The Development of Orientalism: From Amateurism to the College at Fort William (1772-1800)
Before 1772, there was little if any formal training for East India Company [the institution that ran India until 1858, when it became a Crown Colony, administered by the British Government until 1947] officers, who prior to 1765 were principally merchants and traders. Practically all of the positions within the Company had been filled through patronage, and with many interested in only creating private fortunes and adventures, becoming acquainted with the Indian peoples, their languages, cultures, and traditions was not a priority for many. As historian Percival Spears noted in his The Nabobs, most officers were pitifully and "frequently ignorant of the country languages and the debased Portuguese..." [1] When the British were merely merchants and traders, this probably was seen as deplorable, but by no means a serious problem. After 1765, however, this deficiency became seen more and more as a liability that could harmfully affect British rule in India than as a personal oversight on the part of individual officers.
In 1772, Sir Warren Hastings became Governor-General [the chief adminstrative post in India at the time, roughly equivalent to Royal Governor of a Crown Colony] of Bengal. Appalled at the large number of "pity tyrants" among his officer staff, Hastings was one of the first persons to fully realize the detrimental effects that resulted from the lack of proper training. [2] To remedy this problem, Hastings would implement a variety of voluntary programs during his tenure which--while not as substantive as those that later followed--were certainly important as they established a rationale for later policies. Thus, in order to understand Orientalism as it developed, it is important to first understand Hastings and his opinions on India that influenced the former set of policies in so many ways.
Hastings, like so many of his contemporaries, went to India seeking fortune and adventure. However, unlike many of the other "Nabobs," [3] he became enchanted by Indian culture. As historian V.B. Kulkarni wrote, Hastings
