Fakultní inspiratoř: Matthew Rampley

Alois Musil: Czech Scholar, Austrian Imperialist: Patriot, Adventurer, Theologian

In this talk I am interested in exploring the questions prompted by consideration of the life and career of Alois Musil (1868–1944). He is understandably celebrated in his home town of Vyškov. A loyal subject of Austria-Hungary, he was the personal confessor to the Empress Zita, and achieved high military distinction due to his contribution to the Habsburg war effort in the Middle East. After 1918, he reinvented himself as a Czech and, despite some opposition, became central to the development of Islamic studies in Prague. He exemplified the shifting identities so characteristic of early twentieth-century central Europe. Yet he left behind a complex legacy, for in many respects he typified the orientalist scholar and agent of imperialism so powerfully described by Edward Said in his famous study Orientalism. How, therefore, might we view him and his work? How justified might we be in viewing Musil, too, as a would-be imperialist? And what does this tell us about the place of Czechs in the European colonial system of the early twentieth century?