How applicable is a critical evaluation of the discourses of Orientalism to current debates about National Identity

The word nation has been in use since the 13th century and was attributed more to a race group than a political formation. As there is an obvious merger of the two there is difficulty in showing where the modern sense of the political meaning came into play. The confusion of the two has continued with a difference between nation-state and the arguments surrounding nationalists and nationalism. From the early 17th century the adjective nation …

…European and Oriental African ". By 1918 the west held 85 % of the earth as colonies and commonwealths. The basic idea behind this was that europeans should rule and non europeans be ruled. Nowhere was this shown with more outward arrogance than in the British Empire Exhibition of 1903 where the savage and the oriental were paraded in front of vast audiences, as a spectacular show of our wealth and superiority as opposed to the childlike and inferior oriental.