We Occidentals have, in fact, never known "despotism," in its Simon Pure, Oriental sense; not even under the Roman Empire. Indeed, we can hardly conceive what it means. When we speak of a benevolent despot we usually think of the "enlightened autocrats" of eighteenth-century Europe, such as Frederick the Great. But these monarchs were not "despots" as Orientals understand it. Take Frederick, for example. He was regarded as absolute. But his subjects were not slaves. Those proud Prussian officers, starched bureaucrats, stiff-necked burghers, and stubborn peasants each had his sense of personal dignity and legal status. The unquestioning obedience which they gave Frederick was given not merely because he was their king, but also because they knew that he was the hardest-working man in Prussia and tireless in his devotion to the state. If Frederick had suddenly changed into a lazy, depraved, capricious tyrant, his "obedient" Prussians would have soon showed him that there were limits to his power.
In the Orient it is quite otherwise. In the East "there lies upon the eyes and foreheads of all men a law which is not found in the European decalogue; and this law runs: 'Thou shalt honour and worship the man whom God shall set above thee for thy King: if he cherish thee, thou shalt love him; and if he plunder and oppress thee thou shalt still love him, for thou art his slave and his chattel.'"[111] The Eastern monarch may immure himself in his harem, casting the burdens of state upon the shoulders of a grand vizier. This vizier has thenceforth limitless power; the life of every subject is in his hands. Yet, any evening, at the pout of a dancing-girl, the monarch may send from his harem to the vizier's palace a negro "mute," armed with the bowstring. And when that black mute arrives, the vizier, doffing his robe of office, and with neither question nor remonstrance, will bare his neck to be strangled. That is real despotism—the despotism that the East has known.
Such is the political tradition of the Orient. And it is surely obvious that under such a tradition neither ordered government nor consistent progress is possible. Eastern history is, in fact, largely a record of sudden flowerings and equally sudden declines. A strong, able man cuts his way to power in a period of confusion and decay. He must be strong and able, or he would not win over other men of similar nature struggling for the coveted prize. His energy and ability soon work wonders. He knows the rough-and-ready way of getting things done. His vigour and resolution supply the driving-power required to compel his subordinates to act with reasonable efficiency, especially since incompetence or dishonesty are punished with the terrible severity of the Persian king who flayed an unjust satrap alive and made the skin into the seat of the official chair on which the new satrap sat to administer justice.
While the master lives, things may go well. But the master dies, and is succeeded by his son. This son, even assuming that he has inherited much of his father's ability, has had the worst possible upbringing. Raised in the harem, surrounded by obsequious slaves and designing women, neither his pride nor his passions have been effectively restrained, and he grows up a pompous tyrant and probably precociously depraved. Such a man will not be apt to look after things as his father did. And as soon as the master's eye shifts, things begin to go to pieces. How can it be otherwise? His father built up no governmental machine, functioning almost automatically, as in the West. His officers worked from fear or personal loyalty; not out of a patriotic sense of duty or impersonal esprit de corps. Under the grandson, matters get even worse, power slips from his incompetent hands and is parcelled out among many local despots, of whom the strongest cuts his way to power, assuming that the decadent state is not overrun by some foreign conqueror. In either eventuality, the old cycle—David, Solomon, Rehoboam—is finished, and a new cycle begins—with the same destined end.
