CHAPTER 14
The Logic of Empire: French Africa
Even as the term “imperialist” came into current use in European political language, the progress of direct European rule in Islamic countries was coming to an end. The 1880s were devoted to the conquest and partitioning of sub- Saharan Africa. European competition had shifted geographically; new actors existed, Belgium and Germany in particular, but Russia was notably absent. It was completing the consolidation of its hold on central Asia. The division of Africa was formalized by the Conference of Berlin in 1884 and by a series of border- defining accords concluded in the following years.
France had the most at stake in sub- Saharan Muslim Africa. Its penetration followed two major axes. The first began at the African Atlantic coast, advancing inexorably to the east, while the second originated in the North African possessions, reaching the colonies of sub- Saharan Africa through the conquest of the Sahara. The logic of French policy was to occupy the “empty spaces” on the geographical map and thus form an enormous bloc. The agents on the ground were not the same along the two axes. The Army of Africa, its officers coming from Native Affairs, carried out the Saharan penetration, whereas colonial troops, especially naval forces, advanced into sub- Saharan Africa. When they united in the Sahel regions, a certain tension arose between these military forces with different cultures and approaches. Both columns sometimes recorded bloody defeats, even total destruction.
The conquerors of the Sahara saw themselves as peacemakers and were supported by a certain number of Tuareg elements. The formation of the Mehari troops gave rise to a specific mythology, the greatest examples of which could later be found in the novels of Pierre Benoît and in Joseph Peyré’s White Squadron. These works contain an apologia for the adventure and for the personal dynamism specific to the new colonial ethos. In sub- Saharan Africa, colonial officers supervised troops levied locally, particularly the famous Senegalese infantry, and did not hesitate to use terror to establish their authority over the local populations. The two columns joined together in about 1900, but pacification would take a few more years. In 1895, French West Africa was created. The constitution of French Equatorial Africa was understandably delayed, until 1910. On the eve of World War I, fighting was still going on in the deserts of Chad and Mauritania.
A new order was installed, with a ban on raids and the gradual abolition of slavery. Although that penetration also aspired to open the region economically, it destroyed the elements of a centuries- old economy, that of the black slave trade and raids. The dream of establishing a trans- Saharan railroad took hold, but it was a pure colonial fantasy, its profitability being almost nil.
According to specialists in Native Affairs, the soul of the resistance came from the major religious brotherhoods. The enemy most often named was the Sanusiyya, a brotherhood whose actions extended into the Saharan zone. It was seen as “an extremely active religious propaganda group tending to muster the Islamic races against the invasion of the Western powers. That unrest could easily reach Algeria and compromise our domination there” (report of Commander Alfred Le Châtelier in 1888).1 More than ever before, the conquest was accompanied by the development of a colonial ethnography, which classified populations into ethnic and religious groups and determined real or virtual enemies. The brotherhoods were portrayed as the expression and instrument of the pan- Islamist threat, whose secret ringleaders were in the Ottoman Empire, close to Hamidian circles of power.
At the political level, French colonial activities were divided among several agencies— the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior (for Algeria), the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of the Colonies— setting in place a specific French model. Although the colonial conquest was considered a matter of prestige and power in the aftermath of the defeat of 1870– 1871, there were no colonial mass movements in France equivalent to the large British and German colonial leagues. The “colonial party” was a pressure group with decision- making power, and it recruited from all social strata: Parliament, the military, diplomatic circles, academia, public relations, commerce. It set up institutions such as the Société de Géographie de Paris and the Comité de l’Afrique Française, created in 1890. That allowed it to define programs of action and to constitute more specific pressure groups devoted to precise geographic zones, such as the Comité de l’Égypte (1895) and the Comité du Maroc (1902).
Parallel to the conquest of the Sahara, the penetration of Moroccan territory, little known except for its coastal fringes, got under way. Military explorers such as Charles de Foucauld and Alfred Le Châtelier mapped the regions concerned and proceeded to inventory the tribes and brotherhoods. From their positions in the Sahara, French officers toiled to turn these regions into a French zone of influence. Around 1884, it seemed for a moment that the conquest of Morocco was about to begin, but the historical circumstances of European diplomacy conspired against it. In the early 1890s, the nibbling away of eastern Morocco resumed, and France expressed with increasing clarity its desire to complete the conquest of the Maghreb. The other European powers opposed France, though they implied that the affair could be settled within the framework of a vast bargaining session.
