The New World of Islam Part 7

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 _a 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 a.s.sumes 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 enfranchis.e.m.e.nt--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 a.s.sert 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.similation of Western ideas. The reactionaries can only delay this process, and thereby prolong the Orient's inferiority and weakness.

Nevertheless, the reactionary att.i.tude, 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 a.s.sistants 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 cla.s.ses, 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 mult.i.tudes around it than the dwellers on an island care for the fishes in the circ.u.mambient 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 att.i.tude is that of the superior, the master. This att.i.tude is not due to brutality or sn.o.bbery; 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 mult.i.tudes 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.suredly 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 a.s.sign 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-j.a.panese 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-cla.s.s 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 j.a.panese victories on northern India, where he was stationed at the time: "A stir of excitement pa.s.sed over the north of India. Even the remote villagers talked over the victories of j.a.pan as they sat in their circles and pa.s.sed 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-j.a.panese War did not create this new spirit, whose roots lay in the previous epoch of subtle changes that had been going on. The Russo-j.a.panese 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 att.i.tude 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 j.a.pan. Certainly our ultra-imperialists of the West were playing a dangerous game during the decade between 1904 and 1914. As Arminius Vambery 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 part.i.tioning 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 Vambery, _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 Vambery, _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 elites, see L. Bertrand, _Le Mirage Orientale_ (Paris, 1910); Cromer, _op. cit._; A. Metin, _L'Inde d'aujourd'hui: etude 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 indigene en Algerie_ (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. Vambery, _Western Culture in Eastern Lands_ (London, 1906); W. S. Blunt, _The Future of Islam_ (London, 1882); also the two articles by Leon Cahun on intellectual and social developments in the Islamic world during the nineteenth century in Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Generale_, Vol. XI., chap. xv.; Vol. XII., chap. xiv.

[88] See A. Vambery, _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'etat 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 att.i.tude 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.