assumed. For example,
Robert Irwin points out what he sees as the inconsistency in Said’s argument, this
time with regard to periodization. Irwin suggests that in trying to demonstrate
the ancient roots of Orientalism, Said is attributing a style of representation
which is intrinsically linked in his theory to domination and supremacy to a time
when the West was itself dominated by the Orient. Irwin writes that:

The chronological issue is of some importance, for if Aeschylus, Dante and

Postel are to be indicted for Orientalism, it follows that the necessary linkage
between Orientalism and imperialism that Said posits elsewhere cannot be true.
Until the late seventeenth century at least, Europe was threatened by Ottoman
imperialism and it is hard to date Western economic dominance of the Middle
East to earlier than the late eighteenth century.100
Other documents randomly have
different content
drank and sung together in parts, I my self having indifferent good
judgment. Having spun out the time so long till it was time to go to
bed, she then conducted me to the Chamber where she intended we
should lie. Though she made what haste she could to undress her
self, yet me thought she was purposely tedious. I commended
before, her Vocal and Instrumental Musick; but then I esteemed no
other Musick sweeter then what the Tag made against her Bodice
when she was unlacing her self. About two a Clock in the Morning,
three or four fellows rushed into our Room; at which I awakened,
but made as little noise as a Perdue. My Mistress leaping out of the
Bed, they seized on her, gagged and bound her; and then opening
the two leaves of the Window that was the entrance into the
Belcony, they came in all haste to the Bed, and in a trice, had rowled
up the Bed so close, that they had like to have stifled me in the
middle on’t: though they dragged me in the Bed from off the
Bedsteed, rudely letting me fall on the ground; yet I felt no harm;
every part of me was so well guarded, that in that condition, I might
have bid defiance to a Canon-Bullet. But when I heard them talk of
flinging the Bed over the Belcony to their Companions, I thought I
should have died instantly for fear, knowing I must of necessity go
with it. Whereupon I cryed out as loud as I could, and struggling, I
got a little place open, and then I roar’d like Phalaris his Bull. They
seeming to be surprized with my unexpected noise, fled, fastning a
Rope to the Belcony, and so slid down into the street. Perceiving
they were all gone, I groped about the Room (for it was very dark)
speaking very lowly, Where are you Madam? repeating it often; but
much wondring I could not hear her answer me. As I was feeling
round the Room, stretching forth my hands, I chanced to run one of
my hands against her, and one of my fingers into her mouth: I
thought my finger had strayed at first, mistaking the place; but
searching farther, and finding teeth, I knew then whereabout I was,
and discovered withal a stick in her mouth, keeping it wide open, as
Butchers do their Sheep with a Gambrel. But having removed this
obstacle of her speech, she begged me to untie her hands; which
having done, she her self untied her feet; and with that, she would
have clasped me in her Arms; but I hung an arse, being sensible of
the stinking condition that the fear had put me in. She was very
inquisitive after my welfare, asking me again and again, Whether I
had received any harm from the Rogues. I told her no: Nay, then I
care not for my own sufferings, or what loss I have sustained by
them, said she, and so speedily went for a candle. As I was thinking
to Apologize for my nastiness, up she came with a light, viewing me,
and perceiving what a condition I was in, she kept at a distance; Sir,
said she, my fancy suggests to me, that you now resemble
Nebuchadnezzar when Metamorphozed into a beast, and lying in his
own dung, when you shall have reassumed your humanity, I shall
presume to approach nearer to you. I made my Sirreverence to her,
wishing they had gagged her breech too so wide, that her guts
might have a passage through her posteriours. For I plainly
perceived, notwithstanding all her specious pretences, she was the
foundress of this Plot. Well, she caused water to be brought up, with
which I cleansed my self; and because my shirt had too strong a
sent of Stercus humanum, she lent me a Smock, which presaged ere
long I should wear Coats too. Having shifted my self, I looked for my
Cloaths, but there was a Non est inventus out against them, all my
search could afford me not the least comfort: my Mistress seemed
much disturbed at my loss; but when I told her I had lost such a
considerable quantity of Gold, her sorrow seemed to be redoubled,
and I am sure her inward joy was increased. She comforted me with
a great many friendly loving expression, sdesiring me to be patient,
and indeed necessity forced me to it. I asked her advice what I
should do in this naked condition: There is no remedy, (she replyed)
you must be content to cloath your self in Womans apparel, as for
mans I have none to furnish you withal. I consented to it, and
presently she drest me up in one of her Gowns, with all the
appurtenances thereunto belonging. The slenderness of my body,
whiteness of skin, beauty, and smoothness of face (having no hairs
thereon) added a suitableness to my garb. I must ingeniously
confess, when I consulted with a Looking-glass, I thought the
transmutation of Sexes had been verified in me; but when I walked,
I found something pendulous, which easily perswaded me to the
