THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST
The influence of the West is the great dynamic in the modern
transformation of the East. The ubiquitous impact of Westernism is
modifying not merely the Islamic world but all non-Moslem Asia and
Africa,[72] and in subsequent pages we shall examine the effects of
Western influence upon the non-Moslem elements of India. Of course
Western influence does not entirely account for Islam's recent
evolution. We have already seen that, for the last hundred years, Islam
itself has been engendering forces which, however quickened by external
Western stimuli, are essentially internal in their nature, arising
spontaneously and working toward distinctive, original goals. It is not
a mere copying of the West that is to-day going on in the Moslem world,
but an attempt at a new synthesis--an assimilation of Western methods to
Eastern ends. We must always remember that the Asiatic stocks which
constitute the bulk of Islam's followers are not primitive savages like
the African negroes or the Australoids, but are mainly peoples with
genuine civilizations built up by their own efforts from the remote
past. In view of their historic achievements, therefore, it seems safe
to conclude that in the great ferment now stirring the Moslem world we
behold a real _Renaissance_, whose genuineness is best attested by the
fact that there have been similar movements in former times.
The modern influence of the West on the East is quite unprecedented in
both intensity and scope. The far more local, partial influence of
Greece and Rome cannot be compared to it. Another point to be noted is
that this modern influence of the West upon the East is a very recent
thing. The full impact of Westernism upon the Orient as a whole dates
only from about the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then,
however, the process has been going on by leaps and bounds. Roads and
railways, posts and telegraphs, books and papers, methods and ideas,
have penetrated, or are in process of penetrating, every nook and cranny
of the East. Steamships sail the remotest seas. Commerce drives forth
and scatters the multitudinous products of Western industry among the
remotest peoples. Nations which only half a century ago lived the life
of thirty centuries ago, to-day read newspapers and go to business in
electric tram-cars. Both the habits and thoughts of Orientals are being
revolutionized. To a discussion of the influence of the West upon the
Moslem world the remainder of this book will be devoted. The chief
elements will be separately analysed in subsequent chapters, the present
chapter being a general survey of an introductory character.
The permeation of Westernism is naturally most advanced in those parts
of Islam which have been longest under Western political control. The
penetration of the British "Raj" into the remotest Indian jungles, for
example, is an extraordinary phenomenon. By the coinage, the
post-office, the railroads, the administration of justice, the
encouragement of education, the relief of famine, and a thousand other
ways, the great organization has penetrated all India. But even in
regions where European control is still nominal, the permeation of
Westernism has gone on apace. The customs and habits of the people have
been distinctly modified. Western material improvements and comforts
like the kerosene-oil lamp and the sewing-machine are to-day part and
parcel of the daily life of the people. New economic wants have been
created; standards of living have been raised; canons of taste have been
altered.[73]
In the intellectual and spiritual fields, likewise, the leaven of
Westernism is clearly apparent. We have already seen how profoundly
Moslem liberal reformers have been influenced by Western ideas and the
spirit of Western progress. Of course in these fields Westernism has
progressed more slowly and has awakened much stronger opposition than it
has on the material plane. Material innovations, especially mechanical
improvements, comforts, and luxuries, make their way much faster than
novel customs or ideas, which usually shock established beliefs or
ancestral prejudices. Tobacco was taken up with extraordinary rapidity
by every race and clime, and the kerosene-lamp has in half a century
penetrated the recesses of Central Asia and of China; whereas customs
like Western dress and ideas like Western education encounter many
setbacks and are often adopted with such modifications that their
original spirit is denatured or perverted. The superior strength and
skill of the West are to-day generally admitted throughout the East, but
in many quarters the first receptivity to Western progress and zeal for
Western ideas have cooled or have actually given place to a reactionary
hatred of the very spirit of Western civilization.[74]
Western influences are most apparent in the upper and middle classes,
especially in the Western-educated _intelligentsia_ which to-day exists
in every Eastern land. These élites of course vary greatly in numbers
and influence, but they all possess a more or less definite grasp of
Western ideas. In their reactions to Westernism they are sharply
differentiated. Some, while retaining the fundamentals of their
ancestral philosophy of life, attempt a genuine assimilation of Western
ideals and envisage a higher synthesis of the spirits of East and West.
Others break with their traditional pasts, steep themselves in
Westernism, and become more or less genuinely Westernized. Still others
conceal behind their Western veneer disillusionment and detestation.[75]
Of course it is in externals that Westernization is most pronounced. The
Indian or Turkish "intellectual," holding Western university degrees and
speaking fluently several European languages, and the wealthy prince or
pasha, with his motor-cars, his racing-stables, and his annual "cure" at
European watering-places, appear very Occidental to the casual eye. Such
men wear European clothes, eat European food, and live in houses partly
or wholly furnished in European style. Behind this façade exists every
possible variation of inner life, from earnest enthusiasm for Western
ideals to inveterate reaction.
These varied attitudes toward Westernism are not parked off by groups or
localities, they co-exist among the individuals of every class and every
land in the East. The entire Orient is, in fact, undergoing a prodigious
transformation, far more sudden and intense than anything the West has
ever known. Our civilization is mainly self-evolved; a natural growth
developing by normal, logical, and relatively gradual stages. The East,
on the contrary, is undergoing a concentrated process of adaptation
which, with us, was spread over centuries, and the result is not so much
evolution as revolution--political, economic, social, idealistic,
religious, and much more besides. The upshot is confusion, uncertainty,
grotesque anachronism, and glaring contradiction. Single generations
are sundered by unbridgeable mental and spiritual gulfs. Fathers do not
understand sons; sons despise their fathers. Everywhere the old and the
new struggle fiercely, often within the brain or spirit of the same
individual. The infinite complexity of this struggle as it appears in
India is well summarized by Sir Valentine Chirol when he speaks of the
many "currents and cross-currents of the confused movement which is
stirring the stagnant waters of Indian life--the steady impact of alien
ideas on an ancient and obsolescent civilization; the more or less
imperfect assimilation of those ideas by the few; the dread and
resentment of them by those whose traditional ascendancy they threaten;
the disintegration of old beliefs, and then again their aggressive
revival; the careless diffusion of an artificial system of education,
based none too firmly on mere intellectualism, and bereft of all moral
or religious sanction; the application of Western theories of
administration and of jurisprudence to a social formation stratified on
lines of singular rigidity; the play of modern economic forces upon
primitive conditions of industry and trade; the constant and unconscious
but inevitable friction between subject races and their alien rulers;
the reverberation of distant wars and distant racial conflicts; the
exaltation of an Oriental people in the Far East."[76] These lines,
though written about India, apply with fair exactitude to every other
portion of the Near and Middle East to-day. As a French writer remarks
with special reference to the Levant: "The truth is that the Orient is
in transformation, and the Mohammedan mentality as well--though not
perhaps exactly as we might wish. It is undergoing a period of crisis,
wherein the past struggles everywhere against the present; where ancient
customs, impaired by modern innovations, present a hybrid and
disconcerting spectacle."[77]
To this is largely due the unlovely traits displayed by most of the
so-called "Westernized" Orientals; the "stucco civilization"[78] of the
Indian Babu, and the boulevardier "culture" of the Turkish
"Effendi"--syphilized rather than civilized. Any profound transformation
must engender many worthless by-products, and the contemporary
Westernization of the Orient has its dark as well as its bright side.