While constantly expanding its African dominion, France consolidated its domination over North Africa. The advent of the Third Republic ratified the victory of the settlers over the military forces, who aspired to be the paternalistic protectors of the Arab population. The Government of National Defense accepted the principal claims of the settlers, with the nine decrees of October 24, 1870. These decrees naturalized Algerian Jews, who suddenly became French citizens. The government also transformed Algeria into three French departments falling under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior and represented in French parliamentary assemblies.
The French defeat in Europe (in the Franco- Prussian War) was accompanied by a Kabyle uprising in March 1871. The repression was extremely harsh, and the confiscations of land dispossessed the native populations. An underlying colonial fear became a permanent part of the makeup of the so- called European population, which demanded a general policy of control over the Muslims. That policy consisted of a patchwork of rules determined by the local authorities and culminated in the law of June 28, 1881, known as the Native Code, which gave local administrators full power over the indigenous peoples. The rural population was subjected to a quasi- dictatorship. In addition, the tax system was completely inequitable, benefiting primarily the European population.
In 1892, Jules Ferry, heading a senatorial investigation committee, pronounced a merciless but ineffectual indictment of the Algerian situation:
It is difficult to make the European settler understand that there are other rights besides his own in Arab territory, and that the natives do not constitute a race ready to do its master’s bidding. . . . If violence is not in the actions, it is in the language and feelings. We have the sense that an unappeased torrent of rancor, contempt, and fear is still roaring in [the settler’s] heart of hearts. Very few settlers are instilled with the mission of education and civilization belonging to the superior race; even fewer believe in any possible improvement of the vanquished race. They outdo each other proclaiming that race incorrigible and uneducable, without having attempted in thirty years to wrest it from moral and intellectual destitution. . . . The settlers do not have general ideas about the conduct to assume with the natives. They barely understand any policy other than containment toward those three million men. They probably do not envision destroying them and even deny wanting to repress them; but they are concerned neither with [the natives’] complaints nor with their numbers, which seem to increase with their poverty. They have a sense of potential peril, but they take no measures to fend it off.2
Ferry would not hear of political rights for the natives, who needed only a strong and just power, and he favored reestablishing the authority of the governor- general of Algeria, named by the metropolis and standing above local influences.
To give added weight to the European population, a systematic policy was conducted to favor French naturalization of European (especially Spanish) immigrants. The law of June 26, 1889, instituted the automatic naturalization of every foreign European born in the country. With that “fusion of races” and “Creolization,” a specific French population was constituted: in 1896 the number of Europeans born in Algeria for the first time exceeded that of European immigrants.
The fusion of European races was also a rejection of the Muslim element. Both the settlers and the administration rejected naturalization of the indigenous peoples through the acquisition of European civil status. Those Muslims who might have been tempted also met with the radical hostility of their coreligionists, who considered the renunciation of Muslim personal status a betrayal of Islam. Algerian Jews were in an intermediate position. They had European civil status (those who rejected the Crémieux decree of 1870 had sought exile in Syria, settling near the Algerian Muslims of Emir Abd al- Qadir) and full political rights, and they participated both in Arab culture and in French culture. But in that world of de facto separation, they did not play any role as mediators.
Algeria did not project a favorable image of French policy. Tunisia was the showcase for what was called the colonial policy of association. The Tunisian state was kept in place, and French officials merely “oversaw” the native administration. Consular jurisdictions were abolished. The tax system was gradually transformed. The protectorate did not seem to be encountering major opposition.
The Tunisian protectorate made it possible to evade the question of political representation for the European population. The settlers protested in 1890 and demanded advantages equivalent to those of the French population of Algeria. The residency granted a concession by agreeing to the constitution of French chambers of agriculture and commerce, but their duties remained consultative and economic in nature. The essential political question was still the Italian presence. The Italians, who outnumbered the French three to one, were not encouraged to ask for French nationality, and the Italian government urged them to keep their original identity.
The apparent success of French policy in Tunisia allowed for a clearer definition of the doctrine of association, in contrast to that of assimilation. The repercussions of the Dreyfus Affair in Algeria launched the debate anew. The European population was overtaken by a wave of anti- Semitism of unprecedented severity. In 1898, actual riots took place, and anti- Semitic candidates won the elections. Some settlers went so far as to call for autonomy or even independence from the metropolis.
The Third Republic then conducted an intelligent policy, granting the three Algerian departments financial autonomy and a local assembly (known as the “financial delegations”), even as they increased the power of the general government. A local Muslim uprising reignited colonial fear and put an end to separatist temptations.
Although one section of the financial delegations was created to represent the native peoples, the delegates were elected by a very small voter base (fifteen thousand electors) and were carefully controlled by the administration, giving rise to their nickname, “Béni oui- oui” (Yes- men). The French doctrine became that of an association of Muslims within the assimilation of Algeria to France.
