This is a survey of modern history from a global perspective. Part One begins with the political and economic revolutions of the late 1700s and tracks the transformation of the world during the 1800s. Part One concludes as these bewildering changes seem to be running beyond the capacity of older institutions to handle them. Throughout the course we try to grasp what is happening and ask: Why? And the answers often turn on very human choices.
The Islamic World Adapts
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From the course by University of Virginia
The Modern World, Part One: Global History from 1760 to 1910
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From the lesson
The World Transformed (1830-1870)
Meet the Instructors
Philip ZelikowWhite Burkett Miller Professor of History
In the last presentation I spent a lot of time on Europe.
In this presentation and the next one, I want to talk
about how other parts of the world are coping with this new situation.
Let's start with the Islamic world.
We need to think a little bit harder about the character of what this challenge meant
for the Islamic world.
To do that let's just take a moment and
think about the character of governance in the Islamic world is contrasted with
the European world that many of you know a little bit better.
So in the traditional European world, to put this in really crude way.
Remember, you've got, King and his soldiers at the very top.
You've got nobles and and
other aristocrats in that kind of intermediary position,
usually managing the courts in the administration of justice.
So they're also part of the government.
And then you had everyone else.
And then a lot of what's happening because of the commercial revolution,
the democratic revolution.
Is that this intermediary role is increasingly being played by everyone
else in new kinds of intermediary assemblies, parliaments and so on.
Now with the adoption of constitutions and the like.
But the point is, is that this intermediary role of
the administration of justice in Europe is always played by the government.
In Islamic societies it might be more useful to think about a ruler.
And the ruler is usually someone who is a successful warrior,
this is a very traditional pattern.
And held in power by his soldiers.
So ruler, military elite at the top.
Then the intermediary role for
the administration of justice is played by a learned elite.
But in the Islamic world, this learned elite is a religious elite.
They don't really consider themselves part of the government.
Because the system of Islamic law is a system of religious law administered by
religious figures who have mastered the difficult classical Arabic.
Mastery of the Koran and so on.
And then you have everyone else.
One point of this then is that in Islamic societies actually the role
of government as Westerners understand that term is relatively narrow.
That private society, family life, the religious world,
actually dominates the rest.
So in the Islamic world these rulers may come and go.
They may assassinate each other.
And full loyalty is owed to whoever has supreme power.
But the religious elite is much concerned about maintaining this divide in which
the ruler is acknowledged to be supreme.
But most facets of everyday life remain highly stable.
Because there's the continuity of a religious legal system
dominated by the elite that have mastered that system.
But I don't want to imply that Islam itself in the 1700s and
1800s is some static, decaying, religious force, it's not.
Actually Islam is going through a period of some significant innovation and
turbulence in its beliefs, really from two different wings.
Most of you probably know that Islam tends to be divided among those who
are Sunni and Shi'a,
this is a division that dates back to the early days of Islam.
What I want to focus on now is some sources of ferment within Sunni Islam.
Which is the majority of people making up the Ummah,
the community of believers in Islam across the world.
On one side, and this has older roots.
Sufism is very strong in the 1800s.
What's Sufism?
Sufi brotherhoods form around charismatic figures and a mystical set of beliefs,
finding joy and exultation in the practice together of Islam.
Often with rituals that involve dancing and
the veneration of senior figures in the Sufi
brotherhood who were treated in the way Christians almost might treat saints.
These brotherhoods with their ecstatic rituals,
Are a powerful evangelical missionary force spreading Islam all
the way to the Dutch East Indies, on the one hand.
And also into East and even West Africa.
Another area of ferment in Islam,
Is Wahhabism, this is a very different strain of Islam.
They're arguing that in order for
Islam to recover its original energy it needs to return to its roots.
An ascetic, what some people called fundamentalist practice of Islam
shorn of deviatioist practices.
In fact, the Wahhabists are very critical of the Sufi brotherhoods.
Wahhabism gains tremendous strength in the Arabian Peninsula,
especially during the 1700s.
And it continues to gather force in the 1800s as well.
Now, the most important formal political entity in the Islamic world in the period
we're looking at between about 1830 and 1870 is still the Ottoman Empire.
This is not a nationality.
The Ottoman Empire is a dynasty,
mainly founded by Turkic peoples hundreds of years earlier.
In Arabia, tribes aligned with the new Wahhabist fervor push out Ottoman rulers.
And reclaim much of Arabia to Arab control, including for
a time seizing the great holy places of Islam, Mecca and Medina.
Egypt is perhaps the wealthiest single part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Nile Valley traditionally a source of great wealth and
influence in the Mediterranean world.
Egypt actually revives during this period, the 1830s,
1840s, especially under the leadership of a man named Muhammad Ali.