contrary belief of my self. I thought it folly to tax her for my
misfortune, knowing how little it would advantage me. The time was
come I was to take my leave of her: going to salute her, I committed
a foul mistake, indeavouring to pull off my hood in stead of my hat,
and making a Leg (as the vulgar term is) in stead of a Curchy; but
she advising me to rectifie that mistake for the time to come, we bid
each other adieu. In this disguize I traversed the streets, it being
almost impossible for any to discover me, my voice being so
effeminate, that I was confident that would never betray me. As I
walkt, I consulted with Reason what was most expedient. My
invention (as at all times) was now ready to assist me; and thus it
was. Finding a Bill on a door, I knocked, desiring to see what
Lodgings they had; I was very civilly intreated to come in, and was
shown several Rooms with much respect, for my female habit was
very gallant, and so it had need, for it cost me dearer than so much
cloath of Gold. I pitch’d at last upon a Chamber extraordinary well
furnished; I never scrupled the price, (because they should look on
me as a person of Quality) but agreed to my Landlords own terms. I
told him I was lately come out of the Country, and that my Trunks
were not yet arriv’d, with a great many more fictions to prevent
suspition. At first I intended to take for no longer time, than I could
contrive a way to dispose of my self, and procure mans Apparrel; but
perceiving how agreeable my Feature, Stature and Gesture were to
my Female Weeds, I resolved to trie some projects in them. There
was a young Gentleman that lay in the house, and took special
notice of me as soon as I entered it, and as he told me next day,
was over joyed that I had determined to be a Lodger there. This
young Bravo (which had more money than wit) had prepared a
Banquet for me, and requested the favour of me, that it and himself
might be received into my chamber: I alleadged I could not do it in
point of honour, and therefore desired to be excused; but he prest
me so far (getting also his Landlady to intercede for him), that at
last (though with much seeming unwillingness) I condescended
thereunto. Very merry they were, but I thought it prudence to be
reserv’d. My Amorist so gazed on me, that I thought he would have
devoured me with his eyes, kissing me sometimes, which had like to
have made me disgorge my stomack in his face. For in my opinion, it
is very unnatural, nay loathsome, for one man to kiss another,
though of late too customary I know it is; yet I look on such as use
it, inclining to Sodomy, and have had the unhappiness to be
acquainted with severall, who using that unnatural action, found it
onely the Preludium to a more beastly intention. In three dayes time
we grew so intimately acquainted, that at last he became impudent.
One time as I past by him, he catch’d at me, endeavouring to
intrude his hand where he had no interest, but he did it so rudely,
that I verily thought he had spoiled me; I believe he imagined that
he had caught me by the busk, which some Ladies wear very long to
hide their rising bellies. I showed my self much displeased at him for
so doing, expressing my resentment in imbittered words for so great
a Crime. Next morning, he courted me to a Reconciliation with a
Gold Watch: by that he should have been well skilled in gaining
female affections; for there is nothing prevails on them more than
presents; and nothing gains sooner over them a total conquest, than
the hopes of enjoying a fair promising Fortune. With much
importunity I accepted his Peace-offering, conditionally, that he
should never attempt the like offence. Nothing troubled me more,
then how to dress my self when my cloaths were off. I durst not lay
two things together, for fear I should mistake; there were so many
baubles, I wished for a Pen and Ink, to write on them what places
they properly belonged to. Viewing them on the Table together, they
represented to my thoughts Babel, or a great confusion, and nothing
but a miracle could produce Order out of them, I had so improv’d
my self by hourly practice, when none was with me, and observation
of others, that I had now the knack on’t. I new modelled my steps,
my former being too large by three quarters; I could advantagiously
cast my eye, set my face in a plat-form, and dissect my words; my
feet were my only Traytors, and therefore I alwayes kept them close
Prisoners, for their greatness (like the Devils cloven-foot) proclaimed
me the contrary Sex I imitated. Well, I thought it high time to be
gone, not without plucking my Widgeon. Having a fit opportunity,
there being none present but himself and I, I pretended
disappointment of money, and that my Rents were not yet due, and
therefore desired him to lend me 10l. for eight days; at the
termination of which time, I should not fail to return it him with
gratitude. He was much joy’d, that I would favour him so far, as to
accept his service; & with that flew like Lightning, fearing he would
have fractured his Leg-bone for haste to bring me the money, which
I received from him thankfully. I caused a Coach to be call’d,
pretending I had business into the City. My Cully would have waited
on me, which I utterly refused, telling him without privacy my affairs
would prove ineffectual; whereupon he desisted.
Coming into Burchin-Lane, I went to a Salesman, and bought
(pretendedly for my Maid) an ordinary yet handsome Petticoat and
Wastcoat, furnishing my self with all the Appurtenances requisite for
a Servant maid.
