Who were called orientalist?

In a wide sense, the concept of “orientalism” is very vast, and could be defined by the search by Westerners of exoticism and inspiration in non Western civilizations. In a narrower sense, it applied to a rather short-lived movement in Europe (and France in particular) in the mid 19th century, targeted towards the Middle East and North Africa.

“Oriental” was meant by Christians to refer to non Christian civilizations. Actually, in Western Europe, Orthodox Christians would often be deemed as “oriental”. More specifically, Muslim countries were called oriental, being for a long time the only different civilization well known to Europeans. More broadly, it woud apply to anything East, which included India and the Far East. The term did never apply to Africa or America, since they had mostly a tribal lifestyle, and were classified as “wild”. On the other hand, “oriental” rather implied different but refined civilizations with cities, art, elaborate religions and undecipherable scripts.