FOOTNOTES:
[25] Islam has not only won much ground in India, Brahmanism's homeland, but has also converted virtually the entire populations of the great islands of Java and Sumatra, where Brahmanism was formerly ascendant.
[26] The small Parsi communities of India, centring in Bombay, are the sole surviving representatives of Zoroastrianism. They were founded by Zoroastrian refugees after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia in the seventh century a.d.
[27] Though Mecca is forbidden to non-Moslems, a few Europeans have managed to make the Hajj in disguise, and have written their impressions. Of these, Snouck Hurgronje's Mekka (2 vols., The Hague, 1888) and Het Mekkaansche Feest (Leiden, 1889) are the most recent good works. Also see Burton and Burckhardt. A recent account of value from the pen of a Mohammedan liberal is: Gazanfar Ali Khan, With the Pilgrims to Mecca; The Great Pilgrimage of A. H. 1319 (A.D. 1902), with an Introduction by Arminius Vambéry (London, 1905).
[28] The Shiite Persians of course refused to recognize any Sunnite or orthodox caliphate; while the Moors pay spiritual allegiance to their own Shereefian sultans.
[29] The Turkish name for Constantinople.
[30] On the caliphate, see Sir W. Muir, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (Edinburgh, 1915); Sir Mark Sykes, The Caliph's Last Heritage (London, 1915); XX, "L'Islam après la Guerre," Revue de Paris, 15 January, 1916; "The Indian Khilafat Delegation," Foreign Affairs, July, 1920 (Special Supplement).
[31] Literally, "he who is guided aright."
[32] "Seyid" means "Lord." This title is borne only by descendants of the Prophet.
[33] The explorer Dr. Nachtigal.
[34] On the Islamic fraternities in general and the Sennussiya in particular see W. S. Blunt, The Future of Islam (London, 1882); O. Depont and X. Coppolani, Les Confréries réligieuses musulmanes (Paris, 1897); H. Duveyrier, La Confrérie musulmane de Sidi Mohammed ben Ali es Sénoussi (Paris, 1884); A. Le Chatelier, Les Confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz (Paris, 1887); L. Petit, Confréries musulmanes (Paris, 1899); L. Rinn, Marabouts et Khouan (Algiers, 1884); A. Servier, Le Nationalisme musulman (Constantine, Algeria, 1913); Simian, Les Confréries islamiques en Algérie (Algiers, 1910); Achmed Abdullah (himself a Sennussi), "The Sennussiyehs," The Forum, May, 1914; A. R. Colquhoun, "Pan-Islam," North American Review, June, 1906; T. R. Threlfall, "Senussi and His Threatened Holy War," Nineteenth Century, March, 1900; Captain H. A. Wilson, "The Moslem Menace," Nineteenth Century and After, September, 1907; ... "La Puissance de l'Islam: Ses Confréries Réligieuses," Le Correspondant, 25 November and 10 December, 1909. The above judgments, particularly regarding the Sennussiya, vary greatly, some being highly alarmist, others minimizing its importance. A full balancing of the entire subject is that of Commandant Binger, "Le Péril de l'Islam," Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique française, 1902. Personal interviews of educated Moslems with El Sennussi are Si Mohammed el Hechaish, "Chez les Senoussia et les Touareg," L'Expansion Coloniale française, 1900; Muhammad ibn Utman, Voyage au Pays des Sénoussia à travers la Tripolitaine (translated from the Arabic), Paris, 1903.
[35] On Moslem missionary activity in general, see Jansen, Verbreitung des Islams (Berlin, 1897); M. Townsend, Asia and Europe, pp. 46-49, 60-61, 81; A. Le Chatelier, L'Islam au dix-neuvième Siècle (Paris, 1888); various papers in The Mohammedan World To-day (London, 1906).
[36] T. R. Threlfall, "Senussi and His Threatened Holy War," Nineteenth Century, March, 1900.
[37] D. A. Forget, L'Islam et le Christianisme dans l'Afrique centrale, p. 65 (Paris, 1900). For other statements regarding Moslem missionary activity in Africa, see G. Bonet-Maury, L'Islamisme et le Christianisme en Afrique (Paris, 1906); E. W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (London, 1887); Forget, op. cit.
[38] A. Guérinot, "L'Islam et l'Abyssinie," Revue du Monde musulman, 1918. Also see similar opinion of the Protestant missionary K. Cederquist, "Islam and Christianity in Abyssinia," The Moslem World, April, 1921.