In 1900, Robert de Caix, spokesman for the Comité de l’Afrique Française, perfectly expressed the views of the colonial world. By nature, he said, colonialism produced an aristocracy vis- à- vis the native populations. When there was a large European population, there was no possibility of merging with the native peoples but only of coexisting with them. The model of the declining Roman Empire, with the Edict of Caracalla of the year 212 making all free men citizens, was out of the question:
If we confer political rights on our Muslim subjects, we plunge our entire achievement, our entire Algerian colonization, into chaos. . . . If, conversely, without giving them these dangerous rights, we make the natives subject to legislation, to a procedure, to an administration designed for French people, we fall into another theoretical error committed by the supporters of assimilation, which allowed the practices in Algeria that have come to light in certain legal proceedings. With such a system, the native is exploited by the European, whom that very exploitation corrupts. . . . To ward off that danger, we must have an administration of natives that does not mix with that of the Europeans. In a word, we must accept the existence in our colonial territory of different personal statuses. No doubt the rigidity of our administrative logic is loath to do that; but let us not invoke our character as Latins to deny ourselves the capacity for political adaptation. Whether we are or are not Latins is a very disputable matter; but if we are, we descend from a people who ruled the world while accepting all local circumstances, all social, ethnic, and religious diversity. The Roman Empire was unified in its rule, but very heterogeneous in the various regimes of persons; it was only during its decline that it effected a legal fusion by granting the status of Roman citizen in an unlimited manner. A nation like our own, possessing an empire, must tell itself that there is no viable imperial policy that can fail to encompass, accept in practice, and even put to use the diversities of which we have just spoken. If we fail to recognize that truth . . . we run the risk, first and foremost, of introducing unrest, disorganization, in the native populations in the various parts of our empire; but above all, we risk later losing that empire and being overtaken by the subjected peoples. Perhaps that theory will be found very aristocratic, but there is no reconciling imperial policy with the exportation of democracy.3
Such was the French dilemma. The strong tendency of French culture was toward assimilation, but it clashed with the realities of settlement colonies. The not unrealistic fear of being thrown back into the sea gave rise to the institutionalized violence of the Native Code and fed colonial racism, which created an authoritarian paternalism. Once again, colonialism culminated in a regression of values. The native had to “know his place,” which was subordinate to that of the settlers. Inexorably, France reproduced in the colonial construct its old interpretation of the nature of the ancien régime as a product of conquest and the juxtaposition of races.
The Logic of Empire: England in Egypt
Whereas France was concerned with constituting a huge African bloc with the primary and avowed motive of preserving its rank as a major power, Great Britain confined itself to the desire to control the Indian route. True, certain great imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes set forth the grandiose plan of establishing territorial continuity between Egypt and Capetown; but by the end of the century, efforts focused primarily on the southern part of Africa and culminated in the Boer War.
The occupation of Egypt conformed to that logic of control. Originally declared provisional, it based its legitimacy on the need to bring about reforms before making any other decisions. These reforms were not political in the liberal sense, since the British had intervened to put an end to the national Egyptian movement, which embraced constitutionalism. Despite a first discourse on establishing “institutions favorable for the development of freedom” (Dufferin report of 1883), the matter at hand was to restore public security and punish those responsible for the revolt, while reestablishing the khedive’s formal authority. Beyond that, it was necessary to put Egyptian finances in order to assure debt payments to the Europeans and to institute a viable state.
In that dual program, Evelyn Baring, the future Lord Cromer, British agent general and consul from 1883 to 1907, clashed with the other European powers. The Caisse de la Dette Publique (Commission of the Public Debt), dominated by the French, rejected the British monopoly. Backed by the capitulations, the European powers conducted a policy of harassment, called the “pinprick” policy. The war fronts were reversed: the British wanted to put an end to the capitulations, an obstacle for good management, while the Egyptians defended them to hold onto their room for maneuvering against the omnipotence of the unauthorized occupiers. As for France, though it discreetly supported the Egyptian nationalists, it made the internationalization of Egypt its battle cry. Renan theorized it, asserting that Egypt was not a nation but the stakes of competing interests. “A region that is so important to the rest of the world cannot belong to itself; it is neutralized for the benefit of humanity; the nationality principle meets its death there.”
French diplomacy had a partial success with the convention of Constantinople on the international status of the Suez Canal (1888), but the British would apply the convention only with reservations.
