WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST

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WESTERN CIVILIZATION
THE NEAR EAST

WESTERN CIVILIZATION
IN THE NEAR EAST

BY
HANS KOHN

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY

E. W. DICKES

NEW YOBK: MORNINCSIDE HEICHTS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

1936

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CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ix

INTRODtTCTION 1

THE ENVIRONMENT 9

MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT IN HISTORY 23

MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT AT THE PRESENT DAY 9

CHANGING MAN IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 87

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OF WORLD

COMMUNICATIONS 1 1(5

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OK WORLD

ECONOMICS 147

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OF WORLD

POLITICS 185

METHODS AND PROBLEMS OF EUROPEANIUTION 227

BIBLIOGRAPHY 307

INDEX 321

MAP 330

vll

PREFACE

MODERN civilization had its origin in Western Europe.
But from its beginnings it was universal in aim and
scope. Its fundamental attitude was rationalist and
individualist, secularist and scientific. It appealed to
man and his reason, it destroyed the traditional attitude
of mind and structure of society. During the nineteenth
century it spread from Western Europe to the rest of
Europe and to all other parts of the earth. The latest
stage of modern civilization, the age of the motor car and
the aeroplane, of the cinema and wireless, spread almost
simultaneously through Europe and the two Americas,
to Asia and Africa. Modern civilization has become
world-wide.

This process of the spread of modern civilization,
which has become the outstanding and dominant factor
of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
has been called the Europeanization of mankind. On
account of its modern civilization Europe was able in the
nineteenth century to conquer and dominate the world
politically and economically. The spread of modern
civilization enables the non-European peoples to-day to
reject Europe's political and economic control. The
brief epoch of European world domination seems to be
approaching its end. The world-wide triumph and
ascendancy of the civilization of Europe impHes the
weakening and waning of Europe's political and economic
superiority. Like other races before them, the Europeans
were entirely ready to ascribe their political and economic
successes to an inborn or God-ordained superiority. But
before the rise of modern civilization Occidental and
Oriental races had met as equals, in fact the cultural and
the political superiority had rested frequently with the
latter.

x PREFACE

Modern civilization transformed Europe. This highly
complex process was not only a question of technical inno-
vation, of political and economic reorganization, of the
advance of science. The coming of modern civilization
involved a complete and profound re-moulding of theentire
cultural and social heritage of Europe. Man and his
environment changed entirely ; a new outlook upon the
world, a new feeling of life, a new valuation of man '8 place
in history and society evolved. But in the midst of the
new dynamic changes and adaptations ancient primitive
and medieval belief^ emotions and ntateaof mind survived.
This cultural lag and the quickening pace of changes
made modern civilization conscious of the need for
permanent readjustment.

The new Europe arising out of this transformation
came in its new feeling of exuberant strength into contact
with the old civilizations of the East at a time of their
decay or stagnation. Out of this meeting followed not a
clash of races or religions, but a contact and conflict of
civilizations or of stages of civilization. The medieval
but flexible civilizations of the Eat adapted thcmBclvcm
to modern civilization as the medieval civilization of
Europe had done before them, Again, as in the countries
of Europe, the change could not remain confined to matters
of technique or organization, but comprehended the whole
man and all manifestations of life. As modem civiliza-
tion becomes more and more universal, the races and peoples
of the earth meet again more and more on a footing of
equality as they did before the rise of modern civilization.

This universal acculturation and the ensuing birth of a
coherent and closely-knit humanity, facing similar social
economic and cultural problems, will determine the new
trends of world history. Their effect is felt in Mexico and
in China, in Ethiopia and in Brazil. 1 studied them for
almost twenty years in the more limited area of the Near
and Middle Bast. These lands had been for many centuries
politically and culturally linked up with Europe ; their
estrangement had set in with the rise of modem civiliza-
tion. I entered first into contact with the Mualim East

PREFACE xi

in Turkestan, when I came in April 1915 to Samarkand.
Having been born in Prague in the old Austrian Monarchy,
the classical battleground of nationalities and civilizations,
I quickly became interested in the problems of nationalism
and the history of civilization. I spent fifteen months in
Samarkand and in Ferghana and then over three years in
different parts of Siberia and the Far East. A residence
of nearly six years in Paris and London brought me into
the centres in which modern civilization was first born and
from which the main modernizing influences upon the
Near and Middle East emanated. From the autumn of
1925 I lived in Jerusalem and travelled extensively in the
countries of the Near East. I wrote the present book
mainly in the year 1932 and finished it on May 15th, 1934,
the day I left the Near East. In the present edition
figures and other statements have been brought, as far as
possible, up to date.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation and grate-
fulness to Mr E. W. Dickes of Manchester for his most
valuable help in rendering the present book into English
and for his interest in the book.

ILK

Northampton, Mass.
January 1936.

INTRODUCTION

THIS book is concerned with the countries of the Levant
and their immediate hinterland. There are two ways
of approaching such a subject. It is possible to choose
geography as the starting point nature, the factor which
remains unchanged through long epochs as the basis of
all happenings, and the picture can then be rounded into
plastic form. Or the starting point chosen may be his-
tory, the communal life of men with its changes in the
course of time, the competitive ambitions and tendencies
in political and economic life, the tireless effort of the
human spirit, and the story may then lift itself up to
the dynamic of drama. In every exposition the two
elements interpenetrate one another: space and time,
nature and mind. The environment, in its divisions into
valleys and mountains, in the composition of the soil and
the coast formation, in climate and winds, sets limits to
man's political and economic activities, and in all sorts
of ways determines his manner of living and his mental
make-up. Its influence shows itself, however, most
strongly in primitive man ; humanity gradually learns to
become more and more independent of its environment :
in this victorious though never-ending straggle the mind's
weapon is technical advance. The character and destiny
of a nation are partly determined by the soil, but they also
overcome the influence of the soil, wrest the national type
from it, and determine its place amid further associations.
Among various peoples, in different countries, and at
different times, there are to be found identical or similar
economic and cultural stages, with their characteristic
effects on all fields of personal and social life, The
unity of great cultural regions, embracing many countries
and peoples, which come to share a common destiny ; the
contact and mutual enrichment of these cultural regions
in the course of time through their neighbourhood ; the

2 INTRODUCTION

unity of the human race and of its intellectual and social
development/ a unity preserved in spite of all territorial
and national divisions release the life and the history
of man more and more from the first predominantly static
condition, reinforce the dynamic influence of the inter-
relationship of all happenings, and give the lives of men
and nations a meaning and a unity which permit of com-
prehension and of mutual understanding. 80, in the
exposition which has to proceed from the geographical
starting point, the historic destiny, and for us the living
present with its tendencies to growth and change, come
more and more into the foreground. Geography sets the
stage, a magnificent scenery with the dignity and the
gravity of thousands of years ; for the old writers, both
in the Bible and among the Greeks, tell UH that in the
Levant the climate and the soil have remained uniform
through all history. On this stage, within ite limits but
not its limitations, there proceeds the speetaele of history.

All history is interwoven, every act ho* its natural
antecedents, but, for all that, new element* may make
their appearance again and again and dependence on the
past at a critical turning-point may mean the dewtruetion
of the future. This should be borne in mind above all
in the present condition of the world, threatened every-
where with ruin and chaos on a scale never before wit-
nessed* The only way out is to make now a radical
breach with the past, to enter on new paths, and, distant
and doubtful as the goal may appear in the age of
universal nationalism and of jealous autarchy within every
geographical area, to proceed to the creation of an all*
comprehending economic order, a world federation,
embracing and preserving all individual characteristics,
but establishing on our shrinking earth the one world* wide
stage for the one single spirit of man.

The countries of the Levant, the coastal strip around
the south-eastern basin of the Mediterranean, reaching
from Greece and the Straits of Byzantium to the Nile
Delta in a vast are which encloses the Aegean and the
Levant Sea, have already occupied the centre of the stage

INTRODUCTION 3

in past history at a period when there existed a forerunner
of the World State. The Roman empire, with its Hellen-
istic culture, had been an approximation to the World
State ; it had founded a unity of the whole economic
area of civilization on the basis of unity of intellectual
life ; it had embraced the " world " ; at its frontiers
there came to an end all of the " world " of which the
people of that day had knowledge ; beyond them began
the deserts and virgin forests of barbarians destitute
of economic organization and of intellectual life. The
eastern basin of the Mediterranean had divided the
three continents of that world ; and since, with its wealth
of islands and bays, it had formed a highway which had
long been in use, it had also united the three continents.
Here Asia and Europe met one another, here they
exchanged their wares, from here in the very earliest
times routes led in one direction to the barbarians of the
north north-west through the western Mediterranean to
Gaul and Britain, north-east through the Black Sea to
the vast plains of Sarmatia and in the other direction
to the storied lands of the south, to India and the Far
East. Here, therefore, there rubbed shoulders the various
cultures and ways of living which were to determine the
character of Western humanity. From here Europe and
Asia received their names, Europe, the old Assyrian
ereb, the western land, and Asia, the old Assyrian acu,
the eastern land Occident and Orient, from the view-
point of the Aegean, Ponente and Lewmte as they were
called later, when in the Middle Ages the Italian maritime
towns began to control the trade of the eastern Mediterra-
nean ; the Far East, the way to which led through the
Levante, was then called the High Levant*

The Levant was at first the centre of the world, the
beginning of world history. Here the cultures of the
Nile Valley and of Mesopotamia met. From here the
Phoenicians went out on their mission of cultural and
economic development and synthesis of the Mediterranean,
Here, in Crete and Qyprus, the first centres of Aegean
civilization came into existence. For thousands of years

4 INTRODUCTION

the Levant remained the great bridge of the world, or
more precisely the Pontifex Maximus, the great builder
of the bridges thrown between the civilizations of different
regions and epochs. Perhaps ** Pontifex Maximus "
should be kept as a human distinction, and in that case
the title belongs to Alexander the Groat, whom* action
made the Levant the home of the Hellenism which in its
universalimn paved the way for Christianity, and, grown
rigid, has lived on to modern times in Islam and in the
eastern churches. The Levant was the centre of the two
greatest movements in the history of the Middle Ages,
Islam and the Crusades ; the blood that wa# wheel was the
Levant's ; and in those movements the Levant completed
its bridge-building function. By the end of the Middle
Ages the Levant was sinking out of history ; the eastern
Mediterranean , once the central sea of the worh I , t he h intone
stage par excellence, WIIH becoming a deHerted backwater.
Since then Europe has advanced to world dominion
as the realm of modern humanimn and industrialism.
Only in recent decades, with the cutting of the Suez
Canal and the coining of the motor car and the aeroplane,
has the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the girdle
dividing north and west Eurojie from the tropical wealth
of the south of Ania and the east of Africa, returned to ite
old importance. In our own days there him been
proceeding in this region a structural change affecting
its inhabitants in all their HOC in I and jirrHonnl relations.
This change is not confined to the Levant, to the territory
of the former Ottoman empire and Persia ; it in proceed-
ing similarly, sometimes with more intensity, sometimes
with less, in Russia and central Asia, in India and China,
in Africa and Latin America, AH these countries, which
embrace three-quarters of the human race, are becoming
" Europeanized ". They are awakening to historic
consciousness, are taking over from Europe its humanistic
mental attitude, inherited from the Renaissance and the
Encyclopaedists, and its technique, based on natural
science, They are " modernizing " themselves, and an
determined to enter into active partnership in the single

INTRODUCTION 5

economic and intellectual community of the world which
is being formed through the new possibilities of com-
munication and production. The Mediterranean is no
longer the centre of the world as it was in the time of
the first World State, the Roman empire. But it is once
more of great and growing importance.

The Near East, unlike the Far East, was at one time,
indeed until far into the Middle Ages, based on the same
intellectual and social foundations as Europe. It is not
as something entirely strange that it is now receiving the
revitalized inheritance of ancient thought in Europe's
science and humanism.

The structural change in social life in the Levant
becomes of significance as typical of the process of
Europcanization which is now going on throughout the
world. From its geographical situation the Near East is
of incomparably greater importance to Europe, politically
as well as in other respects, than the Far East and the
Pacific, South America or Africa. In the " Near East
question " lay the origin of the Crimean War, the Balkan
Wars, and the World War. Here Great Britain, Russia,
Germany, France, Italy struggled and still struggle over
the most important inter-continental routes in the world,
for world power and world influence* In Turkey, Iran,
Afghanistan, Arabia, there stand confronting one another,
more than elsewhere, the two great systems of world
power of the present day the Anglo-Saxon Imperrum, the
commercial imperialism of the capitalist and industrialist
economic epoch, supported by the missionary ideals of
Christian and democratic civilization and by the race-
consciousness of the Nordic aristocrat ; and the Soviet
Union, the social imperialism inspired by a new missionary
ideal and by the conviction of the complete equality of
rights of all races and peoples, which stands ready to serve
as pattern and helper for all peoples engaged in their
own industrialization and modernization.

The change in social and economic structure is proceed-
ing under the slogan of Nationalism. The peoples of the
Levant first, in the nineteenth century the inhabitants

6 INTRODUCTION

of the Balkans, and then, at the beginning of the twen-
tieth, Egyptians and Anatolians, Arabs and Iranians,
even Kurds and Afghans, have awakened to national
consciousness. They aim at making the territories they
inhabit into unified states, politically and economically
independent, and to provide them with a modern
administrative system. And they aim at the fulfilment
of their historic " mission ", which every jyeople likes to
infer from its past and from its talents, and no longer to
be objects of " imperialist activism " in the political and
economic fields. They are taking up the Htrtigglu against
centuries-old fetters of tradition, and are trying to create
a new State, a now economy, a new wociety, and an their
bearer a new human type tanks of a magnitude demand-
ing the utmost expenditure of effort from all these peoples,
economically and culturally backward and mink under
misrule and oppression.

In this effort they find themselves in conflict not only
with the external adversary, Imperialism, in whose
interest, as it seems to them, they an* kept in a weak
condition and at a modest level of development, but also
with their own intrinsic weaknesses, which the external
adversary knows how to exploit, their great poverty and
ignorance, an inheritance from the past, their sparse
population, the absence of a sense of solidarity, and the
lack of endurance, strength of character, and sense of
responsibility. The overcoming of those defects pre-
supposes the creation of an 61ite, a stratum of intellectual
and moral leaders; it presupposes also a patient and
tenacious work of education in every field and a period
of undisturbed development. But these desiderata of
time and peace are lacking, and so the structural change
has to proceed amid pressure from without and poverty
at home, in tbe midst of the play of conflicting forces,
amid a painful succession of frictions and inadequacies.
Centuries of progress have to be overtaken in a few years
before the bases of organic growth have been established.

From the point of view of world politics and world
trade, these are regions of comparatively little significance

INTRODUCTION 7

apart from the important fact of their situation as transit
countries. They are relatively small States, not in area,
it is true, but in population and industrial equipment ;
they are largely covered with deserts, steppes, and infertile
mountain territory, and are frequently without natural
water supplies for the development of agriculture and
without mineral wealth for the development of a large-
scale industry.

But what is going on in the Levant is typical of a
process which is now world-wide the effort of the
colonial and semi-colonial countries to achieve emanci-
pation. In this territory of an immemorial civilization,
this classic field of tension between Orient and Occident,
this historic battlefield of empires and peoples, civiliza-
tions and religions, there are now proceeding an outward
straggle and an inward change of fundamental impor-
tance. Here the expansionist tendencies of all the Great
Powers come into conflict in a narrow space. Here
Napoleon sought tho route to India and Great Britain
found it and developed it, though the dream of the great
Middle Eastern empire, based on Constantinople and
Baku, Haifa, and Basra, could only be partially realized.
Here Germany made her thrust with the Baghdad
Railway and tried to take up anew, across a vast land
bridge and with a bold territorial grasp, the old medieval
dream of the succession to the Imperium* Here Russia
pressed forward from her cold northern steppes through
the Bosphorus, from the Caucasus and from the oases of
Turkestan to the warm open seas and gulfs of the south,
and sought to found her Middle Eastern empire. Here
the traditions of the Crusades still lived vividly enough in
French minds to inspire the ambition of incorporating the
Levant in the French Mediterranean empire, and the
memories of Rome's world dominion awoke in the new
naval standing which the Italian flag has secured in the
Mediterranean, with the repeatedly announced intention
of spreading the power of the new Roman empire and
its surplus population over the territories in which Rome

8 INTRODUCTION

once before showed her quality in the ordering and
policing of the world.

In this unique field of tension of world politics the
indigenous peoples are trying to secure their existence
and progress. In the last fifteen years new States have
arisen here, old ones have recovered their youth, social
and cultural and economic systems hundreds and indeed
thousands of years old have been rapidly revolutionized;
here the primitive and immemorial lives on Hide by
side with the latest advances in civilization. Islam
is beginning to change under the influence of the enlight-
ened West in the name way an once the religion of the
desert Arabs was modified through contact with the
surrounding civilization of Hellenism and the Persian
empire. The dignified but entirely torpid churches of
the Orient are awakening to now life through contact
with their Western sisters, and the reunion of Orient and
Occident under the imperial a?gia of the Anglo-Saxons
finds its spiritual reflection in the approach between
Anglican ProteBtantism and the patriarchate** of the
East* All these political, intellectual, and economic
movements are being lit up by the emotion, often
expressed in the rhetorical terms of the southerner, of
newly awakened aud enthusiastic nationalisms ; to them
there come from the opposite pole of Western influences
storms which are sweeping over the whole of Asia and
which bear seeds of unrest from China, from India, from
the Soviet Union, to the shores of the Mediterranean,

So it is not by any mean* through the scale of its
economic or political power, but through the effects, still
operating, of its great past, through the poamonato con-
flict of so many forces, and through the typical nature of
the structural change in every field, that the Levant once
more attracts our attention to-day and ia once more
becoming a representative arena for the play of con-
flicting issues in world history. This region is sparsely
inhabited ; much of it is desert ; it has lived through
centuries of neglect and impoverishment. But it seema
to be inseparably bound up with world history,

THE ENVIRONMENT

UNITY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION

THE cultural unity of the territory of Hellenism and of
the Eoman empire corresponded to a similarity in the
physiognomy of the whole country. Amid the manifold
variety of the landscape and the human types, both from
country to country and within the various countries, the
observant traveller who visits Spain and Anatolia, Greece
and Syria, southern Italy and northern Africa, will be
surprised at the uniformity he finds in all the Mediter-
ranean countries in the character of the landscape, in
the flora, the climate, and the rhythm of human Me,
The northerner, in his longing for the blue waters, the
brilliant sunshine, the clear atmosphere, and the pic-
turesque though dignified nonchalance of the natives,
is very liable to idealize the country of the South, and
on the other hand to be disgusted on a closer acquaintance
with the unfamiliar scene, the dried up rivers and stream-
lets, the burning sun, the dust, and the dirtiness and
lack of discipline of the inhabitants. But the dweller in
any one Mediterranean country will feel at home in any
of the others; sun and shade, spring and grove, the
animals and the way of living of the humans will remind
him of his own homeland.

Not only have the same influences of soil and climate
been at work among the people of the Mediterranean
countries, but the people have been formed by the same
historic forces. The Phoenicians, and after them the
Greeks, travelled throughout the Mediterranean in ancient
times ; Hellenism gave it a cultural unity and the Roman
empire a legal and political one. This general culture
was fed from sources contributed by every Mediterranean
people. In Imperial Rome, where the Stoa taught
universalism and the unity of the human race, Greeks and

10 THE ENVIRONMENT

Berbers, Syrians and Spaniards mingled. The unity of
the Mediterranean countries provided the basis for the
spread of Christianity and later of Islam, which in turn
determined the cultural stamp of the whole region. The
Church, which had come into existence in the Mediter-
ranean area, remained a Mediterranean church ; its
centre of gravity in the Went was Rome ; so soon as
northern Europe won its emancipation from the
Mediterranean and rose to intellectual and political world
dominion, it fell away from Rome ; the centre of gravity
of the Church in the East was Byzantium, which brought
civilization to the Slavn as Rome had brought it to the
Teutons. The Arabs penetrated as far us Spain, where
for seven centuries they determined the physiognomy
of the country ; they were only driven out four centuries
ago. They spread a lingual and cultural unity from
Asia Minor by way of Malta and Sicily a far a* Gibraltar.
Later, under Turkish leadership, Islam spread through
the Balkans and round the shores of the Black Sea ; at
its zenith the Ottoman empire united the countries
between Belgrade and Basra and from the (Yimea to
Tunis. Through their common history the Mediterranean
countries acquired a unity not only in the character of
the landscape, but also in the spiritual attitude of the
people and in social structure.

In later times also the critical epochs of history were
common to them all, The (Trusadea brought to the South
the first flicker of northern aggressiveness ; they were the
forerunners of the change that reached a symbolic acme
about 1492 with the discovery of America and the
expulsion of the last Arabs from Spain. From that
time onwards the surviving spirit of the Crusades carried
European adventurousness in another direction. In
spite of centuries of effort, the Crusades failed in the
Mediterranean and ended in retreat, for the difference in
civilization between the north-western and the south-
eastern Mediterranean countries was too slight ; it is
doubtful, indeed, whether at that time the superiority
in civilization did not lie on the side of the south-eaat,

THE ENVIRONMENT g"J9ll

the Levant. The new Crusades, the journeys of the
conquistadores across the Atlantic and round Africa, were
entirely successful, since the difference in civilization
between their homeland and the new countries was very
great. The discovery of the world beyond the Atlantic,
and of that vast ocean, shifted the centre of gravity from
the Mediterranean to north-western Europe and produced
a new mental outlook and a new social order. The
Mediterranean world fell from its world-dominance. The
mental outlook and the social order of the Mediterranean
countries were unable to maintain their supremacy.
Spain and Italy fell into decay, as did the Asiatic and
African shores of the Mediterranean. The great trade
routes became deserted.

