CHAPTER 15
Islam and Revolution: Persia
In the 1890s, a portion of Ottoman society shifted toward a revolutionary outlook, but that faction consisted for the most part of nationalist Christian militants. In traditional Islamic political thought, the idea of revolution was considered a negative, since it shattered the unity of the community (or of society). The reformists of the years 1870– 1880 had instead adopted a critique of the existing political system, defined as “despotic,” and had sought to Islamize European liberal constitutional discourse. The sultan agreed to the Ottoman constitution of 1876, even though it was the result of a coup d’état, and he retained major powers in accordance with it. Although the constitution was later suspended, it remained part of the Ottoman legal codes. By contrast, in the Ottoman Empire as in Persia, any reference to “revolution” was strictly banned by official censorship, especially at the end of the century.
It was in Persia, precisely because modernization was less advanced there and the state weaker, that the first revolutionary Muslim tendencies arose. That is, modernizing intellectuals again found themselves part of a popular movement of which they were not the only organizers. Shah Nasir al- Dīn had shown a certain interest in reformist ideas and had spent time in Europe and Russia, where he was impressed with modern achievements.
After the failure of the concession granted to Julius von Reuter, British diplomacy did not wait long to ask for new concessions. Some were granted them. This time, Jamal al- Dīn al- Afghani worked to unite the reformist opposition to European encroachments with the opposition of the clergy. Secret societies formed. In 1891, Afghani was expelled from Persia. His followers focused their attacks on the tobacco monopoly, which had just been granted to a British company. The theme was particularly popular, since this was no longer a modern activity such as the railroads, created with foreign capital, but a traditional sector that affected thousands of peasants and small tradespeople. The clergy rallied behind the protest, and a mass movement spearheaded a boycott on the consumption of tobacco. In early 1892, in the face of popular demonstrations, the government was forced to cancel the concession, at the cost of heavy indemnities. That movement was considered the first national Iranian movement, organized in part from the holy Shiite cities in Iraq. In 1896, a follower of Afghani assassinated Shah Nasir al- Dīn, the last powerful figure of the Qajar dynasty.
Under his successor, the weak Muzaffar al- Dīn, the financial crisis grew perilously worse, with growing debts to the British and the Russians. Joseph Naus, a Belgian (that is, neither a Russian nor a Briton), was assigned to reorganize finances, spurring opposition on all sides. Again, the secret societies protested.
The Japanese victories over Russia in 1905 seemed to show that an Eastern constitutional state could successfully challenge Europe. In late 1905, a vast popular movement supported by the clergy defied the shah’s authority in Persia. The reformers demanded that a constitution be set in place. The authorities were obliged to convene a constitutive assembly in summer 1906. The basic law was drafted and amended in the following months. Persia officially became a constitutional monarchy with equal rights for all, including non- Muslims.
Contrary to expectations, the constitution did not make it possible to resolve the problems. Muhammad Ali Shah, who ascended to the throne in January 1907, resumed the struggle against the constitutionalists. He obtained the support of part of the conservative clergy, who were hostile to Westernization. That led to a civil war between the revolutionary mujahidin, or fidayin, and the royalist troops supported by the Russians, who sent an armed contingent to the north of the country, officially to protect the Europeans. Following the Russian intervention in 1911, the assembly was dissolved and the central power collapsed.
Despite the sympathy of British public opinion for the Persian liberals, the new European alliances led the British government to align itself with Russian policy. Persia ceased to be a buffer state between the two empires. Russian troops occupied the northern part of the country, while the south came under the de facto tutelage of the British.
A fairly clear rule emerged from the Persian example: geopolitical constraints dictated that the European powers would have no interest in supporting attempts to establish a liberal regime in the Muslim world.
European Instability and the Fate of the Muslim World
In the early twentieth century, European political alignments changed, with tragic consequences for the Muslim world under European domination, despite theoretical independence. The essential factor was the Anglo- German naval competition within the context of the German empire’s global policy. The construction of a powerful modern war fleet directly threatened the British Isles. Although Great Britain had a large numerical advantage, the needs of its empire required it to disperse its fleet over all the seas of the world, whereas Germany could concentrate its own in the Black Sea.
As a result, London rationalized its deployment and, in addition to launching new modern units, emerged from its splendid isolation to confront the German threat. The 1902 treaty with Japan allowed the British to limit its naval presence in the Pacific. The Entente Cordiale with France had more far-reaching consequences. It liquidated colonial disputes by putting an end to France’s claims on Egypt, in exchange for support of its action in Morocco. France found it easy to end its discreet encouragement of the Egyptian nationalists, especially since it was itself worried about the pan- Islamist discourses being freely voiced in Egypt.
The Russo- Japanese War of 1904– 1905 shook the world. The crushing defeats that an Asian country inflicted on a European Christian power looked like a promise of liberation for the entire European- ruled world. The Muslim press conceived a passion for the cause of Japan, which appeared to have pulled off the tour de force of preserving its identity intact even as it achieved perfect modernization. For the first time, a non- European model took shape. Some went so far as to evoke the imminent conversion of the Japanese to Islam.
The Russian defeats paralyzed the Franco- Russian alliance. Germany attempted to take advantage of the situation to isolate France and put an end to its growing interference in Morocco. On March 31, 1905, stopping in Tangier during a pleasure cruise, William II made a declaration in which he recognized the sultan as the only authority in Morocco. A major European crisis followed, with Great Britain joining forces with France, whose views prevailed at the Algeciras Conference (January– March 1906). The independence of Morocco and the principle of equal treatment of the European nations were recognized, but France retained priority in the country.
In the same context, Abdülhamid reopened the question of the status of Sinai by establishing a military position in Taba. Great Britain reacted forcefully with a naval demonstration at the entrance to the Dardanelles. The Ottomans were obliged to give in, but Egyptian public opinion proved favorable to the Ottoman outlook. European diplomacy saw that crisis as the resurgence of pan- Islamism supported by Germany.
In the wake of the Taba crisis, Great Britain considered itself under threat in Egypt. It no longer had the means to exert pressure on the Porte, especially since, more than in Mesopotamia and the Gulf, the controversy of the Baghdad railroad— another pan- Islamist German- Ottoman conspiracy— was raging there. Britain had to assure the security of Egypt while increasing its influence in the Red Sea and Palestine. In the event of war, British strategists planned a landing on the Syrian coasts to overtake from the rear the Ottomans marching on Egypt. Reconnaissance missions to that end were carried out in 1906.