In stead of returning to my Lodging, I caused the Coachman to drive
me to one of the principal Nurseries of Venus, Whetstones Park. For
I lookt upon it as a matter of small import, to take my leave either of
my young Gallant at home, or my Landlord, since I had not left the
least Mortgage behind me for sleeping.
Mother Cunny (to tell the truth) was the Nick-name of that Corpulent
Matron, that with much demonstrations of joy received me into her
house; neither could she forbear expressing her great satisfaction, in
that her civil and honest deportment was so generally taken notice
of, as that it should be an inducement to strangers to shelter
themselves under her Tutelage, preferring her as a Guardian or
Tutress, before so many throughly tried, and long experienced
antient Gentlewomen, both in City and Suburbs. She highly
applauded both the Features and Complexion of my Face, not
forgetting the right colour of my Hair, which was flaxen: the Stature
of my Person infinitely pleased her, which was somewhat of the
tallest: In short, nothing disliked her, but that she said I lookt as if I
had a greater mind to beat, than buss; and to fight, than delight my
Amoretes with smiling insinuations.
I had not been long in her house, before a roaring Damme entred
the house, (a constant visitant) who meeting with my Guardian, was
informed that there was a rich treasure discover’d in her house, and
that none should attempt to spring the Mine, till he had made
entrance by the first stroak. In short, he was brought into the
Chamber where I was, who at first behaved himself indifferently
civil, and treated me nobly: But O Heavens! how great was my
confusion and distraction, when strength of Arguments and force of
hands would not repel the fury of his lust, and that nothing would
serve his turn but lying with me. I defended my self manfully a long
time; but seeing it was impossible to hold out any longer, and that I
must be discovered, the next assault he made, forced me to cry out:
this so alarumed my Gentleman (concluding this outcry proceeded
not from modesty and chastity, but out of some trapanning design)
that he drew his sword, and made toward the Stair-case, and
running down with more haste than good speed, overturned my kind
Governess (that was puffing up the Stairs to my relief) and so both
tumbled down together: fear had so dispossest this huffling fellow of
his senses, that he mistook my old Matron for the Bravo he thought
did usually attend me, and so without once looking behind him,
made his escape into the street, leaving the piece of Antiquity not so
much defaced by time, as by this dismal accident so near
extinguishing, that she was half undone in the vast expence of her
Strong-waters, to bring her tongue to one single motion.
Coming to her self, you may imagine how I was treated by her; but
to be brief, I told her I could not brook such a course of life, wherein
all injoyments were attended by ruine and destruction, although
habited and cloathed in the seeming ornaments of real pleasure;
adding moreover, that I would speedily leave her house, investing
my self with a meaner garb, bestowing those I wore on her in part
of satisfaction for what she suffered through my means. This
proposition so well pleased her, that I had free liberty to do as I
thought most convenient herein.
Exchanging my fine Madamship for plain Joan-ship, my equipage
being suitable for service, I resolved to apply my self to a Boarding
School; and the rather, having observed it to be more thronged with
Beauties, than any other: My address proved as successful as I could
desire, for instantly upon my motion, I was received in as a Menial
of the house. But when I came to use the Tools of the Kitchin, I
handled them so scurvily, it made those teething Giglers my fellow
servants, even split with laughter. To add to my misfortune, those
Varlets one time when we had some meat to roast, on purpose got
out of the way for a while, to see how I could behave my self; and
then I did spit the meat so monstrously strange, that coming into
the Kitchin, they could not tell at first sight what those joynts were
called at fire. My actions had proclaimed my ignorance in all
Domestick Affairs, so that my Mistress could not but take notice of
me; and told me, that I was altogether unfit for her service, and that
she could do no less than discharge me.
Fearing that my design was now frustrated, and my fair hopes of
delight annihilated, I could not contain my tears from bedewing my
face. My blubber’d eyes wrought so powerfully with my Mistress,
that I judged it now the fittest time in broken Accents to mollifie her
anger, and still reserve my place in her service. Whereupon I told her
a great many formal and plausible lies, well methodized; that I had
all my life time lived in an obscure Village amongst rude and ill-bred
people, and therefore knew nothing; that it was my desire to learn,
not so much valuing wages as experience, and that it was for that
intent I had tendred my service. The good old Gentlewoman being
much pleased with my freedom, presently ordered the Maids that
without their grinning and gigleting, they should shew me any thing
I understood not.
By diligent observing, I gained shortly an indifferent knowledge:
Though I lay with one of my fellow servants every night, yet I
judged it no prudence to discover to her my Sex (though much
against the hair) till I had by external kindnesses indeared her to
me. I went through my business pretty handily, giving a general
satisfaction, gaining daily an interest upon the loves of the young
Gentlewomen.