Not until three centuries later did the Mediterranean
re-awaken under Napoleon, himself a Corsican and a man
of the Mediterranean. His ambition was to be the first
to restore by conquest the old unity of the Mediterranean,
to re-open the old trade routes, and through his campaign
to shake Egypt and Syria, Italy and Spain out of their
lethargy. The first signs of renaissance in the Mediter-
ranean countries date back to Napoleon the activity of
Mehemet Ali in Egypt and Syria, the Greek war of
independence, the Eisorgimento in Italy, and the assembly
of the Cortes in Cadiz in 1812. From that time the
influence of the mental outlook and the social order of the
people of north-western Europe began to penetrate the
Mediterranean region.

The various stages in the process of Europeanization
were reached with varying speeds. England, the outpost
of north-western Europe, was the first non-Mediterranean
Power to gain controlling influence in the Mediterranean,
French the language of a country adjoining the
Mediterranean but centring historically and geographically
in the lie de France, belonging to north-western Europe,
and primarily concerned not with the Mediterranean but
with the Atlantic became the language of culture and
of political and commercial relations, in place of Italian,
which had predominated up to the seventeenth century.

12 THE ENVIRONMENT

In the nineteenth century, however, this Europeaniza*
tion remained no more than a thin film, embracing an
almost infinitesimal upper stratum. Beneath it the life of
the people in Spain and Turkey, southern Italy and
Egypt, Greece and Persia remained substantially un-
influenced in its traditional character. Not until after the
World War were there any attempts to effect a more
thorough Europeanimtion of the life of the masses in the
Mediterranean countries, in Spain through the revolution
of 1930, in southern Italy by Fascism, in Turkey by
Mustapha Kemal, and in Persia by Reza Shah. This
process, however, is going on uniformly all round the
Mediterranean, though on a varying wale, and is leaving
unaltered the unity of character of the whole region.

PHYSIOGRAPHY

The Mediterranean stretches from west to oast an the
central region of the Old World. At its eastern end it
divides into two arms. The north-eastern one IB formed
by the Aegean and the Black Sea and continued by the
Caspian ; the south-eastern one IB formed by the levant
Sea and continued by the Red Sea and the Persian (Jtilf.
The long coastline of Turkey is washed by the Levant Hca f
the Aegean, and the Black Sea ; Syria and Palestine are
coast lands of the Levant Sea, and tbe river-oasis of Kgypt
opens into the Mediterranean. These four cowi trios
directly adjoin the Mediterranean and have their full part
in it. But their importance in history and at the present
day as transit countries is given to them by their hinter-
land, which provided from the earliest times and to-day
again provides the connecting link with Asia ; Iraq on the
Persian Gulf, central and southern Arabia between the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and Iran (Persia) between
the Persian Gulf and the Caspian. AH the importance of
Marseilles and later of Genoa and Venice in the northern
Mediterranean rested on the fact that by means of their
hinterland, the Rhone valley and the valley of the Po f
they provided the means of communication with Europe,

THE ENVIRONMENT 13

so in the past and in our own day the cities of the Levant
have controlled world trade with Asia through their
connection with their hinterland, with the shores of the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

This region around the Levant Sea is bounded on the
north by a girdle of highlands which rise gradually from
,the Ionic shore of the Aegean and run from west to east
into the mountain country of Anatolia, Armenia, and
Persia between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and on the
south from the Levant Sea to the Persian Gulf. Anatolia
is a highland surrounded by high mountains except in the
west ; its centre is a depression without an outlet, and has
become a salt steppe. The plateau attains its greatest
height in the east, and falls away toward the west. At its
highest point it passes into the Armenian highlands, the
topmost peak of which, Ararat, rises to 16,920 feet ; these
highlands, with their deep ravines and rich meadows,
form an excellent grazing country. The mountain chains
running out from the ranges on the borders of Anatolia
divide the country into a number of almost inaccessible
regions. They offer great obstacles to transport, but
along the coasts and through the passes there have always
been important routes leading to the Aegean, to Cilicia and
to Armenia, making Asia Minor a transit country between
west and east. Through it the Persians marched into
Greece and Alexander the Great into Persia, and through
it in our own day Europeanizing influences are finding
their way eastwards and southwards into Asia.

The tableland of Iran, united with Anatolia by
Armenia, is cut up by mountain chains which meet along
the shores, enclosing between them a highland country
split up into several basins* The highest mountain in
Iran, Demavend, south of the Caspian, attains a height of
18>600 feet. In Iran, as in Anatolia, there are basins with
no outlet, in which there are many salt lakes, often dried
up in summer*

South of this highland girdle lies the great Libyan
desert tableland, Syria and Palestine form a country of
mountains and deep valleys between the Mediterranean

16 THE ENVIRONMENT

are known as khamsin, in north Africa simoon, in south
Spain leveche, and in Italy and Greece scirocco. The sky
becomes of a leaden colour, the air unendurably dust-
laden, the horizon, generally so clear, is hazy with water
vapour, and the parching effect of these winds withers
the plants. The night brings no coolness, and the sultry
atmosphere makes sleep impossible.

Entirely different is the winter time. The first rains
to fall in the autumn, the Biblical " showers that water
the earth ", cover the land with green. The time of sowirg^
comes ; water begins to collect and flow. But the wint '<
is not exclusively a rainy period. Splendid days of mil
sunny weather alternate with days of rain ; rain lasting
all day is comparatively rare ; winter is largely spring*
like. Often there is no rain for weeks, or rain in insuffi-
cient quantity. These frequent and dreaded periods
of drought in the Mediterranean region bring shortage
of water and harvest failures. Of great importance to the
crops are the late rains, which ripen the grain. In the
winter there are also occasional frosts, and in the high
mountain regions, in the Lebanon, in Asia Minor, and in
Iran with its more continental climate, snow lies for many
weeks a yard deep and makes railways and roads impass-
able. The more low-lying regions seldom or never see
snow ; if it comes it melts away as a rule after a short
time. In places like Jerusalem, which is over 2,000 feet
above sea level, the snow lies for several days in some
years, though only rarely. The Mediterranean thus has
no really cold season, except in its highland girdle ; never-
theless inadequate heating often makes the winter a very
uncomfortable period.

The landscapes of the south are very attractive. The
air is clear and transparent, and the wealth and purity
of colours constantly delight the eye of the observer.
On the other hand, there is little or none of the gentle
transitions and shadings to which the central European
is accustomed, the streamlets and woods and meadows of
his homeland. Nature ia rich in sharp and sudden tran-
sitions. Summer and winter follow one another without

THE ENVIRONMENT 17

any definite spring or autumn, day and night without
the long hours of twilight. Unknown are the long snug
winter evenings, unknown the short summer nights;
,aU contrasts are abrupt, without the imperceptible
/merging through intermediate stages.
' Nowhere are springs of such importance and water
courses so sought after as in the Mediterranean region.
Villages crowd around springs and wells where they are
not built on mountain slopes or like fortresses on hilltops,
for security or in order to avoid malaria. The streams
often flow only periodically; characteristic are the
wadis, which have water in them only for quite a short
time after rainfall and are then like foaming mountain
streams, but quickly dry up again and are then nothing
but wide beds of stones destitute of water or with nothing
but an almost invisible trickle of water. The water
resources arc also sapped by evaporation. In the steppes
and deserts the few springs are surrounded by lusciously
green oases, which stand out sharply without any
transition, like miracles, from the cheerless surrounding
barrenness. In towns and villages the rain water is
collected in cisterns ; if there is little rainfall the crops
wither and man and beast go thirsty. The mountain
slopes are bare, deforested through thousands of years
of felling in order to build ships, of wartime ravaging,
and of the destruction of the young growth by goats,
which will chew up anything, Thus one very frequently
meets with a naked rock which is clothed only for a short
period in spring in a many-coloured carpet embroidered
with a fairylike wealth of flowers. The deforestation
is also answerable for the slowness of the formation of
soil : when arable land has once become desert, usually
through historic events, its past productivity is restored
only with great difficulty and after heavy expenditure of
labour and capital.

An exception in this general Mediterranean climate
is formed by the coastal mountains of southern Arabia
with their ample raiaf all in summer, and by the tropical
climatic enclaves along the south-eastern ooast of the

18 THE ENVIRONMENT

Black Sea and the southern coast of the Caspian, where
rain falls in quantities throughout the year, and where,
in consequence, the vegetation is tropical and the uncul-
tivated land is covered with ever-damp virgin forest.

THE FLORA

Apart from these climatic enclaves, in which coffee
and tea thrive, the flora of the Mediterranean region is
as uniform as the climate. Nature has no winter sleep ;
vegetables and grasses flourish most luxuriantly in winter |
and spring; most of the trees are evergreen, and the
type of growth most frequently found is that of trees
like the olive and the laurel, whose tough leaves afford
protection against evaporation. The date palm is typical
of only a few districts ; it bears fruit in the sandy soil of ,
Mesopotamia, south Palestine, Arabia, southern Iran,
and Egypt, often being planted in extensive, spacious
groves. The typical plants of commercial importance
in the Mediterranean region are either indigenous, like
grain, vines, olives and fig trees, or have been introduced,
as rice and the various sorts of citrus, from the monsoon
regions of Asia, and tobacco and maize from America,
Grain and olives are of primary importance as food for the
simple countryman ; bread, with onions or garlic, forms
his daily food, and the olive supplies him with the fats
represented by butter in northern regions. As the grain
is sown at the coming of the early rains and harvested
at the beginning of the dry period, it can be stored and
threshed in the open, in contrast to northern usage. In
the Mohammedan countries in particular the grapes are
dried after the harvest, being converted into raisins on
open baxn floors. In many parts the mulberry tree is
planted for silkworm culture ; in others, cotton, which
like citrus trees and rice requires artificial irrigation.
Agricultural labour is often carried on with great intensity,
and in the neighbourhood of the towns and in many
alluvial plains by horticultural methods, with minute
attention to each plant. The mountain slopes are made

THE ENVIRONMENT 19

cultivable by a laborious construction of terraces; as a
rule every inch of soil is utilized, even soil which would
hardly seem worth cultivating by the ordinary European
methods.

The Mediterranean flora differs from that of northern
Europe in the absence of woods. There are forests in the
Mediterranean region, but they are not the fairy woods of
central Europe with their damp moss, their running water,
their thick carpet of green, the rustling leafage underfoot,
and the twilight gloom amid the tall, crowded trunks,
where goblins and fairies can play. The Mediterranean
forest is not dense ; the trees are at a distance from one
another, without undergrowth ; everywhere the clear,
bright light penetrates. The timber is oak of various
sorts, pines, and cypresses. But more frequent than
these sparse and airy woods, in the Mediterranean basin
and especially in the countries of the Levant, are isolated
trees, often miles apart from one another. These are
pine, oak, the wild olive, sycamore, and terebinth.

THE FAUNA

The fauna is as uniform as the flora. There are the
little animals met with in all the Mediterranean countries,
which impress the traveller in various ways the graceful
gecko, or house-lizard, which becomes an appreciated
inmate of the home, and the feared scorpion, whose sting
causes severe and long-continued pain; the harmless-
looking locust, whose immense swarms, to-day as in
Biblical times, threaten whole countries, and the cicadas,
whose song rises in the stillness of summer nights ; gnats
and bugs, which are not unknown in northern Europe,
but often reveal in the Levant, under the stimulat-
ing influence of the sun, a persistency and endurance of
which they fortunately do not seem capable in northern
countries. More important, however, than the lower
animals are the mammals. Dog and cat are comrades
of man and inmates of his home here as elsewhere,
but they are rougher and wilder, more timorous and

20 THE ENVIRONMENT

mistrustful, as the people of the Mediterranean rarely
treat them with affection. On the other hand, the people
rarely interfere with them ; only in recent years has
there been some action to combat the plague of ownerless
cats and dogs. The donkey is much more common than
in Europe. It is one of the most useful animals, patient
and intelligent, and gains from closer acquaintance.
Often its frame seems small and frail, but it carries heavy,
loads and is everywhere the mount of the poorer classes,
where the horse is the mount of the richer. Mule and,
hinny are frequently found as mounts and beasts of bur-jj
den, especially the mule, the offspring of a male ass and d*
mare, which has all the endurance and more than thA
strength of the donkey. The camel, in the Near East,
the one-humped dromedary, is not only the Bedouin's
mount but until recent times has been one of the most
important beasts of burden of the caravan routes and
tracks for pack animals. It is an extraordinarily powerful
animal, and can carry heavy burdens with ease. Every-
where outside the desert it is now replaced by the motor
lorry, but the tourist may still meet the heavy-laden
camel caravans which come into the streets at night,
led by drivers who precede them on asses ; the camels'
bells are heard long before the caravans come into sight.
The ox is much less common than in northern Europe,
It is used almost exclusively as a beast of burden, rarely
for food. The indigenous oxen are very different from
the European breeds of cattle ; they often have a woeful
appearance ; they are small and lean because they are
ill-fed. There is no rich pasture, no hay, and no stall*
feed ; in the dry season especially the oxen have to make
do with such sparse and withered vegetation as they can
find. Thus sheep and goats are much more important
than the ox. When the people of the Levant eat meat,
a thing the masses do only on feast-days, they oat mutton
or fowl. But while oxen and fowls seem skinny and of
poor breed in comparison with the European, sheep and
goats are noticeable not only from their number but often
on account of their splendid condition. They are the

THE ENVIRONMENT 21

principal animals bred for profit. Goats' milk and goats'
cheese are the food of the masses, and sheep's and goats'
wool is spun for their clothing; the famous Angora
goats of Turkey yield mohair.

Stock-raising has a different significance in the
countries around the south-eastern Mediterranean from
that which it has in Europe, In Europe it proceeds hand
in hand with tillage ; the farmer is also a cattle breeder ;
horned cattle, which are principally bred, play a funda-
mental part in farming. The case is different in the
Mediterranean countries, where sheep and goats play no
part in peasant agriculture. The herdsmen there are a
separate occupational group, plainly marked off from
the agriculturists ; they feed their flocks in spring along
the border between the fruitful land and the desert, where
the steppes turn into green pasturage ; in summer they
make for the highlands and mountains, where there is
more water and the highland meadows provide food for
their animals. In Europe, where large cattle are
principally kept and are fed in the stall, the farmer obtains
ample supplies of dung for his fields. There is nothing
of this in the breeding of the small cattle of the Levant.
Little use is made of dung ; it is mostly dried and used
as fuel. The conflict between settled agriculturists and
the nomad or semi-nomad herdsmen, to whom the
patriarchs of the Bible belonged, has governed the history
of the Near East* This immemorial conflict becomes
specially acute along the border of the arable land, where
it is complicated by the competition for springs and
wells, Cain's murder of Abel bears witness to this
immemorial conflict. In the early times of the Old
Testament it was the shepherd and the goatherd who
represented the peaceful element. " Abel was a keeper of
sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground*" It was the
tiller of the soil whose wrath rose up and who became
a rover and a fugitive*

Thus in their general features the countries around the
Mediterranean have a unity of character in respect of
landscape and climate, fauna and flora* In this region

22 THE ENVIRONMENT

man was set down, and through the life of generations he
became one with it. The history of this region and of the
historic forces which had their play within it became
his history. Without a knowledge of the broad lines of
this history, of its community with the West and its
divergence from it, it is impossible to understand the
mental and social bases of the existence of the people
of the Near East and their incorporation in the
new universality which is spreading out from Europe in
our day,

MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT IN HISTORY

ANCIENT TIMES

WHETHER the first home of all civilization, the place of
origin of the higher forms of agriculture, of cattle breeding
and of the plough, is to be found in Mesopotamia, whether
it was from there that these arts spread across southern
Arabia into the Nile valley and across the Persian Gulf
to southern and eastern Asia, is likely to be difficult for
research ever to establish beyond question. But the
matter is of no importance as an aid to understanding
the present day. Even the civilizations of Babylonia and
Egypt, with which their monuments have made us
familiar, are of much more interest to the modern
European and convey much more to his imagination
than they do to that of the present-day inhabitants of
those countries. The Egyptians and the Iraqi sometimes
look with curiosity* but never with any sense of spiritual
community, at the treasures which European science has
brought to light, treasures which Europe's wealth has
made accessible and which have deeply influenced
European aesthetics and art, The latest descendants of
the creators and artificers of these monuments of religion
and art no longer feel any vital community with those
past epochs* Only under European influence have they
begun of late to feel pride in the origin of their race, but
this too is a part of the process of their Europeanization,
not the revival of an inheritance and not a spontaneous
feeling.

So much of the religious and intellectual traditions of
these old cultures as has lived on into later epochs, had
to be re-cast and re-moulded in the syncretistic culture of
Hellenism, Only one of the older cultures was able to
maintain its creative individual existence against Hellen-
ism and against the humanism of the Roman, empire,

8

24 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

and to carry its historic continuity in unbroken vitality
down to the present day. This was the most meagre
of the important cultures in monuments, in artistic
expression, and in splendour, that of the small and poor
Judaic mountain country ; a culture which in its unique
and extreme historic consciousness overcame the limita-
tions of time and space by means of its concentration on
religious and ethical thought. But this culture too
attained its importance in world history from the fact
that through the Septuagint, Philo, and Paul, it became
merged, in Hellenistic intellectual garb, into the unity
of the expiring ancient world.

The Greeks were originally under the influence of the
civilizations, already highly developed, of the Oriental
river oases. Old legends describe the journey of civiliza-
tion from the eastern shore of the Levant Sea into the
Aegean. The alphabet came from the Phoenicians,
who, founding Carthage, also transplanted the civilization
of the Levant to northern Africa and the western
Mediterranean. Europe, according to Greek mythology,
was the daughter of a Phoenician king ; Zeus carried
her off to Crete, where she became the mother of Minos,
the first of the Aegean rulers. The home of Greek
philosophy was Miletus, in Asia Minor, then one of the
foci of the Levant, an outpost of Babylonian-Assyrian
civilization, where Thales appropriated the wisdom and
knowledge of the East and developed it, as a disciple of
Babylonia, Egypt, and Phoenicia. Karl Joel attributes
Thales' success in raising their philosophy to a higher
level to the fact that Greece was politically a small and
weak state : the Greek spirit owes its eminence in the
same way as the Judaic to the limitations imposed on a
nation by the lack of power. " The whole of the wealth
of the East, which called for supervision, circulation,
synthesis, and control of great masses, lived on here in
the brain of a citizen of Hellas without any opportunity
of mass application, and therefore the more inwardly and
spiritually. The urge towards unity and comprehensive-
ness, which he was unable to satisfy politically in face of

IN HISTORY 25

the particularism around him, sought satisfaction in the
intellectual field, in the idea of the unity of the world ;
the mathematical art grew amid the modest circumstances
beyond practical needs into an abstract science, pursued
for its own sake as a field of action for the superfluity of
intellectual energy. He controlled all the world's wealth
of change with the high hand of the Oriental despots of
the time, with the unifying force which he demanded in
vain for Ionia, and so there arose out of disappointed and
checked practical activity the first theory. 5 ' In the age
of the foundation of great empires and of the emergence
of dominant personalities in the East, the mind celebrated
its triumphs in Judah and in Hellas as a result of the
powerlessness and pettiness of its environment.

But in political life the Greeks evolved an attitude
which the East has lacked down to our own day, and
which was the basis of the great superiority of Europe,
the heir of Greece in this respect, in the field of political
ethics the sense of free citizenship. Heinrich Gomperz
may or may not be right in finding the central idea of
Greek ethics in the ideal of inward freedom, but the free
citizen, inwardly depending on himself, whose criterion
is self-knowledge, is the victory of Greece, of the Ionic
coast of Asia Minor, over the power of the East which
then held sway over it. This Greek spirit of citizenship,
first represented by the sages of Ionia, finds its culminating
point in Socrates, the individual who resisted the mass
of the people, " the first entirely free man on this earth,
not because he set himself like the Sophists above all
laws and conventional valuations, but because he formed
valuations anew in his mind, because he contained the
law in himself and was the first man who in self-rule
created personality." (Karl JoeL)

The first Greek to take up the empire-building idea of
the Oriental monarchies was the Macedonian semi-
barbarian Alexander, who had been brought up under the
influence of Greek intellectual training. Under this
influence the empire he founded proved much more
of a spiritual power than all its predecessors. It brought

26 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

Greek thought and knowledge to the East ; it absorbed
the wisdom and the myths of the East and gave them
sharpness of conceptual definition ; but it did not
succeed in giving the East the Greek concept of citizen-
ship and liberty ; Greece herself had not the strength left
for this. In the countries of the Levant, down to the
present day, the Bedouin has been able to show a sense of
freedom and a primitive democracy with nobility in its
attitude, but the townsman has not ; public life in these
countries suffers to this day from this inferiority in
political character of the settled population. The
Hellenism which flourished in the Levant was no longer
of the Greek pattern but a hybrid civilisation, Hellas
rationalized the Near East, but Greek thought returned
to the bondage of quasi-myth from which it had once
been liberated at Miletus.