The very process of reform, however necessary and inevitable, lends
fresh virulence to old ills and imports new evils previously unknown. As
Lord Cromer says: "It is doubtful whether the price which is being paid
for introducing European civilization into these backward Eastern
societies is always recognized as fully as it should be. The material
benefits derived from European civilization are unquestionably great,
but as regards the ultimate effect on public and private morality the
future is altogether uncertain."[79]
The good and the evil of Westernization are alike mostly clearly evident
among the ranks of the educated élites. Some of these men show the
happiest effects of the Western spirit, but an even larger number fall
into the gulf between old and new, and there miserably perish. Lord
Cromer characterized many of the "Europeanized" Egyptians as "at the
same time de-Moslemized Moslems and invertebrate Europeans";[80] while
another British writer thus pessimistically describes the superficial
Europeanism prevalent in India: "Beautiful Mogul palaces furnished with
cracked furniture from Tottenham Court Road. That is what we have done
to the Indian mind. We have not only made it despise its own culture and
throw it out; we have asked it to fill up the vacant spaces with
furniture which will not stand the climate. The mental Eurasianism of
India is appalling. Such minds are nomad. They belong to no
civilization, no country, and no history. They create a craving that
cannot be satisfied, and ideals that are unreal. They falsify life.
They deprive men of the nourishment of their cultural past, and the
substitutes they supply are unsubstantial.... We sought to give the
Eastern mind a Western content and environment; we have succeeded too
well in establishing intellectual and moral anarchy in both."[81]
These patent evils of Westernization are a prime cause of that
implacable hatred of everything Western which animates so many
Orientals, including some well acquainted with the West. Such persons
are precious auxiliaries to the ignorant reactionaries and to the rebels
against Western political domination.
The political predominance of the West over the East is, indeed, the
outstanding factor in the whole question of Western influence upon the
Orient. We have already surveyed Europe's conquest of the Near and
Middle East during the past century, and we have seen how helpless the
backward, decrepit Moslem world was in face of the twofold tide of
political and economic subjugation. In fact, the economic phase was
perhaps the more important factor in the rapidity and completeness of
Europe's success. To be sure, some Eastern lands were subjugated at a
stroke by naked military force, as in the French expedition to Algiers,
the Russian conquest of central Asia, and the Italian descent upon
Tripoli. Much oftener, however, subjection began by the essentially
economic process known as "pacific penetration"--the acquirement of a
financial grip upon a hitherto independent Oriental country by Western
capital in the form of loans and concessions, until the assumption of
Western political control became little more than a formal registration
of what already existed in fact. Such is the story of the subjection of
Egypt, Morocco, and Persia, while England's Indian Empire started in a
purely trading venture--the East India Company. The tremendous potency
of "pacific penetration" is often not fully appreciated. Take the
significance of one item alone--railway concessions. Says that keen
student of _Weltpolitik_, Doctor Dillon: "Railways are the iron
tentacles of latter-day expanding Powers. They are stretched out
caressingly at first. But once the iron has, so to say, entered the soul
of the weaker nation, the tentacles swell to the dimensions of brawny
arms, and the embrace tightens to a crushing grip."[82]
On the question of the abstract rightness or wrongness of this
subjection of the East by the West, I do not propose to enter. It has
been exhaustively discussed, pro and con, and every reader of these
pages is undoubtedly familiar with the stock arguments on both sides.
The one thing certain is that this process of subjugation was, broadly
speaking, inevitable. Given two worlds at such different levels as East
and West at the beginning of the nineteenth century--the West
overflowing with vitality and striding at the forefront of human
progress, the East sunk in lethargy and decrepitude--and it was a
foregone conclusion that the former would encroach upon the latter.
What does concern us in our present discussion is the effect of European
political control upon the general process of Westernization in Eastern
lands. And there can be no doubt that such Westernization was thereby
greatly furthered. Once in control of an Oriental country, the European
rulers were bound to favour its Westernization for a variety of reasons.
Mere self-interest impelled them to make the country peaceful and
prosperous, in order to extract profit for themselves and reconcile the
inhabitants to their rule. This meant the replacement of inefficient and
sanguinary native despotisms inhibiting progress and engendering anarchy
by stable colonial governments, maintaining order, encouraging
industry, and introducing improvements like the railway, the post,
sanitation, and much more besides. In addition to these material
innovations, practically all the Western governments endeavoured to
better the social, intellectual, and spiritual condition of the peoples
that had come under their control. The European Powers who built up
colonial empires during the nineteenth century were actuated by a spirit
far more enlightened than that of former times, when the early colonial
empires of Spain, Portugal, Holland, and the English East India Company
had been run on the brutal and short-sighted doctrine of sheer
exploitation. In the nineteenth century all Western rule in the Orient
was more or less impregnated with the ideal of "The White Man's Burden."
The great empire-builders of the nineteenth century, actuated as they
were not merely by self-interest and patriotic ambition but also by a
profound sense of obligation to improve the populations which they had
brought under their country's sway, felt themselves bearers of Western
enlightenment and laboured to diffuse all the benefits of Western
civilization. They honestly believed that the extension of Western
political control was the best and quickest, perhaps the only, means of
modernizing the backward portions of the world.
That standpoint is ably presented by a British "liberal imperialist,"
Professor Ramsay Muir, who writes: "It is an undeniable fact that the
imperialism of the European peoples has been the means whereby European
civilization has been in some degree extended to the whole world, so
that to-day the whole world has become a single economic unit, and all
its members are parts of a single political system. And this achievement
brings us in sight of the creation of a world-order such as the wildest
dreamers of the past could never have anticipated. Without the
imperialism of the European peoples North and South America, Australia,
South Africa, must have remained wildernesses, peopled by scattered
bands of savages. Without it India and other lands of ancient
civilization must have remained, for all we can see, externally subject
to that endless succession of wars and arbitrary despotisms which have
formed the substance of their history through untold centuries, and
under which neither rational and equal law nor political liberty, as we
conceive them, were practicable conceptions. Without it the backward
peoples of the earth must have continued to stagnate under the dominance
of an unchanging primitive customary régime, which has been their state
throughout recorded time. If to-day the most fruitful political ideas of
the West--the ideas of nationality and self-government--which are purely
products of Western civilization, are beginning to produce a healthy
fermentation in many parts of the non-European world, that result is due
to European Imperialism."[83]
The ethics of modern imperialism have nowhere been better formulated
than in an essay by Lord Cromer. "An imperial policy," he writes, "must,
of course, be carried out with reasonable prudence, and the principles
of government which guide our relations with whatsoever races are
brought under our control must be politically and economically sound and
morally defensible. This is, in fact, the keystone of the imperial arch.
The main justification of imperialism is to be found in the use which is
made of imperial power. If we make good use of our power, we may face
the future without fear that we shall be overtaken by the Nemesis which
attended Roman misrule. If the reverse is the case, the British Empire
will deserve to fall, and of a surety it will ultimately fall."[84]
Such are the basic sanctions of Western imperialism as evolved during
the nineteenth century. Whether or not it is destined to endure, there
can be no question that this prodigious extension of European political
control greatly favoured the spread of Western influences of every kind.