After its defeats in the Far East, Russia cut its losses and turned back to the Mediterranean and Europe. That coincided with British interests, in that it assured the security of the Indian route. The Anglo- Russian convention of August 31, 1907, divided Persia into two zones of influence, the north going to the Russians, the south to the British, with a neutral zone between them. We have already seen the consequences of that division for the constitutionalist Persian revolution.
The new European political alignment, founded on a de facto alliance between France, Great Britain, and Russia, came about directly at the expense of the Muslim world in Morocco, Egypt, and Persia. By contrast, imperial Germany, which felt threatened by a supposed desire to encircle it, more than ever looked like the major power protecting Islam.
The three empires in question considered themselves “Muslim powers,” since they had millions of Muslim subjects.
France was permanently haunted by the specter of an Algerian uprising like the one in 1871. The North Africa– sub- Saharan Africa bloc was near completion. Although it was considered a source of power and a way to recruit soldiers, it appeared vulnerable to internal subversion by pan- Islamism. The colonial fear of a native uprising was a permanent reality, though official discourse usually concealed it. Nevertheless, many colonials, such as Louis Lyautey, harshly criticized the behavior of European civilians in North Africa, who heaped scorn on the Arab population. A whole Arabophile current was taking shape, deeply committed to respecting Arab mores and culture. Its finest expression came from Isabelle Eberhardt, who died at twenty- eight and whose friends posthumously published her In the Hot Shade of Islam. These Arabophiles were far from adversaries of French colonization and even recruited from political and military circles. We would now say that they wanted to put a “human face” on French colonization.
Russia completed its conquest of the Caucasus and central Asia. It even appeared about to add northern Persia, thus moving closer to the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the Muslims in the empire were in the midst of an evolution. The most dynamic factor came from the earliest conquered elements, the Tatars of Kazan and Crimea, whose influence extended to central Asia. Possessing a better knowledge of European culture, some Tatar intellectuals redefined Turkish identity.
The European Orientalists had determined the existence of two major ethnolinguistic groups, the Aryan and the Semitic. They gradually defined a third group, called “Touranian.” The great Hungarian Orientalist Arminius Vambéry (1832–1913), a personal friend of Abdülhamid, became its theorist. He included within the Touranian group the Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, and all the Turkophone peoples, even the Siberian populations. He argued that there was a great Touranian civilization that, as a result of the vicissitudes of history, almost completely surrounded Russia. That sufficed to make Vambéry look like an agent of Great Britain, with its desire to contain Russia along the Indian route.
Whereas the French and German Orientalists were primarily concerned with the opposition between the Aryan and the Semitic, Russian Orientalists focused on the Touranian question, seen as a tool for devaluing the Slavs, who had supposedly intermarried with the Touranians everywhere. (German Orientalists often expressed that view.) They claimed both an autochthony for the Russians, supposedly descended from the Scythians of antiquity, and their proximity to the primitive Indo- Europeans of India. (The Russians therefore had a greater purity than the Germans and Celts of western Europe.) The Russian conquest of Siberia and of Muslim Asia, from the Caucasus to rural Asia, was only a reconquest of the original birthplace of the Aryan race. The Russian version of the Aryan myth played the same role as references to the Roman Empire by French colonizers, who saw the colonization of North Africa as a restoration of its former Latin character.
The writings of Vambéry, those of the Frenchman Léon Cahun (1841– 1900), as well as the responses of the Russian Orientalists, immediately became known to the Turkophone intellectuals of the Russian empire, whose aim was to constitute a common Turkish language from the Mediterranean to central Asia, or even to China. This pan- Touranist movement sought to emancipate itself from Russian domination by reversing the terms of the discourse. They championed the unity of all Turkish, even all Touranian, peoples. These ideas spread to Ottoman territory via the constant immigration of Muslims from the Russian empire. Abdülhamid, deeply attached to the caliphate and to Islam, opposed them. But he could not prevent the creation of the modern Turkish language, a natural product of the diffusion of education and the printed word, and distinct from classical Ottoman Turkish. As everywhere, the modern language was a simplification, which entailed a gradual suppression of the many borrowings from Arabic and Persian. Turkophone intellectuals of the Russian empire played a large role in that process. Hence pan- Islamism combined with a pan- Turkish nationalism, a factor contributing to the rebellions against Russian rule.
Outside that Touranian current, there was an affirmation among Muslim intellectuals of the Russian empire of a more classic Muslim reformism, which combined pan- Islamism with a certain penchant for liberalism.
In Great Britain, the occupation of Egypt and Sudan, along with the vast Indian empire, made the colonial administration a growing outlet for educated young people. A colonial career provided guaranteed social ascent for members of the middle classes, and the power elite was also increasingly interested in that almost aristocratic opportunity. Although the colonial officers were recruited from the British public schools, those in the upper colonial administration were educated in the prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge, with significant instruction in the Eastern languages. That large caste was composed of the thousand members of the Indian Civil Service emerging from the upper classes of British society.
Rudyard Kipling became the voice of that milieu, with both an ideology of dedication incarnated in the “white man’s burden” and a provincialist reproduction of the metropolis, represented by Simla, the summer capital of the Indian empire. In Kim, he expresses better than anyone the colonial fantasy of concealing oneself within the indigenous population, while placing that fantasy within the context of the Great Game between the Russians and the British in Asia. But the “native” cherished by the British colonial was the one who preserved his authenticity and therefore knew his place. Colonial ideology was coupled with a Victorian medievalism, which had its apogee in the great “durbars,” ceremonies held in Delhi that made the British the direct heirs of the Great Moguls. These theatrical spectacles, during which the Indian princes paraded with great pomp, were intended to mark the continuity of Indian history in its British expression.
Colonialism had introduced modernity and found its justification therein, but it was also the victim of modernity. And though the Anglo- Indians ultimately aspired to be the just and moral restorers of the ancient order of the Great Mogul, they undermined its foundations. The upper classes of Indian society had access to modern education and began to contest the Europeans’ monopoly on the modern professions. These beginnings of competition provoked a visceral reaction on the part of the British service aristocracy: The Hindu, regardless of his educational level, could never accede to the moral dignity of the Briton. The Hindu preferred words to action, lacked natural authority, was inclined toward venality, and foundered during a major crisis. The rejected Indian elite returned to the Congress Party, which initially sought only to make adjustments to the British system.