On another plane there recurred in the world port of
Hellenism, Alexandria, the contact between the Hellenic
and the Oriental spirit which had taken place once at
Miletus. Greek philosophy, which had arisen out of the
East, finally dissolved again into it. A Hellenism which
had adopted the wisdom of the priests and the cult of the
mysteries of the East, and had come into touch with
Judaism at Alexandria, became for many centuries the
cultural basis of the countries of the Levant* In the
world empire of Alexander the Great, which had embraced
the Levant and all its hinterland from the Bosphorus to
the Indus and the Nile, the idea of catholicity had for the
first time materialized, Alexander took Oriental princesses
as wives and ordered his generals and soldiers to marry
eastern women. His empire proclaimed the equality of
its races and made an end of the conflicts between its
peoples. It provided a common ground for understand-
ing, a vast basin into which the various streams of progress
could debouch, Alexander and the Diadochi who shared
the succession to his empire aimed at the maintenance of
Greek culture as the basis of this catholicity ; wherever
Alexander came he founded Greek cities with Greek civil
rights as the moral pillars of his power. But the Greek

IN HISTORY 27

spirit was unable to maintain itself in this vast expansion.
The Greek element was swamped in Hellenism and
languished in its original home.

Gradually, with the growing activity and boldness of
navigators, who ventured more and more away from the
coasts, and as their ships grew in size were able to remain
day and night on the seas without continually returning
to port, Greece with her bays and islands lost her world
importance as a neighbour of the Levant. It was now
possible for Carthage and Rome to carry on the world
trade with the Levant direct from the western basin of
the Mediterranean. Rome took over from Hellas her
importance as a trade centre and also, a thing of still
greater importance, her ideal of free citizenship. Under
Greek influence the primitive Roman virtus advanced to
humanitas ; Rome took over the succession to Alexander
in a still more comprehensive oecumene. She became a
world city in which there were brought together not only
the treasures but the civilizations of the whole world.
Rome's situation in the centre of the world of her day
favoured her. The Italian peninsula divides the Mediter-
ranean into two as it runs from north-west to south-east ;
its south-eastern extremity looks out at the Levant, and
in Sicily it has a bridge to Africa. Thus Italy's maritime
cities became the great transhipment centres for goods
sent via the Levant from the East to Europe ; they have
remained so to this day. Rome herself lies in the centre
of Italy, where the road west of the Apennines crosses the
Tiber. Her situation made it easy for Rome to hold her
empire together.

But Alexandria, whither after his death the remains
of Alexander the Great were borne, remained the intel-
lectual centre of the empire, and was also a close second to
Rome as a trade centre, Alexandria was the seat of
Hellenistic philosophy, poetry, and science. Here was
the Museum, the foremost university of ancient times, and
here what was until quite recent times the greatest
library the world has known contained the treasures of
the world's literature* This city saw a period when

28 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

Jewish, philosophy flourished, and after it Christian
philosophy ; here the Church fought the greatest intel-
lectual movement of the expiring ancient world, now
become oecumenical Gnosis, which " sought to over-
come dualism by intermingling the truths of the Christian
faith with Oriental mythology and Greek speculation,
and so to found a universal religious view of life embracing
the truth of all existing religions and philosophies."
(Arthur Drews.) Since Alexander's expeditions, science
had conquered new fields : reports from foreign countries
had been accumulated, expeditions sent out to distant
lands and seas, and the many observations of geographical
and sociological facts surveyed. Through Alexandria
there streamed the trade from India and southern
Arabia, proceeding from the Bed Sea down the arms of
the Nile.

With the fall o* Alexandria after the Arab conquest of
Egypt, Egypt ceased in its turn to be a main channel of
world trade ; it lost contact with the Mediterranean and
fell into isolation. Alexandria remained for centuries a
small outlying town of a few thousand inhabitants. Not
until the French and English armies were opposed to one
another near Alexandria in 1801 did this town again
attract attention, becoming of importance to those who
were concerned to bring Egypt out of her isolation and
open her up once more as a trade route from southern Asia
to the Mediterranean. The awakener of modern Egypt,
Mehemet Ali, recognized the importance of Alexandria,
connected it with the Nile in 1820 by the Mahmudia
Canal, and made it Europe's gateway to the Nile valley
and the starting point of the route to India for half a
century, until the completion of the Suez CanaL

To-day as in ancient times Alexandria is a chief centre
of the Greek dispersion. The Greeks have remained in
modern as in ancient times an extremely shrewd trading
people, and for that reason have not always been popular,
Greek colonies, spread in ancient times through southern
Russia and as far as the borders of India, in Mesopotamia,
and in Spain, dominated the exchange of commodities on

IN HISTORY 29

the great trade routes. At the beginning of the nine-
teenth century the great Greek colonies in Odessa and
Constantinople, Alexandria and Marseilles, Manchester
and Liverpool, were the agents for the grain trade
between the Black Sea and north-west Europe and for the
export of British cotton goods to the Levant. With the
aid of the wealth they accumulated, these Greeks of the
diaspora promoted the development of Greek national
consciousness and the wars of liberation in their entirely
impoverished and decayed homeland. Their Greek
patriotism is live and ardent to this day. In all the ports
and cities of the Levant they form the core of the popula-
tion known as Levantine ; they engage in wholesale and
retail trading and agency business. In Alexandria
to-day they form the strongest non-Egyptian nationality.
A rival of Alexandria as an outpost of the Levant and
an entrepot centre for world trade was the Greek colony
founded a little later at Antioch, in a fertile plain on the
left bank of the Orontes in northern Syria. This spot was
the junction of the routes leading from the Euphrates and
from the northern highlands to the Mediterranean.
Antioch was far behind Alexandria in cultural importance,
but its geographical situation was much more favourable
than that of the Egyptian port, which lay far from the
natural overland lines of communication. Antioch's
population seems to have had from the first the mixed
character of the Levantine trade centres; the wealth
and the morals of the city were famous, though hardly
of good fame. Antioch also formed the first and greatest
Gentile Christian community of early times. It was the
seat of one of the four patriarchates of the Eastern Church,
Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem being the
three others* On account of its situation and impor-
tance the patriarchate of Antioch became known as the
patriarchate of Asia. With the decline of the ancient
civilization the importance of Antioch dwindled away ;
its place in relation to the hinterland was taken by Aleppo
and Damascus, both of which were better situated from
the point of view of the new rulers of the country, on the

30 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

border of the desert ; and the connection with the West
passed to the ports of the old Phoenician coast.

Alexandria and the region around Antioch, the great
entrepot centres of ancient times in Egypt and Syria, have
shown by their revived importance that the new trade
routes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, following
geographical laws, have returned to the old routes of world
traffic. The third important Hellenistic city, Seleucia,
on the Tigris, has similarly shown that there are places
which, though political changes or changes in methods of
transport may turn them into backwaters for centuries,
again and again return through their geographical
situation to their old importance. According to Pliny,
Seleucia had 600,000 inhabitants in his day ; it was a
Greek settlement at no great distance from the spot at
which Babylon, the first world-city of history and the
sacred city of western Asia, had stood on the Euphrates
for thousands of years, until the year in which its last
remaining inhabitants were transferred to Seleucia*

The importance of these cities, and later of Baghdad,
which was founded in the neighbourhood of their sites
by the Abbasid Khalifs, depended not only on the fertility
which irrigation assured to Mesopotamia but above all
to the fact that they formed entrepots for trade and
consequently centres of industrial crafts. During the
eighteenth century industry developed wherever there
were sources of raw material and of motive power, especi-
ally coal; but before the Industrial Revolution industry
had settled wherever commerce assembled the goods
of various countries on its few great routes, so giving a
field for wealth and enterprise and knowledge of the
world and of market opportunities,

Baghdad entered into the inheritance of Babylon and
Seleucia. At the time of Haroun-al-Rashid it was said
to have two million inhabitants. The trade routes from
China and India led through Mesopotamia to the Syrian
coast except when the prosperity of Alexandria was at its
height, after the fall of Babylon and before the growth of
Baghdad; during that period the trade was diverted

IN HISTORY 31

from the Mesopotamian route through the Red Sea and
from the Syrian ports to those of the Nile valley. Baghdad
in its time was the centre of Islam, which played in
world civilization and world trade the part played later by
Christianity. Baghdad, like Babylon, was an industrial
centre and world-famed for the beauty and costliness
of its richly-dyed cloths. With the breaking over the
Levant of the storms of Mongol migration and the
desertion of the trade routes in the " dark ages ", Baghdad
fell into decay as Alexandria and Antioch had done before
it. Only at the present day has it re-awakened to new life
with the revival of the old routes.

THE END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

For nearly 1,600 years Byzantium, the new Rome,
was the capital of the Levant, the seat of the imperial
power on which all the countries of the Levant were
dependent. It was the centre of the first great Christian
Power and subsequently of the last great Mohammedan
one. It was originally a Greek colony, and with its excel-
lent natural harbour it lay in a situation of unique advan-
tage, commanding the routes from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean and from Europe to Asia. When the
centre of gravity of the Roman empire, and therewith
of the world, shifted back from the west to the east,
Byzantium was the natural capital. It was chosen as
capital by Constantine I, who gave it his name ; from
A.D. 330 Constantinople was the capital of the Roman
empire. Here Roman law was completed and con-
summated, and here Christian dogma was first elaborated*
While in the west the Roman empire fell to pieces under
the onslaughts of the Teutons, and civilization perished,
in the east, the first home of civilization, empire and
civilization continued to exist. But the empire was
no longer an oecumene, no longer orbis terramm; the
peoples of forest and steppe had advanced into it, and
in the east it faced a new Power the old Power with which
Hellas and Alexander the Great had fought, Persia.

32 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

Since the times of Cyrus and of Darius the Persian kings
had arrogated to themselves the title of " king of all
civilized countries ", right down to our own time. The
Persians have never entirely lost the sense of being a
Great Power, and even the Hellenistic empire of the
Seleucids and the Parthians had adopted the national
Persian civilization and customs, until in 224 B.C. a
national Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, re-ascended the
throne. While the Roman empire under Constantine
became Christian, the national faith of Zoroastrianism
continued to hold sway in Persia; the king was the
representative of Ormuzd ; the priesthood, the Magi,
were the controlling element, and there was severe
persecution of Christians. The conflict between the two
States thus became a conflict between the two great
religions. Both States had later to yield before a new
Great Power, bearer of a new religion, which overran
them from central Arabia. The Roman empire, confined
mainly to Byzantium and Hellas, was able to continue in
existence, robbed of its old splendour, for a few more
centuries, but Persia and Zoroastrianism collapsed
entirely, the State for many centuries (in the fifteenth
century a new national dynasty, the Safawids, rose to
power), the religion for all time.

However much territory the Roman empire might
sacrifice under the onslaughts of the barbarians, the
Roman Emperor still sat on his throne in Constantinople,
and the succession of emperors followed without a break
from Augustus to Constantine XI (1453). Until A.D. 800
there was only one Empire, only one Imperium ; in that
year the Pope took advantage of the circumstance that
after the death of Constantine VI in 797 a woman, Irene,
became Empress, to confer the imperial crown on
Charlemagne. From then on there were an eastern and
a western Imperium, but until the eleventh century the
eastern remained the more powerful, until the twelfth
Constantinople remained the wealthiest commercial centre
in the world, and the Byzantine empire remained, until
its end, amid all the changes in its character, the legitimate

IN HISTORY 33

successor of Rome. Its Senate was formally vested with
the same power and authority as in Imperial Rome, and
the Byzantine emperors were chosen, like those of Rome,
by the Senate. In the Byzantine empire the Roman
idea of the State lived on ; the legislation, the adminis-
tration, the military system, and the extraordinarily
high level of strategic science continued the Roman
traditions. The very inhabitants of the empire, the
Greeks, called themselves Rhomaioi, and retained this
appellation in the Turkish empire, in which they were
called Rumi, until our own day. The name " Hellene "
had a depreciatory flavour. Hellenes were heathen.
Not until the time of the Greek liberation movement of
the nineteenth century was the old name proudly revived,
in memory of the pre-Roman, pre-Christian epoch.

Constantinople was the new Rome, and the political
elevation of Constantinople as the Imperial capital over
old Rome was followed by the attempt of the Patriarch of
Constantinople to secure equality of standing with the
Bishop of Rome. The division between East and West
in the empire was repeated in the church. Until the death
of Athanasius in 373, Alexandria had maintained ecclesias-
tical hegemony in the East. After that the predominance
went to Constantinople. The Patriarch of Constantinople
was only primus inter pares, but he was the first, the
Patriarch of the Imperial city, the oecumenical Patriarch.
The Emperor of Constantinople naturally favoured the
Constantinople Patriarch ; the creation of the States of
the Church out of territories which formed parts of the
Roman Imperial possessions administered by the
Byzantine exarch in Ravenna, and the creation of a new
Western Imperial seat, of necessity widened the breach
between Rome and Byzantium. Over against the
oecumenical empire and patriarchate of Byzantium there
emerged in Rome another empire and church, both of
which also claimed universality. So the hatred constantly
grew between Rome and the East. The final parting
between the two Apostolic and Catholic churches, the
tearing apart of Christianity, in 1064, was only the

34 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

external completion of a deep cleavage based on race,
civilization, and geographical tradition.

With the onslaught of Islam the Byzantine empire
lost its eastern provinces. Within less than ten years the
Near East was revolutionized. Khaled, the great general
of the first Khalif , Abu Bekr, made a simultaneous attack
on eastern Rome and Persia, and under the second Khalif ,
Omar, Syria and Iraq, Egypt and Persia, fell into the
hands of the Arabians. New towns, originally Arabian
military encampments, were founded Fiistat in Egypt,
out of which Cairo grew, and Basra and Kufa in Iraq*
Twice the Arabians laid siege to Constantinople, in
673-7 and 717-18, but failed to take the city; 500
years were to pass before it fell into the hands of a
cruel enemy who came not from the East but from the
West.

The loss of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire
made no change in the character of the empire. It
remained essentially an admixture of East and West.
Byzantine art was strongly influenced by the East. The
plastic, clear stylistic aim of the architecture of the
ancient Greeks was transformed by the wealth of colour
of the East ; in place of the austere and simple external
arrangement there came an imposing and picturesque
interior style. The Hagia Sophia, built 1,400 years ago,
is a monument of the new influence of the East in the heart
of Hellenic civilization. While eastern influence thus
penetrated Hellas, Hellenism retained its vitality in the
Near East. c< The Syrian and Mesopotamian art of the
Christian period is living evidence of the astonishing
vitality with which Hellenism was filled even after the
destruction of the ancient world. In the great cities
along the upper course of the Mesopotamian rivers there
flourished a purely classicist art. The architectonic
language of these buildings did not consist of the dark
glow of mosaics and maxble surfaces, but of the strongly
outstanding profiles in emulation of the antique, in the
pillars with their capitals and in the unconcealed
maaoary." (Samuel Guyer.)

IN HISTORY 35

For 2,000 years, in ancient times and during the
period of decay of the ancient world, the Near East had
a common cultural basis in Hellenism, which was pene-
trated by Roman constitutional and legal conceptions
owing to the setting up of the new Rome in the Byzantine
empire. The Ottoman empire, strange as the fact may
seem at first sight, entered upon the inheritance of
Byzantium as a state and a civilization. The Arabian
Mohammedans completed and took over the heritage of
Hellenism. " The spiritual culture of Islam is Islamized
Hellenism. Christian Syrians, Zoroastrian priests, and
Gnostics, on Aramaic and Iranian soil, passed on to the
Muslims the Grecian inheritance. Islam, which from its
earliest origins and in the spirit of its prophet was capable
of a greater degree of adjustment to the surrounding
world than any other religion of redemption, was bound
under these influences to produce new forms of piety and
theology. The spiritual culture founded by Hellenism
reaches in the Near East to the threshold of the present
times, to the period of the penetration of European
civilization and science in the last three generations."
(Hans Heinrich Schader.) The Greek heritage lost its
vitality in the Near East, so that in later times it was
unable to bear fresh fruit and exhausted itself in adap-
tation and interpretation. But by way of the Levant,
through the penetration of Arabian Islam into Spain and
Sicily, the intellectual life of the ancient world was saved
for the West, and there, after the fall of Constantinople,
it was able to renfew its youth and to flourish in a regained
spontaneity.

Hellenism did not reveal in the Levant the power of
forming and absorbing nations which Rome had in the
western Mediterranean* The Hellenic language was
unable to make the conquests which Latin made in the
western basin of the Mediterranean and Arabic made later
in Syria, Iraq, and northern Africa. Aramaic, Coptic,
and other languages held their own against Greek, while
Gallic and Iberian disappeared entirely before Latin.
Syrian and Coptic, indeed, were able to hold their own,

36 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

at least as the languages of religious ceremonial, even
against Arabic, while Greek disappeared entirely in all
these countries, in which it had once flourished. " The
Greeks did not possess that enormous political energy
and force which enabled the Romans to assimilate foreign
races ; and they were confronted by sturdy Oriental
peoples who were by no means so easy to subjugate as
were the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain." (Carl Krum-
bacher.) Nevertheless, Hellenism had thrown bridges
between Baghdad and Constantinople at a time when
they were centres of the civilized world, the Christian
and Mohammedan foci of the whole earth, enemies to all
appearance, and yet, in their mental outlook and in their
administration of a common -heritage, closely related to
one another, just as to this day the Christians of the Near
East are closer in their mentality and their social insti-
tutions to the Mohammedans than to the Christians of
the West.

Thus Byzantium, the new Rome, fell in the end, not
to the West and North, but to the East and South. As
the Teutons began to invest old Rome from the moment
when they awoke to historic consciousness, so the Slavs
have been trying to capture Constantinople since their
entry into history. The longing for the southern waters,
the blue sky, and the old civilization drove the Teutons
against Rome and the Slavs against Byzantium. Rome
became for the Teutons and Constantinople for the Slavs
the imperial city and the religious metropolis. But the
aim the Teutons achieved, the capture of the Urbs, the
Slavs pursued in vain. After the faU of Constantinople
the Tsars of Moscow took over the imperial title (Tsar,
like Kaiser, means Caesar), and inherited the Caesareo-
Papism of the Byzantine empire which was characteristic
of the Eastern church. Moscow felt itself to be the heir
of Byzantium, the third Rome. From then on the rulers
of the new Byzantium were unceasingly inspired by the
ambition to incorporate in their possessions the old
Byzantium and the old Byzantine empire. As succes-
sors of the Basileus, they regarded themselves as the

IN HISTORY 37

protectors of Orthodox Christianity in the Ottoman
empire, and this Caesareo-Papistical claim became for
them, under its modern form of the claim to be a protector
of the Christian minorities, the powerful lever which in the
end destroyed the real heir of the Byzantine empire,
the Ottoman Sultanate.

THE EASTERN CHUItCH

The position of the church in regard to the state in the
Near East was fundamentally different from the position
in the West. In the West, Pope and Emperor, the
spiritual and secular powers, faced one another like two
swords, in combat as equals or the stronger dominating
the weaker. In the Eastern church, as in Islam and as
in the Persian empire of the Sassanids, state and church
formed a single unit like body and soul. In the East the
Emperor was the head of the church, in the same way as
the IChalif was a temporal ruler and at the same time the
commander of all -the Faithful. The Roman Emperor
presided over the Church Councils or was represented by a
delegate who was usually a layman ; the resolutions of the
Councils required his assent to acquire legislative force in
the empire. The Byzantine Emperor used his influence
in the election and deposition of the Patriarch.

This union of state and church provides the
explanation of many peculiar characteristics of the
Eastern church. The church did not stand above the
state but entered into the state or national group and
filled it. On the other hand, it was dependent on the
secular organization of state and nation, the political and
ethnic dividing lines, which determined the organization
and the dividing lines of the church. The church in the
West set itself above national distinctions, and the for-
mation of nations accordingly proceeded originally amid
a straggle against the church ; in the East the national
groupings and the national organization of the church
proceeded in harmony with one another* For this very
reason there came no schism ; the various national

38 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

ecclesiastical organizations remained united in faith as
members of a single Holy Orthodox Apostolic Eastern
Church. Thus in place of the rigid monarchical unity of
the Western church there was established a conception
of synthetic unity, the consciousness of unity in multi-
formity, a vital sense of cohesion coupled with the con-
tinuance of an autocephalous or autonomous church in
each state. The Eastern church was a federation, at the
head of which stood the four Patriarchs of Constantinople,
Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, and the highest
organ of which was the Synod of Bishops. All these
churches have developed organically from a single root ;
they are not alienated from one another although most of
them use in their liturgy the language of their own country,
often in an antiquated form. Their inter-association is
similar to that which developed in the Anglican world-
church on constitutional and political grounds in the
course of the nineteenth century. But while this church,
itself split up into a number of churches with territorial
autonomy, has possessed since 1867 an organ, the Lambeth
Conferences which regularly assemble under the presi-
dency of the Archbishop of Canterbury (promoting
co-operation and agreement, though they have not the
authority of an oecumenical synod), the Orthodox church
has no such organ. Not until after the world war did the
Oecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople draw up a plan
for the assembly of a council of the Orthodox churches.
A preparatory conference assembled in 1930 on Mount
Athos and a Pro-Synod on the Orthodox Whit-Sunday
in 1932, to discuss measures for bringing more effectively
into play in external relations the internal unity of the
Orthodox church, and for co-operation, with the Western
church.