It is, of course, arguable that the East would have voluntarily adopted
Western methods and ideas even if no sort of Western pressure had been
applied. But they would have been adopted much more slowly, and this
vital element of time renders such arguments mere academic speculation.
For the vital, expanding nineteenth-century West to have deliberately
restrained itself while the backward East blunderingly experimented with
Westernism, accepting and rejecting, buying goods and refusing to pay
for them, negotiating loans and then squandering and repudiating them,
inviting in Europeans and then expelling or massacring them, would have
been against all history and human nature.
As a matter of fact, Western pressure was applied, as it was bound to be
applied; and this constant, ubiquitous, unrelenting pressure, broke down
the barriers of Oriental conservatism and inertia as nothing else could
have done, forced the East out of its old ruts, and compelled it to take
stock of things as they are in a world of hard facts instead of
reminiscent dreams. In subsequent chapters we shall examine the manifold
results of this process which has so profoundly transformed the Orient
during the past hundred years. Here we will continue our general survey
by examining the more recent aspects of Western control over the East
and the reactions of the East thereto.
In my opinion, the chief fallacy involved in criticisms of Western
control over Eastern lands arises from failure to discriminate between
nineteenth-century and twentieth-century imperialism. Nineteenth-century
imperialism was certainly inevitable, and was apparently beneficial in
the main. Twentieth-century imperialism cannot be so favourably judged.
By the year 1900 the Oriental peoples were no longer mere fanatical
obscurantists neither knowing nor caring to know anything outside the
closed circle of their ossified, decadent civilizations. The East had
been going to school, and wanted to begin to apply what it had been
taught by the West. It should have been obvious that these peoples,
whose past history proved them capable of achievement and who were now
showing an apparently genuine desire for new progress, needed to be
treated differently from what they had been. In other words, a more
liberal attitude on the part of the West had become advisable.
But no such change was made. On the contrary, in the West itself, the
liberal idealism which had prevailed during most of the nineteenth
century was giving way to that spirit of fierce political and economic
rivalry which culminated in the Great War.[85] Never had Europe been so
avid for colonies, for "spheres of influence," for concessions and
preferential markets; in fine, so "imperialistic," in the unfavourable
sense of the term. The result was that with the beginning of the
twentieth century Western pressure on the East, instead of being
relaxed, was redoubled; and the awakening Orient, far from being met
with sympathetic consideration, was treated more ruthlessly than it had
been for two hundred years. The way in which Eastern countries like
Turkey and Persia, striving to reform themselves and protect their
independence, were treated by Europe's new _Realpolitik_ would have
scandalized the liberal imperialists of a generation before. It
certainly scandalized present-day liberals, as witness these scathing
lines written in 1912 by the well-known British publicist Sidney Low:
"The conduct of the Most Christian Powers during the past few years has
borne a striking resemblance to that of robber-bands descending upon an
unarmed and helpless population of peasants. So far from respecting the
rights of other nations, they have exhibited the most complete and
cynical disregard for them. They have, in fact, asserted the claim of
the strong to prey upon the weak, and the utter impotence of all ethical
considerations in the face of armed force, with a crude nakedness which
few Eastern military conquerors could well have surpassed.
"The great cosmic event in the history of the last quarter of a century
has been the awakening of Asia after centuries of somnolence. The East
has suddenly sprung to life, and endeavoured to throw itself vigorously
into the full current of Western progress. Japan started the enterprise;
and, fortunately for herself, she entered upon it before the new Western
policy had fully developed itself, and while certain archaic ideals
about the rights of peoples and the sanctity of treaties still
prevailed. When the new era was inaugurated by the great Japanese
statesmen of the nineteenth century, Europe did not feel called upon to
interfere. We regarded the Japanese renaissance with interest and
admiration, and left the people of Nippon to work out the difficulties
of their own salvation, unobstructed. If that revolution had taken place
thirty years later, there would probably have been a different story to
tell; and New Japan, in the throes of her travail, would have found the
armed Great Powers at her bedside, each stretching forth a mailed fist
to grab something worth taking. Other Eastern countries which have
endeavoured to follow the example of Japan during the present century
have had worse luck. During the past ten years a wave of sheer
materialism and absolute contempt for international morality has swept
across the Foreign Offices of Europe, and has reacted disastrously upon
the various Eastern nations in their desperate struggles to reform a
constitutional system. They have been attempting to carry out the
suggestions made to them for generations by benevolent advisers in
Christendom.
"Now, when they take these counsels to heart, and endeavour, with
halting steps, and in the face of immense obstacles, to pursue the path
of reform, one might suppose that their efforts would be regarded with
sympathetic attention by the Governments of the West; and that, even if
these offered no direct aid, they would at least allow a fair trial."
But, on the contrary, "one Great Power after another has used the
opportunity presented by the internal difficulties of the Eastern
countries to set out upon a career of annexation."[86]
We have already seen how rapid was this career of annexation,
extinguishing the independence of the last remaining Mohammedan states
at the close of the Great War. We have also seen how it exacerbated
Moslem fear and hatred of the West. And the West was already feared and
hated for many reasons. In the preceding chapter we traced the growth of
the Pan-Islamic movement, and in subsequent chapters we shall trace the
development of Oriental nationalism. These politico-religious movements,
however, by no means exhaust the list of Oriental reactions to
Westernism. There are others, economic, social, racial in character. In
view of the complex nature of the Orient's reaction against Westernism,
let us briefly analyse the problem in its various constituent elements.
Anti-Western feeling has been waning in some quarters and waxing in
others during the past hundred years. By temperamental reactionaries and
fanatics things Western have, of course, always been abhorred. But,
leaving aside this intransigeant minority, the attitude of other
categories of Orientals has varied greatly according to times and
circumstances. By liberal-minded persons Western influences were at
first hailed with cordiality and even with enthusiasm. In the opening
chapter we saw how the liberal reformers welcomed the Western concept of
progress and made it one of the bases of their projected religious
reformation. And the liberals displayed the same attitude in secular
matters. The liberal statesmen who governed Turkey during the third
quarter of the nineteenth century made earnest efforts to reform the
Ottoman State, and it was the same in other parts of the Moslem world.
An interesting example is the attempt made by General Kheir-ed-Din to
modernize Tunis. This man, a Circassian by birth, had won the confidence
of his master, the Bey, who made him vizier. In 1860 he toured Europe
and returned greatly impressed with its civilization. Convinced of
Europe's infinite superiority, he desired passionately to transplant
Western ideas and methods to Tunis. This he believed quite feasible, and
the result would, so he thought, be Tunis's rapid regeneration.
Kheir-ed-Din was not in the least a hater of the West. He merely
recognized clearly the Moslem world's peril of speedy subjection to the
West if it did not set its house rapidly in order, and he therefore
desired, in a perfectly legitimate feeling of patriotism, to press his
country along the road of progress, that it might be able to stand alone
and preserve its independence.
So greatly was the Bey impressed by Kheir-ed-Din's report that he gave
him a free hand in his reforming endeavours. For a short time
Kheir-ed-Din displayed great activity, though he encountered stubborn
opposition from reactionary officials. His work was cut short by his
untimely death, and Tunis, still unmodernized, fell twenty years later
under the power of France. Kheir-ed-Din, however, worked for posterity.