Interest in Islam increased with the Sudanese revolt against Egyptian domination. The death of Gordon Pasha on January 26, 1885, was the occasion for great anxiety, as Renan noted:
The dangerous cyclones that central Africa will periodically produce, ever since we were so rash as to leave it Muslim, were repressed. European science had free rein in a country that in some sense fell into its hands as a field of study and experimentation. But some consequences ought to have been brought to bear on that excellent plan. There was an imperative not to weaken a dynasty by means of which the tip of Europe’s sword penetrated almost to the equator. Above all, it was imperative to keep an eye on Al- Azhar Mosque, the center from which Muslim propaganda has spread to Africa as a whole. When isolated and given over to fetishism, the Sudanese races amount to very little; but, when converted to Islam, they become hotbeds of intense fanaticism. For lack of foresight, an Arabia was allowed to form west of the Nile that is much more dangerous than the real Arabia.4
Great Britain could therefore justify its presence by the need to counter the Sudanese Islamic threat and to eliminate the risk of a contagion of fanaticism. But the immediate danger came from Europe, with the colonial penetration into sub- Saharan Africa. A French column might therefore be able to establish its presence on the Nile, and the French government clearly expressed its intention of doing so. Gabriel Hanotaux, minister of foreign affairs from 1894 to 1898, pressed for the reopening of the Egypt question. The Marchand Mission was launched in summer 1896 and arrived at the Nile, in Fachoda, on July 10, 1898.
That mission precipitated Britain’s decision to reconquer Sudan. An Anglo- Egyptian army, under the leadership of Sir Herbert Kitchener, marched on Khartoum. It crushed the Mahdists at the Battle of Omdurman on September 1, 1898. The mortal remains of al- Mahdī were profaned to avenge Gordon’s death. Kitchener rushed to Fachoda and demanded that the French depart. It was a major international crisis. French public opinion was in an uproar, but the French government gave in.
Within France, the nationalist right, until then hostile to the idea of colonial expansion— for fear of seeing the Alsace- Lorraine question abandoned— was finally won over. Colonials such as Robert de Caix were ready to envision an alliance with Germany against Great Britain, given the state of power relations: “It has never appeared more clearly that diplomacy is much less the representation of laws than the power of influence, so to speak. When we have such power on our side, we will certainly find an excellent legal argument for reopening the Egypt question.”5
Sudan became an Anglo- Egyptian condominium in which Egypt paid and England administered. Under the cover of restoring Egyptian authority, a new Islamic region fell under direct European domination.
As for the rest, it seemed that British domination would have to continue automatically, since the work of reform to be undertaken was enormous, given that the colonizers retained the khedivial state and British actions were carried out by advisers established in sensitive areas. According to Lord Cromer, the governance of a half- civilized people was a long- term moral mission. The British were there for the good of the masses, who had to be lifted up materially and spiritually from their present abjection. Islam was more than a religion; it was a social system totally unsuited to the modern world. It was impossible to reform because it would thereby cease to exist. Hence his famous formulation, “Reformed Islam is Islam no longer.” The authentic Easterner did not want to be reformed, because he knew that to change even moderately would completely transform his understanding of the world. In assimilating civilization, Islam ran the risk of succumbing: hence its resistance to modernity. There were some shining exceptions, including Lord Cromer’s friend Muhammad Abduh, who recognized the need for European assistance in the reform process. Cromer suspected he was agnostic or at least a philosopher, that is, someone who knew how to discern the difference between the seventh and the twentieth century. In point of fact, every Europeanized Muslim Egyptian was an agnostic. Access to modernity meant being uprooted and losing one’s traditional values, resulting in a dubious morality, especially if one did not convert to Christianity, the source of morality and civilization. It would take several generations for Egypt to be capable of governing itself. The British therefore had to remain for Egypt’s own good, despite the ingratitude of the population.
Anglo- Egyptians developed the tendency, already observed among the AngloIndians, of increasingly separating themselves from the population they were administering, and especially, from its modernized elites. Even while championing modernizing reforms, they rejected the results, which would have run the risk of reducing the distance between the conquerors and the conquered. They rejected a cultural policy of Anglicization and allowed the Francophone schools to train the new generations of the elite. That allowed the British to assert that the Gallicized Egyptian had all the vices of the French along with all those of the Egyptians, without any of their virtues. The pashas of Turkish origin were perceived with somewhat more indulgence, since they still had some of their original dynamism as conquerors. Duplicity, in combination with immorality, was characteristic of the modern Egyptian.