The close connection between nationality and religion
shows itself still more clearly in the heretical churches of
the East. It was in theological formulas and dis-
putations that the independence movements of the
Egyptians, Syrians, and Mesopotamians found expression
in opposition to the Greek church of the empire. Ethnical

IN HISTORY 39

differences gave the controversies over the godhead of
Jesus their violence. The Nestorians, who arose in Persia
and Mesopotamia, came out in opposition to the resolu-
tions of the fourth Oecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon
in 451, maintaining the separateness of the godhead and
the human character in Jesus ; the Monophysites of
Armenia and Egypt affirmed the oneness of Christ's
nature, his human character being entirely comprehended
in his godhead. A later schism was that of the Mono-
thelites of Syria, who refused to accept the decision of the
sixth Oecumenical Council (Constantinople, 680) that
Christ had two wills. These separate national churches,
in their dissent from Greek Orthodoxy, facilitated the
conquest of their countries by Islam. Many of these
schismatic churches exist to this day ; sections of all of
them, in many cases only small sections, have gone over
to Rome.

The Nestorians, some of Aramaic and some of Persian
national origin and character, attained their maximum
influence in the eighth century. Out of their ranks came
the teachers of theology at the court of the Khalif of
Baghdad ; they sent successful missions to central Asia,
China, and Ceylon. All that are left of them to-day are
the few tens of thousands of the ancient national church
of the Assyrians, a primitive and warlike mountain
people, who with other national churches of the Near
East became during the world war a plaything of the
policy of expansion of the Christian Great Powers. They
fought against the Turks, were driven out of the territory
they had inhabited in Urmia, and finally became a trouble-
some problem for British policy in the north of Iraq and
for that young State. A section of the Assyrians, the
Chaldeans of the plain, went over to Borne.

The Monophysites are still divided into three national
churches, the Armenian, the Coptic in Egypt, to which
the Abyssinian Monophysites belong, and the Jacobite
in Syria, The Monopolistic sect in Syria, the Maronites,
went over to Rome as long ago as 1182. This union,
which was finally consummated in the sixteenth century,

40 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT
had great importance for Christian literature and Christian
politics in Arabian Syria. Pope Gregory XIII founded
a Maronite college in Rome in 1584, which sent out many
men of learning, and the Maronite Christians of Lebanon
came into contact with the vivifying tendencies of the
West much earlier than other Christians of the Near East.

All these churches have their Patriarchs, to whom
there are often added Patriarchs of those sections which
have united with Rome. But behind all the external
pomp and the venerable past of many of the patriarchates
there is no longer any power at the present day. Even
the Greek-Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt,
who to this day bears the title of " Pope, Father of
Fathers, Shepherd of Shepherds, Archpriestof Archpriests,
Thirteenth Apostle and Oecumenical Judge, 7 ' has only
one bishop under him, and in his archdiocese has
authority over perhaps 20,000 souls.

Religious and racial considerations also entered into
the struggle between Constantinople and the West, and
together dominated every issue and every stage of it.
The Greek clergy stood at the head of the Byzantine
nation, which was filled with hatred of the West. The
Pope of Rome himself pursued his efforts at dogmatic
union with the Orthodox church both by diplomatic
and by belligerent means ; his purpose was " to attain
union by means of an alliance of anti-Byzantine Powers
of the West, indirectly through the political subjection of
the Greeks ". The ideal method of attaining his hegemony
over new Rome seemed to the Pope to be " the conquest
of eastern Rome by a western petty prince as the leader
of an international crusading army". This aim was
attained in 1204. Christian Byzantium fell then into the
hands not of Mohammedans, but of Catholic Crusaders.
Their fury was worse than was ever that of the Turks ; the
Christian churches of Constantinople went up in flames
or were degraded to stables. u Illustrious Crusaders
rode on neighing steeds into the Church of St Sophia ;
others caroused there, drinking wine from the sacred
vessels, whose consecrated contents they had first poured

IN HISTORY 41

out like refuse, while a courtesan mounted the Patriarch's
throne. They adorned themselves and their women
with the costly materials of the priests' vestments and
with the jewels from the sacred utensils. They laid
barbarous hands on the noble works of ecclesiastical and
profane art, destroying the tokens of an almost millennial
culture. Frightful also was the fate of the inhabitants.
They were mercilessly plundered and massacred, youths
were sold into slavery, maidens dishonoured. And the
conquerors had no awe of saintliness : no nun was safe
from violation, no church afforded protection of life."
(Walter Norden.)

It was long before the exasperation and the hatred
of the West with which these outrages filled the Greek
community and its church abated. Two centuries later
the majority of the Byzantines preferred to live under the
Orescent rather than the Tiara. Turkish rule was 4 4 actually
made light for them by the consciousness of being
emancipated in this way from the rule of the Latins ".
This feeling of alienation between East and West, of
community of the Eastern church with the East, has
re-awakened in recent times among many of the Eastern
churches, since they have had the feeling of being used
as pawns in the political competition between the
European States, to be sacrificed regardless of all protests
when any change in the situation occurs or when they
have served the required purpose. Max Pribilla, S.J.,
writes : " But just as in Germany there are Protestants
who went to Versailles rather than accept a tolerable
peace at the hands of the Pope, so there are also many
members of the Orthodox faith who would rather suffer
perdition under Bolsheviks or Turks than be saved at
the hands of Rome." The concluding part of this dictum
may be too sweeping, but the mistrust and indeed the
hatred of the political and religious " Imperialism " of
the West among various churches of the Near East is
scarcely less than in Islam,

In the East the national churches fulfilled the rdle of
the national state. In a multi-national state each church

42 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

formed a state within the state. The form of the
Mohammedan state in the Middle Ages took account of
this structure : the law of personal status, including the
law of marriage and inheritance, came under canon law
and accordingly was administered separately for each
particular religion ; the church exercised in certain
defined fields rights of legislation and of administration
of law which the modern state reserves to itself. The
Patriarchs and heads of the church in the Near East
represented the members of their religious community in
the world outside it ; they were not only ecclesiastical
but political and juridical leaders of the Faithful, In
the Ottoman empire historic tradition lent the Patriarch
of Constantinople a special position ; in the Phanar he
possessed a court of his own on the Byzantine model.
He had the assistance not only of a clerical Synod but
also of a " Permanent National Council " with very strong
lay representation, which took part in the election of the
Patriarchs.

In the Orthodox Greek patriarchate of Constantinople
the religious and national elements were of identical
scope ; it became the centre of nationalist Hellenizing
movements among the Ottoman Christians. The situa-
tion was different in the Orthodox patriarchates of
Antioch and Jerusalem. Here the higher clergy were
Greek and the lower clergy and the laity Arabic, These
were the only churches in the Near East in which the
national element had not made its appearance in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century* This and the
establishment of the influence of the laity took place in
the diocese of Antioch in the nineteenth century; in
Jerusalem the struggle is still proceeding.

After the world war, British Commissions of Inquiry
pronounced in favour of the urgently needed reform of
the administration of the Jerusalem patriarchate, includ-
ing the admission of the laity to a large share in the
administration. But on political grounds the British
administration in Palestine is protecting the privileges
of the Greek prelates, who are united in the Brotherhood

IN HISTORY 43

of the Holy Sepulchre, against the Arab laity. The
Greek clergy are clinging to the nationalist Greek
character of the Jerusalem patriarchate with the same
determination with which in the nineteenth century they
tried to retain the Orthodox churches in Roumania and
Bulgaria under the Greek nationalist and HeUenizing
domination of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The
strong nationalism of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate
and its prelates has contributed greatly to the awakening
and intensification of the national consciousness of the
non-Greek laity.

The Anglican church, which regards itself as a third
oecumenical church alongside the Roman and the
Orthodox churches, took repeated steps in the nineteenth
century to effect a rapprochement and thereafter perhaps
a re-union with the Orthodox church. What a contrast
there is between the two churches ! One represents the
spirit of modern dynamic civilization, the quest for
social and practical reforms of Anglo-Saxondom and of
the countries with highly developed industry ; the other,
in its dignified torpidity, its contemplation, and its way
of living, belongs entirely to the East with its primitive
agricultural countries. For all that, this is not merely
an attempt at expansion of the British Empire and of the
Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence under cover of the stole,
but a genuine part of the universalijzing effort, embracing
East and West and all humanity, which to-day, amid all
the conflicts and clashes of nationalisms and imperialisms,
and in the midst of all concealments and distortions, is
steadily growing.

Since the world war the Church of England, with the
Archbishop of Canterbury at its head, has repeatedly
raised its voice on behalf of the Eastern churches, the
Patriarchs of Moscow and Constantinople, the Armenians,
and the Assyrians, At the Lambeth Conference of 1920
delegates were present from the Patriarch of Constanti-
nople (the city was then under British occupation), and in
1923 the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem
and the Archbishop of Cyprus recognized the Anglican

44 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

ordinations. This happened, it is true, to churches within
the British sphere of influence, and the patriarchates of
Constantinople and Jerusalem were then in a difficult
political situation and in financial distress and were
expecting aid from the Church of England. The Orthodox
church of the East was also represented at the inter-
national conference of the Protestant churches at
Stockholm and Lausanne. But no progress was effected
in the direction of the hoped-for union of the faiths.

Rome, like the Anglican church, has interested itself
in the churches of the East. In 1917 Benedict XV
founded the Congregation of the Eastern church and the
Papal Institute for Oriental Studies. In the Encyclical
" Rerum Orientalium " of Septembex 8th, 1928, Pius XI
laid stress on the importance of the restoration of unity,
and further developed the Oriental Institute for this
purpose. The motu proprio " Quod maxima " of
September 30th, 1928, affiliated the Institute to the
Papal University " in full confidence that this Institute
wiU be of great service in attracting the Orientals as soon
as possible into the centre of unity " (Rome).

The churches of the Near East have been ** orphaned "
since, with the fall of the Tsardom, the most powerful of
the Orthodox churches has no longer been able to extend
its protection to the others and to give them the benefit
of frequent material aid, Rome and the Anglican church
are in competition for the succession to this inheritance.
The journey made by the Archbishop of Canterbury to
Jerusalem in the spring of 1931 was jealously watched by
the Vatican* But the churches of the Near East, apart
from the Russian and the Balkan churches, are virtually
of no significance as an element in power, comprising
only a few million souls ; the revolutionizing of the eastern
world and the contact with the West in recent decades
have roused them, however, from their lethargy, and the
modernization of the ethnic groups they represent faces
them with new tasks. Their new responsibilities have
strengthened their sense of a special trust. Under the
entirely altered conditions of the new Orient these

IN HISTORY 45

churches, which, like Islam, have borne the cultural
heritage of the last centuries of the ancient world right
down to the threshold of the present times, have to go
through a process of thorough transformation. To-day
once more their destiny is bound up with that of the whole
of the Near East and with that of Islam.

ISLAM

Islam entered in the Levant into the spiritual and
political heritage of Hellenism and of the Eastern church.
Its beginnings lay in Arabia, and here religious and
national elements were closely associated. " At the time
of his rise Mohammed was free from universalistic aims ;
he was an Arabian prophet for the Arabians." (C. H.
Becker.) As the preaching of Jesus was directed solely
to the Jews, so the preaching of Mohammed, which in
its content was also an eschatological preaching of
repentance, with a highly-coloured description of the
Day of Judgment, the pains of Hell, and the delights of
Paradise, was directed to the Arabs. Islam brought a
watchword uniting all the Arabs, and rousing them out of
" ignorance " and tribal hatred to mighty deeds. The
fact that Islam did not confine itself to Arabia was due,
according to Leone Ca&tani, to economic causes : a
continuous process of desiccation of the territory they
inhabited drove the Bedouins into raids on the fertile
land on their borders. To this day hunger is the principal
cause of Bedouin raids ; changes in the natural environ-
ment out of which they gain their subsistence result in
mass migrations from the desert. A migration of this
sort took place when the Arabs streamed out of the
peninsula in the seventh century ; Islam had been the
force that united them and the weakness of the Byzantine
and Persian empires the circumstance that tempted
them. The Mohammedan empire which then grew with
such rapidity was originally a national Arab realm ; the
Mohammedan Arabs formed the dominant class, and their
subjects, who were left unhindered in the maintenance of

46 MAN AND HIS ENVIKONMENT

their faith, were the tillers of the soil, the artisans, the
tax-payers. Islam only gradually developed into a
universal religion; the subjugated peoples voluntarily
went over to the new faith of the ruling class on social
and economic grounds " an entirely peaceful and
natural spread of the new religion." (C. H. Becker.)
It is interesting to compare this with the spread of
Christianity, a " slaves' religion," followed by the lowest
strata of the people, which forced its way xipwards from
below until it reached the head of the state : Islam, the
religion of an aristocratic fighting caste, flowed down
from above, beginning as the religion of the head of the
state. In Islam there reigned a spirit of fraternal equality
between all Mohammedans, a spirit adopted in the teach-
ing but strange to the way of life of Christianity. Racial
pride was unknown to Islam ; everyone who confessed
Allah was accepted as a brother and an equal, whether
he were a negro, a Malay, or a European ; the great
attraction exercised by Islam in Africa to this day is
largely due to this attitude.

In many parts of the eastern Roman empire, especially
in Syria and Egypt, the Arabs were welcomed by the
population as liberators. It was possible for the Arabs
to conquer Palestine and Syria so rapidly and without
any determined resistance because the Byzantine rule
was hated everywhere outside the Greek cities, of which
Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Gaza were the most important.
The burden of taxation under Emperor Heraclius weighed
down the country, " On top of this economic burden
there was the religious ; the ecclesiastical policy of
Heraclius, the introduction of a Monotheletio formula,
was pursued to the length of an inquisition against the
Monophysites and the Jews, To this religious difference
there was now joined the natural reaction of the Semitic
element against Greek alien rule* In the Muslims, on
the other hand, the many Christian Arabic clans, including
the Aramaic ones, welcomed, to begin with, blood
relations ; the tribute demanded by the Arabs was not
heavy, and finally the Arabs granted full religious freedom

IN HISTORY 47

indeed, for political reasons, they actually favoured the
unorthodox tendency. Thus, after the annihilation of
its despotic masters, the country fell into the Arabs'
hands without any effort on their part ; the opposition
offered by Jerusalem and Caesarea is the exception that
4 proves the rule, 5 for both cities were entirely Grecianized
and Orthodox." (C. H. Becker.) Similarly the Mono-
physite Copts of Egypt were glad to see the country
wrested from the hands of the Greek-Orthodox Emperor
by the Arabs. In Persia, where the Arabs were not
welcomed as Semitic racial brethren or religious liberators,
they met with greater resistance in their invasion ; and
in Persia, unlike Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, the native
language and the national traditions were preserved.

Through the conversion of the conquered peoples to
Islam the new great state soon lost its national character.
The new Mohammedans brought their Hellenistic culture
and the state-craft and science of the Byzantine and
Persian empires, and under their influence the primitive
Arabian Islam changed ; through Mohammed's relations
with Judaism and Christianity it had been ready in advance
for the full assimilation of the civilization of Hellenistic
Asia Minor. Consequently Mohammedan civilization
developed on the same bases as the medieval European
civilization. This is true particularly of the Christian
eastern Roman empire and the empire of the Khalifs,
whose eastern frontiers coincided with the limits of the
old spread of Hellenism. East Borne and Islam " were
equals in the possession of a related but differently
developed heritage, as bearers of the unbroken tradition
of the last centuries of the ancient world ". (Robert
Tschudi.) This similarity also embraces the medieval
Christendom of western Europe. " The peculiar religious
culture of the Middle Ages in Christendom and Islam is
identical in its basic ideas ; the roots of both cultures and
religions are intimately related, ... In the last
resort both religions are rooted in the Orient and its
world of ideas. In the period between the seventh and
thirteenth centuries the politically strengthened world

48 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

of the East was bound to be superior to the West, which
had been politically and culturally broken by the
invasions of the Teutons : in the East there was an
organic connection between the ethnic forces and the
intellectual ideals and conceptions, since here the thread
of development had not been broken, . . . Hence
the enormous cultural influence of the Islamic world on
Christendom, which finds expression to this day in the
numberless words of Arabic origin in our languages and
of which it is impossible to have an exaggerated con-
ception. Not only material products of the East but
the broad lines of economic life, the ideal expressions
of our medieval chivalry including even the poetry of
the Minnesingers, for all its European appearance the
bases of our whole education in the natural sciences, even
ideas in philosophy and theology which have had a wide
influence, came to us during that period from Islam.
The consequences of the Crusades are the plainest
evidence of the enormous superiority of the Islamic
world, which we are recognizing more and more every
day." (0. H. Becker.)

So it is permissible to speak of a similarity, indeed an
identity, of the cultural bases of the Near East and of the
West in the Middle Ages* It was not only in the East
that the contact between Islam and Christendom took
place. The civilization founded in Sicily by the Arabian
dynasty of the Kalbites made possible the country's
progress under the Normans and under Frederick II.
In the ninth century central Italy was under the dominion
of the Sultan of Ban ; in 846 the Arabian fleets were at
the gates of Rome, and in 878 Pope John VIII had to pay
tribute to them. It was no superiority of the West but
the disunity of the Arabs and the too-vast extent of their
empire that made possible the riconquisia.

The adoption of Hellenism changed the character of
Islam as a state. It had originally been democratic and
tolerant. This applies not only to the time of the first
four Khalifa (the title Khalif means successor of
Mohammed as commander of the Faithful), but also to

IN HISTORY 49

the time of the Omayyad Khalifs of Damascus. The
change came when the Abbasids ruled Islam from
Baghdad. The court of the Abbasids followed the pre-
cedent of the court of the Great Bangs of Persia and the
Emperor of Byzantium, and developed into a despotic
oriental princely court with an elaborate ceremonial.
The Omayyads in their desert fortresses had cultivated
the old ideals of free Arab life ; the Abbasids, in contrast
to the more temporal and secular leanings of the
Omayyads, proposed " to regard their Khalifate as an
ecclesiastical state, in whose government the sacred law
was the only criterion. The Persian ideal of the intimate
relationship between religion and government was plainly
the programme of Abbasid rule." (Ignaz Goldziher.)
This brought a change in the habitual toleration of
Islam, a change due to the influence of the Christian
ideas which it took over. Originally " the principle of
toleration was put into operation in regard to the exercise
of religion ; and the considerate and gentle treatment of
persons of other faiths became the law of the land also
in civil matters and in matters of trade. The oppression
of the non-Muslims under Islamic protection was con-
demned by the Faithful as a sinful excess. The governor
of the province of Lebanon took stern proceedings at one
time against the population, which had revolted against
the oppressive measures of the tax-gatherers. He was
reminded, by way of warning, of the teaching of the
Prophet : " If any man shall oppress one who is assigned
to his protection, and lays too heavy burdens on him, I
shall myself stand forth as that man's accuser at the Day
of Judgment." (Ignaz Goldziher.) Leone Caetani also
points out this change in Islamic tolerance : " In the
earliest times the Arabs were not fanatical but associated
almost fraternally with their Christian Semitic cousins ;
but these latter, after themselves quickly turning into
Mussulmans, introduced into the new religion the
intolerance, the blind hostility to the faith of Byzantium.,
with which they had previously brought destruction to
the spirit of Oriental Christianity."

50 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

For the Bedouins, conversion to Islam was mainly a
superficial matter; only in Hellenized Islam did the
canonical law, the Sharia, become the basis of the whole
life of the community. As in medieval Jewry, whose
Middle Age ended only a few decades before that of Islam,
and in many cases continued to the threshold of the
immediate present, religion, the obligation to God, domin-
ated until recent times every act in daily life ; it was
the ideal of the life of the community, the basis of the
state, as well as the personal ideal of education and life.
As the administration of the law required its inter-
pretation and exposition, and this required an exact
knowledge of the law, in Islam as in Jewry the caste of
those proficient in the law, of the wise men learned in the
word of God, enjoyed special esteem. Yet there was no
priestly caste and no sacrament ; except for particular
sects, Islam, like Jewry, held aloof from the Near Eastern
cult of mysteries.

Islam means submission to God, concentration on
God. To Islam the absolute domination of the world by
God is a basic dogma. Therefore the whole duty of man
is to obey the will of the Creator. Many Sufis have
clothed the basic dogma of Islam in magnificent phrases.
The chief prayer of Ibrahim ibn Adham ran : " O God,
bring me out of the contemptible condition of rebellion
against Thee into the nobility of obedience." When the
son of Elfadil died, this man, who at other times did not
even smile, laughed and said : " If anything pleases God,
it pleases me too." (Adalbert Merx.) Another Sufi
spoke the word " Allah " without intermission until he
went into ecstasy. At that a stone shattered his head,
and the blood that spurted on to the ground formed as
it flowed on the earth the letters of the name of God.
(M. Horten.) This entire devotion to Allah explains the
belief in fate (Turkish kismet) in Islam ; but the fate that
comes to the Mohammedan and which he accepts in faith
is no blind fate in the Greek sense, no senseless tragedy
under the weight of which the hero is destroyed, but the

of God, inscrutable by man, to which honour and

IN HISTORY 51

praise is due ; obedience to it ennobles and consummates
the hero. That this fatalism can spur men on to overcome
the fear of death and to commit courageous acts is
evident, but it is equally evident that it may easily become
a maxim of life injurious to culture and to activity and
that it deters men from tenacious energy, from steady
pursuit of a purpose in spite of obstacles and opposition.
" For the rest, Islam has itself at times come out in
opposition to the misuse of fatalistic ideas. Thus there
is a tradition that there are three sorts of prayers to which
God does not listen when anyone is living in a tumble-
down house and prays to God to prevent it from falling
in ; when he puts his goods and chattels out in the street
and prays to God to protect them ; when he lets his beast
run away and prays to God to catch it for him. 55 (Alfred
Bertholet.)