In order to rouse his compatriots to the realities of their situation he
published a remarkable book, _The Surest Means of Knowing the State of
Nations_. This book has profoundly influenced both liberals and
nationalists throughout the Near East, especially in North Africa, where
it has become the bible of Tunisian and Algerian nationalism. In his
book Kheir-ed-Din shows his co-religionists the necessity of breaking
with their attitude of blind admiration for the past and proud
indifference to everything else, and of studying what is going on in the
outer world. Europe's present prosperity is due, he asserts, not to
natural advantages or to religion, but "to progress in the arts and
sciences, which facilitate the circulation of wealth and exploit the
treasures of the earth by an enlightened protection constantly given to
agriculture, industry, and commerce: all natural consequences of justice
and liberty--two things which, for Europeans, have become second
nature." In past ages the Moslem world was great and progressive,
because it was then liberal and open to progress. It declined through
bigotry and obscurantism. But it can revive by reviving the spirit of
its early days.
I have stressed the example of the Tunisian Kheir-ed-Din rather than the
better-known Turkish instances because it illustrates the general
receptivity of mid-nineteenth-century Moslem liberals to Western ideas
and their freedom from anti-Western feeling.[87] As time passed,
however, many of these erstwhile liberals, disillusioned with the West
for various reasons, notably European aggression, became the bitterest
enemies of the West, hating the very spirit of Western civilization.[88]
This anti-Western feeling has, of course, been greatly exacerbated since
the beginning of the present century. As an influential Mohammedan wrote
just before the Great War: "The events of these last ten years and the
disasters which have stricken the Mohammedan world have awakened in its
bosom a sentiment of mutual cordiality and devotion hitherto unknown,
and a unanimous hatred against all its oppressors has been the ferment
which to-day stirs the hearts of all Moslems."[89] The bitter rancour
seething in many Moslem hearts shows in outbursts like the following,
from the pen of a popular Turkish writer at the close of the Balkan
Wars: "We have been defeated, we have been shown hostility by the
outside world, because we have become too deliberative, too cultured,
too refined in our conceptions of right and wrong, of humanity and
civilization. The example of the Bulgarian army has taught us that every
soldier facing the enemy must return to the days of barbarism, must have
a thirst of blood, must be merciless in slaughtering children and women,
old and weak, must disregard others' property, life, and honour. Let us
spread blood, suffering, wrong, and mourning. Thus only may we become
the favourites of the civilized world like King Ferdinand's army."[90]
The Great War itself was hailed by multitudes of Moslems as a
well-merited Nemesis on Western arrogance and greed. Here is how a
leading Turkish newspaper characterized the European Powers: "They would
not look at the evils in their own countries or elsewhere, but
interfered at the slightest incident in our borders; every day they
would gnaw at some part of our rights and our sovereignty; they would
perform vivisection on our quivering flesh and cut off great pieces of
it. And we, with a forcibly controlled spirit of rebellion in our hearts
and with clinched but powerless fists, silent and depressed, would
murmur as the fire burned within: 'Oh, that they might fall out with one
another! Oh, that they might eat one another up!' And lo! to-day they
are eating each other up, just as the Turk wished they would."[91]
Such anti-Western sentiments are not confined to journalists or
politicians, they are shared by all classes, from princes to peasants.
Each class has its special reasons for hating European political
control. The native princes, even when maintained upon their thrones and
confirmed in their dignities and emoluments, bitterly resent their state
of vassalage and their loss of limitless, despotic power. "Do you know,
I can hardly buy a pen or a sword for myself without asking the Resident
for permission?" remarked an Indian rajah bitterly. His attitude was
precisely that of Khedive Tewfik Pasha, who, in the early days of the
British occupation of Egypt, while watching a review of British troops,
said to one of his ministers: "Do you suppose I like this? I tell you, I
never see an English sentinel in my streets without longing to jump out
of my carriage and strangle him with my own hands."[92] The upper
classes feel much the same as their sovereigns. They regret their former
monopoly of privilege and office. This is especially true of the
Western-educated _intelligentsia_, who believe that they should hold all
government posts and resent bitterly the reservation of high-salaried
directive positions for Europeans. Of course many intelligent liberals
realize so fully the educative effect of European control that they
acquiesce in a temporary loss of independence in order to complete their
modernization and ultimately be able to stand alone without fear of
reaction or anarchy. However, these liberals are only a small minority,
hated by their upper-class fellows as time-servers and renegades, and
sundered by an immense gulf from the ignorant masses.
At first sight we might think that the masses would, on the whole, be
favourably disposed toward European political control. Despite certain
economic disadvantages that Westernization has imposed, the masses have
unquestionably gained most by European rule. Formerly exploited
ruthlessly by both princes and upper classes, the peasants and town
workers are to-day assured peace, order, justice, and security for
their landholdings and the fruits of their toil. Now it would be a
mistake to think that the masses are insensible to all this. The fact
is, they do recognize the benefits of European rule. Nevertheless, the
new rulers, while tolerated and even respected, are never beloved.
Furthermore, as the generation which knew the old régime dies off, its
evils are forgotten, and the younger generation, taking present benefits
for granted, murmurs at the flaws in the existing order, and lends a
readier ear to native agitators extolling the glories of independence
and idealizing the "good old times."
The truth of the matter is that, despite all its shortcomings, the
average Oriental hankers after the old way of life. Even when he
recognizes the good points of the new, he nevertheless yearns
irrationally for the old. "A Moslem ruler though he oppress me and not a
_kafir_[93] though he work me weal" is a Moslem proverb of long
standing. Every colonial administration, no matter how enlightened, runs
counter to this ineradicable aversion of Moslems for Christian rule. A
Russian administrator in Central Asia voices the sentiments of European
officials generally when he states: "Pious Moslems cannot accommodate
themselves to the government of _Giaours_."[94]
Furthermore, it must be remembered that most Orientals either do not
recognize much benefit in European rule, or, even though they do
recognize considerable benefits, consider these more than offset by many
points which, in their eyes, are maddening annoyances or burdens. The
very things which we most pride ourselves on having given to the
Orient--peace, order, justice, security--are not valued by the Oriental
anywhere near as highly as we might expect. Of course he likes these
things, but he would prefer to get less of them if what he did get was
given by native rulers, sharing his prejudices and point of view. Take
the single factor of justice. As an English writer remarks: "The Asiatic
is not delighted with justice _per se_; indeed, the Asiatic really cares
but little about it if he can get _sympathy_ in the sense in which he
understands that misunderstood word.... This is the real reason why
every Asiatic in his heart of hearts prefers the rule of his own
nationality, bad though it be, to the most ideal rule of aliens. For
when he is ruled by his own countrymen, he is dealt with by people who
understand his frailties, and who, though they may savagely punish him,
are at least in sympathy with the motives which prompt his
delinquencies."[95]
Take again the matter of order. The average Oriental not only does not
appreciate, but detests, our well-regulated, systematic manner of life.