[39] S. Brobovnikov, "Moslems in Russia," The Moslem World, January, 1911.
[40] Broomhall, Islam in China (London, 1910); Nigârèndé, "Notes sur les Musulmans Chinois," Revue du Monde musulman, January, 1907; paper on Islam in China in The Mohammedan World To-day (London, 1906).
[41] See papers on Islam in Java and Sumatra in The Mohammedan World To-day (London, 1906); A. Cabaton, Java, Sumatra, and the Dutch East Indies (translated from the Dutch), New York, 1916.
[42] Quoted from article by "X," "Le Pan-Islamisme et le Pan-Turquisme," Revue du Monde musulman, March, 1913. This authoritative article is, so the editor informs us, from the pen of an eminent Mohammedan—"un homme d'étât musulman." For other activities of Djemal-ed-Din, see A. Servier, Le Nationalisme musulman, pp. 10-13.
[43] Quoted from W. G. Palgrave, Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 111 (London, 1872).
[44] A. Vambéry, Western Culture in Eastern Lands, p. 351 (London, 1906).
[45] Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic schemes were first clearly discerned by the French publicist Gabriel Charmes as early as 1881, and his warnings were published in his prophetic book L'Avenir de la Turquie—Le Panislamisme (Paris, 1883).
[46] Gabriel Hanotaux, "La Crise méditerranéenne et l'Islam," Revue Hebdomadaire, April 13, 1912.
[47] See "X," "La Situation politique de la Perse," Revue du Monde musulman, June, 1914; B. Temple, "The Place of Persia in World-Politics," Proceedings of the Central Asian Society, May 4, 1910; W. M. Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (New York, 1912).
[48] Quoted from A. Vambéry, "Die türkische Katastrophe und die Islamwelt," Deutsche Revue, July, 1913.
[49] Shah Mohammed Naimatullah, "Recent Turkish Events and Moslem India," Asiatic Review, October, 1913.
[50] Quoted by F. Farjanel, "Le Japon et l'Islam," Revue du Monde musulman, November, 1906.
[51] Farjanel, supra.
[52] Quoted by Vambéry, supra.
[53] Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists," Nineteenth Century and After, April, 1912.
[54] Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists," Nineteenth Century and After, April, 1912.
[55] Special cable to the New York Times, dated Rome, May 28, 1919.
[56] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," Nineteenth Century and After, July, 1919.
[57] H. H. The Aga Khan, India in Transition, p. 158 (London, 1918).
[58] This hatred of Western civilization, as such, will be discussed in the next chapter.
[59] Ernst Paraquin, formerly Ottoman lieutenant-colonel and chief of general staff, in the Berliner Tageblatt, January 24, 1920.
[60] A. Vambéry, La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant Quarante Ans, pp. 71, 72 (Paris, 1898).
[61] A. Servier, Le Nationalisme musulman, p. 182.
[62] B. Temple, "The Place of Persia in World-Politics," Proceedings of the Central Asian Society, May, 1910.
[63] L. Rinn, Marabouts et Khouan, p. vi.
[64] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," op. cit.
[65] Yahya Siddyk, Le Reveil des Peuples islamiques au quatorzième Siècle de l'Hégire (Cairo, 1907). Also published in Arabic.
[66] For a full discussion of the effect of the Great War upon Asiatic and African peoples, see my book The Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy (New York and London, 1920).
[67] L. Massignon, "L'Islam et la Politique des Alliés," Revue des Sciences politiques, June, 1920.
[68] Sir T. Morison, "England and Islam," op. cit.
[69] For the Ikhwan movement, see P. W. Harrison, "The Situation in Arabia," Atlantic Monthly, December, 1920; S. Mylrea, "The Politico-Religious Situation in Arabia," The Moslem World, July, 1919.
[70] For the Salafî movement, see "Wahhabisme—Son Avenir sociale et le Mouvement salafî," Revue du Monde musulman, 1919.
[71] On the general subject of economic Pan-Islamism, see A. Le Chatelier, "Le Reveil de l'Islam—Sa Situation économique," Revue Économique internationale, July, 1910; also his article "Politique musulmane," Revue du Monde musulman, September, 1910; M. Pickthall, "La Morale islamique," Revue Politique internationale, July, 1916; S. Khuda Bukhsh, Essays: Indian and Islamic (London, 1912).
CHAPTER III
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.