Whereas the early Congress Party aspired toward modernization, even Westernization, placing itself within a liberal and secular perspective and therefore opening its ranks to Indian Muslims, other currents aspired to be the defenders of a Hindu character that would call into question the rise of the Anglicized elites. The Sepoy War had marked the end of the last vestiges of Muslim domination, with the disappearance of the shadow sultanate of Delhi. Within that context, Muslim reformism was very well received by the Muslim elites, some of whom were leaning toward a liberalism in collaboration with the British. That gave rise to criticism from Afghani, who condemned them as “materialists.” (Afghani actually agreed on the content of the doctrine; what he rejected was collaboration with the English.) More hard- line tendencies expressed a desire to return to Islam, whose doctrine was interpreted literally in the rigorous Wahhabi or Hanbalite mode.
Muslim reformism, like the revival of a Hindu identity movement, sought to purify religion of its supposed superstitions, which were often forms of religious practice common to Muslims and Hindus. That translated into an increasing uneasiness about the practices of the Other. In northern India, a vast movement developed in the 1890s to forbid Muslims from slaughtering cows, leading to conflicts of unprecedented scope between the two communities. In the same region, the cleavage took on a cultural aspect. The Hindus tended to reject the legacy of the sultanate of Delhi and to turn toward the purity of their Sanskrit origins. A so- called Hindi language and written culture developed. It used Sanskrit characters and became increasingly distinct from Urdu, the culture and language of the Muslims. Northern India thus underwent a process of cultural renaissance preliminary to the affirmation of a national body of knowledge, similar to that occurring elsewhere in the world. Hindu nationalists began to perceive the Indian Muslims as exogenous elements or traitors to Indian culture. They fought both British domination and the Muslim part of their own culture.
Indian Muslims gradually found themselves in the same situation as the Balkan Muslims, considered strangers and traitors in their own countries, which they had formerly ruled.
With Lord George Curzon, the greatest of the viceroys, the Indian empire reached its pinnacle (1899–1905). Curzon tried both to shake up administrative routines and to impose his imperial and aristocratic vision, even while combating the Congress Party. He also became the architect of the empire’s expansion into Persia and the Gulf. Despite his tremendous energy, his political vision remained profoundly conservative.
His successor, Lord Minto, was cognizant of the need to put an end to the European monopoly on government institutions. With the agreement of John Morley, secretary for India, he spearheaded a vast reform program that opened all posts in the public sector to the indigenous people and in 1908 put elected native representatives on the government councils responsible for drafting laws, though only in a minority capacity. As is often the case in such situations, political openness was accompanied by unrest and protests in various regions of India, for the most part by Hindu elements.
Within that context, in 1906 Lord Minto came out in favor of constituting a Muslim League, which, in reaction to the Hindus’ attitude, expressed its loyalty to the British from the start. Its first concern was to assure Muslim representation in the new institutions. In 1908, the league obtained in principle a separate electorate. Although the British had not sought to divide and conquer and had not created the antagonism between Muslims and Hindus— which was the product of new formulations of identity within the context of access to modernity, as the Ottoman example has shown— they noted with favor the massive support the Muslims provided for their rule.
From 1907–1908 on, Indian policymakers were firmly persuaded that the support of the Muslims was indispensable for maintaining British domination. As a result, they claimed, any event in the rest of the Muslim world involving the British would have damaging consequences for the Indian empire. That view was tirelessly repeated in the government councils.
The de facto alliance concluded in 1907 between France, Great Britain, and Russia was naturally intended to contain the supposed ambitions of imperial Germany. It was also an alliance of the three great colonial empires with the largest Muslim populations, all of which were troubled by the specter of pan- Islamism. The fourth colonial empire with large numbers of Muslims was Dutch India (now Indonesia). Its leaders and Orientalists were also worried about the pan- Islamist danger, but that empire enjoyed relative calm, given its neutrality in the new European political alignments.
With the Tangier crisis of 1905, the disordered state of the European political system carried with it the risk of a general war in Europe, though the principal conflicts leading to crises, or at least to tensions, occurred within the Muslim world.
The Young Turks
In early 1908, Alfred Le Châtelier’s Revue du Monde Musulman inquired:
Does it not seem that this struggle, so passionate, so shrewd to be sure, being waged against destiny from the Yildiz Kiosk, gives the impression of a last act soon to come, conditioned by so many conflicts that there are no longer enough diversions to change the outcome?
If Europe wants to maintain the balance, which it worries will be destroyed, it will not suffice to focus its attention on the Balkans. Let it not forget the mediators provided it by Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, and Arabia.1
All these geographical regions returned to the political horizon with the Young Turk revolution of 1908. In July of that year, the army of Macedonia, at the urging of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), marched on the capital and forced the sultan to restore the constitution of 1876. It was the end of Hamidian “despotism” and the triumph of the ideas of freedom and equality. Never had a great Muslim state gone so far in adopting European ideas.
Reality rapidly intervened. On October 5, 1908, Bulgaria declared its independence and rejected the sultan’s theoretical sovereignty. The next day, Austria- Hungary proclaimed the annexation of Bosnia- Herzegovina, which it had administered since the Congress of Berlin, and Crete announced its intention to unite with Greece. All of a sudden, the new regime had lost more territories than Abdülhamid since 1878. Throughout the empire, the CUP orchestrated a powerful boycott against Austrian goods. Largely embraced by the working classes, it was also a de facto protest against the capitulation system. Diplomacy discreetly took on a role and, between February and March 1909, the Ottoman Empire received financial compensation, while the caliph’s right to control the religious life of Muslims in the lost territories was acknowledged.
The essential thing was to establish a modern political life revolving around elections, the first of which occurred in November– December 1908, with a two- round voting process. The Muslim populations of the Balkans and Anatolia elected the candidates backed by the CUP. In the Arab provinces, by contrast, the important families of notables prevailed. Although they sought and obtained the backing of the CUP, these families for the most part represented very strong local influences, even engaging in logrolling. They thus returned to the forefront after being relatively marginalized under Abdülhamid’s personal reign. The liberals from the same Young Turk current as the CUP, but who were proponents of full equality with non- Muslims based on extensive decentralization, were defeated everywhere by the Muslim electorate. The liberals were primarily represented by non- Muslim deputies, while the non- Turkish Muslim deputies (Albanians, Arabs) were naturally sympathetic to the idea of decentralization.