Accustomed as he has been for centuries to a slipshod, easygoing
existence, in which, if there was much injustice, there was also much
favouritism, he instinctively hates things like sanitary measures and
police regulations. Accustomed to a wide "personal liberty" in the
anarchic sense, he is not willing to limit this liberty for the common
weal. He wants his own way, even though it involves possible dangers to
himself--dangers which may always be averted by bribery, favouritism, or
violence. Said an American who had listened to a Filipino's glowing
words on independence: "What could you do, if you were independent, that
you cannot do now?" "I could build my house there in the middle of the
street, if I wanted to." "But suppose your neighbour objected and
interfered?" "I would 'get' him." "But suppose he 'got' you?" A shrug of
the shoulders was the only answer.[96]
The fact is that the majority of Orientals, despite the considerable
penetration of Western ideas and methods that has been going on for the
last century, still love their old ruts and hate to be budged out of
them. They realize that Western rule furthers more than anything else
the Westernization of their social system, their traditional manner of
life, and they therefore tend to react fanatically against it. Every
innovation imposed by the colonial authorities is apt to rouse the most
purblind resistance. For example, compulsory vaccination was bitterly
opposed for years by the natives of Algeria. The French officials
pointed out that smallpox, hitherto rampant, was being rapidly
extirpated. The natives replied that, in their opinion, it was merely a
crafty scheme for sterilizing them sexually and thus make room for
French colonists. The officials thereupon pointed to the census figures,
which showed that the natives were increasing at an unprecedented rate.
The natives merely shrugged their shoulders and continued to inveigh
against the innovation.
This whole matter has been well summarized by a French writer with a
wide knowledge of Mohammedan lands. Says Louis Bertrand:
"In reality, all these peoples, indisposed as they are by their
traditions, customs, and climates to live according to our social ideal,
hate to endure the constraint of our police, of our administration--in a
word, of any sort of _regulated_ government, no matter how just and
honest. Delivered from the most anarchic and vexatious of tyrannies,
they remain in spirit more or less like our vagabonds, always hoping to
escape from the gendarmes. In vain do we point out to the Arabs of North
Africa that, thanks to the protection of France, they are no longer
pillaged by Turkish despots nor massacred and tortured by rival tribes.
They see only one thing: the necessity of paying taxes for matters that
they do not understand. We shall never realize the rage, the fury,
aroused in our Algerian towns by the simple health department ordinance
requiring the emptying of a garbage-can at a fixed hour. At Cairo and
elsewhere I have observed the same rebellious feelings among the
donkey-boys and cab-drivers subjected to the regulations of the English
policeman.
"But it is not merely our municipal and administrative regulations which
they find insupportable; it is all our habits, taken _en bloc_--in a
word, the _order_ which regulates our civilized life. For instance: on
the railway-line from Jaffa to Jerusalem the train stops at a station
beside which stands the tomb of a holy man. The schedule calls for a
stop of a minute at most. But no sooner had we arrived than what was my
stupefaction to see all the Mohammedans on the train get off, spread
their prayer-rugs, and tranquilly begin their devotions. The
station-master blew his whistle, the conductor yelled at them that he
was going to leave them behind; nobody budged. A squad of railway
employees had to be mobilized, who, with blows and curses, finally
bundled these pious persons back into the train again. The business
lasted a good quarter of an hour, and was not easy. The more vigorous of
the worshippers put up an energetic resistance.
"The above is only a casual instance, chosen at random. What is certain
is that these peoples do not yet understand what we mean by exactitude,
and that the concept of a well-regulated existence has not yet
penetrated their heads."[97]
What has just been written of course applies primarily to the ignorant
masses. But this attitude of mind is more or less common to all classes
of Oriental peoples. The habits of centuries are not easily transformed.
In fact, it must not be forgotten that the upper classes were able to
enjoy most fully the capricious personal liberty of the unmodified East,
and that, therefore, though they may be better able to understand the
value of Westernization, they have in one sense the most to lose.[98]
In fact, for all Orientals, high and low alike, the "good old times"
had charms which they mournfully regret. For the prince, the pasha, the
courtier, existence was truly an Oriental paradise. To be sure, the
prince might at any moment be defeated and slain by a rival monarch; the
pasha strangled at his master's order; the courtier tortured through a
superior's whim. But, meanwhile, it was "life," rich and full. "Each of
these men had his own character and his own renown among his countrymen,
and each enjoyed a position such as is now unattainable in Europe, in
which he was released from laws, could indulge his own fancies, bad or
good, and was fed every day and all day with the special flattery of
Asia--that willing submissiveness to mere volition which is so like
adoration, and which is to its recipients the most intoxicating of
delights. Each, too, had his court of followers, and every courtier
shared in the power, the luxury, and the adulation accruing to his lord.
The power was that of life and death; the luxury included possession of
every woman he desired; the adulation was, as I have said, almost
religious worship."[99]
But, it may be asked, what about the poor man, exploited by this
hierarchy of capricious despots? What had he to gain from all this?
Well, in most cases, he got nothing at all; but he _might_ gain a great
deal. Life in the old Orient was a gigantic lottery. Any one, however
humble, who chanced to please a great man, might rise to fame and
fortune at a bound. And this is just what pleases the Eastern
temperament; for in the East, "luck" and caprice are more prized than
the "security" cherished in the West. In the Orient the favourite
stories are those narrating sudden and amazing shifts of
fortune--beggars become viziers or viziers become beggars, and all in a
single night. To the majority of Orientals it is still the uncertainties
of life, and the capricious favour of the powerful, which make it most
worth living; not the sure reward of honesty and well-regulated labour.
All these things made the life of the Orient infinitely _interesting_
to _all_. And it is precisely this gambler's interest which
Westernization has more or less destroyed. As an English writer very
justly remarks _à propos_ of modern Egypt: "Our rule may be perfect, but
the East finds it dull. The old order was a ragged garment, but it was
gay. Its very vicissitude had a charm. 'Ah! yes,' said an Egyptian to a
champion of English rule, 'but in the old days a beggar might sit at the
gate, and if he were found pleasing in the eyes of a great lady, he
might be a great man on the morrow.' There is a natural and inevitable
regret for the gorgeous and perilous past, when favour took the place of
justice, and life had great heights and depths--for the Egypt of Joseph,
Haroun-al-Rashid, and Ismail Pasha. We have spread the coat of
broadcloth over the radiant garment."[100]
Saddened and irritated by the threatened loss of so much that they hold
dear, it is not strange that many Eastern conservatives glorify the past
as a sort of Golden Age, infinitely superior to anything the West can
produce, and in this they are joined by many quondam liberals,
disillusioned with Westernism and flying into the arms of reaction. The
result is a spirit of hatred against everything Western, which sometimes
assumes the most extravagant forms. Says Louis Bertrand: "During a
lecture that I attended at Cairo the speaker contended that France owed
Islam (1) its civilization and sciences; (2) half of its vocabulary; (3)
all that was best in the character and mentality of its population,
seeing that, from the Middle Ages to the Revolution of 1789, all the
reformers who laboured for its enfranchisement--Albigensians, Vaudois,
Calvinists, and Camisards--were probably descendants of the Saracens. It
was nothing less than the total annexation of France to Morocco."