Islam has only one main division into sects which
has continued down to the present time, influencing its
political life in various fields. The four rites or schools
of orthodox Islam do not amount to sects ; the differences
between them are slight and do not touch essential
questions either in dogma or in the law. The most con-
servative of these schools, the Hanbalites, who reject all
innovations and hold fast to the Sunna, the oral tradition
from the time of the companions of the Ptophet, has the
fewest supporters, but experienced a renascence in central
Arabia with the Wahhabites in the eighteenth century.
Twice, at the beginning of the nineteenth century and
again in the twentieth, the followers of Mohammed ibn
Abd-al-Wahhab have tried to restore the pure faith of the
Sunna and a union of the Arabs in a single great realm ;
like the Arabs under Mohammed himself, they were
inspired at once by religious, national, and economic
considerations.

- The Shiite sect, the only dissenting sect known to
Islam, had its origin in constitutional problems, not
religious ones. The Shiites form the Shia (party) of Ali,
Mohammed's son-in-law and the fourth Khalif ; they
regard only Ali and his descendants as true Khalifs or

52 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

Imams. All had two sons, grandsons of the Prophet,
Hasan and Husain. Hasan's descendants bear to this
day the title of sherif , those of Husain the title of sayyid.
Husain died a martyr's death in battle against the
Omayyads at Kerbela in Iraq, which has since been a
pilgrims' resort for all the Shiites. The battle decided
the question of the Khalifate, but in the eyes of the
Shiites all the Khalifs were usurpers. The true Imams
in their view were AH and his descendants, consecrated
in their office in virtue of a dispensation of God, not of a
human choice. According to the Shiite doctrine every
generation and every epoch possesses its Imam, " who is
alone entitled and enabled, by means of the extraordinary
quality of infallibility bestowed on him by God, to instruct
and to guide the community in all its religious affairs.
The presence of an Imam is indispensable in every epoch,
for without one of these inspired persons the aim of
godly legislation and leadership would be unattainable,"
(Ignaz Goldziher.) Thus the Imam in the Shia becomes
something quite different from the Sunmte Khalif. The
Khalif becomes Mohammed's successor by human selec-
tion, not through his inner qualities ; his task is the
execution of the laws and the defence of Islam. He is not
an authority on dogma, not a Pope ; he is the external
symbol of the unity and continuity of Islam, which is a
state and a religion at one and the same time. The
Imam of the Shia, on the contrary, has superhuman
qualities ; he is by birth a leader without sin and an
infallible teacher of Islam. Some Shiite sects have
brought the Imam into close association with the name of
God. The Shia itself is divided into sects segregated
according to the series of Imams whom they recognize.
One group ends the series of Imams at the twelfth,
another at the seventh. The last Imam is then regarded
as the invisible lord of the age, living on in seclusion ;
one day he will return as Imam Mahdi, the saviour of the
world, and will set up the realm of peace and justice.

In ordinary life Sunnites and Shiites differ little. The
law and the dogma are binding on both and are the same

IN HISTORY 53

for both except for insignificant differences. The Shiite
himself recognizes the principle of the Sunna, the oral
tradition, but he bases his Sunna on the authority of All
and his circle, notof the other " comrades "of the Prophet.
Wellhausen and Goldziher have shown that the Shia did
not arise under Persian influence. " The Alidic move-
ment arose on native Arabic soil. The roots of the Imam
theory, the theocratic opposition to the temporal con-
ception of the power of the state, the Messianism into
which the Imam theory runs, are to be attributed to
Jewish and Christian influences. The Shiite form of
opposition was, however, entirely welcome to the
Persians." (Ignaz Goldziher.) In opposition to its
neighbour, Turkey, the national Persian dynasty of the
Saf awids raised the Shia in Persia to a state religion, and
the conflicts between Turks and Persians, which formed
a continuation of the old conflicts between eastern Rome
and Persia, accentuated the religious difference.

In addition to the Persian Shiites, who recognized
the twelfth Imam as the last in the series, two other
branches of the Shia have maintained their existence
down to the present the Zeydites and the Ismailites.
The former end the series of Imams at the fifth and
recognize Zeyd as Imam. They stand nearest to the
Sunnites. The Idrisides of north-west Africa, and to-day
both the Imam of Yemen with his Zeydites and the
Idrisidic Emir of Asir, go back to them. The Ismailites
end the series of the visible Imams at the seventh, Ismail.
They stand farthest from the Sunnites and have adopted
into their system of belief a great deal of alien speculative
matter, especially Neo-Platonic and Gnostic doctrines of
emanation ; they have also given an allegorical significance
to the Islamic traditions. The Ismailites are the most
backward group in Islam, filled with a blind authoritarian
belief in the power of the Imam and intolerant against
other faiths. They live in India and in central Syria ;
their head is the Indian Aga Khan, himself entirely
Europeaniased he lives in London and on the Riviera,
He is a man of extraordinary wealth and one of the most

54 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

loyal supporters of British, policy in India and in the
Near East. A peculiar, isolated Shiite sect, in which a
good deal of old primitive paganism lives on, is that of the
Nussayrians or Alauites, who live in the mountains along
the coast of Syria between Tripoli and Alexandretta.

For all the relationship between their bases and their
ways of life, medieval Europe and Islam parted com-
pletely when Europe broke with the Middle Ages through
the influence of the humanists and the rationalists. The
Europe that came into existence in the sixteenth century
and was in full bloom in the eighteenth was inspired by a
new sense of life which remained foreign to Islam and to
the Eastern churches. In the past, East and West had
been equals ; but from now onwards the West grew far
beyond the East not only in power but in the breadth and
depth of its intellectual life. The gulf between the two
widened decade by decade, for while Europe advanced
the East fell more and more deeply into lethargy and
narrowness of spirit; it not only lost touch with the
Western progress, but also with its own past, with the
period when its own field of culture flourished and was
at the height of its vitality. Only in recent years has
Islam begun to awaken under the influence of Europe,
to break away from the medievalism that has fettered it,
to allow a field to critical thought, and to participate,
even if, at present, only passively, in the cultural develop-
ment of Europe since the days of Humanism. Religion
is losing in the East, as it has lost in Europe, its universal
influence over all life, it is beginning to be but a province
of the life of the individual, new forces are bringing inspira-
tion, reforming movements are setting in, and all this is
taking place amid a serious crisis in every sphere of
intellectual and social life. It does not mean the end of
Islam, any more than the Renaissance and rationalism
meant the end of Christianity in Europe. Islam will be
able to adapt itself to the new field of work. " Islam,
too, in, a crisis of the gravest, is emerging from medieval-
ism ; but its religious and ethical forces will retain their
vitality, even if the Sharia is no longer anything but an

IN HISTORY 55

ideal and there is no longer a Khalifate." (Robert
Tschudi.) Thus there are grounds for hope that with
time a new type of Mohammedan will arise, and that the
relationship between East and West in bases and ways
of life which was so pronounced in the Middle Ages will
reappear. Then there will be an end of the four centuries
of entire aloofness and segregation and a new approach
will begin. Alfred Bertholet quotes a phrase of a present-
day Mohammedan which contains much food for thought,
and which the historian of this period will again and again
feel to have in it at least an element of truth : " Men
resemble their time more than they do their fathers."

THE CRUSADES

In the exercise of their rule over the Holy Places in
Palestine, the Arabs showed a generous tolerance, in the
spirit of the original Islam of Arabia, a tolerance of
which there can scarcely be many other examples in the
Middle Ages or even in modern times. The Khalif
Haroun-al-Rashid appointed the IVanks to be protectors
of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Charlemagne
founded a hospital and a library in Jerusalem. Numbers
of pilgrims from the West came to Jerusalem and were
able to live there in peace and go their way entirely
undisturbed. This lasted until about the end of the
eleventh century. In 1021 eastern Rome took over the
protectorate over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
the struggle over the Church between Rome and
Byzantium which then began has lasted down to the
present day, and has produced around the Holy Places
an atmosphere of religious and political exasperation and
jealous hostility which has brought conflicts and dis-
turbances over and over again. The assumption of the
protection of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the
Byzantines also placed obstacles in the way of the pil-
grimages from the West, which until then had taken
place in peace.

Toward the end of the eleventh century Palestine

56 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

became the battlefield in which, as so often in history, the
powers in Mesopotamia and in the Nile valley fought out
their differences. The Turkish Seljuks, as hirelings and
mayors of the palace of the more and more feeble Abbasid
Khalifs of Baghdad, fought the Shiite Fatimids, who had
founded an independent realm in Egypt. Syria and
Assyria broke up into a number of semi-independent
Seljuk governorships. This disunity between the
Mohammedans, and the weakening of their power through
division and through quarrels between the Seljuk generals,
offered western Europe an opportunity of gaining a foot-
ing in the Levant for the first time since the fall of the
western Roman empire. The fighting between the
Mohammedans had closed to European trade the great
routes through the Levant, along which the world's
commerce had passed under the earlier Abbasid Khalifs.
At the end of the eleventh eejitury the West armed for
its second great thrust against the Orient. The Crusades
lasted three centuries and ended in complete failure. The
Orient proved the stronger in the long run. But this
period revolutionized the West and laid the foundation
for its later rapid progress, while it left the countries of
the East almost unaffected. So the Crusades, in spite
of the victory of the Orient, became a source of the
strength of Europe and started the decay of the East.
At the bottom the Crusades were due to the religious
excitement of the Middle Ages, the longing for repentance
and for works pleasing to God. But the religious enthusi-
asm was accompanied by many other motives and
furthered them in turn* To begin with, at first a non-
political and non-material motive, there was the vitality
of chivalry, its urge to action, its thirst for adventure.
The church had been exerting itself to keep within bounds
the vengefulness and the brutal fighting spirit of the
knighthood by means of the Truce of God and in other
ways; now there was an opportunity of enabling the
knights to wear out their passions on a pious and useful
mission. " The knight who joined the Crusades might
thus still indulge the bellicose side of his genius under

IN HISTORY 57

the aegis and at the bidding of the church ; and in doing
so he would also attain what the spiritual side of his nature
ardently sought a perfect salvation and remission of
sins. He might butcher all day, till he waded ankle-deep
in blood, and then at nightfall kneel, sobbing for joy, at
the altar of the Sepulchre for was he not red from the
winepress of the Lord ? One can readily understand the
popularity of the Crusades, when one reflects that they
permitted men to get to the other world by fighting hard
on earth, and allowed them to gain the fruits of asceticism
by the ways of hedonism." (Ernest Barker.) Manly
courage and godly love, massacre and pilgrimage were
bound up with one another. But the Crusades gained
significance from three sets of political and economic
motives the greed for booty on the part of knights
and vassals, driven by years of famine and pestilence
in north-western Europe to search for new countries and
rich treasure, including new fiefs for the younger sons
of the nobles ; the desire of the Pope to see Roman
Christendom extend not only at the expense of Islam
but also at that of the Eastern church, and so to attain
the Catholic unity of the whole of the known world ;
and the efforts of the rising Italian trading towns of
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, to re-open to trade the great
routes which had been made unsafe by the unsettled
state of the country through which they passed, to set
up trading branches in the Levant ports, and to secure
trading privileges of various kinds.

The Crusades made Venice the leading power in the
Levant. The city had become independent of Byzantium
in the ninth century, and in 1048 it received such extensive
privileges in Constantinople that it soon began to
dominate the whole trade of the port, The fourth
Crusade, which set up the empire of the Latins in
Byzantium in 1204, was carried out under the leadership
of Venice ; Venice gained from it privileges in the
territory of eastern Rome and annexed Crete, the Greek
islands, coastal territory in the Adriatic and the Black
Sea, and Thessaly, The monopoly of trade in the

58 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT
Adriatic, the Levant Sea, the Aegean, and the Black
Sea made Venice the wealthiest city of the later Middle
Ages and a great power. Not until the advance of the
Ottoman Turks and the discovery of the route round
Africa to India was an end made of the monopoly of trade
with the East which the proud city of the Doges held
throughout the centuries of the Crusades.

While the Crusades brought the Italians the control of
trade with the East, the political and cultural dominance
fell to France. The Crusades began as a French and
Norman enterprise ; the Crusaders were called Franks
in the Near East, and the name is given to this day to
the Christian Levantine population of the trading cities ;
and the states founded in the Levant by the Crusaders
bore in every respect a French character, France has
kept alive her spiritual and political claim to the Levant
since the Crusades ; in taking possession of Syria in 1919
France entered into the heritage of Godfrey of Bouillon
and Saint Louis ; in addition she laid hands on Damascus,
Horns, Hama, and Aleppo, which had never been in the
possession of the Crusaders. But " historic " claims have
a way of not only lasting but growing as they last.

Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Crusaders on
July 15th, 1099. Its kingdom extended eastwards to
the Jordan ; east of the Dead Sea it also included a small
strip of territory with Kerak. It reached southwards
as fax as Akaba, the port at the north-east point of the
Red Sea. Akaba was an important point for the
Crusaders; the goods of southern Arabia and India
came there through the Bed Sea and could be forwarded
thence to the Phoenician coast. But the centre of
gravity of the kingdom of Jerusalem did not lie in
Jerusalem or in Judaea or in the mountains, where the
Israelites and the Jews had once lived, but in the coastal
plain, which had once belonged to Phoenicians and
Philistines. It is interesting to note that Zionist
colonization, which took up the historic claim of the Jews
of ancient times, followed the Crusaders* policy; the
mountain country, which had originally been the home

IN HISTORY 59

of the Jews, remained as in the time of the Crusaders
in the hands of the indigenous inhabitants ; the colonists
coming from the West concentrated on the fertile coastal
plains and their trading cities.

Alongside the kingdom of Jerusalem the Crusaders
founded three other states, the principality of Antioch
and the countships of Edessa and Tripoli. They thus
controlled the whole coastland from Egypt to the Gulf of
Alexandretta, leaving the interior of the country to the
Mohammedans. Here again the latest developments
have followed precedent : after the world war the British
and the French sought to establish their domination of
the Levant and its trade routes by bringing the coastal
strip from Egypt to Alexandretta under their direct
control, separating it to this end from its hinterland and
splitting it up into various small states in which they
assured their domination by favouring the minorities
the Jews in Palestine, the Maronites in Lebanon, the
Alauites in the Government of Latakia, and the Turks in
the Sandjak of Alexandretta. The Mohammedans were
left only the territory that had reverted to desert. This
territory lost its importance in being cut off from the
coastal strip ; that strip, open to the world, was of critical
political and commercial importance.

In this coastal strip the Western traders then, in the
time of the Crusades, as now, set up their factories and
commercial houses, protected by special privileges. At
that period Venice and Genoa were granted important
privileges by the Crusaders, special areas in the Near
East cities, freedom from all taxation, and their own
courts of justice. These privileges, first granted in such
towns as Tyre and Acre, as well as Constantinople, were
the origin of the system of capitulations which made the
European business communities in the Near East a state
within the state and withdrew them from the financial
and juridical sovereignty of the territorial state in which
they had settled. The states that have won their
independence, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, have now abolished
capitulations, but in Egypt they still remain in full force,

60 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

and in Palestine and Syria the Mandatory Powers still
retain them on a restricted scale.

With the setting up of the kingdom of Jerusalem the
Crusaders reached the summit of their success. The
second Crusade, under two Western kings, Louis VII of
France and Conrad of Germany, collapsed under the
victories of the Mohammedans,, who now took the offen-
sive ; Saladin had meanwhile re-imited Syria and Egypt,
The Crusaders were unable to withstand the united
Mohammedans, and Jerusalem was attacked by the armies
of Saladin. It is a Holy City to the Mohammedans as
well as the Christians ; its Arabic name of Kuds al Sherif
is derived from the sacredness of the city, and its recapture
was greeted with the same enthusiasm which had filled
the Crusading armies ninety years earlier. The city fell
into the hands of the Mohammedans on October 2nd,
1287. All the efforts of united Europe to recapture it
by force of arms failed.

Among the peoples of Christendom " national
jealousies had been increased and national differences
brought into prominence by association in a common
enterprise, while on the other side Christians and
Mohammedans associated as brethren in a way they had
never done before ". (Ernest Barker*) In Europe in
the twelfth century the Crusades had begun as a bond of
religious and Christian union between the peoples ; but
as they proceeded they developed into an important
factor in the awakening of the nationalism of the Western
peoples and so in the destruction of Christian unity. On
the other hand they proved to the Europeans that the
Orientals were not only their equals in culture and
capacity but in many respects their superiors.

Leasing, in his Nathan der Weise, had good reason
for making Saladin an example of noble tolerance* Saladin
was of the fine flower of Arab knightliness. Arab Chivalry
did not become, like the Chivalry of the West, an organiza-
tion ; it remained, as before Islam, a principle and a
way of life; but it had a manifold influence on Western
Chivalry. Magnanimity and courage, the sense of honour,

IN HISTORY 61

the respect for womanhood, the art of poetry and the love
of the chase were regarded as knightly virtues. The
common aspiration to knightliness and the mutual trading
relations brought Franks and Mohammedans close to
one another. Most of the Crusaders married eastern
women, and their princes Greek and Armenian princesses.
They adopted the higher and more refined standard of the
Orientals in clothing, way of living, and education. Only
through a negotiated treaty and for the very limited dura-
tion of the treaty was the Hohenstaufen Emperor
Frederick II (who under the influence of Arab civilization
had become one of the most notable princes of the Middle
Ages) able to bring Jerusalem and the coastal cities back
into Christian ownership, from 1229 to 1244. Not until
673 years later was a Christian Crusader, General Allenby,
once more to capture Jerusalem. This time, too, ideals
were united with aims of economic and political expansion
as motives of the enterprise.

In 1291, after further vain Crusades, the last fortress
of the Crusaders, Acre, fell into the hands of the
Mohammedans. The Bay of Haifa was Europe's last
possession in the Holy Land. The Venetians hastened
to conclude advantageous treaties of amity with the
foes of Christendom and to secure for themselves the same
trading privileges that they had possessed under the
Crusaders. Only in Cyprus, the commanding outpost
in the Levant Sea, did the Crusaders retain their hold
until 1489 ; its capital, Famagusta, was an important
trading centre. With the death of the last king of the
island Venice came into possession of it through adopting
the king's widow, a Venetian woman, as a daughter of
the republic. For eighty-two years Venice ruled over
Cyprus, whose inhabitants had even more reason to com-
plain of its harsh rule than of that of the titular kings of
Jerusalem . Then the island shared the fate of Jerusalem :
it fell into the hands of the Turks, and came later under
British rule*

The Crusades continued for nearly 200 years after
the fall of Acre, But their character had changed : they

62 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

were no longer an offensive against the Holy Land, but a
defensive struggle against the Turks, who carried the
banners of Islam as far as Hungary. The Levant
remained in Eastern hands. But the Crusades had
greatly widened the vision of the Europeans. About this
period European missionaries and traders had reached
China, India, and central Asia ; the Levant routes were
more thoroughly explored and the wealth of the Far East
became more familiar. The journey was made overland
from Acre to Peking, and by sea from Basra to Canton.
New horizons opened, the frontiers were pushed farther
back, and a new vision of life arose- The medieval
lethargy and isolation of Europe had been broken down.
The spirit of the Crusades took Vasco da Gama round the
Cape of Good Hope. The Levant had been able to beat
off the invaders, but the ultimate result of the Crusades
was the thrusting out of the Levant from the centre of
history. Trade and civilization took other paths. But
before this happened the end of a great historic period
was to be, as it were, compressed into one symbolic act :
on May 30th, 1463, the Turks entered Constantinople,
which they regarded as the capital of Christendom, the
urba of the expiring ancient world, the pclia of Hellenism*
From their long struggle to enter this city eia ten polin
it received its Turkish name of Istanbul. The capital
of the Christian Roman Emperors became the seat of the
Khalif , the Hagia Sophia a mosque*

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

When Constantinople fell, the great civilizing power of
Islam was already broken. As the ancient civilization of
Europe foundered amid the mass migration of peoples,
and several centuries passed before civilized life began
anew in Europe, so the civilization of Islam and the
beginnings of an eastern European, Slav civilization
perished amid the great mass migration which brought
the Mongols under Genghis Khan westward from the
interior of Asia. That great conqueror left behind him

IN HISTORY 63

an empire that stretched from the China Sea to the
Dnieper. In 1258 Baghdad fell before his successor, and
the Abbasid Khalifate and the power of the Seljuks,
who had founded a state in Asia Minor with Konia as its
capital, came to an end. The Mongols had a number of
Turkish tribes in their ranks, and drove others before
them.