The question of equality therefore arose. In the CUP’s view, a Jacobin orientation favored the disappearance of community- based privileges and the establishment of full equal rights and duties between Muslims and non- Muslims. For the millets, conversely, the matter at hand was to strengthen their nonterritorial autonomy or even to undertake a movement toward nationhood.
In conservative Muslim circles, the notions of freedom and equality seemed to run counter to Muslim traditions. Besides, the Young Turks were evoking a form of women’s emancipation. By the very fact that political freedom of a sort had been instituted, the reactionaries were able to develop their propaganda campaign against a “handful of atheists” who were leading the empire to its ruin. A powerful movement called the “Islamic Union” came into being, the first modern form of Islamic populism, whose cadres recruited minor ulemas and students of religion. In April 1909, the soldiers in the Istanbul garrison mutinied and drove the Islamic Unionists from the capital. In the provinces, the movement evolved into a terrible massacre of Armenians in Adana. The army of Salonika immediately marched on the capital and imposed a harsh repression. In May, Abdülhamid was deposed and replaced by his brother, Mehmed Reshad. That marked the end of the sultanate’s political role.
The events of April– May 1909 were the culmination of a vast debate of ideas that began with the revolution of July 1908. It is now possible to clearly discern two major currents of thought. The first was represented by the “Occidentalists.” According to Abdullah Cevdet, one of their spokesmen, “there is only one civilization, and that is European civilization. It must be imported with its roses and its thorns.” Mentalities had to be changed through the adoption, with the help of education, of the principles of modern life, freedom, and critical and scientific thought. The second current, which can be called Islamist, embraced the Muslim reformism of the previous generation and proposed to follow the model of Japan, which had been able to adopt Western science and technology without losing its identity. The decline of the empire was linked not to religion but to its corruption. Hence the need to restore the original principles of Islam. Other tendencies were more conservative and more blunt in their condemnation of modern mores imported from Europe.
Both Occidentalists and Islamists were fervent defenders of the empire and were committed above all to its survival. In these circles, Turkish nationalism, inspired by ideas coming from the Muslims of the Russian empire, exerted a growing appeal. Turkish culture could form a synthesis with European modernity. The nation was the modern receptacle for civilization. For a time, however, these ideas influenced only small circles in Istanbul and Salonika.
The Young Turks naturally turned to the liberal European powers: Great Britain, the mother of parliamentarianism, and France, land of positivism and modern ideas. At the same time, these nations were the two great colonial powers of the Muslim world, and they worried about the repercussions of revolution. In Egypt, the nationalists and liberals demanded a parliamentary constitution, the first phase of a British evacuation.
Cromer was recalled in 1907 and replaced by Sir Eldon Gorst, whose mission was to restore amicable relations with the khedive and to re- Egyptianize an administration overrun by British civil servants. At issue was not liberalization but an “indirect rule” policy, which produced direct hostility on the part of Anglo- Egyptians whose positions were threatened. The man behind that policy was the Coptic prime minister, Boutros Ghali. The Egyptian nationalists, who had lost the khedive’s support, became radicalized and assumed a militant Islamist tone. On February 23, 1910, Boutros Ghali was assassinated. His murderer was considered a national hero among the Muslims, which led to strong religious tensions. Balfour, the former Conservative British prime minister, a member of the opposition at the time, declared in June 1910: “The Eastern peoples were not made for constitutional government. English authority in Egypt must remain intact, and everything must be done to maintain its prestige.” The government defended itself by asserting “that no progress can be realized in Egypt so long as the protest against the occupation has not ended.”2Gorst remained in office, but he was gravely ill.
It was not until Gorst’s death in July 1911 that his successor, Sir Herbert Kitchener, was named and given the task of conducting a policy of repression against the nationalists and of restoring the British Empire’s prestige. The new consul and British agent publicly styled himself the protector of the Egyptian peasantry and maintained that the nationalists were of no account. He bluntly explained in his first annual report that the Easterners were a long way from having the maturity necessary for a liberal political life:
Upon my return to Egypt, I was deeply affected upon observing that the masses of enlightened Muslims who formerly constituted a collective community based on fixed social laws are at present divided into parties and factions of a political character.
Whatever the value of a party system in Western political life, it is obvious that its application is misguided and can produce only division and weakness in a community . . . whose social system is based on the brotherhood of men, combined with respect for the knowledge and experience of age.
The development and elevation of a people’s character depend on the respect individuals have for themselves, on the power to control their natural impulses, on a discreet personal confidence combined with a rational determination. In no way can elements of progress be advanced through dissension and party quarrels. A calm and well- considered interest in political affairs is good for both the governed and the governors, but imaginary interests presented in a false light and maintained with the aid of tactics and funds from these parties can in no way elevate or develop the intelligent character of an Oriental race.3
He launched a private war against the khedive, slighting him many times, and became increasingly interested in the political evolution of the neighboring Arab provinces.
There was also a risk that the Young Turk revolution would contaminate the Indian Muslims, who had become one of the essential pillars for maintaining the Indian empire. The British embassy in Constantinople was quick to see the Young Turks not as the natural offshoot of liberal European ideas, but as the fruit of the dark machinations of a Jewish and Freemason plot.
The French had the same anxiety about North Africa, especially since they had resumed the penetration of Morocco. Others had fears about the French influence. The new regime tended to display a supercilious nationalism, and nearly everywhere disputed the capitulations and their indirect effects.
For France and Great Britain, the absolute priority was to maintain the European alignment with Russia against the German threat. But Russia, ejected from the Far East by the Japanese, more than ever looked like the Ottomans’ hereditary enemy.
The “Le Châtelier Moment”
A true debate opened among French experts on Islam. The CUP represented the triumph of Europe over Asia, represented by Abdülhamid’s Arab entourage. Beyond that, the form of modernization of the Young Turk regime raised new issues: if Islam could not be reduced to a mere religious practice and had to be considered a social fact, then an Islamic nation and an Islamic nationalism distinct from the religious phenomenon might emerge. In addition, did not the hostility to the Young Turk regime translate into autonomist aspirations among the non- Turkish Muslims of the empire, the Albanians and the Arabs? Within that context, French policy could not confine itself to keeping track of its usual clients. It had to take an interest directly in Muslims who, in the Hamidian compromise, were located outside its zone of influence.