Meanwhile, "it has become the fashion for fervent (Egyptian)
nationalists to go to Spain and meditate in the gardens of the Alcazar
of Seville or in the patios of the Alhambra of Granada on the defunct
splendours of western Islam."[101]
Even more grotesque are the rhapsodies of the Hindu wing of this Golden
Age school. These Hindu enthusiasts far outdo the wildest flights of
their Moslem fellows. They solemnly assert that Hindustan is the nursery
and home of all true religion, philosophy, culture, civilization,
science, invention, and everything else; and they aver that when India's
present regrettable eclipse is past (an eclipse of course caused
entirely by English rule) she is again to shine forth in her glory for
the salvation of the whole world. Employing to the full the old adage
that there is nothing new under the sun, they have "discovered" in the
Vedas and other Hindu sacred texts "irrefutable" evidence that the
ancient Hindu sages anticipated all our modern ideas, including such
up-to-date matters as bomb-dropping aeroplanes and the League of
Nations.[102]
All this rhapsodical laudation of the past will, in the long run, prove
futile. The East, like the West, has its peculiar virtues; but the East
also has its special faults, and it is the faults which, for the last
thousand years, have been gaining on the virtues, resulting in
backwardness, stagnation, and inferiority. To-day the East is being
penetrated--and quickened--by the West. The outcome will never be
complete Westernization in the sense of a mere wholesale copying and
absolute transformation; the East will always remain fundamentally
itself. But it will be a new self, the result of a true assimilation of
Western ideas. The reactionaries can only delay this process, and
thereby prolong the Orient's inferiority and weakness.
Nevertheless, the reactionary attitude, though unintelligent, is
intelligible. Westernization hurts too many cherished prejudices and
vested interests not to arouse chronic resistance. This resistance would
occur even if Western influences were all good and Westerners all angels
of light. But of course Westernization has its dark side, while our
Western culture-bearers are animated not merely by altruism, but also by
far less worthy motives. This strengthens the hand of the Oriental
reactionaries and lends them the cover of moral sanctions. In addition
to the extremely painful nature of any transformative process,
especially in economic and social matters, there are many incidental
factors of an extremely irritating nature.
To begin with, the mere presence of the European, with his patent
superiority of power and progress, is a constant annoyance and
humiliation. This physical presence of the European is probably as
necessary to the Orient's regeneration as it is inevitable in view of
the Orient's present inferiority. But, however beneficial, it is none
the less a source of profound irritation. These Europeans disturb
everything, modify customs, raise living standards, erect separate
"quarters" in the cities, where they form "extraterritorial" colonies
exempt from native law and customary regulation. An English town rises
in the heart of Cairo, a "Little Paris" eats into Arabesque Algiers,
while European Pera flaunts itself opposite Turkish Stambul.
As for India, it is dotted with British "enclaves". "The great
Presidency towns, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, are European cities planted
on Indian soil. All the prominent buildings are European, though in some
of the more recent ones an endeavour has been made to adopt what is
known as the 'Indo-Saracenic' style of architecture. For the rest, the
streets are called by English names, generally the names of bygone
viceroys and governors, or of the soldiers who conquered the land and
quelled the mutiny--heroes whose effigies meet you at every turn. The
shops are English shops, where English or Eurasian assistants traffic in
English goods. English carriages and motors bowl along the macadamized
or tarred roads of Old England. On every hand there is evidence of the
instinctive effort to reproduce, as nearly as the climate will permit,
English conditions of life.... Almost the whole life of the people of
India is relegated to the back streets, not to say the slums--frankly
called in Madras the Black Town. There are a few points--clubs and
gymkhanas specially established to that end--where Englishmen, and even
women, meet Indian men, and even women, of the wealthier classes, on a
basis of social equality. But few indeed are the points of contact
between the Asian town and the European city which has been superimposed
upon it. The missionary, the Salvation Army outpost, perhaps the
curiosity-hunting tourist, may go forth into the bazaars; but the
European community as a whole cares no more for the swarming brown
multitudes around it than the dwellers on an island care for the fishes
in the circumambient sea."[103] And what is true of the great towns
holds good for scores of provincial centres, "stations," and
cantonments. The scale may be smaller, but the type is the same.
The European in the Orient is thus everywhere profoundly an alien,
living apart from the native life. And the European is not merely an
aloof alien; he is a ruling alien as well. Always his attitude is that
of the superior, the master. This attitude is not due to brutality or
snobbery; it is inherent in the very essence of the situation. Of course
many Europeans have bad manners, but that does not change the basic
reality of the case. And this reality is that, whatever the future may
bring, the European first established himself in the Orient because the
West was then infinitely ahead of the East; and he is still there to-day
because, despite all recent changes, the East is still behind the West.
Therefore the European in the Orient is still the ruler, and so long as
he stays there _must_ continue to rule--justly, temperately, with
politic regard for Eastern progress and liberal devolution of power as
the East becomes ripe for its liberal exercise--but, nevertheless,
_rule_. Wherever the Occidental has established his political control,
there are but two alternatives: govern or go. Furthermore, in his
governing, the Occidental must rule according to his own lights; despite
all concessions to local feeling, he must, in the last analysis, act as
a Western, not as an Eastern, ruler. Lord Cromer voices the heart of all
true colonial government when he says: "In governing Oriental races the
first thought must be what is good for them, but not necessarily what
they think is good for them."[104]
Now all this is inevitable, and should be self-evident. Nevertheless,
the fact remains that even the most enlightened Oriental can hardly
regard it as other than a bitter though salutary medicine, while most
Orientals feel it to be humiliating or intolerable. The very virtues of
the European are prime causes of his unpopularity. For, as Meredith
Townsend well says: "The European is, in Asia, the man who will insist
on his neighbour doing business just after dinner, and being exact when
he is half-asleep, and being 'prompt' just when he wants to enjoy,--and
he rules in Asia and is loved in Asia accordingly."[105]
Furthermore, the European in the Orient is disliked not merely as a
ruler and a disturber, but also as a man of widely different race. This
matter of race is very complicated,[106] but it cuts deep and is of
fundamental importance. Most of the peoples of the Near and Middle East
with which our present discussion is concerned belong to what is known
as the "brown" category of the human species. Of course, in strict
anthropology, the term is inexact. Anthropologically, we cannot set off
a sharply differentiated group of "brown" types as a "brown race," as we
can set off the "white" types of Europe as a "white race" or the
"yellow" Mongoloid types of the Far East as a "yellow race." This is
because the Near and Middle East have been racially a vast melting-pot,
or series of melting-pots, wherein conquest and migration have
continually poured new heterogeneous elements, producing the most
diverse ethnic amalgamations. Thus to-day some of the Near and Middle
Eastern peoples are largely white, like the Persians and Ottoman Turks;
others, like the southern Indians and Yemenite Arabs, are largely black;
while still others, like the Himalayan and Central Asian peoples, have
much yellow blood. Again, as there is no brown racial type-norm, as
there are white and yellow type-norms, so there is no generalized brown
culture like those possessed by yellows and whites. The great brown
spiritual bond is Islam, yet in India, the chief seat of brown
population, Islam is professed by only one-fifth of the inhabitants.
Lastly, while the spiritual frontiers of the Moslem world coincide
mainly with the ethnic frontiers of the brown world, Islam overlaps at
several points, including some pure whites in eastern Europe, many true
yellows in the Far East, and multitudes of negroes in Africa.
Nevertheless, despite these partial modifications, the terms "brown
race" and "brown world" do connote genuine realities which science and
politics alike recognize to be essentially true. There certainly is a
fundamental comity between the brown peoples. This comity is subtle and
intangible in character; yet it exists, and under certain circumstances
it is capable of momentous manifestations. Its salient feature is the
instinctive recognition by all Near and Middle Eastern peoples that they
are fellow "Asiatics," however bitter may be their internecine feuds.
