1. Père Huc,L'Empire Chinois(Paris: 1980 edition), pp. 77–78.
2. Michel Foucault has argued that ‘truth’ is linked to the ‘systems of power’ that produce it.
3. See his “Truth and Power” in M. FoucaultPower/KnowledgeC. Gordon 1980 109 133 Brighton E. SaidOrientalism1978 stresses the crucial role of power in the West's attempt to ‘colonise’ knowledge of the Near and Middle East from the late eighteenth century onwards.