A year after the revolution, in July 1909, the French government issued instructions to those posted in the Muslim world to conduct a review of the press in their districts and to send it to Paris, a first stage in a general reflection on the situation. The next year, in the September issue of the Revue du Monde Musulman, Alfred Le Châtelier recommended the creation of a “Muslim policy” within the framework of a “consultative institution, as indispensable in our time to the political order as to the administrative order.” He took the opportunity to draw a portrait of the Muslim world: European Islam was in full political retreat, but full Europeanization and modernization was under way. The European Muslims, “in renouncing their privileges of religious isolation, in participating in the movement of the European peoples . . . have gained in opportunities what they have lost in traditions.”He was the first to analyze “the spread throughout Europe of a Western Muslim colonization with intellectual tendencies, but completely Islamic in its political objectives.” These tendencies were represented primarily by students and political refugees from the Muslim world generally, now living in England, France, Switzerland, and Germany. In the case of that Muslim enclave,
in becoming modernized, its civilization, a short time ago inert and somnolent, has become singularly active and robust in its new mode of being. It provides the meaningful spectacle of an Islam fighting and defending itself, not retreating but transforming itself, and in which a communal attraction to ideas, and resistance to the domination of the West, are becoming more pronounced. The same inspiration seems to preside over the efforts of the Hindu, Persian, Tunisian, Egyptian, or Turkish student, the Balkan komitadji, and the Russian Tatar: an aspiration for a twofold deliverance, through the progress of education and the demand by Muslims for the rights of every people. How better to define that stage of evolution except by the expression “state of civilization”?
During that time, an “African Muslim civilization” was developing, and it “manifested [itself] in the assimilation of the native to the foreigner, along with the absorption of the foreigner into the African environment.” That end of isolation translated into raised consciousness for a vast Muslim community that extended as far as China, even as it was increasingly affirming national consciousness and was making progress within Africa.
When Le Châtelier spoke of the Ottoman world, the idea of movement always prevailed. It was
dominated from above by a sincere fervor for intellectual, political, and social emancipation, but it culminates in the imperialism of authority, in Albania and in Syria, and in the request for alliances, solicited sometimes from France and England, sometimes from Germany. All things considered, Europe finds itself in the presence of a movement where the impulses of Turkish nationalism and Ottoman imperialism combine with those of a liberal and modern outlook, still rather young, and showing it is so through its ambition to exactly assimilate the civilization of Islam to that of Europe, leaving the former sufficiently Muslim so that there can be no mistaking it.
The Persian revolution marked “the vital force of rebirth by a civilization transforming itself in order to come back to life.”4 In India, Le Châtelier insisted on the primacy of the conflict with Hinduism.
To summarize a relatively complex notion, the confrontation with Europe and modernity gave rise to tendencies that were not contradictory: an increased awareness of belonging collectively to Muslim civilization, the affirmation of national identities, and the desire to emancipate oneself from European domination, even if that meant playing on the rivalry among the European powers.
Within that context, France had to acquire a “social science of the Muslim world,” which would be used to develop a policy for fending off the danger of a “clash of civilizations.”
Le Châtelier’s writings constituted an essential turning point in the history of European Orientalism. Rejecting any idea of a fixism or specific essence, he introduced into the study of the contemporary period the central notion of “social science,” applied to the study of “movement.” The chair he held in Muslim sociology and sociography at the Collège de France was created in 1902, scarcely ten years after Renan’s death. It is therefore clear how strong and quick the break with the past was.
In 1911, the French government endorsed Le Châtelier’s conclusions by creating the Commission Interministérielle des Affaires Musulmanes.
The Zionist Question and the Arab Question
Zionism’s existence as an effective movement depended on the linkage between western European railroad networks and those of eastern Europe, which allowed for connections to be made in the ports to the regular steamship lines. This linkage occurred in about 1880. That indispensable material contingency corresponded chronologically to the increasing harshness of discriminatory laws in the Russian empire and to the appearance of anti- Semitism in western Europe.
Although the first Zionist groups appeared in Russia in the early 1880s and attempted a first emigration to Palestine, they quickly met with failure. The risk was that the English Protestant missionaries, still intent on the conversion of the Jews within the context of the fulfillment of prophecies, would launch a religious propaganda campaign, offering material incentives to these migrants. Worried, the leaders of the Alliance Israélite Universelle made contact with the French baron Edmond de Rothschild, who initially offered one- time assistance, then later became enthusiastic about the project. He therefore established a whole series of agricultural colonies. He asked for French consular protection, which he obtained, in part because the agricultural colony administration was composed of French Jews, who therefore benefited from French protection.
Edmond de Rothschild was rapidly persuaded of the need to act discreetly, given the wariness of the Ottoman authorities, who saw that immigration movement as a European colonial project. He also had to somehow make these colonies economically self- sufficient, which led to a series of costly stumbles, until a “plantation economy” using an Arab labor force was set in place.
Those belonging to the first wave of immigration ( aliya) integrated quite naturally into Levantine society. The administrative language of Rothschildian colonization was French and, apart from a few neighborhood skirmishes with the Arab peasants, there was no particular violence. In the cities, the Jewish immigrants participated in the community life of the Levant. The sociability of the elites occurred across communities. The young Hajj Amin al- Husayni, for example, learned French at the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and under the tutelage of the baron’s representative in Jerusalem.
With the beginning of Theodor Herzl’s public activities in 1896, the situation changed. Rothschild rejected the political activism of the founder of political Zionism, who was making a mistake in drawing public attention to the Jewish immigration to Palestine. Herzl wanted a “charter” guaranteed by the European great powers, which would allow for the creation in Palestine of a homeland for the Jewish people. At the international level, he sought to obtain the support of imperial Germany. (He accompanied William II on his famous journey to the East in 1898.) Herzl opened negotiations with Abdülhamid, promising to pay off the Ottoman debt with Jewish finances. The sultan was a shrewd partner, who used Herzl as a means to apply pressure as he negotiated for another Ottoman loan. After that dual failure, the founder of the Zionist organization turned to Great Britain, which declared it was interested in a Jewish concession in Sinai. But Cromer resolutely opposed it. At the time of Herzl’s death in 1904, he had obtained nothing, though he had succeeded in organizing a powerful political movement known on the international scene. His successors at the head of the Zionist organization moved closer to Germany. The leadership of the movement was primarily German in composition, whereas most of the militants came from the Russian empire.