This instinctive "Asiatic" feeling has been noted by historians for
more than two thousand years, and it is true to-day as in the past.
The great racial divisions of mankind are the most fundamental, the most
permanent, the most ineradicable things in human experience. They are
not mere diverse colorations of skin. Matters like complexion, stature,
and hair-formation are merely the outward, visible symbols of
correlative mental and spiritual differences which reveal themselves in
sharply contrasted temperaments and view-points, and which translate
themselves into the infinite phenomena of divergent group-life.
Now it is one of these basic racial lines of cleavage which runs between
"East" and "West." Broadly speaking, the Near and Middle East is the
"brown world," and this differentiates it from the "white world" of the
West in a way which never can be really obliterated. Indeed, to attempt
to obliterate the difference by racial fusion would be the maddest of
follies. East and West can mutually quicken each other by a mutual
exchange of ideas and ideals. They can only harm each other by
transfusions of blood. To unite physically would be the greatest of
disasters. East and West have both given much to the world in the past,
and promise to give more in the future. But whatever of true value they
are to give can be given only on condition that they remain essentially
themselves. Ethnic fusion would destroy both their race-souls and would
result in a dreary mongrelization from which would issue nothing but
degeneration and decay.
Both East and West instinctively recognize the truth of this, and show
it by their common contempt for the "Eurasian"--the mongrel offspring of
unions between the two races. As Meredith Townsend well says: "The chasm
between the brown man and the white is unfathomable, has existed in all
ages, and exists still everywhere. No white man marries a brown wife, no
brown man marries a white wife, without an inner sense of having been
false to some unintelligible but irresistible command."[107]
The above summary of the political, economic, social, and racial
differences between East and West gives us a fair idea of the numerous
cross-currents which complicate the relations of the two worlds and
which hinder Westernization. The Westernizing process is assuredly going
on, and in subsequent chapters we shall see how far-reaching is its
scope. But the factors just considered will indicate the possibilities
of reaction and will roughly assign the limits to which Westernization
may ultimately extend.
One thing is certain: Western political control in the Orient, however
prolonged and however imposing in appearance, must ever rest on
essentially fragile foundations. The Western rulers will always remain
an alien caste; tolerated, even respected, perhaps, but never loved and
never regarded as anything but foreigners. Furthermore, Western rule
must necessarily become more precarious with the increasing
enlightenment of the subject peoples, so that the acquiescence of one
generation may be followed by the hostile protest of the next. It is
indeed an unstable equilibrium, hard to maintain and easily upset.
The latent instability of European political control over the Near and
Middle East was dramatically shown by the moral effect of the
Russo-Japanese War. Down to that time the Orient had been so helpless in
face of European aggression that most Orientals had come to regard
Western supremacy with fatalistic resignation. But the defeat of a
first-class European Power by an Asiatic people instantly broke the
spell, and all Asia and Africa thrilled with a wild intoxication which
we can scarcely conceive. A Scotch missionary thus describes the effect
of the Japanese victories on northern India, where he was stationed at
the time: "A stir of excitement passed over the north of India. Even the
remote villagers talked over the victories of Japan as they sat in
their circles and passed round the huqqa at night. One of the older men
said to me, 'There has been nothing like it since the mutiny'. A Turkish
consul of long experience in Western Asia told me that in the interior
you could see everywhere the most ignorant peasants 'tingling' with the
news. Asia was moved from end to end, and the sleep of the centuries was
finally broken. It was a time when it was 'good to be alive,' for a new
chapter was being written in the book of the world's history."[108]
Of course the Russo-Japanese War did not create this new spirit, whose
roots lay in the previous epoch of subtle changes that had been going
on. The Russo-Japanese War was thus rather the occasion than the cause
of the wave of exultant self-confidence which swept over Asia and Africa
in the year 1904. But it did dramatize and clarify ideas that had been
germinating half-unconsciously in millions of Oriental minds, and was
thus the sign manual of the whole nexus of forces making for a
revivified Orient.
Furthermore, this new temper profoundly influenced the Orient's
attitude toward the series of fresh European aggressions which then
began. It is a curious fact that just when the Far East had
successfully resisted European encroachment, the Near and Middle East
should have been subjected to European aggressions of unparalleled
severity. We have already noted the furious protests and the unwonted
moral solidarity of the Moslem world at these manifestations of Western
_Realpolitik_. It would be interesting to know exactly how much of this
defiant temper was due to the heartening example of Japan. Certainly
our ultra-imperialists of the West were playing a dangerous game during
the decade between 1904 and 1914. As Arminius Vambéry remarked after
the Italian raid on Tripoli: "The more the power and authority of the
West gains ground in the Old World, the stronger becomes the bond of
unity and mutual interest between the separate factions of Asiatics,
and the deeper burns the fanatical hatred of Europe. Is it wise or
expedient by useless provocation and unnecessary attacks to increase
the feeling of animosity, to hurry on the struggle between the two
worlds, and to nip in the bud the work of modern culture which is now
going on in Asia?"[109]
The Great War of course immensely aggravated an already critical
situation. The Orient suddenly saw the European peoples, who, in racial
matters, had hitherto maintained something like solidarity, locked in an
internecine death-grapple of unparalleled ferocity; it saw those same
peoples put one another furiously to the ban as irreconcilable foes; it
saw white race-unity cleft by moral and political gulfs which white men
themselves continuously iterated would never be filled. The one
redeeming feature of the struggle, in Oriental eyes, was the liberal
programme which the Allied statesmen inscribed upon their banners. But
when the war was over and the Allies had won, it promptly leaked out
that at the very time when the Allied leaders were making their liberal
speeches they had been negotiating a series of secret treaties
partitioning the Near East between them in a spirit of the most cynical
imperialism; and in the peace conferences that closed the war it was
these secret treaties, not the liberal speeches, which determined the
Oriental settlement, resulting (on paper at least) in the total
subjugation of the Near and Middle East to European political control.
The wave of wrath which thereupon rolled over the East was not confined
to furious remonstrance like the protests of pre-war days. There was a
note of immediate resistance and rebellion not audible before. This
rebellious temper has translated itself into warlike action which has
already forced the European Powers to abate some of their extreme
pretensions and which will undoubtedly make them abate others in the
near future. The details of this post-war unrest will be discussed in
later chapters. Suffice it to say here that the Great War has shattered
European prestige in the East and has opened the eyes of Orientals to
the weaknesses of the West. To the Orient the war was a gigantic course
of education. For one thing, millions of Orientals and negroes were
taken from the remotest jungles of Asia and Africa to serve as soldiers
and labourers in the White Man's War. Though the bulk of these
auxiliaries were used in colonial operations, more than a million of
them were brought to Europe itself. Here they killed white men, raped
white women, tasted white luxuries, learned white weaknesses--and went
home to tell their people the whole story.[110] Asia and Africa to-day
know Europe as they never knew it before, and we may be sure that they
will make use of their knowledge. The most serious factor in the
situation is that the Orient realizes that the famous Versailles "Peace"
which purports to have pacified Europe is no peace, but rather an
unconstructive, unstatesmanlike futility that left old sores unhealed
and even dealt fresh wounds. Europe to-day lies debilitated and uncured,
while Asia and Africa see in this a standing incitement to rash dreams
and violent action.