O the fine inexpressible petulances that dayly, nay, hourly past
between me and some other of them; and so crafty I was grown,
that I perfectly did counterfeit a modest maiden. Sometimes we
would retire three or four of us into a private corner, yet not so
obscure but that we intended to be seen by some man or other we
had afore discovered; and then as if affrighted by an unexpected
surprize, squeak out, and then with strange haste endeavour to hide
our pretended shamefacedness. Thus concurring and suiting my self
to their humours, I had all the freedome I could desire.
And now I thought it high time to handle the matter for which I
came about; for indeed flesh and blood could hold out no longer.
One night I perceived my Bedfellow could not in the least close her
eyes, continually sighing and tumbling to and fro, sometimes laying
her leg over me, and at other times hugging me within her arms, as
if I had been in a press. At first I thought this commotion or
perturbation proceeded from Sympathy, as questionless in part it
did; for I found experimentally by my self that my heart did beat as
if it would have forced its passage through my breast.
I thought I could do no less than ask her what she ailed that she
was thus restless. At first, sighs were her onely answers, till at last (I
pressing her much) poor thing she melted into tears. As soon as her
eyes had given over deluging, and that her heart would give her
leave to speak; Jone (said she, for so I called my self) if thou wilt
keep my secrets, I will tell thee my whole heart. Having promised to
do that, whereupon she began thus to relate her story. Our
Coachman for several years hath shown me more then common
respect, and indeed though I have concealed that affection I ever
bore him, yet I could not but now and then give him slight occasions
of hope: as the moneths wherein we lived together added to our
age, so did it add true life & vigour to our loves, which increased so
much and fast, that I could hide mine no longer. But herein consists
my misery, that our affections aim at different ends; I fain would
marry him; he is onely for present enjoyment, and finding me
obstinate, and not in the least yielding to his amorous sollicitations,
begins to slight me, and toys with such before my face, that I know
will surrender their Maiden forts upon the first Summons. Now Dear
Joan, let me tell thee, I can hold out no longer, but am resolved to
give him all the opportunity of privacy I can invent, upon the least
motion offered, I will entertain it. I disswaded her from this rash
resolution with as much reason as I could utter; inculcating the
danger of being gotten with child, with all its aggravations: that
having obtained his ends, his love would be converted into loathing;
and he having rejected her as his object, none that knew her would
choose her as an object that may make an honest wife; for who
would marry a whore, but to entail the Pox on his progeny? What
ever I alleadged, she valued not. Seeing the was fully bent, I
thought this the critical hour to discover my self to her, Come, come
(said I) I will quickly put you out of conceit with John, and cure this
love that so much troubles you; and so I did, after which I enjoyned
her silence; which I thought she would have done, for her own
interest sake; which she did for a while. I came at length to be very
much beloved in general. It was the custome almost every night for
the young Gentlewomen to run skittishly up and down into one
anothers Chambers; and I was so pestered with them, that they
would not let me sleep. But I had an excellent Guardian in bed with
me, that would not let any of them come in to us, resolving to
monopolize all the sport to her self. It was good sport to observe
how this Maid always followed me as my shadow, and whatever I
was doing of, she would have a hand in it with me. What an endless
work we made in making the beds! Our Mistress saw her work very
much neglected, laying all the blame upon my Bedfellow; and indeed
not without cause: for her mind was so employed about thinking on
night, that she did little all day; which my Mistress perceiving, turned
her away; which was no small joy to me, if for no other
consideration then her extream fondness, which I knew would
betray us both in the end.
After the departure of my Bedfellow, the young Ladies pittying my
loneness in the night, redrest that solitude by their welcome
presence. The first that came had like to have spoiled all; by her
squeaking; but some of her Associates running to know what was
the matter, she readily told them she thought there was a Mouse in
the bed: thus satisfied, they departed; and I enjoyned her as I did
the other, silence; but alas! all Injunctions on Women to keep a
secret, are but as so many perswasions to divulge it.
Notwithstanding I had so enjoyned her secrecy, yet she made it
known to some that she entertained a peculiar respect for, intending
they should participate with her in the pleasure she enjoyed. This
discovery did put me to an extream hard task; I should never have
undergone it, had not variety of such sweet smelling Rose-buds
encouraged me.
Thus frequently each night did I repeat
My uncontrouled passions; and for heat,
And active liveliness, I thought that none
Could stand with me in competition.
Twas then, forgetful wretch, that I a kiss
Did oft prefer before a greater bliss.
What did I care? my carnal joys did swell;
So slighted Heaven, and ne’re feared Hell.
But let me henceforth learn to slight those toys,
And set my heart upon Celestial joys.