Two applications developed out of the cult of authenticity. The first was directed at the most traditional population possible, for whom the British administrator was sacrificing himself. That included the Sudanese and the Bedouins. The second application adopted the idea of a slow accession to modernity, thanks to an evolution within a preserved but purified authenticity. For the time being, the interpretation of the world by British colonials, even more than that by French colonials, was based on neo- feudal values: the justice of the ruler and the loyalty- fidelity of the ruled. In some sense, political reform was supposed to reproduce the European feudal process, relying on a progressive attribution of rights on the model of the Magna Carta. For Egypt, that would mean educating the population while accustoming them to local management of their own affairs.
The contradiction specific to the British was that they saw their colonials as a service aristocracy devoted to the good of the populations, whom they initiated into freedom by slowly reproducing the European trajectory, which had begun in the forests of Germania; yet the British were in fact the agents of a military despotism with increasingly technocratic aims.
A portion of the Egyptian elite, particularly among Abduh’s disciples, was receptive to that theme of reforms to be undertaken, especially since Cromer provided some support in their battle against the most conservative elements of society. What they appreciated about British policy was the great freedom of expression that was granted them. At the end of the century, Egypt became an active laboratory of ideas, because censorship was practically nonexistent in that country, unlike in the large independent Muslim states. Conversely, the Egyptian nationalists pointed out the contradictions of British discourse: if the reforms were achieved, the British would have to leave; if they were not achieved, it was because they were ineffective, and therefore the British would have to leave.
The Ottoman Empire, or the Conjunction of Empires
In the wake of the Eastern crisis, Abdülhamid’s regime focused on a policy of reconsolidating the empire on the basis of a modernizing Muslim authoritarianism. In an empire where the share of the Muslim population had grown considerably, with the loss of the Balkan provinces and the continuous influx of Muslim refugees, there was a revival of caliphal as well as Islamic influence. At the same time, the authorities continuously developed the tools of modernity: an administration with an economic development plan; a private and public education system oriented toward the new disciplines; and a strengthening of the means of communication, such as the railroads and the telegraph network.
Integration into Europe advanced with the completion of the Orient Express, which put the Ottoman capital three days from Paris (1888). At that date, European Turkey was part of the European railroad system as a whole, whereas the Asian networks were discontinuous, consisting of lines between the coast and the interior.
Integration was also domination since, after the bankruptcy of 1881, the Caisse de la Dette Publique was set in place. It allowed the empire to restore its credit, at the price of foreign control over a considerable share of state resources. Lack of financial means was the principal weakness of a state whose responsibilities were continually increasing and that, to assure its survival, had to maintain large military forces. Citing the capitulations, the European powers opposed any increase in customs duties, which would also have made possible the beginning of industrialization. To assure its development, the empire, which in any case could not oppose it, became completely open to foreign investment, particularly in the communication infrastructures (ports, lighthouses, railroads). These investments strengthened both the empire’s cohesiveness and the foreign presence. In them, the state found another means of survival, since the chief European powers now had a direct interest in maintaining the empire. France was its first investor; Great Britain its first commercial partner. Britain had to deal with growing competition from imperial Germany.
Abdülhamid was particularly interested in the Arab provinces. He catered to Muslim identity and opened the doors of the administration and the army to Arab Muslim elites. A subtle play of influences was exerted at the local level. The European powers had given up the Muslims’ consular protections. (France conducted a rearguard action on its Algerian subjects.) Political dialogue took place between the consuls and governors, men of law and order. The principal risk was that religious violence would resurface. In the event of an incident, the consuls took responsibility for their protected Christians and Jews, the governor for the Muslim notables. Their common desire was to defuse the crisis while saving face on both sides. That first balance of power combined with struggles for influence among the Europeans. England was handicapped by the absence of a religious protectorate and of a cultural policy; for the most part, it was preoccupied with its commercial interests and the security of the Indian route. It therefore showed a special interest in Mesopotamia, an extension of the Gulf dominated by the Anglo- Indians, and in Persia, the stopover point for a Russian advance toward the Indian Ocean.
The Franco- Russian alliance of 1891 marked an important change. On the ground, competition remained keen between the two partners, but Paris and Saint Petersburg acted in concert to prevent any violent confrontation between Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Russia was competing with Greece for Orthodox churches. The high- ranking clergy, recruited from among the monks, was ethnically Greek, whereas the low- ranking clergy and the ordinary faithful were Arabs. The Arabs protested the domination of the Greeks and received Russia’s support. Violent conflicts erupted around episcopal and patriarchal elections.