Such is the situation to-day: an East, torn by the conflict between new
and old, facing a West riven with dissension and sick from its mad
follies. Probably never before have the relations between the two
worlds contained so many incalculable, even cataclysmic, possibilities.
The point to be here noted is that this strange new East which now faces
us is mainly the result of Western influences permeating it in
unprecedented fashion for the past hundred years. To the chief elements
in that permeation let us now turn.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] For the larger aspects, see my book _The Rising Tide of Colour
against White World-Supremacy_ (New York and London, 1920).
[73] On these points, see Arminius Vambéry, _Western Culture in Eastern
Lands_ (London, 1906); also his _La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant
Quarante Ans_ (Paris, 1898); C. S. Cooper, _The Modernizing of the
Orient_ (New York, 1914); S. Khuda Bukhsh, _Essays: Indian and Islamic_
(London, 1912); A. J. Brown, "Economic Changes in Asia," _The Century_,
March, 1904.
[74] For the effect of the West intellectually and spiritually, see
Vambéry, _op. cit._; Sir Valentine Chirol, _Indian Unrest_ (London,
1910); J. N. Farquhar, _Modern Religious Movements in India_ (New York,
1915); Rev. J. Morrison, _New Ideas in India: A Study of Social,
Political, and Religious Developments_ (Edinburgh, 1906); the Earl of
Cromer, _Modern Egypt_, especially Vol. II., pp. 228-243 (London, 1908).
[75] For the Westernised élites, see L. Bertrand, _Le Mirage Orientale_
(Paris, 1910); Cromer, _op. cit._; A. Métin, _L'Inde d'aujourd'hui:
Étude Sociale_ (Paris, 1918); A. Le Chatelier, "Politique musulmane,"
_Revue du Monde musulman_, September, 1910.
[76] Chirol, _op. cit._, pp 321-322.
[77] Bertrand, _op. cit._, p 39. See also Bukhsh, _op. cit._; Farquhar,
_op. cit._; Morrison, _op. cit._; R. Mukerjee, _The Foundations of
Indian Economics_ (London, 1916); D. H. Dodwell, "Economic Transition in
India," _Economic Journal_, December, 1910.
[78] W. S. Lilly, _India and Its Problems_, p. 243 (London, 1902).
[79] Cromer, _op. cit._, Vol. II., p. 231.
[80] _Ibid._, p. 228.
[81] J. Ramsay Macdonald, _The Government of India_, pp. 171-172
(London, 1920). On the evils of Westernization, see further: Bukhsh,
Cromer, Dodwell, Mukerjee, already cited; Sir W. M. Ramsay, "The Turkish
Peasantry of Anatolia," _Quarterly Review_, January, 1918; H. M.
Hyndman, _The Awakening of Asia_ (New York, 1919); T. Rothstein,
_Egypt's Ruin_ (London, 1910); Captain P. Azan, _Recherche d'une
Solution de la Question indigène en Algérie_ (Paris, 1903).
[82] E. J. Dillon, "Persia," _Contemporary Review_, June, 1910.
[83] Ramsay Muir, "Europe and the Non-European World," _The New Europe_,
June 28, 1917.
[84] The Earl of Cromer, _Political and Literary Essays_, p. 5 (London,
1913).
[85] For a full discussion of these changes in Western ideas, see my
_Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy_, especially chaps.
vi. and vii.
[86] Sidney Low, "The Most Christian Powers," _Fortnightly Review_,
March, 1912.
[87] On this point see also A. Vambéry, _Western Culture in Eastern
Lands_ (London, 1906); W. S. Blunt, _The Future of Islam_ (London,
1882); also the two articles by Léon Cahun on intellectual and social
developments in the Islamic world during the nineteenth century in
Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Générale_, Vol. XI., chap. xv.; Vol. XII.,
chap. xiv.
[88] See A. Vambéry, _Der Islam im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, chap. vi.
(Leipzig, 1875).
[89] "X," "La Situation politique de la Perse," _Revue du Monde
musulman_, June, 1914. As already stated, the editor vouches for this
anonymous writer as a distinguished Mohammedan official--"un homme
d'étât musulman."
[90] Ahmed Emin, _The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by Its
Press_, p. 108 (Columbia University Ph.D. Thesis, New York, 1914).
[91] The Constantinople _Tanine_. Quoted from _The Literary Digest_,
October 24, 1914, p. 784. This attitude toward the Great War and the
European Powers was not confined to Mohammedan peoples; it was common to
non-white peoples everywhere. For a survey of this feeling throughout
the world, see my _Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy_,
pp. 13-16.
[92] Both the above instances are taken from C. S. Cooper, _The
Modernizing of the Orient_, pp. 339-340 (New York, 1914).
[93] An "Unbeliever"--in other words, a Christian.
[94] Quoted by A. Woeikof, _Le Turkestan russe_ (Paris, 1914).
[95] B. L. Putnam Weale, _The Conflict of Colour_, p. 193 (London,
1910).
[96] Quoted from H. H. Powers, _The Great Peace_, p. 82 (New York,
1918).
[97] L. Bertrand, _Le Mirage oriental_, pp. 441-442 (Paris, 1910).
[98] On this point see the very interesting essay by Meredith Townsend
entitled "The Charm of Asia for Asiatics," in his book _Asia and
Europe_, pp. 120-128.
[99] Townsend, _op. cit._, p. 104.
[100] H. Spender, "England, Egypt, and Turkey," _Contemporary Review_,
October, 1906.
[101] Bertrand, pp. 209, 210.
[102] For discussion of this Hindu attitude see W. Archer, _India and
the Future_ (London, 1918); Young and Ferrers, _India in Conflict_
(London, 1920). Also see Hindu writings of this nature: H. Maitra,
_Hinduism: The World-Ideal_ (London, 1916); A. Coomaraswamy, _The Dance
of Siva_ (New York, 1918); M. N. Chatterjee, "The World and the Next
War," _Journal of Race Development_, April, 1916.
[103] Archer, pp. 11, 12.
[104] Cromer, _Political and Literary Essays_, p. 25.
[105] Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, p. 128.
[106] I have dealt with it at length in my _Rising Tide of Colour
against White World-Supremacy_.
[107] Townsend, p. 97.
[108] Rev. C. F. Andrews, _The Renaissance in India_, p. 4 (London,
1911). For other similar accounts of the effect of the Russo-Japanese
War upon Oriental peoples generally, see A. M. Low, "Egyptian Unrest,"
_The Forum_, October, 1906; F. Farjanel, "Le Japon et l'Islam," _Revue
du Monde musulman_, November, 1906; "Oriental Ideals as Affected by the
Russo-Japanese War," _American Review of Reviews_, February, 1905; A.
Vambéry, "Japan and the Mahometan World," _Nineteenth Century and
After_, April, 1905; Yahya Siddyk, _op. cit._, p. 42.
[109] A. Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists,"
_Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1912.
[110] For the effect of the war on Asia and Africa, see A. Demangeon,
_Le Déclin de l'Europe_ (Paris, 1920); H. M. Hyndman, _The Awakening of
Asia_ (New York, 1919); E. D. Morel, _The Black Man's Burden_ (New York,
1920); F. B. Fisher, _India's Silent Revolution_ (New York, 1919); also,
my _Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy_.