At the time when Baghdad fell before the Mongols,
the Osmans, one of the Turkish knightly fraternities
settled by the Seljuks on territory in the north-west of
Asia Minor, rose to power. The early history of this
fraternity is lost in legendary obscurity. Its leader
Osman, son of Ertoghrul, conquered Brussa in the year of
his death, 1326. From then on the Osmanli advanced
rapidly and unceasingly through two centuries to world
power. By 1361 Murad I had conquered Adrianople and
reduced the Balkan countries to submission ; Constanti-
nople had long lost all real power and independence before
it fell in 1453. The Ottoman empire reached its zenith
under Suleiman I (1520-1566), who conquered Budapest
and Algiers ; his victorious fleets dominated the
Mediterranean, and his possessions included the shores
of the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf. But with the
expansion of the empire the first signs of decay made their
appearance. Suleiman, "the great lawgiver, was still able
to cope with the difficulties. Through peace and security
in the wide realm, through the admirable administration,
the excellent state of the finances, and the strong army,
always ready to strike, the Ottoman empire was one of
the most powerful and most prosperous of states. The
old method of bringing in assimilated renegades to rein-
force the upper ranks gave an incomparable field of ser-
vice in the world empire to the best heads among the
subjected population/' In those days the Ottoman
empire saved from the heritage of the civilizations that
had sprung from the latest period of the ancient world
so much as had escaped in the destruction of the Khalifate
by the Mongol incursion and the destruction of Byzantium
by the Latins. c< These were, it is true, old, tired

64 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

civilizations ; they were granted a second flowering^
and the syncretistic technique this demanded made the
Ottoman state not only an artistic but an artificial
product, too Oriental for the West, too Byzantine for
the East." (Robert Tschudi.)

With Suleiman there came to an end the succession of
great and powerful sultans. The external magnificence
and the wide extent of the empire continued unchallenged
for a further century and a half. But within it there was
being repeated the experience of all the autocracies of the
Orient: feeble rulers, with their harems and their
favourites, ruined finances, disordered administration,
everywhere corruption and the absence of all sense of
responsibility for the state as a whole. The turning
point in the empire's external relations came with the
peace treaty of Carlowitz in 1699. At the same time
there began the long continued conflict with Russia,
whose Tsar demanded from the Sultan, for a long time j
without success, the recognition of his title of Emperor
and his equality of standing. The peace treaty of Kutchuk
Kainardji (1774) brought Russia the right of surveillance
of the Danube principalities which were under Turkish
sovereignty, and the opportunity of claiming under a
clause of the treaty a protectorate over the Orthodox
Christians in the Ottoman empire.

After this the dissolution of the once mighty empire
was only a question of time, It was delayed by the
jealousy of the European Powers, which kept the " sick
man " alive. There were many points of friction ; the
interests of Russian and Austro-Hungarian expansion
came into conflict in the Balkans, and the control of the
Bosphorus was regarded alike by Great Britain and by
Russia as a matter of vital importance. Asiatic Turkey,
which until well into the nineteenth century had been
regarded as outside the sphere of interest of the European
Powers, began to attract their attention, each of them
watching to see that none of the others extended its field
of influence. Out of this conflict of interests there arose
the programme of the maintenance of the integrity of

IN HISTORY 65

Turkey, at all events until the Powers could agree between
themselves over the detachment of one or other of the
provinces of the empire, or until one of them should take
the risk of facing the rest with an accomplished fact.

As early as 1815, at the Vienna Congress, the Powers
were planning a guarantee of the territorial integrity of
Turkey, and at the Congress of Paris in 1856 all the sig-
natories bound themselves to respect her independence
and territorial integrity. At that time Turkey had made
a beginning with her first attempts at reform, to turn a
medieval oriental state into a modern state, all the
inhabitants of which should enjoy equal rights and accept
equal obligations. But the Powers had an interest in
maintaining Turkey in her old weakness and disunion.
Within the Ottoman empire there was no dominant class
to carry out the reforms from patriotic zeal and to awaken
a new sense of the state. The placing of the Christian
population on an equality with the Mohammedan did not
have the desired success ; many Mohammedans looked
down with contempt on the unbelievers who had suffered
centuries of oppression, while the Christian nationalities
concentrated their whole attention on the acquisition of
independence, and to that end on the weakening of Turkey
with the aid of the foreign Christian Powers. The struggle
between Eussia and the Western Powers, especially
France, for dominance in Turkey, went on under the cover
of a struggle between the Orthodox and Catholic churches
for controlling influence in the Holy Places. It was a
struggle of this sort over the rights of the monks at the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem that led to the
Crimean War*

On its eastern frontier the Ottoman empire continued
the old struggle of eastern Rome against Persia. Persia
had not had, like Turkey, a period, at the beginning of the
modern age, of great advance in political power, but on
the other hand Persian culture had spread through
Turkestan and, under the rule of the Grand Moguls,
Mohammedan India, where Persian became the language
of official and educated intercourse. But the struggles

66 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

between Persia and Turkey were without significance *
the fate of Persia (which had been ruled since the end o!
the eighteenth century by the dynasty of the KajarsJ
depended, like that of Turkey, on the issue of the rivalry
between Great Britain and Russia. As in Turkey, the
policy of the granting of loans to the government was
pursued with a view to securing political and economic
concessions for the European states and continually
weakening and exploiting the country. u It is manifest
that the brutally selfish policy of the Europeans, together
with the incapacity and unscrupulousness of the govern-
ment, was bound to result in the economic and social ruin
of the country. And the people were still too weak to
take their fate into their own hands." (Hans Heinrich
Schader,) When, however, the people took cotirage to
do this, when the Persian revolution, the first in the coun-
tries of the Orient, gave the signal for political and
economic emancipation, the Powers exerted themselves
to the utmost to make impossible any reform and any
improvement in the condition of the people. The history
of this period, which is only typical of what was going on
all over the East, has been written by an American,
Morgan Shuster, from a knowledge of the circumstances
gained in Persia itself in the course of intimate collabora-
tion with the Persians. He gave his book the significant
title of The Strangling of Persia.

It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century
that Persia came into contact with European ideas and
so was led to set her house in order. In Turkey there had
already been contact with Europe for half a century.
Turkish writers had conveyed the ideas of the Western
world in the Turkish language to their compatriots. There
had been an uninterrupted process of modernization
among the Turkish intelligentsia, though it only affected
a small upper stratum of the people* The social and
cultural attitude to life of medieval Islam was replaced
by the ideas of the West, the rights of man and of the
citizen, the freedom and dignity of the nation, the ration-
alist and scientific attitude to life. For three decades

IN HISTORY 67

Sultan Abdul Hamid attempted through his reactionary
and tyrannical regime to check the progress of modern
ideas, of Liberalism and nationalism, in his empire. He
made use for this purpose of the religious fanaticism of the
uneducated masses of the people. Abdul Hamid became
the great champion of Pan-Islamism. He made much of
his position as Khalif , and used it to gain the adhesion of
Mohammedans outside Turkey. But his resistance to the
penetration of Western ideas proved as hopelessly
ineffectual as the similar efforts of the Austria of
Metternich and those of Tsarist Russia had been. The
assimilation of the technical progress of the West, at least
by a small class of intellectuals, was absolutely necessary
to enable an army and an administration to be developed,
and it was impossible to permit this without also admitting
the ideas which formed the basis of all technical achieve-
ment. It was this upper stratum that carried through the
revolution of 1908, with the watchword " Unity and
Progress ". They were led by officers and by intellectuals
who had returned from exile. The nationalism they
brought with them from Europe was bound to hasten the
dissolution of this empire of many nationalities.

During the last two centuries of its history the
Ottoman empire has been the arena of the new contest
between East and West. But this resumption of the old
rivalry of the time of the Crusades took place under
totally changed circumstances. The political and cultural
superiority of the West was firmly established ; in no
field of social or intellectual life had the East anything of
comparable value to oppose to it. Thus it was possible
for the West to penetrate the East politically and cul-
turally without meeting with any lasting resistance.
The political pressure has grown in recent decades with the
opening of the international trade routes by water, on the
land, and in the air, and with the continually increasing
closeness of the network of world trade. The Levant
became a field of tension in world politics, in which the
oriental peoples were merely passive elements with which
world policy operated. Only in recent years, with the
change in the view of the world formed by the people

68 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

of the Orient under the influence of European thought,
has there begun a complete transformation in the political,
social, and cultural life of the East which, under the
stimulating influence of the West, has awakened to new
activity in political and economic life.

The relations between East and West have entered
upon a new phase. The world war, in which all the
countries of the Near East were involved, was the turning
point. At the end of the world war the West succeeded
in doing what it had already done once at the time of the
Crusades. Constantinople was occupied by the Allied
Powers, under British leadership. European influence
in the Near East attained its zenith. Turkey, Persia, the
countries of Arabia, and Egypt seemed to have fallen
once and for all under the political and economic domina-
tion of the West. But this apparently supreme point
attained by the power of the West was actually the turn-
ing point. The fate of Constantinople seems like a
symbolic summing up of the significance of this transition
period. In the Middle Ages the Pope, the Latins,
Normans, Italians, had invested the city in vain ; the
Tsar of Russia, the King of the Hellenes, the Tsar of the
Bulgars made efforts in the past century to obtain pos-
session of the city in order to fulfil the aspirations of their
peoples. Here West and East had fought for domination
of the world, for their souls, for their faiths. This city
was witness of a historic continuity which reached from
Hellenism down to the twentieth century. Down to our
own day it bore the name of the founder of its greatness.
Only now has it lost its world significance ; and now it
has only its Turkish name left Istanbul. The Turks
themselves have transferred their capital to Asia, to the
interior of Anatolia, whence they once issued for the
conquest of the West. With the victory of European
ideas in the Near East the centuries of rivalry of which
Constantinople was the symbol seem to have ended.
On the rejuvenated bases of a historic past, which was
determined by the attraction and rejection, the penetra-
tion and separation of West and East, the present is
building farther,

MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT AT THE
PRESENT DAY

WITH the uniformity of his climate and natural conditions,
and the uniformity of his history, in the course of which
there were continual interminglings of races, all of them
exposed to the working of the same civilizing forces, there
is a corresponding uniformity of type of Levantine man
in spite of all differentiations. His character has been
determined by two different elements: the inborn
qualities of the man of the Mediterranean and the man of
the Near East, and the typical way of life of the man of
the pre-capitalistic economic epoch. The Mediterranean
man and the man of the Near East still live in some
degree in the pre-capitalistic world ; they are only at the
threshold of industrial capitalism. The changing economic
conditions will affect the character of these men, will
change some of their distinguishing features, and will
train them in a new general outlook. For human
characteristics are not determined only by race and
environment but also by history and social development.
The process of economic restratification will result in
changes similar to those which took place in Europe some
centuries ago in men's way of living, in their general
attitude and in their outlook on the world, and which in
recent years, with the bringing of the whole planet into a
uniform and world-wide machine economy, has taken
place alike in Russia and in the Far East, in South America
and India.

The climate of the Mediterranean countries determines
the external features of life. In the north the closed
house is the centre of life not only of family life, but also
of social, cultural, and economic relations. Men leave
their houses only for the special reasons which bring
them into the street or the open air. It is different in the

69

70 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

Mediterranean region. There the centre of personal and
social life is the open place, the Forum or the Agora, the
caf 6s with their seats on the pavement, the open shops and
booths. The reliability and mildness of the weather per-
mit the great open-air theatres. This life in the open
air brings more intimate comradeship than does the seclu-
sion of the northern houses. Speech flows more easily,
men are not so cut off from one another, they meet every-
where, and this intermingling produces a natural,
unconstrained, hearty democracy ; intercourse is not so
stiff, men are more impulsive, voices are louder. Only
the Mohammedan preserves at times the silent dignity
of the desert.

But this public life is only for the men ; the women are
tied to the house, not only among the Mohammedans,
although with special strictness among them. Women
do not enter the caf6s or places of entertainment, and
men's and women's gatherings are usually strictly
segregated. In the home the position of the woman
varies ; often she is the servant of the man, often she
ranks as mistress of the house. Her seclusion frequently
results in ignorance, in a blas<S shallowness and super-
ficiality, in mere sweet-eating and idling. Yet there are
many exceptions. The woman of the lower classes is
very hard-working, her frame steeled by the rigours of
exacting labour, but often prematurely aged. The
mother is everywhere in a position of authority among
her children ; she is the most respected member of the
home ; the grandmother also is treated with great respect.
The isolation of family life has prevented any relaxation
of morals.

The climate reduces the need for clothing and shelter,
The man of the Near East is temperate in eating and
drinking. The Mohammedan is forbidden wine, but
among the Christians also drunkenness is rare, Since
needs are less, especiaUy in view of the different attitude
to industry, less labour seems necessary than in the
European capitalist countries. The man of the Mediter-
ranean has more free time, more sense of the simple

AT THE PRESENT DAY 71

joys of life, of the dolce far niente. Business deals are
concluded in the open air, in cafes, always amid easy-
going negotiation, without any undignified haste, without
any sense of time or of the value of time.

This " timelessness " is a part of the pre-capitalist
attitude towards trade and industry. Life still proceeds
amid a natural harmony, in which there is as yet no
dominance of the impulse to push business at the cost of
everybody else, of the lust for the acquisition of material
possessions. Men still have a dignified indifference to the
chances of business success ; they feel it as important to
satisfy the need for an easy-going and care-free existence
and for a simple and direct joy in life as to earn money.
Poverty is no disgrace, and in business life irrational
considerations play an important part. In the suk
(bazaar) one may often find vendors who make themselves
a nuisance in their efforts to attract customers and who
sing the praises of their goods with Oriental extravagance;
but this is more from southern exuberance and the joy
in simply making a noise, especially among the typical
trading peoples of the Levant ; most of the shopkeepers
sit silently amid the treasures of their open shops, waiting
patiently for customers to come ; if the customer enters
they allow him to explore their stock in silence, and
scarcely betray by a movement any interest in doing
business, The typical Levantine trading is not carried
on out of trading zeal or self-seeking.

There is not the same care as in the north to keep to
the exact truth ; people promise more than they mean
to do ; but those who are dealing with them are aware
of the rhetorical exaggerations and know exactly how
much or how little of all the talk and big figures need be
taken seriously* In all this there is less of peasant
cunning and graspingness than in northern Europe. It
is a "naive joy in bargaining, not for the sake of making
money but just for the joy of beating the opponent in
the trading game, a deal which is nothing else than a
competition between man and man. Such business has
nothing whatever to do with honesty and dishonesty;

72 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

everything is permitted that can be devised by human
ingenuity." (Reinhard Junge.)

The Mediterranean workman also works industriously,
but only as much as he has to, and if he has saved up a
little he will live on it until it is exhausted and he must
go to work again. He works with a will only when his
work has in it a creative element or satisfies his pleasure
in form and colour, and his patience is soon exhausted by
monotonous and undistinguished work such as is offered
by modern machine production. The lack of a sense of
time is characteristic of the whole life of the easterner :
in the languages of the peoples at this stage in social
evolution, in Arabic, Russian, Spanish, the word for
"to-morrow" has a vague and indefinite significance,
amounting in effect to " by and by ". Time is not money,
and money itself is held of much less account than in
Europe or North America. The easterner who states
a time never means it with any precision. Similarly, in
common with all men of the pre-capitalist era, he is
without a sense of precision and proportion in other
ways, in industrial processes, for instance, which call for
minute attention in correlating the play of various operat-
ing parts, or for the last millimetre of accuracy in
finishing. His spirit rebels against any excessive rational-
ization of life and work.

In his business life, too, an important part is played
by fancy, by sympathies and antipathies. At one moment
he will be tempted by alluring castles in the air, at
another he will fall into the resignation of fatalism. He
is not hard enough with himself, is easily led by his
inclinations, and will interrupt the work on which he is
engaged on the slightest occasion. Moreover, the
townsman, especially the trader of the type described
as Levantine or, like the traders of Turkestan, as a Sarte,
belongs to a class that has been oppressed for centuries ;
he is driven by the desire for respectful recognition to an
exhibition of vanity and an attempt to exaggerate his
importance, both of which interfere with his business
efficiency.

AT THE PRESENT DAY 73

The same irresponsibility is found among the peasants,
who after many months of living on the edge of hunger will
suddenly, on some festal occasion such as a betrothal,
spend in a single day more than they normally spend in
a whole year, so incurring an enormous burden of debt.
Hospitality is lavish everywhere, frequently to the
extent of injuring the host's financial position ; for a
chance guest the easterner will rush into expenditure
out of all proportion to his normal meagre existence.
Among the well-to-do classes in the towns this desire
to make a good show has results which are even more
injurious socially and economically, when the penetration
of European civilization brings the opportunity for a
manner of life which also undermines the traditional
bases of stern morality and patriarchalism.

The population is divided into three groups, differing
in their economic activities and in their characteristics
the nomads, the peasants, and the townspeople. The
nomads include the Arabs of steppe and desert, the
Bedouins, and numbers of Turkish and Kurdish tribes.
They are all characterized by a proud demeanour and
an impatience of anything that interferes with their
independence. They have not the desire for recognition
or the ambition to cut a figure with which the townsman
and some of the peasants are filled. Their cultural
level is very low ; they do not display the desire for educa-
tion or the intellectual activity and receptivity that
distinguish the townspeople. The Bedouins are herds-
men, but often live in walled towns in the oases, where
they cultivate grain ; the date palm, however, provides
the main food supply. As they dominate the caravan
routes, they draw profit from trade, either as dealers or as
guardians of the highways exacting levies from the
caravans. The important route from the south of Arabia
along the Red Sea to the Mediterranean was the seat of
numbers of tribes who lived in this way on trade, some
of them directly, some parasitically. The nomad herds-
men, on the other hand, in the steppes and deserts of
Arabia, Asia Minor, or Iran lead a very meagre and

74 MAN AND HIS ENVIEONMENT

primitive existence. Most of them are driven by hunger
to raid the cultivated land or the other nomad tribes
on its border.

If ever, thanks to the rare combination of an excep-
tional gift of organization with public spirit in the
government or among the leaders, the opportunity comes
for them to settle and take up agriculture, they gladly
seize it. King Ibn Saud, the leader of the Wahhabites,
has settled many of the restless Bedouin tribes of central
Arabia around springs in the desert in the present century.
In this way he has not only given these tribes increased
economic security, but has also given his empire some
prospect of permanence. For the nomad is politically
unstable and rebellious. Under the leadership of a great
statesman and soldier he can found an empire, but this
empire soon falls into dissolution. The life of the nomad
knows nothing of the steady continuity of an organic
system of government.

Among the various tribes the loose forms of govern-
ment are entirely democratic. The community as a
whole determine matters of common concern, and only
for the duration of a campaign or a raid do they accept
submission to a chosen leader or to one who stands out
through his bravery and qualities of character. Their
rejection of authority prevents the misuse of authority
general in urban and peasant communities*

Thus the nomads form no permanent states either
in the steppes or in the mountains. The principal
representatives of the mountain nomads of the Levant
are the Kurds. In winter they live in strongly built
villages on the lower slopes of the mountains, and grow
grain around them ; in the summer they take their herds
to pasture high up in the mountains* They too are
proud, independent, and often ferooions as fighters and
raiders. The Kurds, and also the Druses of Lebanon
and the Druse mountains, have developed, unlike the
nomads of the steppes, a tribal organization under
the rule of hereditary feudal families, to whom they give
allegiance*

AT THE PRESENT DAY 75

The Turks also were originally nomads, and the aristo-
cratic stratum among the Turks has retained something
of the lordliness of the nomad chiefs. The Turkish
peasant has become a peasant of the normal type. The
Turkish townsmen, on the other hand, have remained
until recently a ruling class alien to urban economic
life, a caste of soldiers and officials, proud and full of the
sense of their own dignity, but without application,
without any ambition for education, and without any
gift for trade and industry, which have fallen entirely
into the hands of the Christian peoples of the Levant,
especially the Greeks and Armenians, on whom the Turk
looks down with contempt. This character of the
Turkish ruling class, inherited from its nomad days,
accounted for the fact that the vast empire so rapidly
formed by the ruling race, at the time when its powers
were still unexhausted, lingered in impotence for a
time before it entirely fell to pieces, and did not contain
within itself the guarantee of an efficient order that could
establish permanence.

The peasants or fellaheen are hard workers, cautious
and suspicious, but with great natural intelligence. They
carry on a hard struggle against the unfruitf ulness of the
soil and the shortage of water, or against its exuberance
in the deltas, but are underfed and uneducated, suffering
from centuries of oppression and exploitation. His
prudence and caution makes the fellah "in his daily
labours an extremely patient worker, able to carry out
with great industry the most tedious and monotonous
tasks in petty cultivation ; his mentality often makes
him an unexcelled master of such work. A further con-
sequence of cautiousness is often great obstinacy in holding
on to old economic forms with the utmost tenacity, and
in meeting the foreigner, if he tries to introduce new
methods with all too little consideration of the human
element, with insuperable suspicion. Lack of under-
standing becomes refusal to understand. Only the
deepest consideration for the people, the deepest love
for the people, touching the heart of the Oriental, can

76 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

conquer this difficulty " and pave the way for more
modern methods. (Reinhard Junge.)

The peasant's wife is as industrious as the peasant
himself. Even among the Mohammedans the country-
woman is not subjected in any way to the seclusion
suffered by the townswoman, especially among the upper
classes.

Until recent times the peasant, as in eastern Europe
and a hundred years ago in central Europe, counted
politically for nothing at all ; to the governments he was
simply a source of revenue and to the usurers a subject
of exploitation. But the new national movements have
given him a hitherto unknown self -confidence and have
directed the attention of national governments to the
peasantry as pillars of the strength and future of the
nation. On the other hand, the quickened flow of money
and exchange, the complications of world trade, and the
contact with new and superior forms of economic
organization, at first far beyond his comprehension, have,
if anything, made worse his century-old impoverishment.
The burden of taxation in all these countries was borne
mainly by the peasants and was made still more
unendurable by the farming of the taxes, greatly increas-
ing a burden already excessive* The lack of any organized
system of credit prevented any transition to more inten-
sive farming, even had the peasant had the needed
education, and drove the peasantry into the hands of
moneylenders who demanded rates of interest often
amounting to 50 per cent, per annum and even exceed-
ing this ; the ignorant and unprotected countryman
was quite unable to repay his loan on top of the interest,
and fell deeper and deeper into debt.