The Uniate Catholics were supported by the Latin missionaries, who were overwhelmingly French. Leo XIII proved favorable to the cause of Eastern rites and called a halt to their Latinization, but his successor, Pius X, went in the other direction. The end of the nineteenth century was the golden age for French missionaries, particularly in the field of teaching. Their more or less avowed dream was to re- create in the East a French Catholic Christendom uncontaminated by so- called modern ideas. They had at their disposal financing from the French Catholics, thanks in particular to the work of the Eastern schools, but also to subsidies from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, approved on an annual basis and not without debate by a majority Republican parliament. For the Republicans, the French language was the natural vehicle for human emancipation, as Renan told the congress of the Alliance Française in 1888: “Everywhere the French go . . . the Revolution will ride behind them in the back seat. You mustn’t have too much revolution, I know; but there are many countries in the world where, in certain doses, it would still do some good. Let’s not press for it; but let our little bugle do its job. At certain times, who knows how, it turns into the trumpets of Jericho.”6
By about 1880, French was by far the chief foreign language used in the empire. Several factors explain the birth of Eastern Francophonism. The state and society needed a language that would provide access to modernity. The Ottoman reformers were recruited from diplomatic circles, where French was the professional language, and they had a tendency to impose it in the reformed sectors of the administration. The Catholic missions and the Alliance Israélite Universelle made French the primary language of private instruction. Non- Muslims, the first clients of that education, benefited from their privileged access, but the Muslims followed. Public secondary education and the non- Catholic Christian schools thus contributed a great deal to the use of French.
Only the American Protestant missionary schools could really compete with the French schools in Syria and Anatolia, but since 1880 they had often served as a first stop on the way to emigration to North America. In that early globalization prior to 1914, the populations of the Ottoman Empire widely participated in the great human migration from the Old World to the new countries (North and South America, South Africa, Australia). That emigration was primarily Christian and came in response to the overpopulation of their own communities (the number of Christians was growing much faster than that of the Muslims), resulting in a large- scale rural exodus from the mountain zones. By contrast, the Muslim peasants were very active in the development of new lands taken from the Bedouins’ domains.
The eastern Mediterranean metropolises moved to the rhythm of the world. They were the expression of Europe’s openness and the starting point for intercontinental migrations. They became centers of culture. The study of French was accompanied by a vast translation movement with encyclopedic ambitions. The Eastern literary renaissances were inseparable from that movement and from the creation of so- called modern literary languages linked to the printing of newspapers and particularly active magazines.
Eastern Francophonism arose through that conjuncture of supply and demand. The mobile civilization proper to the Eastern Mediterranean gave a new meaning to the word “Levant.” With great pride, the French publicists (but not the diplomats) spoke of a France of the Levant consisting of islets from Salonika to Alexandria and including Galata, Smyrna, and Beirut. That Levant was not only on the coast but existed wherever missions were involved in education, within the context of a demand for access to modernity.
The French were touched by that spontaneous adoption of their culture, often framed by the conservative interpretation of the Catholic missions. They were ready to see it as the voluntary choice of a French identity, especially since the consuls liberally granted consular protection to non- Muslims. By contrast, that Levantine growth appeared to be almost an abomination to the British, who considered it immoral and unnatural. According to Cromer, the ethnological status of the Levantine individual could not even be properly assessed. The British traveler developed a cult of authenticity based on the rejection of Levantine corruption. The idealization of the pure Bedouin Arab became a central element of the Anglo- Arab saga.
The New Eastern Crises
During that period, the chief originality of the Arab provinces within the Ottoman Empire as a whole was that they did not move in the direction of ethnic conflict. Hamidian policy strengthened Islamic and Ottoman identity, and the Arab literary renaissance was the joint achievement of the Christian and Muslim Levantines. As a result, that sense of identity, of belonging, developed unopposed between the Ottoman frame of reference (the only one besides religion to have a legal definition), the Arab frame of reference, which was cultural in nature, and the Syrian frame of reference, which was geographical. The process of constituting a specific national identity seemed to have been halted.
The same was not true in the rest of the empire, where nationalism combined irremediably with religion. The religious cleavage prevailed over the linguistic: a Muslim whose native tongue was Greek or a Slavic language would not be considered Greek or Slavic but rather a Muslim who had betrayed his (supposed) native people. A Turkophone Armenian would be defined as Armenian and not Turkish. Territorialization was accompanied by the adoption of a revolutionary outlook.
Armenian nationalism, based on the transformation of the religious community into an ethnic identity, lagged behind that of the Balkans. The Treaty of Berlin (article 61) spoke of “improvements and reforms” to be applied “in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians,” whose security would have to be guaranteed against the Circassians and Kurds. That rather weak pledge marked the confusion between two problems: that of the coexistence of populations in eastern Anatolia— where the resurgence of agriculture clashed with pastoralism, and where Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the Balkans were setting down roots; and that of the territorialization of Armenian claims, beyond the status of a religious community.