That, in a nutshell, is the political history of the East. It has, however, been modified or temporarily interrupted by the impact of more liberal political influences, exerted sometimes from special Eastern regions and sometimes from the West. Not all the Orient has been given over to unrelieved despotism. Here and there have been peoples (mostly mountain or pastoral peoples) who abhorred despotism. Such a people have always been the Arabs. We have already seen how the Arabs, fired by Islam, established a mighty caliphate which, in its early days, was a theocratic democracy. Of course we have also seen how the older tradition of despotism reasserted itself over most of the Moslem world, how the democratic caliphate turned into a despotic sultanate, and how the liberty-loving Arabs retired sullenly to their deserts. Political liberalism, like religious liberalism, was crushed and almost forgotten. Almost—not quite; for memories of the Meccan caliphate, like memories of Motazelism, remained in the back of men's minds, ready to come forth again with better days. After all, free Arabia still stood, with every Arab tribesman armed to the teeth to see that it kept free. And then, there was Islam. No court theologian could entirely explain away the fact that Mohammed had said things like "All Believers are brothers" and "All Moslems are free." No court chronicler could entirely expunge from Moslem annals the story of Islam's early days, known as the Wakti-Seadet, or "Age of Blessedness." Even in the darkest times Moslems of liberal tendencies must have been greatly interested to read that the first caliph, Abu Bekr, after his election by the people, said: "Oh nation! you have chosen me, the most unworthy among you, for your caliph. Support me as long as my actions are just. If otherwise, admonish me, rouse me to a sense of my duty. Truth alone is desirable, and lies are despicable.... As I am the guardian of the weak, obey me only so long as I obey the Sheriat [Divine Law]. But if you see that I deviate but in the minutest details from this law, you need obey me no more."[112]
In fine, no subsequent distortions could entirely obliterate the fact that primitive Islam was the supreme expression of a freedom-loving folk whose religion must necessarily contain many liberal tendencies. Even the sheriat, or canon law, is, as Professor Lybyer states, "fundamentally democratic and opposed in essence to absolutism."[113] Vambéry well summarizes this matter when he writes: "It is not Islam and its doctrines which have devastated the western portion of Asia and brought about the present sad state of things; but it is the tyranny of the Moslem princes, who have wilfully perverted the doctrines of the Prophet, and sought and found maxims in the Koran as a basis for their despotic rule. They have not allowed the faintest suspicion of doubt in matters of religion, and, efficaciously distorting and crushing all liberal principles, they have prevented the dawn of a Moslem Renaissance."[114]
In the opening chapter we saw how Oriental despotism reached its evil maximum in the eighteenth century, and how the Mohammedan Revival was not merely a puritan reformation of religion, but was also in part a political protest against the vicious and contemptible tyrants who misruled the Moslem world. This internal movement of political liberalism was soon cross-cut by another political current coming in from the West. Comparing the miserable decrepitude of the Moslem East with Europe's prosperity and vigour, thinking Moslems were beginning to recognize their shortcomings, and they could not avoid the conclusion that their woes were in large part due to their wretched governments. Indeed, a few even of the Moslem princes came to realize that there must be some adoption of Western political methods if their countries were to be saved from destruction. The most notable examples of this new type of Oriental sovereign were Sultan Mahmud II of Turkey and Mehemet Ali of Egypt, both of whom came to power about the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Of course none of these reforming princes had the slightest idea of granting their subjects constitutional liberties or of transforming themselves into limited monarchs. They intended to remain absolute, but absolute more in the sense of the "enlightened autocrat" of Europe and less in the sense of the purely Oriental despot. What they wanted were true organs of government—army, civil service, judiciary, etc.—which would function efficiently and semi-automatically as governmental machinery, and not as mere amorphous masses of individuals who had to be continuously prodded and punished by the sovereign in order to get anything done.
Mahmud II, Mehemet Ali, and their princely colleagues persisted in their new policies, but the outcome of these "reforms from above" was, on the whole, disappointing. The monarchs might build barracks and bureaux on European models and fill them with soldiers and bureaucrats in European clothes, but they did not get European results. Most of these "Western-type" officials knew almost nothing about the West, and were therefore incapable of doing things in Western fashion. In fact, they had small heart for the business. Devoid of any sort of enthusiasm for ideas and institutions which they did not comprehend, they applied themselves to the work of reform with secret ill-will and repugnance, moved only by blind obedience to their sovereign's command. As time passed, the military branches did gain some modern efficiency, but the civil services made little progress, adopting many Western bureaucratic vices but few or none of the virtues.
Meanwhile reformers of quite a different sort began to appear: men demanding Western innovations like constitutions, parliaments, and other phenomena of modern political life. Their numbers were constantly recruited from the widening circles of men acquainted with Western ideas through the books, pamphlets, and newspapers which were being increasingly published, and through the education given by schools on the Western model which were springing up. The third quarter of the nineteenth century saw the formation of genuine political parties in Turkey, and in 1876 the liberal groups actually wrung from a weak sultan the grant of a parliament.