Orientalism in the Margins: the interest in Indian Antiquity in nineteenth century Italy

Abstract

By analyzing the interest in Indian antiquity and Hindu culture in the context of Florence between the decades of 1860s and 1880s, this article reveals how Orientalist knowledge circulated outside a colonial space. Many Indian scholars, or European scholars based in India, demonstrated their interest in being linked to the initiatives of the Italian Sanskritist Angelo De Gubernatis in Florence. On the one side these intellectual relationships showed how Indians had an active role in the elaboration of knowledge on India. On the other, this dialogue between Florence and India – mostly through personal correspondence published in Orientalist journals – revealed the conflicts and unequal hierarchies
inherent to what was identified as “European knowledge” on India, and what was considered “local knowledge” on India. Florentine Orientalism is an example of an institutional, intellectual and exhibiting experience which questions the association between the production of knowledge and forms of colonial power that tend to prevail in studies on Colonial India throughout the second half of the 19th century, while inscribing orientalist knowledge within a more globalised and transnational perspective.