Large ownership does exist in the Near East, and
also large ownership in mortmain, which is known as
waqf, " pious foundation " But there is very little of
large-scale farming ; the land is leased to peasants, who
usually pay as rent a proportion of the harvest, one-fifth
to one-third. These small farmers ore driven down to
a low level of existence by the absence of any legislation

AT THE PRESENT DAY 77

giving them security of tenure, and this also prevents any
effective work for the amelioration of their condition. In
many regions they suffer from excessive division of their
small properties, which cuts down their existence to the
very minimum.

On top of this there were special institutions born of
the limited wisdom of the Middle Ages, but readily taken
over sometimes even by the mandatory governments,
such as that of collective penalties when it was impossible
to discover the authorship of crimes or outrages ; these
might bring economic ruin to whole villages or districts.
Latterly the national governments in Turkey, Iran and
Egypt have tried to improve the lot of the peasants by the
provision of small credits and by taxation reform.

The situation of the peasant is a most serious social
and economic problem in all the countries of the Near
East. The transition from a primitive economic level
to the modern capitalistic world, involving a complete
break with his habits of thought and life, needs to be
made easier for him by governmental measures of protec-
tion and an understanding and sympathetic consideration
of his position. The national governments recognize
the necessity of protecting the peasant during the
transition period from exploitation of his economic
weakness and inexperience and from a diminution of
his possessions, from the danger of landlessness and
proletarianization. Indigenous agriculture suffers from
the great shortage of capital ; the peasant, indeed, is
entirely without capital ; he not only has no working
capital, so that he is dependent on the usurer, but his
whole live stock and implements are of infinitesimal
value.

In earlier times, before the influx of modern cheap
factory-made goods, the peasant and his family carried
on in their leisure hours an artistically developed home
industry which met the needs of home and family and
provided remunerative occupation at times when there
was no work to do on the land- Household utensils and
clothing had an individual character ; the peasant was

78 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

proud of the good work put into them ; everything was
made with the natural popular feeling for form and
colour, and embroidery and carpets aroused the admira-
tion of Europeans. In recent times this home industry
has greatly declined ; on the other hand, with the develop-
ment of urban industry, the opportunity has come to the
peasant of work away from home during the months in
whic'h there is little or nothing to do in the fields. Agri-
culture did not offer him sufficient support even to meet
his own poor needs, and he sought employment for wages
on public works and in the building trade in the towns ;
there has not yet been an actual flight from the country
into the towns, but nevertheless where the peasant has
been fortunate he has become an element in the urban
labour supply.

Urban economic life has developed differently in the
ports and in the towns of the oases. Trade with Europe
was concentrated in the ports ; European elements settled
in them in early times, mixed with the Christian Levantine
population, and produced the type of " Levantine "
who became the middleman between Europe and the Near
East a denationalized class, shrewd and exceedingly
active, but often unscrupulous and given over to senseless
luxury* The peculiar character of the internal water
supply has resulted in massed populations settling in the
oases while the desert all round was uninhabited. These
oases thus developed into urban centres around which
village settlements came into existence in a narrow but
fertile space. Such an oasis city as, for instance,
Damascus, has a peculiar character of its own the
closely packed city in the midst of rich vegetation, with
swiftly naming water and many canals in the oasis,
houses with marble courts shaded by trees and cooled
by fountains, orchards and fields always green; and
all round, visible almost everywhere from the slightest
elevation, the desert always threatening encroachment,
yellow sand, bare, dust-covered rocks, passing suddenly,
without any transition stage, into rich, watered oasis
country.

AT THE PRESENT DAY 79

These oasis cities have for ages been centres of trade
and industry. But here as in the ports the despotic
form of government has prevented the development of
any spirit of free citizenship. Here, too, one finds a class
of middlemen related to the Levantine type, mostly
Christian Syrians and Armenians, of outstanding intel-
ligence and energy, and like all minorities in the Near
East inspired by an extraordinarily strong sense of
solidarity with one another. The Mohammedan
prohibition of interest and the various expedients for
circumventing it have encouraged usury rather than the
reverse. Financial business lay in the hands of the
traders, though they had very little capital. Commerce
was the only form of economic activity in which there was
any appreciable accumulation of capital ; in other fields
such money as was obtained was hoarded or invested in
personal property and jewellery.

In urban as in rural economy the lack of an organized
system of small credit was acutely felt. Of the two
branches of urban economic life, trade and industry, only
trade worked with a certain capital ; with the complica-
tion and the mobility of commercial business it was
easier to place trading capital beyond the reach of
arbitrary authorities than industrial and agricultural
capital.

The urban industries had been famous from of old
and were able to continue in their traditional form down
to the latest times* In view of the Oriental taste for
sumptuous clothing and for jewellery, the clothing
industry and the jewellery, metal, and leather industries
grew to importance. The impulse to make money was
not the primary motive ; as in the Middle Ages, these
industries served only to provide a living for the
practitioner, who worked slowly, full of the sense of art
and of intelligent deliberation ; but there was no pro-
duction to order for special customers as in medieval
Europe, only production for the market, for the unknown
customer of the bazaar. The artisan " with his super-
fluity of time could put imagination into his work, express

80 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

his whole individuality in every object, no matter how
unimportant it might seem. Customers had always
insisted on individuality in his articles, and the richer
class demanded goods of high quality. His own joy in
beautiful work was a great incentive. So there came into
existence the wonderfully clever little works of art in
leather and metal work, wood carving, silk dyeing, and
embroidery. All the wonderful charm for our eyes in all
Oriental handwork is due largely to this artist's attitude
towards industry, which makes of shoe and cloak and
turban, cup and jug, bolt and window and door, everything,
from the smallest everyday utensil to the ctipola of a
mosque, a masterpiece of beauty, with individual differ-
ences from shop to shop, from oasis to oasis, from region
to region. Here again art and science went hand in hand,
A particularly fine piece was shown only to the real
connoisseur, not to the mere buyer. And the seller could
proudly produce his little wares hour after hour, even if
nothing was bought." (Reinhard Junge.) In the narrow
lanes of Baghdad, with their ugly and short-lived clay
houses, there are continual surprises in the wonderfully
individual execution and the rich and careful carving of
doors and balconies, which give each of the richer houses
an individual dignity and beauty even amid its pathetic
dilapidation. Often a particular trade is in the hands of
a religious or ethnical group, in which the tradition is
carried on from generation to generation, as, for instance,
the silversmith's work of the peculiar old sect of the
Sabaeans, who live to this day, to the number of three
to five thousand souls, in Mesopotamia,

Not only all trade but all industry is concentrated
in the bazaar, which is the centre of all the town life.
Here the various trades possessed their own streets, and
the modern division of a town into a residential quarter
and a business quarter, the two being clearly marked off
from one another, was always followed in the layout of
Eastern towns, where the quietness of the lanes of the
residential quarter is only broken by the hawkers passing
through and not by the bustle of commerce*

AT THE PRESENT DAY 81

In Arabian countries trade was never looked down on ;
for most people, indeed, the ideal was to get into the
trading class. Such wealth as existed had originated in
trade. Agricultural and industrial activities were tied
to a spot, and it was trade that provided the connection
between the various oases and countries and became
the economic pillar of the unity of an empire or state.

While the life of the nomads of the deserts and steppes
was one of freedom and of almost anarchical decentraliza-
tion, there developed in the great river oases of the Nile
valley and of Mesopotamia a highly centralized form of
state. For the inhabitants of these oases could only exist
in the midst of the desert if they devoted a regularly
ordered and regularly shared labour to the task of
irrigation. The unified direction of great masses of
workers which was needed for capturing and making use
of the floods led in these regions to the creation of mighty
states under despotic rule ; it also required at an early
date an intensification of cultivation to secure adequate
yield. On the other hand, the true Mediterranean
climate of the Levantine coast, of Syria and Asia Minor,
with ample rain and more widespread springs and subsoil
water, permitted cultivation without big concentrations
of labour for water control, and so made it possible for
decentralized city and oasis states to come into existence.
But even in those regions with settled populations the
scarcity of water and the irregularity of therainscompelled
close settlement*

This closeness of settlement, and the existence of the
open market or village square as the centre of all life,
go to explain why in recent times, with the fall of despot-
ism, the interest of the whole population, including the
peasantry, in politics is so keen, far keener than any other
interest. Newspapers are eagerly read and passionately
discussed ; they are read out to those who are unable to
read, and in the country districts the number of illiterates
is very great ; newspapers enjoy great prestige ; great
faith is placed, often in a naive way, in the printed word.
Latterly there has also been an improvement in the

82 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

contents of newspapers. Books are little read ; there is no
modern organization of the publishing and sale of books,
and there has hardly been even a beginning of public
libraries on the modern plan ; thus the newspapers are
the only means of penetration of news and knowledge
from the civilized world in general among the masses,
or even among the educated classes.

Newspapers and reports spread by word of mouth,
conversations in the bazaar and the caf6s, and the more
and more frequent visiting of the towns with the aid of the
modern means of transport, have also made the peasant
an active element in politics. As everywhere, it is the
townsman who takes the lead in political life, above all the
educated townsman. His influence is beginning, as in
Europe, to replace that of the landowner and the village
elders, who used to monopolize power, though in colonial
rule the governments, often in co-operation with native
reactionaries, do their best to exclude the towns from
influence over the countryside. Experience has taught
the populations to suspect all the intentions of their
rulers, and they are ready at all times to be sharply
critical of government measures and little inclined for
constructive co-operation. It is a general characteristic
of political life in the Mediterranean countries and the
Near East, as also, for instance, in South America, that
there is little readiness for patient practical detail work,
for steady conquest of cultural and economic advances ;
energies are used up on wrong lines, and axe often
exhausted in rhetorical declamation. Political passions
axe easily aroused, and are capable of producing great
deeds and unselfish sacrifices for the nation and for
freedom, but there is little respect for the daily work
which is the basis of all advance, and in thefaoeof obstinate
resistance there is a tendency to give up the struggle,
though without abandoning the political aim, which fills
men's minds almost to the exclusion of all else,

As the effort to secure political and economic indepen-
dence unites all sections of the population and forms the
common political programme, there axe few parties with

AT THE PRESENT DAY 83

fixed programmes or with definite sociological theories
or fundamental views of life ; the parties are distinguished
more by the personality of their leaders than by theoretical
principles. Consequently the change over from one party
to another is comparatively easy and frequent ; parties
form and dissolve in connection with the personal ascen-
dancy and decline of the various leaders.

The personal element, and the tendency of likes and
dislikes to outweigh rational and practical considerations,
often lead to nepotism and to the granting of personal
favours which interfere with the quality of administrative
service. " The feeling of friendship often outweighs the
sense of justice and the sense of duty," as Hermann
Lautensach writes of analogous conditions in Spain.
Adolf Reichwein writes of South America : " This mixing
up of general considerations with personal interests in
political life has remained up to the present a disease of
Latin America, out of which it is only with difficulty that
a way can be found to a true policy founded on the needs
of the polis," and this applies to many of the Mediter-
ranean and Levant countries. But for that very reason
it is possible for strong patriotic personalities like Saad
Zaghlul Pasha in Egypt to found parties with the simplest
of programmes, summarized in the two terms Independence
and Popular Rule, which give evidence of a stability, last-
ing for many years, which is rarely to be found in other
circumstances. Patriotism and the strong personality
of a leader can even overcome the constant tendency
to faction and disunion which in other circumstances is
so constantly evinced, as, for instance, among the Greeks,
even at the time of their wars and struggles for liberation.
Of one element in the psychology of the Greeks James
David Bourchier writes : " Sustained mental industry
and careful accuracy are distasteful to them." This can
be said of most of the peoples of the Mediterranean and the
Levant, although often in a very restricted sense. Their
thoroughness often does not go very deep ; they scarcely
have the patience and perseverance for working for days
and months at the solution of a problem. On the other

84 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

hand, they have a quick comprehension, a gift of oratory,
great experience in the handling of men, and a natural
gift of courtesy. Moreover, among all classes, especially
the middle class and the peasantry, the hunger for
education is very great. A tradition dating from pre-
capitalist times leads them to prefer a humanistic educa-
tion to a technical one. Their ideal is to enter the
service of the state, and so there easily arises a black-
coated proletariat of educated men who are shut out from
the official career of their ambition by the superfluity of
candidates. As business life is entirely in the hands of
better-trained Europeans or semi-Europeans, there are
often insufficient opportunities for the native population
to take up business careers, unless the national state
paves the way for them as Turkey has now done. So
long as the influence of alien powers or capital keeps the
state at the level of a colony or semi-colonial country and
prevents it from acting first and foremost in the interest
of the native population, the great lack of capital and
experience of the population makes possible this retention
of the control of native trade and industry in alien hands.
This in turn forms the greatest obstacle to native training
and progress in the higher forms of economic life.

In all these countries there has been in the course of
the last few centuries not only a retrogression of culture
but also a fall in the population. One of their most
difficult political and economic problems is the sparseness
of the population* But if erroneous inferences are to
be avoided it is important to use great caution in drawing
conclusions as to the density of population by having
regard simply to the numerical extent of the population
and the size of the country. For all these countries are
very largely uninhabitable desert, with closely packed
masses of people in the cultivable oases and valleys,
The total territory of Egypt (this, it is true, is an extreme
example) is over a million square kilometres ; of this
only 32,000 square kilometres are cultivable, having been
made so by means of expensive irrigation systems. Qa
this small axea, one-thirtieth of the whole, there are

AT THE PRESENT DAY 85

living more than fourteen million people, and on the whole
of the remaining territory no more than a few tens of
thousands. A totally different conclusion is, of course,
arrived at as to the density of population according as
regard is had to the whole surface or only to the cultivable
surface. The same is true of the Arabian peninsula,
whose enormous territory appears to be very thinly
populated but is probably greatly over-populated, so that,
at all events with the water supply as it is at present,
the population of the peninsula is only able to lead a rough
and entirely primitive existence.

In the last two hundred years there has been an
extraordinary increase in the population of Europe;
the growth of European trade and power is bound up
with this increase in population. Meanwhile the popula-
tion in the Ottoman empire and in Iran has remained
stationary, with a high birth rate but an equally high
rate of mortality. In the Levant, as in Spain and
southern Italy, malaria has been ubiquitous andhas under-
mined the stamina of the population. Bad water supply
and entirely inadequate health and education systems
have continued almost to this day to decimate the
population, which is ignorant of the most primitive rules
of hygiene and makes up for this ignorance by a luxuriant
overgrowth of superstition. In addition there have
been frequent wars and the burden of years of service in
the army, which have made impossible any increase in
population.

The economic and cultural decline were due in the old
Ottoman empire and in Persia to the obsolete form of the
state and to the lack of enlightened patriotism among the
ruling classes. The despotism prevalent in these countries
killed all initiative and produced universal insecurity.
Its intrinsic element of arbitrariness and irrationality, the
incalculable element in life, made every attempt at
foresight and calculation, at rationalization of the
juridical and economic system, illusory* It was impos-
sible to carry on any steady enterprise in any field. In
the absence of any public life the formation of character

86 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT

was almost impossible ; men's spirits were ruled by blind
fatalism. The suspiciousness of the population prevented
any formation of capital, producing either a dull resig-
nation or wasteful and spoliatory accumulation in the
effort to get rich as quickly as possible. The adminis-
trative officials possessed a narrow range of vision, and
were incompetent and corrupt, the judiciary were no less
corrupt.

Contact with Europe has given these peoples the
vision, on which they have acted, of a rational state
inspired by the sense of justice, and they have awakened
to a new self-confidence and to a realization of their
dignity and their rights. They are proceeding now to
revolutionize the whole of their constitutional and
economic life. Their experiences of the recent past and
their fear, fully justified by the weaknesses of the transition
period, of the alienation of their industry and trade and
the throttling of native economic activities and of their
liberties, have led these peoples to insist on complete
self-government and on national control by their own
people over their state and their economic life, A new
social order is coming into existence, in many respects
nearer to that of European countries than to that which
only a few decades ago was regarded as the typically
Oriental society. In this transformation of the social
order the individual is being trained in a new outlook,
in new ambitions, and in a new activity.

CHANGING MAN IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

THE change proceeding among the people of the Neax
East in the twentieth century is only part of a universal
process, the Europeanization of all humanity, at work
to-day even in the remotest regions of the world. The
Europe which has grown up since the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, the Europe of freedom of the person, of
the critical play of the intellect, of technical control of
natural resources, has so amply demonstrated its
superiority over older and perhaps also deeper civilizations
that they have been unable to withstand its penetration.
This Europeanization is a process both of education and
of resistance. It can be brought to nations from without ;
in that case it clothes itself in the forms of imperialism,
training the peoples in European economic, technical,
and general progress in its own interest, and only to the
extent its own interest requires, but taking care to
prevent, or at least not actively to promote, any deeper
measure of Europeanization, of popular education, and
of modernization of native trade and industry. To this
end it unites with and strengthens those forces which in
their own conservative interests are opposed to more
far-reaching Europeanization usually princes, nobles,
and priests, but often also a small upper class of big
capitalists who profit by the newly-opened commercial
relations*

But after initial resistance Europeanization may
proceed from the peoples themselves ; it then clothes
itself in the forms of nationalism, and penetrates much
more deeply into the whole life of the people. It does
not merely affect the upper strata, but creates a new
nation, which uses the means of Europeanization to drive
Europe out of its territory. Often both types of
Europeanization are found intimately associated together.
And always Europeanization is a very complex process,

87

88 CHANGING MAN

influencing and altering the attitude and general outlook
of the individual, his intellectual and emotional reaction
to his environment, and also the commercial and industrial
methods and the social life of the community. A new
picture of the world, a new valuation of life, a new activity
inspire in the first place a numerically small upper
stratum, the " intellectuals ", who are unsettled as they
have not been for centuries by contact with the history
of European civilization, of which they learn at school,
and with the achievements of the machine age. From
this stratum these new elements spread through the
masses of the people, slowly, resisted rather than pro-
moted in the countries under imperialist domination,
more quickly and with deliberate encouragement in the
countries of nationalist resistance*

Imperialism, in this case the intrusion of Europe in the
East, and nationalism, in this case the resistance of the
East to European dominance, condition and inter-pene-
trate one another. Europeanization in either form is not
a question of race or religion but one of the stage of
civilization and social progress reached in the course of
history. The nations which have begun to be European-
ized or have Europeanized themselves in the twentieth
century may be Orthodox Christians (Russians,
Armenians), Catholic Christians (Spaniards, South
Americans, Filipinos), Mohammedans (Turks, Iranians),
or Buddhists ; the essential thing is the transition from
a feudal, medieval, religious framework to a new age of
machine industry and rationalized trade and of critical
and liberal thinking. Thus in the Levant as elsewhere
there is no fundamental difference between the changes
that have come as between one religion and another ;
there has not been merely a crisis or reformation of
Islam, but Mohammedans and native Christians and
Jews have been passing through the same change and
transition. For the general outlook of the men of the
Near East has not been determined so much by religion
or race as by stage of historic development, which has
found expression in all the fundamental aspects of their

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 89

life. Arnold Toynbee's dictum concerning Oriental
Christendom that " our common Christianity is not a
living fact but an historical curiosity " well describes the
conditions, except that the Europeanization of the
Christians through political conditions and better oppor-
tunities of education (mission schools, emigration) has
often proceeded more rapidly, at least on the surface.

The transition from one stage of civilization to another
is always a painful and confused process and seldom
pleasant to watch. An old civilization, self-contained and
harmonious in its working, is destroyed ; and then the
internal balance, the peaceful security, and the dignified
elegance which characterized pre-industrial civilizations,
begin to disappear, Morality, until then strictly enforced
by custom, family tradition, and religious precept,
slackens; the unknown, its whole nature often com-
pletely unfamiliar, faces men unprepared and perplexes
them. The inherited sense of beauty cultivated through
centuries of craftsmanship, the thoughtful leisure of a
life lived without haste, generally in a narrow environ-
ment, are destroyed by the machine, its products and its
tempo. Much that is good and solid gives place to a
Europeanization which often is only external, a merely
superficial assimilation, sometimes, indeed, an adoption
of the least desirable features of European, civilization.
Men are uprooted and easily lose their hold. They do
not penetrate the essentials of modern Western life,
its humanism, or the intellectual bases of science and
research, but are out to adopt only the " practical ".

But all this belongs inevitably to the transition
period symptoms of decay intermingled with signs of
advance, the Janus-head of a period pregnant with
destiny. No regrets can hold up this process. In this
awakening out of centuries of passivity, narrowness, and
rigidity, there lies a new start full of promise. The
civilizations which are being weakened and transformed
through contact with Europe axe venerable and beautif ulin
outward aspect, but have long lost their native virtue, they
are without creative activity, and without self -renovating

90 CHANGING MAN

vitality. European superiority, often clothed in a
spirit of moral arrogance, has produced in those who
came first under its influence a feeling of hatred of their
own most recent past with its humiliations and exploita-
tion, corruption and helplessness. The Europeans,
presuming on real or imagined cultural superiority, proud
of their hygiene and technique and strong through their
superiority in capital and organization, looked down
on the non-Europeans, the " natives ", and regarded them
as material for their economic and political domination.