It was not until 1908 that the organization directly took root in Palestine, at a time when the most politicized militants were arriving, often socialist in their inspiration and having lived through the Russian Revolution of 1905. This was the second aliya. The interests of these militants converged with those of the Zionist organization, if only in their efforts to circumvent Rothschildian colonization.
The Arab elites became aware of the existence of the Zionist movement by reading the European press. At first, reactions were mixed. Some saw it as an opportunity to attract European capital for developing the regional economy, but they worried about its political aspirations. In Palestine itself, the first directly political clashes came about in early 1908. It was at that moment that the term “Palestine” entered into common use in the Arabic language. Like “Syria,” the Europeans had originally used it throughout the nineteenth century to designate those regions of the Near East.
Membership in the Ottoman Empire slowed the emergence of a new regional consciousness, unlike in quasi- independent provinces such as Tunisia and Libya. Inasmuch as these new identities had no legal status, they were vague and often better formulated in the language of the Other. In the late nineteenth century, for example, ordinary discourse clearly distinguished the Turks from the Arabs, but without positing any political ramifications. At the start of the twentieth century, however, marginal individuals, whether Muslims like Abd al- Rahman al- Kawakibi or Christians like Najib Azouri, evoked a distinct Arab political identity. There was even talk of an Arab revolt to come. It was in fact in 1905 that Azouri made his famous prediction:
Two important phenomena, of the same nature and yet opposed, and which have not yet attracted anyone’s attention, are coming to light at this moment in Asian Turkey: these are the reawakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute the ancient monarchy of Israel on a very grand scale. These two movements are destined to be continually at odds, until one of them prevails over the other. The fate of the entire world will depend on the ultimate result of that struggle between these two peoples representing two contrary principles.5
The idea of an Arab revolt was primarily identified with the Bedouin movements of the Arabian Peninsula and with the reconstitution of a third Saudi- Wahhabi state from central Arabia, undertaken by Abd al- Aziz al- Sa‘ud (Ibn Sa‘ud).
The great success of Hamidian policy was to integrate the Arab provinces politically in the wake of the Treaty of Berlin. From Syria, the elites from families of notables, usually members of the younger branches, provided an important contingent for high posts in the Ottoman government. From the Iraqi provinces came a large number of officers belonging to the Sunni population. The proclaimed Islamic character of the state cemented that unity.
The Young Turks put an end to that success, despite the return in force of the local notables, who prevailed in the parliamentary elections. Arab high officials were associated with the Hamidian regime. Modernizing discourses were interpreted as a rejection of Islamic traditions. Young, college- educated Arabs no longer received the same welcome in the Ottoman administration. The centralization measures of the CUP were viewed as elements of a Turkization policy, though they had been perfectly well tolerated under Abdülhamid. The same was true for the use of the Ottoman language in the administration and the justice system.
The growing disaffection of the Arab elites led to the reappearance in political discourse of the theme of an Arab caliphate, the only legitimate kind. The constitutional revision of June 1909 that accompanied the deposing of Abdülhamid made the caliphate a magistrature created by a national delegation and responsible to it, that is, to the Ottoman Parliament. But that Parliament included non- Muslims, both Christians and Jews. Those opposed to the Ottoman caliphate also rejected the idea of turning a Muslim community into an Ottoman nation that combined Muslims and non- Muslims.
That debate rapidly turned into a conflict between Turks and Arabs. The young French Orientalist Gaston Wiet analyzed it with acumen in summer 1910:
The Arabs declare that they are tired of seeing the Turks be everything, and, though some of them claim only the right to proportional representation (in the Senate, in the Parliament, and in various public offices), some go much further and declare quite simply that they want to be everything in their turn. The battle, waged in that way, can only be violent, since the men in power and the public employees do not seem in any way inclined to yield their places to the Arabs. For their part, they attack with gusto.6
The protest, first expressed in religious terms, evolved into concrete political demands: greater Arab participation in the administration, but on a local basis, which translated into “administrative decentralization” and a critique of “Ottoman mismanagement.” In Syria, the ancient richness of the country and its future promise of development was contrasted to its present- day poverty. For the Young Turks, such demands were unacceptable. The Balkan, Tunisian, and Egyptian examples stood as a reminder that any process leading to autonomy culminated inexorably either in independence (in majority Christian regions) or in colonial conquest over the medium term (in Islamic territories).
That interpretation was only corroborated by the new European expansion at the expense of Muslim independence.
Morocco and Libya
At the Algeciras Conference, France had received acknowledgment of a de facto preponderance in Morocco, even as the Moroccan state was about to collapse. In the name of protecting the Europeans, the French troops of Algeria, commanded by General Louis Lyautey, undertook the conquest of the neighboring regions of Algeria, while the French navy occupied Casablanca (1907). In 1911, after a period of relative calm, also marked by Franco- German economic cooperation, the French undertook a regular expedition intended to take control of the principal cities in the country, so as to “restore order” there.
Germany responded with a demonstration of force, sending a gunboat to Agadir on July 1, 1911. In face of the “Agadir crisis,” Great Britain joined forces with France. The press in the various countries stirred up nationalist passions. Despite a difficult environment and after several months of negotiations, diplomats arrived at a compromise. France yielded a part of the Congo to Germany, in exchange for the renunciation of German claims.
France now had a free hand to impose its protectorate, which it did with the Treaty of Fez on March 30, 1912. At the same time, Spain directly administered a territory of 28,000 square kilometers. The news gave rise to general insurrection in the country, which General Lyautey, the new resident- general, had to address. The conqueror’s genius consisted of abandoning the civilizing and contemptuous discourse of the French Republicans and of affirming that the French protectorate was a restoration of an old order threatened with collapse by colonial and European modernity. Lyautey pledged to maintain the traditional hierarchies, to keep Islam as the organizing principle of society, and to reestablish the authority of the dynasty. He thus made a pact with the administration of the Moroccan state, which allowed him to neutralize the insurrection, thanks to an army numbering 76,000 men in 1913. A pacified and homogeneous Morocco now stood in contrast to a rural, mountainous region still in rebellion.