In the very height of these my jollities, I cou’d not forbear thinking

sometimes on my eternal condition; but custome and opportunity
had so absolutely inslaved me, that good thoughts which were but
seldom, wrought little good effects upon me. But if my souls welfare
would not deter me from these foul and wicked acts, yet love to my
present mortall condition, compelled me for a while to desist, and by
flying those embraces I lately so hotly pursued, shun those
complicated mischiefs which were appropinquant, the undeniable
effects of my immoderate and destructive wantonness. My
approaching danger was too visible, for I observed that some of the
Gentlewomen began to find strange alterations in their bodies, with
frequent qualms coming over their stomacks, which made me sick to
be gone; and in this manner I did plot my escape. My Mistris having
a Son much about my stature, and one time finding a fit opportunity,
I got a suit of cloaths of his, with other perquisits, which I put on,
reassuming my proper shape and habit, and so with flying colours
marched off, insulting over the conquest of so many Maiden-heads,
leaving the quondam possessors thereof to deplore their ensuing
misery, and condemn their own rash folly.

CHAP. XIV.

What a Trick he served a young man of his

Acquaintance, whom he met withal accidentally; how
he was pinched with hunger, and what wayes he
invented to kill it.

I made all the speed I could to London, knowing the largeness of

that Vast City would afford conveniency for my concealment. But
then my cloaths much troubled me, knowing nothing would betray
me sooner than they. Whilst I was studying all imaginable wayes for
my preservation, such an opportunity presented it self, that therein it
was plainly seen the Fates had decreed of old to favour my
enterprizes. As I said, walking the streets, and ruminating what was
best to be done, I met with a young Man of my acquaintance, who
seeing me, ran and caught me in his Arms, and with very much joy
we congratulated each other, and so as is usual when Friends meet
we must drink together. Over our cups, I began to inquire after his
condition: He shook his head, and so related to me a sad story,
which in effect was to this purpose in his own words.
Dearest Friend, since last I saw you, never was young Man so
unfortunate as my self, the cause thereof I can impute to nothing
more than self-conceit, and over-much credulity; which by the
sequel you will plainly understand. For perceiving that my Mistress
shewed me more then a common respect, I concluded that she had
entertained some private favour for me within her breast, so that I
began to be puft up with conceit; neglecting my duty, and now
despising the Chamber-maid, who was before the only Saint I made
nightly my oraizons too; withal, I carried my self so imperiously, that
my Master was not very well assured whether he durst command or
no. My Mistress would sometimes heartily laugh, to see how
ridiculous I carryed myself; which I looked upon as a singular favour,
mistaking her smiles for tokens of her love, when they were no other
than the apparent Symptomes of her derision. Observing how
affable and pleasing she was, I never considered the generality of it,
so that my self-flattering noddle supposed this carriage particular to
me, and thereupon interpreted this her complacencie strong
affection; and by reason she was frequently merry and jocose, I
concluded her salacious or Lecherous. Thus by the false lights of
misconstruction and easie belief, I was led into Loves Labyrinth; My
Masters affairs was less regarded than my Mistress supposed
affection. In fine, I judged it absolutely necessary to make her
acquainted with my Amorous Passion, and no expedient better than
by Letter. My Mistress (as it is customary with Citizens Wives to light
the Candle of their Husbands Estates at both ends) had her Country-
house, to which I was sent by my Master, with some bottles of Wine,
preparatory for a Feast intended for the accommodation of some
special Friends: arriving, I found my Mistress had sent her Maid to
London about some business, at which I bless’d my propitious stars,
to direct me thither in such a fortunate and most desired hour.
After I had delivered my Message, I began to talk very familiar with
my Mistress: she with a smiling countenance, ask’d me, What I
meant? not in the least checking my presumption, which made me
more arrogant and bold; telling her, I was her eternally devoted
Servant; she answered me, I was bound to be her Servant for a
time, and that I must, when commanded, obey her pleasure: to
which last word, I added in my thoughts the Epithite Venereal,
supposing she meant not to have left it out; with that I replyed,
Mistress, I should not deem my self worthy to be your Servant, if my
resolution had not ingaged me to be so perpetually; as for my
affection, it shall dayly anticipate your desires; you shall not need to
lay your commands on me, since my thoughts shall be solely
imployed in contriving wayes how we may injoy each other, to the
mutual satisfaction of us both. At which words, she fell into an
excess of laughter, (which I judged the effects of joy) and then
asked me, Whether I was Mad? I answered, No, unless too much
love had made me so; Dearest Mistress, read but this Paper, and I
hope that will better inform you.
Here he stopt, pulling out of his pocket a copy thereof, which was to
my best remembrance to this purpose.
Dearest Mistress,
Frequently revolving in my thoughts the condition I now am
in, Despair stands ready to seize me; but the consideration
and knowledge of your commiserating Nature, draws me out
of its ruinating Jaws. When I reflect again on the disparity of
our Fortunes, and that it is your Indentured Vassal that thus
prostrates his affection at your feet, I fear one blast of your
just indignation will suddainly shipwreck all my hopes. I
confess my error is overmuch confidence, for which I may
expect ruine, which commonly attends rash Attempts;
especially daring to sail in the narrow Seas, without any
other Pilot than blind Love; and if I should arrive at my
desired Port, I cannot deliver my Goods without stealing
Custome. But waving all difficulties of this Nature, consider
that Love must needs be quintessential, that is not drawn
from any other interest than reciprocal enjoyment; and it
must needs be exceeding strong and eminent too, that will
force its way through the greatest hazards. Signifie my
Pardon by one gracious smile, for what I have so boldly (yet
forceably) discovered, and I shall esteem my condition little
inferior to what is Celestial; which is no happiness to me,
 without the auspitious beams of your favour shine on me.
And so subscribe my self according as your sentence shall
be, either the
Most happy, or most miserable.

