The Islamic world has been convulsed by the modernization process. Instead ofbeing one of the leaders of world civilization, Islamdom was quickly andpermanently reduced to a dependent bloc by the European powers. Muslims wereexposed to the contempt of the colonialists, who were so thoroughly imbued withthe modern ethos that they were often appalled by what they could only see asthe backwardness, inefficiency, fatalism and corruption of Muslim society. Theyassumed that European culture had always been progressive, and lacked thehistorical perspective to see that they were simply seeing a pre-modernagrarian society, and that a few centuries earlier Europe had been just as"backward." They often took it for granted that Westerners were inherently andracially superior to "orientals" and expressed their contempt in myriad ways.All this not unnaturally had a corrosive effect. Western people are oftenbewildered by the hostility and rage that Muslims often feel for their culture,which, because of their very different experience, they have found to beliberating and empowering. But the Muslim response is not bizarre andeccentric; because the Islamic world was so widespread and strategicallyplaced, it was the first to be subjected in a concerted, systematic manner tothe colonization process in the Middle East, India, Arabia, Malaya and asignificant part of Africa. Muslims in all these places very early felt thebrunt of this modernizing assault. Their response has not been simply areaction to the new West, but the paradigmatic reaction. They would not be ableto come to modernity as successfully or as smoothly as, for example, Japan,which had never been colonized, whose economy and institutions had remainedintact and which had not been forced into a debilitating dependency on theWest.
The European invasion of the Islamic world was not uniform, but it was thoroughand effective. It began in Moghul India. During the latter half of the18th century, British traders had established themselves in Bengal, andat this time, when modernization was still in its infancy, the British lived ona par with the Hindu and Muslim merchants. But this phase of British activityis known as the "plundering of Bengal," because it permanently damaged thelocal industry, and changed its agriculture so that Bengalis no longer grewcrops for themselves but produced raw materials for the industrialized Westernmarkets. Bengal had been reduced to second-class status in the world economy.Gradually as the British became more "modern" and efficient themselves, theirattitude became more superior, and they were determined to "civilize" theIndians, backed up by the Protestant missionaries who started to arrive in1793. But the Bengalis were not encouraged to evolve a fully industrializedsociety of their own; the British administrators introduced only those aspectsof modern technology that would reinforce their supremacy and keep Bengal in acomplementary role. The Bengalis did benefit from British efficiency, whichkept such disasters as disease, famine and war at bay, and the populationincreased as a result; but this created new problems of overcrowding andpoverty, since there was no option of migration to the towns, as in the West,and the people all had to stay on the land.
The plundering of Bengal economically led to political domination. Between 1798and 1818, by treaty or by military conquest, British rule was establishedthroughout India, except in the Indus Valley, which was subdued between 1843and 1849. In the meantime, the French had tried to set up an empire of theirown. In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Egypt, hoping to establish a base inSuez that would cut the British sea routes to India. He brought with him acorps of scholars, a library of modern European literature, a scientificlaboratory and a printing press with Arabic type. From the start, the advancedculture of Europe, coming as it did with a superbly efficient modern army, wasexperienced in the Muslim Middle East as an assault. Napoleon's expedition toEgypt and Syria failed. He had intended to attack British India from the north,with the help of Russia. This gave Iran a wholly new strategic importance, andfor the next century Britain established a base in the south of the country,while the Russians tried to get control of the north. Neither wanted to makeIran a full colony or protectorate (until oil was discovered there in the earlytwentieth century), but both powers dominated the new Qajar dynasty, so thatthe shahs did not dare to make a move without the support of at least one ofthem. As in Bengal, both Britain and Russia promoted only the technology thatfurthered their own interests and blocked such inventions as the railway, whichmight have benefited the Iranian people, in case it endangered their ownstrategic positions.
The European powers colonized one Islamic country after another. Franceoccupied Algeria in 1830, and Britain Aden nine years later. Tunisia wasoccupied in 1881, Egypt in 1882, the Sudan in 1889 and Libya and Morocco in1912. In 1915 the Sykes-Picot agreement divided the territories of the moribundOttoman Empire (which had sided with Germany during the First World War)between Britain and France in anticipation of victory. After the war, Britainand France duly set up protectorates and mandates in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine,Iraq and Transjordan. This was experienced as an outrage, since the Europeanpowers had promised the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire independence. Inthe Ottoman heartlands, Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk (1881-1938), was ableto keep the Europeans at bay and set up the independent state of Turkey.Muslims in the Balkans, Russia and Central Asia became subject to the newSoviet Union. Even after some of these countries had been allowed to becomeindependent, the West often continued to control the economy, the oil or suchresources as the Suez Canal. European occupation often left a legacy of bitterconflict. When the British withdrew from India in 1947, the Indian subcontinentwas partitioned between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, which are to this dayin a state of deadly hostility, with nuclear weapons aimed at each other'scapitals. In 1948 the Arabs of Palestine lost their homeland to the Zionists,who set up the Jewish secular state of Israel there, with the support of theUnited Nations and the international community. The loss of Palestine became apotent symbol of the humiliation of the Muslim world at the hands of theWestern powers, who seemed to feel no qualms about the dispossession andpermanent exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
home·portraits of ordinary muslims·introduction·major themes·interviews·faqs
·discussion·teacher's guide
producer chat··press·credits·privacy
FRONTLINE·wgbh·pbsi
web site copyright 1995-2014 WGBH educational foundation