Given his aestheticism and Orientalism, Lyautey sometimes tended to invent, for the needs of the cause, a tradition where it did not exist. He wanted to make Morocco an anti- Algeria, or even an anti– Republican France. He worked to isolate European modernity and to safeguard the Muslim city. Segregating the populations also meant rejecting any Europeanization of the Moroccan elites, which would have made them “the uprooted” in Barrès’s sense. Everyone had to know his place, but at the same time people were supposed to establish relations of self- interest with one another, and these might have an emotional aspect. A shift therefore occurred from the “policy of respect” to a “bit of love” (parcelle d’amour). The resident- general, all- powerful master of the country, styled himself the servant of the sultan. In transposing a feudal view of society onto Morocco, he secretly assumed the role of a Cardinal de Richelieu: he built an absolutist state with technocratic leanings on behalf of the Moroccan monarchy, which was destined one day to reclaim its independence.
That tremendously original experiment embraced the doctrine of association, as opposed to that of assimilation. It replicated, in an even more aristocratic mode, the differentialist outlook of the British. It belonged to the tradition of thought characteristic of the “indigenophiles” or “Arabophiles” and to the aesthetic approach of Pierre Loti, Fromentin, and Isabelle Eberhardt. The Moroccan elites appreciated that attitude, which kept them safe from the Algerian catastrophe. For the French colonial party, Lyautey was the great man who knew how to wed an applied Islamology to the imperial interests of France.
In a public speech in late 1912, Célestin Jonnart, a high- ranking politician, former governor general of Algeria and Lyautey’s political boss, noted the conclusions to be drawn regarding Algeria from the actions taken in Morocco:
France, a great Muslim power, currently possesses a method and an experience— attained at great cost— which will simplify its task. . . .
Our Algeria, Gentlemen, after many groping hesitations, after half a century of ordeals, has found its way. We now have a clear view of the problems that its destiny raises and of the solutions to be adopted.
No one dreams any longer of making Algeria a vast military camp or an Arab kingdom or simply French departments. It is a land where our race must firmly take root, not with the brutal idea of repressing the native race or with the chimerical notion of assimilating it, but with the firm will of assuring it its place— every place befitting it— that is, of welcoming our Muslim subjects into the French family as the best of collaborators and partners. . . .
The governor- general in Algeria is the guardian of the native populations and, more than ever, our Muslim policy must be imbued with the perspectives of the nation, must subordinate itself to the nation’s hopes and aims.
The policy requires a great deal of tact and competence. I am not surprised that it has given rise to passionate polemics; never before have the problems it stirs up appeared so formidable to French consciousness. . . .
On one hand is the thesis of the emancipation of the native populations; on the other, that of their evolution beforehand, prudently guided, readied, through economic, intellectual, and social development. Between the two tendencies, there is no opposition on principle, only one of method. . . .
The natives must see us as something other then policemen or merchants, and here and there, visible to all, a symbol of French goodness must rise up. . . .
Remember Renan’s response to the question: “What makes a nation?” The constitutive element of a nation is the desire to be together. That is also the constitutive element of good marriages. Let the leader of each of our colonies say to his subordinates: “My instructions can be summed up as follows: Act in such as a way that the last to come into the great French family will feel the desire more each day to live alongside us!”
The security of our empire depends on the directions taken by Muslim policy. If overcautious and tactless, that policy would expose us to perilous complications, should the day come when we need all our resources and all our strength for a supreme struggle. If firm, benevolent, and just, it prepares magnificent reserves of men for us; it participates in the growth of our military might, at well as in the influence of our civilization, that is, in the prestige and greatness of France.7
The recently unified Italy was a latecomer on the imperial scene. In 1881, it found itself divested of Tunisia but was able to acquire Eritrea within the framework of the partitioning of Africa. Its expansion was halted by the defeat of Adoua in 1896 at the hands of the Ethiopians. To assert its ranking as a European power, it had to acquire a true colonial patrimony that would allow it to channel to its own advantage the permanent hemorrhaging of emigration overseas. It had long had its sights on the Ottoman province of Tripolitana, where it was the primary European investor. The Moroccan affair gave it the opportunity to act. On September 29, 1911, Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire. It succeeded without too much difficulty in seizing the coastal zone of Cyrenaica and Tripolitana, from which practically all the troops had been withdrawn. The British forbade Ottoman reinforcements from passing through Egypt, which was still theoretically a province of the empire. But the Young Turks managed to smuggle through officers, who collaborated with the tribes in an exhausting guerilla war against the Italian troops.
Powerless to achieve recognition of their conquest, the Italians turned to the eastern Mediterranean and occupied the Dodecanese Islands. Dealing at the same time with an Albanian revolt that united Christians and Muslims against Ottoman domination, the Young Turk regime was in crisis. Even though it obtained an overwhelming victory in the elections of early 1912, thanks to the massive involvement of the state apparatus, it found itself discredited. In the summer of that year, facing the threat of a military coup, the regime was obliged to cede its power to the liberals. The new government granted quasi- independence to Albania in September 1912 and established peace with Italy by signing the Treaty of Lausanne on October 15, 1912. The Ottoman Empire recognized the annexation of Tripolitana and of Cyrenaica, where the sultan, in his capacity as caliph, retained his spiritual authority over the Muslims. The Italians pledged to evacuate the Dodecanese. In the following days, the principal European powers recognized Italian sovereignty over what had become Libya. Now the task was to secure the conquest of the interior, where the guerilla war continued. The large Sanusiyya brotherhood became the chief adversary.
The empire had yielded to the Albanians and the Italians only because its survival was at stake: a new conflagration was brewing in the Balkans.
The Balkan Wars and the Fate of the Ottoman Empire
The Tripolitanian War provided the opportunity to the enemy brothers in the Balkans to liquidate the Ottoman presence there. Despite their contradictory ambitions, they succeeded in forming a coalition, officially to resolve the question of Macedonia. When the Ottoman Empire rejected their demands, war was declared on October 17, 1912. The empire, completely isolated, suffered defeat after defeat. The Balkan provinces were dismembered. On December 3, an armistice was reached, to allow a European conference to convene in London. The Ottomans refused to abandon Thrace and Adrianople. On January 23, 1913, the CUP staged a coup d’état and returned to power. War resumed on February 3, and Adrianople fell into the hands of the Bulgarians on March 28. At the signing of the Treaty of London on May 30, 1913, the Ottomans held only a thin strip of European territories around the capital.