Like the Syrian provinces, Anatolia went through a time of unrest in the early 1880s. The Kurds organized to reject the constitution of an Armenian state. This period was followed by a crackdown, with a policy for integrating the Kurds similar to that conducted for the Arabs. In the early 1890s, the revolutionary Armenian nationalist militants attempted to organize the peasants against the Kurds. In spring 1894, unrest erupted between Kurds and Armenians. The central power saw it as the beginning of an uprising that would trigger a new Eastern crisis. The regular army was sent in to impose a harsh repression on the Armenians. Mobilized by sympathizers for the Armenian cause, European public opinion raised its voice. The Porte had to accept a consular committee of inquiry, which, even while acknowledging the existence of Armenian revolutionary movements, primarily denounced the excesses of the repression. Projects for reforming the Anatolian vilayets (provinces) were again launched, on the model of the autonomous province of Mount Lebanon, with a division of “the populations into ethnographic groups that are as homogeneous as possible,” that is, the beginning of Balkanization.
Abdülhamid equivocated and tried to stir dissension among the European powers. Russia was wary of the contagion of Armenian autonomist movements, and France believed that its interest lay in preserving the Ottoman political structure. Only Great Britain was on top of the matter.
In early autumn 1895, the revolutionary militants held demonstrations and sparked disturbances in Istanbul, to force the great powers to intervene in favor of the Armenian reforms. Clashes with the law forces ensued, and the Muslim population attacked the Armenians, causing many deaths. On October 16, the sultan gave in to European pressure and announced a program of reforms. In the following days, eastern Anatolia erupted in an outburst of violence between religious communities, leading to tens of thousands of dead. The official Ottoman position provoked spontaneous violence when the reform program was announced. The Armenians accused the imperial palace of premeditated organization of the violence, but that does not tally with Abdülhamid’s cautiousness and with the fact that certain regions were spared the unrest. It appears that most of the responsibility lay with the Anatolian Muslim populations threatening open rebellion against the central authority.
After a relatively calm period in early 1896, the Armenian revolutionaries launched an attack against the central headquarters of the Ottoman Bank (funded by Franco- English capital) and took hostages, to force the Europeans to intervene once again. Although the revolutionaries evacuated the premises and were transported to France, thanks to the intervention of European diplomats, the event gave rise to a new outbreak of violence in Constantinople, producing several thousand Armenian dead. In the European press, the “red sultan” who massacred Christians became a popular image.
The Europeans once again found themselves at an impasse. They naturally considered deposing the sultan, but that would have done nothing to resolve the problem. The recent evolution had made the Ottoman state the instrument of European action. Should that instrument fail, the Europeans would have no other means available. Gunboat diplomacy would not allow them to resolve the question of eastern Anatolia. It would take a true partitioning of the empire, which the Russians were considering; but for Great Britain, that once again raised the question of the Indian route, and for France that of the security of its economic investments.
European paralysis allowed the Hamidian regime to survive, at the terrible cost of destroying the mechanisms of coexistence among the different communities in Anatolia. Distrust and hostility took root, and the authors of violent acts became heroes in each of the communities. At any time, after the slightest incident, all of Anatolia could sink into murderous violence. This consisted less of state action against an ethnic- religious minority (though a large portion of the administration was complicitous with the violence or passive in regards to it) than of mindless conflict between so- called civil societies.
In the Balkans, the dissolution went even further. The Christians split into ethnic groups on the basis of language. Balkan Orthodoxy, therefore, was divided between “patriarchist Greeks” (those who recognized the authority of the patriarchate of Constantinople) and “exarchist Bulgarians” (those who recognized the authority of the Bulgarian exarchate). In this new phase of Balkanization, religious violence between Muslims and Christians combined with ethnic violence between Christian groups. The Macedonian Revolutionary Organization earned the Bulgarians infamy.
Ottoman Macedonia (the vilayets of Kosovo, Monastir, and Salonika) had many ethnic groups and sects, and more than ever, “Macedonia” became the synonym for a heterogeneous mixture. The Christian Orthodox Balkan states (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania) all had interests in the region, given their historical rights and ethnic kinship. Each of them more or less clandestinely supported secret terrorist societies, which in the late nineteenth century attacked the other communities’ public and religious buildings, as well as civilians. It was in the Macedonia of the 1890s that modern terrorism clearly had its origin (the sacking of entire villages, abductions for ransom, holdups, the torching of mosques and churches, attacks against the Orient Express). In fact, Armenian nationalists were inspired by the methods of Bulgarian terrorists. The Armenian “fedayi” followed the model of the terrible Macedonian “komitadji,” and like them saw themselves as revolutionaries.