The Verses that were annext to the Letter, he told me he got a

Rimer to compose for him, which afterwards he found stoln out of
several Authors; a line out of one, and a half out of another, and so
with the course thred of his brain botch’d together; which were
these:
Cupid did wound my heart; I hid the grief
Long time, but durst not seek for your relief;
I found the smart increased on that score,
For wounds, if not well search’d, but rankle more.
O cure me quickly then, or else I die;
Deny not, since there’s none but you and I.

I withdrew as soon as I had delivered my Paper, giving her leave to

read in private, what my Love had dictated. About a quarter of an
hour after she called me to her, assuring me in a day or two I should
receive an answer to the purpose; and so absconding her
displeasure, she sent me with all expedition home again. After the
expiration of three dayes, she came home to her City-house: at night
she pretended some indisposition of body, and desired to lie by her
self; which hearing, I thought my joy would prove a Traytor to my
supposed happiness; she takes an occasion to tell me, About twelve
at night I might come to her Bed-chamber, the door whereof she
would leave open for me on purpose. In the mean time, she shewed
my Master the Letter, acquainting him with the whole business.
According to the time appointed, I entered the Chamber in my shirt;
approaching the Bed, I began to pour out my Amorous Expressions;
and as I had one leg upon the Bed-side, ready to enter the Bed,
where I thought my Mistress had attended my pleasure, I thought
the Devil had waited on my Posteriors, correcting me for not making
more haste. The first lash was seconded with three or four more in
an instant, which made me caper up and down so nimbly about the
Room, that for my life I could not find the door; at last I did; speed
was now the onely Guardian I had left, and so without pausing long
upon it, I made but one step of the first pair of Stairs from top to
the bottom, which had liked to have lamed me; before I could
recover my self, my Master was with me again, which put fresh
expedition into me; and so starting up, I leapt down half the next
pair, and tumbled down the rest. By this time he had lost the cord of
his Whip, and fearing lest he might spoil me with the stick, desisted
bidding me go to bed, lest I should catch cold after so great a heat,
and so with two or three parting blows I got into my chamber, where
I fell into a deep consultation with my self, the result of it was this; I
took my curtains and sheets, and tied them together, and then
fastned one end thereof to the Window; after this I went out of the
Window, and so slid; by that time I was within an half story of the
ground, the knot of one of the Curtains slipt, so that falling from that
height, I thought that every bone in my body had been absolutely
broken. Knowing it was no wayes safe to lie there and cry God help
me, I raised my self as well as I could, but I had not walked far,
before I found my self in no condition of going, wherefore I resolved
to lie under the next Stall. As the Devil would have it, I found a
Coblers Stall newly broke open that very night: never questioning
the place, I crept in, and notwithstanding my bruise by the fall, and
whipping besides, I fell fast asleep, so soundly, that I awaked not, till
I was forced to it with an horse-pox. For the Cobler coming to work
early in the morning (according to his custome) found his door
broken open; with that, he made an hideous noise, crying out, He
was undone; for the day before he had laid out three shillings four
pence, which was all his stock in Leather; all which was stoln, with
many old shooes, nay his very working implements; doubtless it was
done by one of his own Fraternity, that had informed himself of his
late great purchase. The Cobler entring his Stall, found me in one
corner fast asleep. He took no other course to awake me, than
dragging me by the heels out of my Den, into the Street, crying out,
That he had got one of the Rogues, and without any more adoe, fell
upon me, buffeting me with his fist, and treading me underneath his
feet, making himself both my Judge and Executioner: Thus you see
one mischief attends the others heels. I begged him in a pittiful
manner to let me alone, and I would confess to him all I knew,
desiring him to go with me to the next Ale-house, which accordingly
we did. I vowed to him I was no ways accessary to his wrong,
informing him as much as I thought convenient of my sufferings,
shewing him what a woful plight I was in; relating, it was my
Masters cruelty that was the cause of all this, and no other fault of
mine, then staying the last night out a little too long. The Cobler
seemed to commiserate my misery, asking me forgiveness for what
he had done, and so we parted. Since, by the kindness of a good
natured Widow (where I lie) I have recovered my hurts and
strength, and now am overjoyed we should so happily meet.
After this we drank very smartly, but, I forgot not all this while my
design on him. After that I had pitied him, and lamented his sad