The victors could not agree on the division of the spoils. War began again in late June, this time with the Bulgarians against the Serbs and Greeks. The Ottomans took the opportunity to recover Thrace and Adrianople. The Treaty of Bucharest of August 10, 1913, put an end to the conflict, and a whole series of complementary treaties redrew the map of the Balkans.
The war, with all its violence, gave rise to new waves of Muslim refugees, most of them headed toward Anatolia. All the Balkan states were officially Christian and Orthodox— with the exception of Albania, which was majority Muslim but did not include Kosovo and some possessions of Austria- Hungary. In the Balkans, the Muslims had become minorities; considered foreign or alien by nature, they were excluded from plans to form a nation. They were accused of being “Turks,” even if they spoke a Slavic language. The liquidation of European Turkey did not put an end to Balkanization and ethnic cleansing. The history of that peninsula in the twentieth century would remain particularly bloody and tragic.
The European powers had attentively followed the Balkan Wars. Talk of partitioning what remained of the Ottoman Empire resumed, especially since the Moroccan question was now settled. But Europe’s division into two large allied blocs made any amicable accord difficult. In addition, the naval competition between Britain and Germany had direct repercussions in the Mediterranean. Imperial Germany launched the naval armaments race in 1898, forcing Great Britain to pursue closer ties with France and Russia.
The competition had as much to do with the use of the most modern technology as with the number and might of the ships. At issue was the shift from coal to oil fuel. And though Great Britain was one of the major global producers of coal, it did not possess petroleum resources, even in its empire. To refuel, it had to depend on American and Russian production. That dependence was unacceptable. The British first took an interest in Persia, which had begun to produce petroleum in 1980, and the Admiralty became the primary shareholder in the Anglo- Persian Oil Company. It was suspected that the Ottoman Empire had comparable oilfields, and the British began competing for concessions.
It became clear that, in the event of conflict, Great Britain would have to withdraw its Mediterranean fleet to strengthen the Home Fleet. The naval conversations of 1912 culminated in a Franco- British accord. If a European war were imminent, France would move its fleet from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, where it would meet the British fleet moving in the opposite direction, in order to assure protection of the Army of Africa on its way to the metropolis. The British, even in the case of undeclared war, would assure protection of the French Atlantic coasts and of the English Channel. Kitchener vehemently protested: over the medium term, the departure of the Mediterranean fleet would mean the loss of Malta, Cyprus, and Egypt, and the weakening of the British positions in India, China, and the Pacific.
Most concretely, the fate of the Arab provinces was at stake. The Balkan War dealt a terrible blow to Ottoman authority. There was open talk of deep reforms, even of reuniting Syria with Egypt, thereby extending the direct influence of the British. That was unacceptable for French diplomacy, which wanted to see the results of the naval conversations translated into political terms. After a clarification from the British government, Prime Minister Jules- Henri Poincaré was able to declare to the Senate on December 21, 1912, that Great Britain recognized the predominance of France in Syria and Lebanon.
France thereby opened the debate about the future of what remained of the Ottoman Empire.
The autonomist Arab movements were among the first to draw the conclusions of the Poincaré declaration. Having had a large margin of freedom after the Ottoman defeats in the Balkans, they now had to deal with the desire of the Ottoman government, in practice now a CUP dictatorship, to restore the authority of the central power. They realized that the application of their program of decentralizing reforms could come about only with the support of the great powers, in other words, through an internationalization of the “Syrian question.” They even wanted to appeal to foreign— that is, European— advisers who would be granted broad powers.
The risk of such internationalization was that it might lead to the loss of France’s privileged position in Syria. Beginning in early spring 1913, the French strategy, defined in the Syrian Affairs Commission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was in essence to give the foremost role to the Ottoman government. The Balkan Wars had marked a diminution in French influence, since, in the former European Turkey, capitulations, the religious protectorate, and consular protections were abolished all at once. Although the victor states were compelled to take on a portion of Ottoman debt, the Caisse de la Dette Publique did not exert control over Ottoman finances. Any additional partitioning would mean a further reduction in French influence.
The French strategy consisted of obtaining recognition for a privileged zone of influence in Syria, while preserving an active presence in the Ottoman Empire as a whole. France was obliged to agree to an Arab congress in Paris, but it refused to support a secession movement.
The Arab Congress of Paris opened on June 18, 1913. Its president made a famous appeal to the West and to Europe, which he contrasted to Ottoman domination:
The West is at present the guide to the East. However great the danger of assimilating all the ideas of the West may appear to some, it is less serious than that of remaining perfectly rigid and motionless. Since we ourselves are going to profit at no cost from an experience and expertise that Europe acquired at the price of great sacrifices, we owe the West a great debt of gratitude.
We will be grateful for everything we take from it, as it was grateful to our ancestors for everything it owes them.
Those in Europe who prevent us from raising our voices are wrong. They have only themselves to blame for having taught us freedom! If any of you judge our success impossible or improbable, remember what the West was before becoming what it is.8
Just as the Congressists refrained from speaking of an independent Arab state, so too did French diplomacy confine itself to discreet approval. In the months that followed, it was clear that a triangular relationship had been established between the Ottoman authority, the Arab reformists of Syria, and France, whose predominant influence was recognized. Through a series of accords, theoretically of a commercial nature and including railroad concessions and potential petroleum resources, the powers divided up de facto what remained of the Ottoman Empire: to France, Syria; to Germany, Anatolia and the northern part of Mesopotamia; to Great Britain, all the regions bordering the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, it was in everyone’s interest to maintain the Ottoman authority. The CUP, which governed in a quasi- dictatorial fashion, was increasingly oriented toward a form of Turkish nationalism, while seeking at the same time to relaunch the Ottoman economy through both new European investments and the constitution of a Turkish and Muslim middle class.
The management of economic and political interests sometimes clashed with other imperatives, such as reopening the Armenian question. On the model of the former Macedonia, the Europeans attempted to impose control on the eastern provinces of Anatolia.