Here's a picture of Muhammad Ali, a very tough and ruthless ruler.
He reorganizes Egypt, develops a strong military capability,
adopting European techniques.
Develops a commerce based on the growth of Egyptian cotton,
which is being exported also to the mills of England, but elsewhere.
This map can help us see the expansion of Egyptian power during the 1830s,
when Muhammad Ali's domain is at its height, say around 1840.
Egypt controls the Nile Valley, it controls both side of the Red Sea.
It's expanded up the Eastern Mediterranean into Anatolia itself.
Egyptian navy is increasingly powerful in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The whole stability of the Ottoman Empire itself is being threaten now from Egypt.
The West Europeans don't want the Ottoman Empire to collapse.
Why wouldn't they want Ottoman Empire to fall?
In part because the West Europeans, the British, the French,
see the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the expansion of a European rival.
You see, the Russian Empire expanding potentially from here.
If the Ottoman Empire collapses, the Russians will control all of the outlets
from the Black Sea, and become an important Mediterranean power.
The British and French don't want that.
So the British and French actually intervene
to defeat the forces of the Egyptians and protect the Ottoman Empire.
There is an important naval battle here.
And the effect of this is to give the Ottoman Empire a second wind
with this European support.
But my larger point is simply that the Islamic world is adapting in this
situation, and there are some definite sources of strength.
Egypt, though the 1850s and 1860s,
actually remains a relatively robust power.
In fact the Egyptians working with the French government,
but also with some British support, work on completing the historic Suez Canal
that will link the Mediterranean directly with the Red Sea.
And dramatically ease the movement of steamships between Europe and
India and the rest of Asia.
This is an enormous event in the globalization of the world.
And here is an illustration in which people are celebrating the opening of
the Suez Canal.
You see all the flags that are flying, those are Egyptian flags.
And the Ottoman Empire comes out of all this turbulence determined to embark on
a period of reform.
This period of reform is usually just referred to by the expression Tanzimat.
In the 1850s, 1860s, there are a number of liberal reforms, changing
the administration of justice, moving towards the creation of a constitution.
Indeed, by the beginning of the 1870s,
the Ottoman Empire has even created a Parliament, extending civil rights.
And giving more of its many ethnic communities a voice in the overall
governance of the empire, under Sultan Abdul Hamid.
Remember a few minutes ago I talked about the ruling elite usually being a warrior
elite and
then successful warrior might then try to establish a ruling dynasty of his own?
Well that's exactly whats happening in Southwest Asia.
Often the warriors tend to come from Turkic horsemen
from this part of the world.
The Safavid dynasty collapses in the 1770s.
It's replaced by the Qajar's, that's this term right here.
The Qajar dynasty rules this part of the world, what we would now call Iran.
It's fending off pressure from the Russians up here and here.
There's pressure coming out of British-controlled India.
Clashes over these border land areas of Afghanistan, that's not
controlled either by the British, or by the Russians, or by the Qajars.
The main point here is that the Qajar dynasty adapts enough,
balancing the great powers off against each other.
So that it's also able to find a way of coping and maintaining its integrity.
So let's swing around and
take a look at what the situation was in Africa during this period,
again between about 1830 to 1860, 1870.
So during this period,
Africa still remains in the hands of a variety of traditional rulers.
Though they've had their own interactions with outsiders,
including such things as their partnerships in slave trade.
So this is an illustration of Africa, circa 1840.
A couple of things that are of interest, Isam is penetrating
well into the heart of West Africa, for example, Sokoto.
You can see along the coastlines,
Omanis from the Arabian peninsula,
are here with the Sultan of Zanzibar and Oman.
Along with the Portuguese here, who help manage a slave trade that's
continuing to move hundreds of thousands of Africans into the Muslim world.
The Portuguese also have their territory here based on the old
slave trade relationships, especially with Brazil.
Here at the edge of southern Africa,
the British have established a strong outpost on the coast.
The old Dutch settlers, going back to the 1600s, have actually gotten into their
wagons and are trekking into the south African interior, here.
And the French have established an important position here.
But basically, Africa remains under the rule of traditional kingdoms and princes.
It's deadly for Europeans to attempt to penetrate the African interior,
mainly because they can't withstand the diseases.
So one of the great changes that will occur in 1860s, and above all in
the 1870s, is Europeans become able to penetrate the African interior.
Why?
Steamships that can go up river and chemistry invents new pharmaceuticals.
So step back, between about 1830 and 1870, the Islamic world
is profoundly affected by its interactions with the new European situation.
But they're finding ways to cope and adapt.
And as of, say, 1870, they're doing so with a good degree of success.
Now let's take a look at what happens in this same period in East Asia.
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