misfortune, I thought it high time to put my Plot in execution: in
order thereunto, I demanded what difference he would take
between my Hat and his, his Cloak and mine; there being small
matter of advantage in the exchange, we agreed to go to handicap.
In fine, There was not any thing about us of wearing cloaths but we
interchanged: scarce had I un-cased my self, and put on my Friends
cloaths, but in came one that had dogged me, attended by the
Constable, with a Warrant to seize me, who they knew by no other
token but my Boarding-Mistresses Sons garments I had stolen for
my escape. They forthwith laid hold on my Companion, (finding
them on him) telling him, He should severely suffer for the wrong he
did his Mistress, in the abuse of her house. Full of horror and
amazement, he beseeched them not to carry him before his
Mistress, knowing how much he had offended her, she would have
no mercy on him; this confirmed their belief, that they had found out
the Offender. The more he intreated, the more deaf and inexorable
were they; and whilst they were busied about their mistaken
Criminal-Prisoner, I took an occasion to give them the slip, knowing
that a little further discourse would rectifie their Error. What they did
with him I know not, neither durst I be so inquisitive to understand:
wherefore, leaving him to the mercy of such, as would shew but
little to him, I shall proceed forwards in my own story. My stock was
now very small; how to increase it, I knew not. My invention was
daily on the Rack, to find out expedient wayes to supply my
necessary expence. But my money being all spent, my belly began
to grumble out insufferable complaints against me, seeming to
charge me with want of ingenuity and industry, since I injoyed my
liberty; for want that man cannot, which wants not that. Alas, what
should I do? I used what means I could, having no better
experience. There was not a Billiard Table, Boards End, or Nine-Pin-
yard, that I did not daily visit, frequenting such as had the greatest
resort: in a short time I learned the art of Spunging so perfectly, that
I had the Title of Spunge-Master General conferred upon me. In
those places I learned to take Tobacco, which was the chiefest part
of my food; living in a manner by Smoak, as the Camelion by Air. I
fed so lightly, that I durst not stir abroad in a high wind; neither
durst I fight, lest one single stroak should have hazarded my
dissolution; continued drinking had so washed me, that my body
was transparent, you might have seen within me (without
dissection) the motion of the heart; you could have observed but
little as to my liver, it long since had lost its use in the conveyance of
the blood, for my stomack had nothing therein contained to supply
it; like an Inns-a-Court-Kitchin out of Term-time. In short, I appeared
like a walking Skeleton. I had several suggestions within me to
proffer my self again to my Master; but the shame to be seen in that
condition, deterred me; wherefore, I resolved to weather it out a
little longer, and try whether Fortune would once more be favourable
to me. My cloaths were indifferent good, which could not but
procure me credit, if I would make experiment. By means whereof I
had gotten an handsome lodging chamber. It was a publick house of
entertainment, so that here I thought I should have meat, drink and
lodging for chalk, and chalk for nothing. I called freely for what was
in the house, which was readily brought me; but when the servants
beheld with what celerity, (Hocus like) and cleanly conveyance, I had
disposed of what was before me, they verily believed in one week I
would cause a dearth in the house if I staid; wherefore, one of the
servants acquainted her Mistress with what she had observed,
alleadging further invectively against me, That I looked like one of
those lean Beasts which have nothing given them to feed on, but
vertuous and honest Women; that she believed I was the Genius of
some hunger-starved wretch, or a shaddow without a substance,
(which was very true as to my pocket.) When I thought it was time
to go to Bed, I call’d for a candle, not mattering whether I called for
a Reckoning. But my Landlady did; for said she, Sir, It is our custome
to reckon with our Lodgers every night what they have that day, and
once a week to discharge their lodging. In truth I did intend to have
discharged my self of it before the week had been out. I knew not
what at present to answer her, but I was seldom to seek in such
cases. I desired her to be content for that night, on the morrow I
would have my Trunks brought to her house, making it my Quarters
for some time; and that she should find me a boon Companion,
drinking freely: I believe so, she said, you will be here for some
time, or may be you will make this your Refuge or Sanctuary for one
night; and then you say you will drink freely too, give me leave to
tell you, you meant at free cost. Sir, give me my reckoning now, or
you shall have no lodging here this night. Do you suspect me,
Landlady, said I? Respect you, said she, (mistaking the word) for
what grounds, unless I knew you better? and yet I doubt I shall
