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Arab culture and the religion of Islam permeated the traditions and customs of the African sub-Sahara for centuries. When the early colonizers from Europe arrived in Africa they encountered these influences and spontaneously perceived the African cultures to be ideologically hybridized and more compatible with Islam than with the ideologies of the west. This difference progressively endorsed a perception of Africa and the east being "exotic" and was as such depicted in early paintings and writings. This depiction contributed to a cultural misunderstanding of Africa and facilitated colonialism. This article briefly explores some of the facets of these early texts and paintings. In the first place the scripts by early Muslim scholars, who critically analyzed early western perceptions, were discussed against the textual interpretation of east-west perceptions such as the construction of "the other". Secondly, the travel writers and painters between 1860 and 1930, who created a visual embodiment of the exotic, were discussed against the politics behind the French Realist movement that developed in France during that same period. This included the construction of a perception of exoticness as represented by literature descriptions and visual art depictions of the women of the Orient. These perceptions rendered Africa as oriental with African subjects depicted as "exotic others".

Le droit chez les anciennes nations de l'Orient.--Les doctrines religieuses et philosophiques de la Perse.--De l'État politique et religieux de la Judée dans les derniers temps de sa nationalité.--Moïse Maïmonide. (Sa vie et sa doctrine.)--Avicébron. (Salomon ibn-Gébirol.)--Les langues sémitiques.--Le Cantique des cantiques.--Un nouveau système d'exégèse biblique. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The Department for the "administration of affairs with Asian nations" at College of Foreign Affairs was established on February 26, 1796 by the imperial decree and the school for Chinese, Manchu, Persian and Turkish languages translators was opened one year later. However, special training of the Russian diplomatic corps, dealing with the relations with Asian nations, was established only in the XIX century. In 1815 Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages was founded. In 1823 Training Department of Oriental Languages at the Asian Department of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Empire was established. The tradition was continued by the Soviet Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, which become a leading center for the training of specialists, necessary for most important public institutions and social organizations. Moscow Institute for Oriental Studies inherited traditions and rich library from Lazarev Institute. At the confluence of MGIMO and Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1954 the library holdings were transferred to the MGIMO, they now form the basis of the rare fund of the university research library. Development of Oriental School MGIMO historically was influenced by the specifics of the traditional conglomerate of Oriental Sciences and ever increasing needs in the practical application of knowledge about the East. Of course, in addition to the Lazarev Institute other leading centers of domestic study of the East made a considerable impact on the development of Oriental Studies at MGIMO. St. Petersburg (Leningrad) University and the University of Kazan are the most prominent ones, where the Oriental Studies tradition is rooted in the XIX century. Evacuation of many prominent representatives of the Moscow and Leningrad school of Oriental Studies during the Great Patriotic War to Kazan and Central Asia gave new impetus to oriental studies at universities in these regions.

The multiple and occasionally contradictory response of Bloomsbury to the Orient is the focus of this essay which also considers the reverse: the Orient's response to Bloomsbury and the promotion of their texts in the East. From Roger Fry to G. L. Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Vanessa Bell, the Orient became a source of aesthetic interest and problematized politics. French Orientalism and Proust initially corroborated the experiences of Woolf in Constantinople and Leonard Woolf in Ceylon, soon to be revised by new views of Imperial authority. Yet Bloomsbury and the Orient artistically depended on each other, at one point Fry scolding Bloomsbury and England that 'we can no longer hide behind the Elgin marbles and refuse to look at the art of China'. And look they did, from attending museum shows to collecting Oriental art and furniture, while adopting Oriental fashions – and, when possible, traveling to China and Japan marked by visits by Bertrand Russell, William Empson, and Harold Acton. The response of individual Bloomsbury writers to the Orient mixes curiosity and jealousy. To her nephew Julian Bell, teaching at Wuhan University, Woolf wrote that 'you are much to be envied. I wish I had spent three years in China at your age'.

Foreign relations and security in the Asia-Pacific region; the US and China, Japan, Russia, and Myanmar; 5 articles. Topics include internal situation in Myanmar since Aung San Suu-Kyi's release from detention by the military government (SLORC).