The Armenian crisis relaunched the question of Crete. Muslims and Christians were combating and massacring one another. In 1897, the Christian insurgents proclaimed the return of Crete to Greece and arranged for a Greek expeditionary corps to be sent out. The authorities intervened with a naval demonstration: they demanded the autonomy of Crete within the Ottoman framework and the departure of the Greek troops. Urged on by the nationalists, the Greek government declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1897. The Ottoman army easily crushed the Greek troops, but the European powers imposed an armistice immediately.
Territorially, this was another Ottoman setback, since the autonomy of Crete quickly became quasi- independence, which would lead to the island’s return to the kingdom of Greece. The Cretan Muslims, usually Hellenophones, fled the island and swelled the refugee contingent in Anatolia. Politically, however, the Ottoman victory, the first for decades over a Christian power, was universally hailed in the Muslim world, even in India and China, to the great displeasure of the European powers. The prestige of the sultan- caliph was at its height. Nevertheless, the effective loss of Crete encouraged the Christian nationalists of Macedonia to increase their violent activism. The Macedonian question came to be the order of the day in European chancelleries. In 1902, the Bulgarians launched a true uprising, which the Ottoman army had difficulty containing. The Europeans pushed the need for “new reforms” that would place the region under financial oversight. Abdülhamid equivocated. In exchange for an increase in customs duties, he had to accept expanded European financial control of the entire empire.
Within the context of the European balance of powers, the events of 1878– 1882 produced considerable changes. Although Russia remained the hereditary enemy, France, which had seized Tunisia, and Great Britain, which had taken Cyprus and Egypt, were no longer considered the protectors of the empire, as they had been during the Crimean War. Abdülhamid turned to the new Germany, which had not publicly claimed to have territorial ambitions at the expense of the Ottomans. In the 1880s, the sultan appealed to German military advisers to reorganize the Ottoman army, and they stood as the architects of the victory over Greece.
Bismarck had proved wary of any involvement in the Eastern questions, which he primarily used to make Germany the arbiter of European disputes. Wilhelm II, conversely, encouraged that political rapprochement, which corresponded to the growing role of his country in the commerce of the Ottoman Empire. At the start of his reign in 1888, Wilhelm made a first visit to the sultan, but the German emperor was still under Bismarck’s sway. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem in autumn 1898 unfolded under the auspices of Germany’s need to find “a place in the sun” within the global policy framework. Wilhelm II stayed for more than a month and did not confine himself to diplomatic and religious activity. He appealed to Muslim public opinion, particularly during his trip to Damascus to visit Saladin’s tomb at the Umayyad mosque: “The three million Muslims living in the world must know that they have their best friend in me.”
That appeal to the Muslim world as a whole, its population without question greatly overestimated, was taken as an encouragement of pan- Islamism. The first concrete result was the concession given to Germany to build a railroad from Istanbul to Baghdad, which immediately became the object of European rivalries. For Great Britain, the concession called into doubt its own economic domination of Mesopotamia and the Gulf. The first reaction of the British was to establish a protectorate over Kuwait, in order to bar access to the Gulf by the future railroad, but the engineers demonstrated that the railroad could still reach the sea from Basra and the Shatt al- Arab.
The Germans, short on capital, hoped to obtain the participation of the French and the British, but that turned out to be impossible. The result was a failure to establish European consortia for developing the Ottoman Empire and a strong tendency to constitute economic and hence political zones of influence.
The final balance sheet of the Hamidian regime is mixed. The last great sultan managed to strengthen the state and developed a modernizing administration. The loss of territories was limited, to Crete essentially. A complex relationship took root between strengthening the central power’s authority over the provinces and expanding financial and economic oversight of the empire by Europe. The Macedonian and Armenian crises called into question the difficult internal compromises of Anatolian and Balkan society. Although the nationalism with territorial aims of the Christian communities was the product of developments within the populations, their political strategy was to incite tensions in order to provoke a European rescue mission. Despite the protests of certain components of European public opinion, the logic of the European balance of powers now made it impossible to undertake a new territorial dismemberment similar to that of the Congress of Berlin. In addition, the Ottoman political structure, which allowed an almost total openness of the Ottoman space to European interests, appeared of more interest to the great powers than a fragmentation of that space into national states or colonies, which would have been less accessible to them.