know you too well. That’s a good one indeed, respect a skinfull of
Bones; a bag of Chessmen; a bundle of small Faggot-sticks. Why,
thou Haberdasher of small wares, dost thou think I will respect thee
otherways than for thy moneys? unless I should be so mad as to fall
in love with Famine. Come, give me my reckoning first, and I shall
talk with you in another Dialect; if not, I shall set my Currs at thee
(the Tapster and Hostler) that shall worry thy gibb’d Catship. Hearing
her say so, & thinking the passage had been clear, I betook my self
to flight; but running thorow the Entry, I ran my belly directly
against the Tapsters leg, that lay over the bench on which he slept. I
ran so fiercely, that I shoved his head so violently against the board
rais’d at the end of the bench, that I made his neck double; the
knock likewise had like to have turn’d that little brains he had within
his head. As for my own part, I thought that his foot had run quite
into my belly, and that pulling it out he had left his shooe behind.
Before I could rise, I had three or four about me, which I thought
would have limbed me, as boys falling out do their cocks on Shrove-
Tuesday. At that time I would have spared them one limb, provided
that would have contented them. But there was no mercy to be had
at their hands, especially the shrill note of their Mistresses
perpetually moving Tongue, sounding a charge in their ears. Being
tyred with me, they would be revenged of my cloaths. They would
have stript me (I think stark naked) for my Reckoning, but that one
said, Let his Cloak suffice; at which, another pulled so furiously at it,
that miraculously, without rending that thin transparent garment, he
got it all but the cape. In this condition I was brought before my
new Landlady; I asked her what was to pay? Sirrah (said she) more
then thou hast in thy Pocket; (2 s. 4 d.) As well as I could speak, I
demanded how it came to be so much. Why, (said she) there is for
Beef 1 s. for Bread 4 d. six pipes of Tobacco, and three pots of Ale;
all this thou hadst in less then half an hour. I would not contradict
her, though I knew it was near an hour; I desired her to keep my
Cloak for the reckoning, but durst not threaten her for her abuse.
Being about Hay-making time, I walked out into the Fields, resolving
to spend that night in contemplation. I had now time to consider the
damage I sustained in this skirmish: they had carried away all my
Ribbands with their fingers, otherwise my cloaths received the least
harm. My Nose resembled a black pudding before it is boyled, and
my Eyes were fled into my head for fear of such melancholy meat.
My Cheeks were so puft up with swelling pride, that they were
resolved to close up the portals of my Opticks, that they might not
be eye-witnesses of the height of their ambition. My Ears were so
maulled with their fleshy Hammers, that I heard a peal within my
head for joy, I suppose, that my eyes had taken up their residence
within my brains. At last I felt something about my shoulders; at first
I thought it had been the weight of the blows, but feeling, found it a
part of my friend that still hung about my neck, and would not leave
me; which put me in minde of that faithful Cloak that would never
leave its Master, although his Master had attempted all ways
imaginable to leave it. I must needs say, I loved my Cloak so well, as
that it grieved me much to be compelled to part with it. It had been
a servant to servants, ever since the setting up of the first Billiard-
table, whence it deriv’d its Pedegree. Being deprived of its
imployment, and dipossest of its antient habitation, its heart-strings
were ready to break, and being not able to take a nap for grief,
turned changeling. The young man I had it of, told me, that from the
fifteenth successively, it was descended to him: but they were
unworthy to him, that having had his best days, would turn him off
in his extream old age. I have him so fresh in my memory, that I
cannot but condole his loss.
Cloak, if I may so call thee, though thou art
Thus ravish’d from me, don’t abruptly part.
Thou didst not take distaste, and so art gon,
Cause once I call’d thee a meer hanger on.
’Twas but in jest; for had I now my will,
I’de have thee for to hang about me still.
Now I may tax thee justly, for I see
That now th’art nothing else but levitie;
Nay when I had thee, scarcely did I know
Sometimes whether I had thee on or no.
Thou wert so thin, and light, that some have thought
Thee made of that same web Arachne wrought,
And say th’art useless now, unless men put
Thee like a Cobweb to a finger cut.
I love thee still, for better and for worse;
He that divorc’d us, let him have my curse.
Sure ’twas a red-Nos’d fellow, for I know,
He coming near, it was but touch and go.
But let him keep thee, for thou’lt useless be
To him; thick cloaths suit best with knavery.

Day appearing, I got me a stick out of a hedge, and so walked in

Querpo into the City. I walked up and down, but met with none of
my acquaintance on whom I might fasten on as a bur. Noon
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