This very period of transition, of the penetration of
European culture and economic forms among the native
society which has thus been robbed of its former strength
without being able to gain at once an equal footing in
trade and organization with Europe this time of weak-
ness is often exploited by European groups in order to
gain strong positions in the political and economic fields,
to secure concessions and fertile land, and to prolong the
period of weakness of the society in transformation* The
great value to the native society of political independence
is that it enables it to protect itself during the weakness
of the transition period, that it can place the resources
of the state, its legislative power and means of organiza-
tion, in the service of economic and cultural advance,
while protectorates, mandates, and other forms of colonial
expansion leave the native society unprotected at the
very time when protection is most needed, and thus do
irreparable injury to its future development.

The will to Europeanization seeks to offer protection
against this. At the outset some of the native leaders axe
fascinated by the glamour, the freedom and beauty of
European civilization, not only by its external wealth
but also by the internal power of its life-giving, adven-
turous fullness ; they are in danger of losing themselves
in Europe, of becoming semi-Europeans with no roots
to them ; but many realize that the inevitable European-
ization has to be led into sale paths, taken in hand instead
of being passively and helplessly submitted to.

This transformation of man and society is a extremely

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 91

difficult task; the process which in Europe went on
undisturbed through many decades among people living
in independent states, on familiar intellectual bases, and
amid an incomparable intellectual freedom has here to
be assimilated hastily in as many years, often without
full insight into the intellectual bases of the proud
structure and the creative forces which erected it, and
almost always amid perpetual pressure, weakening and
obstructing from without. This process of Europeaniza-
tion, as a necessary resistance and self-defence, is imposed
from without, but it is of more importance as an inner
transformation, and soon as an autonomous growth and
an advance to a fuller life and to an independent
intellectual and social activity. It is going on alike in
the Near East and the Far East, in Russia and in South
America, in all the colonial and semi-colonial countries
which desire to enter on equal economic and political
terms into the great society, into the economic and
cultural unity of humanity which is being formed under
the direction of ideas emanating from Europe. It
embraces all sides of communal and personal life : a new
self-confidence and an awakening activity, popular
education, industrialization, literary renascence, and a
struggle for political independence.

This all-embracing revolution, which has received its
first impulses from without, is capable of leading to one-
sidedness and superficiality. A heavy price has to be
paid for its lessons. Much that seems immature is the
outcome of a suspicion of Europe justified by experience,
a heightened sensitiveness due to earlier humiliations
suffered and not forgotten, the fruit of Europe's attitude
toward the natives. Only a changed attitude on the
part of the Europeans, inspired by understanding and the
readiness to be of service^ a consideration and respect
for sensitiveness and for the non-European peoples*
sense of their own dignity, can bridge the gulf and clear
away xrdsunderstaiadings, while liberating the process of
Europeanization from its regrettable elements and
promoting a real cultural rapprochement^

92 CHANGING MAN

For the complex process of rendering dynamic a
society that has become static and rigid but is developing
politically, economically, in social organization, and in
intellectual life, the conception of nationalism offers the
best general description. The emergence of the
European peoples from the Middle Ages into the present
epoch took place under the banner of nationalism. The
nation became the highest political, social, and economic
form of organization ; nationalism became an intellectual
attitude that determined men's course. All the character-
istic events of the age of nationalism in Europe are now
being repeated in the Orient. Here nationalism also
makes possible a synthesis between the new and the
inherited intellectual outlook. "The problem of the
modernization of the Muslim Turkish community began
to bear most heavily on precisely those circles which were
most deeply convinced of the necessity of this moderniza-
tion and yet were most intimately attached to all that
was good in the faith of their fathers and the national
character*" (Richard Hartmann.) Nationalism was to
establish the synthesis between Europe and the national
character, between future and past, between the mother
country and humanity. The Turkish nationalist thinker
Ziya Goek Alp (1875-1925) enunciated a triple solution
for the transformation of his people, which may be applied
to all nations in transition : nationalism, Europeanization,
religious reform. By Europeanization or modernization
he meant "the acceptance without reservation of the
civilization of the modern West " ; nationalism meant
for him Turkization, " the development of the intellectual
forces slumbering in the Turkish people, in order that a
national culture may emanate from these forces**;
religious reform he called Mamization, " a return to the
intellectual content and spirit of the true and original
Islam, sacrificing all later theological exegeses and
perversions which have been sanctioned by the church
of Islam, and sacrificing even the commands of the
Prophet himself where these were applicable only in past
periods of history,'*

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 93

Where the nation becomes the highest form of
organization, religion loses much of its earlier authority
over public and private life. The citizen becomes of
more importance than the co-religionist. Right down
to the eighteenth century in Europe full citizenship
belonged only to the member of the state religion :
cuius regio illius religio. Religious minorities had not
full rights of citizenship. Protestants were driven out
of Catholic countries ; Catholics in Protestant countries
only secured their emancipation about the middle of
the nineteenth century ; Jews lived in ghettoes. The
Near East was only a few decades behind the West in
regard to religious emancipation. The first steps to give
full equality of citizenship between Mohammedan and
non-Mohammedan subjects of the Ottoman empire were
taken as early as 1839 by the hatti-sherif (decree of the
Sultan) of that year, and especially by the hatti-Jiumayun
(imperial decree) of 1856. But" at that time public
opinion in the Near East was not ripe for this advance ;
the Oriental state remained based on religion, and the
religious minorities led an autonomous existence only
loosely incorporated in the state. As in Europe, religion
has now (not only in Islam but equally in Oriental
Christendom) had to suffer the loss of its position as ruler
of all life ; as in Europe, it has had to give way before the
emergence of politics, law, and economics as autonomous
provinces of life, beyond the control or influence of
religion. This is certainly a critical process for the
religions of the East, but it does not mean the end of them,
any more than the Enlightenment and Rationalism made
an end of religion in Europe. A great process of seculari-
zation has set in. The organization of the state, the
administration of law, the education system in the Levant
have all been hitherto within the sphere of religion, alike
among the Mohammedans, the eastern Christians, and the
Jews ; they are emancipating themselves and becoming
a temporal concern. Religion is becoming a private
affair, and the citizen, defined by his allegiance to state
and not to church, is emerging. Nationalism forms the

94 CHANGING MAN

bridge over which the religious communities formerly
strictly segregated are meeting for collaboration in
political and social life. Differences and disagreements
remain, just as they do between Catholics and Ptotestants
in European countries ; but they are overborne in the
unity of the national idea. Community of religion is
losing its political importance ; it retains it now only
where religious and ethnical frontiers coincide, as, to
quote a European example, in Ireland. In Egypt or in
Palestine Mohammedans and Christians axe entirely
united in their political demands and activities ; they
feel themselves at one in race and speech, though they
retain their loyalty to their several religious communi-
ties.

Alongside this process of secularization there has
gone a process of technical advance ; machine industry
is conquering the Near East. At first there were only
external signs of this penetration, which began to reach
to the remotest villages : oil stoves, sewing machines,
gramophones. With the arrival of the first machines
which required skilled attention the difficulties of technical
progress quickly showed themselves : there were no skilled
workers to attend to the complicated machines and
above all to keep them in repair. They were soon worn
out and so proved extraordinarily costly. It is only in
quite recent times that steam and motor-driven machinery
has begun to receive expert care, repair shops have come
into existence, and a local machine industry on a small
scale has begun to develop. The advance in scientific-
mindedness which has celebrated its triumph in Europe
ever since the Renaissance is as unknown to the Near
East as it was to medieval Europe. What is happening
now is a growth of interest in technical advance, but
though this advance is gladly accepted it is not yet
promoted by any original contributions. Nevertheless
the entry into the age of machine civilization is gradually
transforming people and helping to give them a new
mentality, The daemonic element in the machine, its
tendency to take charge and play havoc among its creators,

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 95

is still something unknown in the Near East, where
industry is in its very first stages.

Scientific discovery has brought in Europe an
unexampled increase of population ; it has greatly
reduced human dependence on Nature, has averted the
danger of harvest failures, has made possible an undreamt-
of intensification of industry and trade, and has greatly
improved the standard of living of the masses. The
Near East, with its sparsely populated regions, its
mainly extensive agriculture, and its incredibly low
standard of living, is in need of machine industry.
Industry may be destroying the creative virtues of tradi-
tional handicraft, the innate sense of beauty, the
intellectual concentration of the hand-worker ; but it
is precisely through scientific invention and discovery
that the man of creative individuality has advanced to
his greatest achievements since the Renaissance and
worked vast miracles. It is in technical advance that the
Easterner senses this qualityof greatness in the European,
long before he is able to understand its intellectual bases.
Sometimes he may gain a glimpse of the fact that technical
advance faces men with new and difficult problems, that
man, who created machine industry, is ceasing to be its
master, that his creation, driven by a daemon of its own,
is growing independently and without end. All this
the Easterner may suspect without being able to compre-
hend from his own experience the insistence of machine
civilization on growth and spread ; but the conquering
march of science can no longer be stemmed ; the
Easterner must receive the conqueror with open arms
if he is to exist. And for him technical advance is still
displaying all the splendour of its youth. Only later
will he be faced in common with the European by the
problem of setting limits to the daemonic independent
growth of machine industry, of subordinating it organically
to a conscious feeling of responsibility of man for his
fellow-men and subordinating it to the new super-
national idea of humanity, which technical advance has
helped to bring to life, and which has begun completely
to change the face of the world*

96 CHANGING MAN

It is in Turkey that the transformation of the state
and of social life in the Levant has proceeded farthest.
The Constitution, the legal system, trade and industry,
and cultural life have been radically transformed. But
Turkey is not alone in this respect ; she has only been
able, as an independent state, to carry out these changes
most thoroughly and without consideration of the interests
of foreigners ; the same changes are being pushed through
with more difficulty in Iran and Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
Everywhere it is being recognized that the foundations
of social and cultural life of the past are no longer intact.
An intelligible conservatism often shows itself in desperate
opposition to the radicalism with which changes have
been made in Turkey ; the imitation of the Turkish
example is opposed in Iran by the influence of the
Mohammedan priesthood, in Lebanon by that of the
Christian clergy, in Egypt by that of the king and the
court ; in all these countries, except Iran, the influence is
especially felt of certain European governments and
foreign colonies, which are too greatly interested in the
maintenance of the old conditions. But in spit of all
these hindrances the structural change which has taken
place in Turkey in the course of ten years is typical and
characteristic of all the countries of the Levant, and,
indeed, of the universal process of Europeanization by
means of which states hitherto economically and politi-
cally dependent or semi-dependent on Europe have
latterly been emancipating themselves from Europe*

In Turkey the fifty years of preparatory work of the
intellectuals had created a much more receptive soil for
structural change than in countries which had scarcely
been accessible to European influence until the beginning
of the twentieth century. Turkey had also created
among the masses the political and psychological con-
ditions for radical structural change through her
victorious campaign against the Greeks, who were allied
with the Entente Powers, and through the tearing up of
the Treaty of Sfcvres* Her people had not only a
sovereign independence unknown in the other countries

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 97

of the Levant, except Iran, but had also gained a new
self-confidence and a trust in the leader of the war of
liberation, who set himself at the head of the process of
modernization in the country. A description of the main
lines of the structural change in Turkey will show also the
tendencies at work to-day in all the countries of the Near
East, changing the face of these peoples and countries.

A structural change as radical as that which has been
effected in Turkey within ten years is only possible with a
unity of leadership and a leadership with firm purpose.
Turkey thus has only one party, which controls every
field of public life. The statutes of this party, the
Republican People's Party, of 1923 lay down in their
first Article that " The aim of the Party is government
through the people and for the people and the making
of Turkey into a modern state/' The old Ottoman
state had not been a modern state. At its head had stood
the Khalif , who at least in theory had been the ruler
of all the Faithful, in other words of all Mohammedans.
The Khalif was a temporal prince, but his sphere of
authority was not a national state but a universal
state built up on a religious basis and held together by
religious bonds. A modern state required the disappear-
ance of the Khalif ate, for which it could no longer find
room.

On November 1st, 1922, the Turkish Great National
Assembly deposed the last Turkish Sultan. From then
on, although the formal announcement did not come
until later, Turkey was a republic, in which the whole
power proceeded from the people and lay in the hands
of the representatives of the people. Considerations of
personal policy played their part in the deposition of the
Sultan ; he had set himself against the national movement
for independence and, like many other Oriental princes,
had tried to come to terms with the imperialism of the
Western Powers. There still remained the Khalifate.
A prince of the imperial house, acceptable to the Turkish
National Assembly, was appointed Khalif. But, robbed
of its temporal power, the Khalif ate was reduced to a

98 CHANGING MAN

nonentity ; it had never been a doctrinal authority.
And just as there was no room for a Sultan in a country
which had set out to give itself " government through the
people and for the people ", there was no room for a Khalif
" in a modern state ". On March 3rd, 1924, the Khalifate
was abolished in Turkey ; the last Khalif went, like his
predecessor, into exile, to a Christian country. An
institution more than twelve hundred years old came to
its end. On February 29th, 1924, the last selamlik of a
Khalif took place, his last ceremonial attendance at a
mosque for the Friday prayer. This scene, which had so
long been characteristic of the splendour of Oriental life
on the shores of the Bosphorus, was witnessed in
Constantinople for the last time.

The end had come rapidly, but it had been inevitable.
In the Europeanization of the Near East, which brings
with it secularization, the replacement of religion by the
nation as the basis of the life of the state, any attempt
to revive the institution of the Khalifate was fore-
doomed to failure, not only because there was no pretender
powerful enough and independent enough to wield the
sword of Islam, but because the conditions on which alone
a Khalifate can rest had disappeared* It is dead not
only for modern Turkey but for Islam* Islam is still
a spiritual power and will remain so, even in Turkey.
It is a bond of union between all its adherents, and has
actually gained new strength where Islam feels itself
oppressed by Europe. But it is changing, becoming
secularized and assuming a national character. Turkey
has gone farthest in this as in other respects. Seculariza-
tion meant the emancipation of the Constitution, of the
legal system, and of education, from their religious bases.
Nationalization meant the saturation of the Islam whose
historic bases had been Arabian, and whose essential
character had been supemational, with Turkish
nationalism. Through its secularization Islam is approach-
ing the position held by Christianity in Western European
states. Through its nationalization it may come to
resemble in its organization the territorial churches

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 99

which arose out of the Reformation, or the churches of
the East, which also administer a common religious
domain under separate national and lingual forms.

The various stages of these two processes rapidly
followed one another. On March 1st, 1924, when the
final abolition of the Khalif ate was under discussion in
the Great National Assembly, Mustapha Kemal enunciated
the programme of " the 'liberation of politics from
religious preconceptions ". Two days later the Ministry
of Religious Affairs was abolished and the closing of all
madrasahs (mosque schools) was decreed. Five weeks
later the National Assembly introduced a new legal
constitution, which abolished the sheria courts, ecclesias-
tical courts which had administered justice under canon
law. This effected the secularization of education and of
the legal system ; both were withdrawn from the com-
petence of religion and brought within that of the state.
The process had already begun in the Ottoman empire
before the world war ; it is now going on in all the states
of the Near East, but in Turkey it has already been
completed* At the opening of the Faculty of Law at
Ankara (Angora) on November 5th, 1925, Mustapha
Kemal declared : " To-day we are united by national
and not by religious uniformity." The Koran verse
42, 36, commands the Faithful " to settle their affairs in
discussion with one another ", and forms the basis of
democracy in Islam. It had been placed on a tablet in
the Great National Assembly in the Arabic original.
Now it was replaced by a tablet bearing in the Turkish
language the inscription: "The power of the state
proceeds from the people " an inscription which based
democracy no longer on Islam and religion, but on the
new principle of the sovereignty of the people. In the
same month the Dervish monasteries were closed they
had played a very important part in the religious life of
Mohammedan Turkey and decrees were issued concern-
ing the vestments of the priesthood and the exercise of
its office. It was also decreed that public officials should
dress entirely in the European style, in order to distinguish

100 CHANGING MAN

them unmistakably from the priesthood. At the end of
1925 the European calendar was introduced in place of
the Mohammedan.

The most important step in the modernization of
Turkish life took place in 1926 in the introduction of
Western law. Until then the medieval canonical law of
the various religious communities had governed all
questions of personal, family, and inheritance law in
Turkey. This had had disastrous consequences in two
respects : the inhabitants of one and the same state had
been under the jurisdiction of various systems of law,
differing entirely with one another, in the very fields which
cut most deeply into intimate daily life ; and the applica-
tion of medieval law offered many obstacles to a
modernization of family life. The law of contract and the
law of real estate were governed by the mejdle, a statute
book which combined principles of Islamic canon law and
of French and Western law. All these laws were repealed
in 1926. Within a year Turkey received a new civil
code and law of contract on the Swiss model, a com-
mercial code based on the German and Italian, and a
criminal law on the Italian model* Thus in a very short
time Turkish law was placed not only on a secular but on
a thoroughly modern basis. In the matter of the modern-
ization of the system of law, as in other fields, the
Levantine states which are under European control are
far behind Turkey, In these states the old Ottoman
law continues in force.

The Turkish Constitution still contained, however,
the provision that Islam was the religion of the state.
On April 10th, 1928, a law was passed by the National
Assembly removing all religious expressions from the
Constitution. The laicization of the Turkish state had
now been completed ; all that remained to be done was
to nationalize Islam, to clothe it in national dress. Until
the nineteenth century Turkish culture had been a
religious and humanist culture, resting on Islamic and on
Arabian and Persian national bases* The classic Islamic
literatures of the Arabs and Persians were the material

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 101

of the education of the cultivated Turk, whose language
was impregnated with Arabic and Persian words and
terms of speech. As Latin and to some extent Greek
had in past centuries been the basis of the religious and
humanist culture of Europe, so Arab and Persian culture
had been the basis of Turkish intellectual life. Not until
the nineteenth century had there entered also, as a new
element in Turkish culture, the influence of the French
language. With the awakening of nationalism the popular
tongues in Europe had become the languages of literature
and science, which had thus been given a more popularly
assimilable form and had been brought closer to the
everyday life of the mass of the people. Similarly the
Turkish language, simplified under the influence of
nationalism and modernism, brought into a more popular
form, and divested of its humanist and classicist associa-
tions, became an instrument of literature and science. In
1929 a Turkish language committee was set up in Ankara
to work out a grammar, rules for a unified Turkish ortho-
graphy, and the publication of a Turkish dictionary in
which all words borrowed from Persian and Arabian
should be replaced by Turkish words. Similar efforts
have been made in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad to
compile an Arabian encyclopaedia and to subject the
modern Arab vocabulary to scientific revision. But only
in Turkey have the efforts been systematically pursued
and promoted by legislation,

A law of 1929 did away with the teaching of Arabic
and Persian in the higher schools ; their place was to be
taken by French and a second European language. This
was one more step along the path of modernization and
nationalization.

As early as February 1928, the Friday prayer, the
khufbah, had been recited in the mosques of Stamboul in
Turkish instead of Arabic* A further step in the national-
ization of Islam took place at the beginning of 1932.
On January 22nd for the first time a sura, (chapter) of the
Koran was recited by a famous prayer-leader in a
Stamboul mosque in Turkish. The invocation with

102 CHANGING MAN

which the prayer-leader followed his reading, again in
Turkish, reveals the new religious attitude :

" Lord and God, thanks be to Thee and praise.
From the seat of Thy power accept the Koran which has
now been recited. We give to the souls of our Prophet
Mohammed hail be to him ! and of all the Faithful
the merit that is their due ; do Thou ordain that they
receive their guerdon. Establish for ever the Turkish
Republic, the expression of the national sovereignty ;
grant success to our Republican administration, victory
to our heroic army, happiness and well-being to our
beloved fatherland and to the nation*"

On February 3rd, the day of the Mohammedan festival
of the 27th of the fast month of Ramadan, the mosque of
St Sophia in Constantinople was crowded to its utmost
when the most famous reciters of the Koran chanted
the story of the birth of the Prophet, some mras from the
Koran, and the prayers, in Turkish. The service was
transmitted by wireless to every town in Turkey, receivers
having been installed in the mosques.

Secularization of Islam has been carried out along the
same lines as in Turkey, although much more slowly
and cautiously, and in the other countries of the Levant ;
here, however, there is not the incentive to the nationaliza-
tion of religion. In the Arab countries Islam, through
its language and origin, has become most intimately
associated with the national heritage ; in Persia the
Shiite form of Islam has a national character of its own.
But nowhere has the secularization of Islam been so
clearly envisaged as in the report of the commission of
the Stamboul Theological Faculty set up to discuss that
reform in 1928. The report says : " Religion is a social
institution, and must therefore be adapted to the needs
of life and the laws of progress. In the Turkish
democracy religion, like everything else, must enter into
the new era of vitality which that democracy needs. It
is indispensable that the teaching and the precepts of the
Koran shall be re-interpreted and re*valued." The actual
proposals in the report had reference to the outward

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 103

form of religious service, which was to be in Turkish, and
to the intelligibility and intellectual standard of the
preaching. " Religious life must be reformed with
scientific means and with the aid of reason, so that it may
advance in line with other social institutions and bear
all the fruit it is able to give."

Secularization and nationalism have also created a
new educational system. In the nineteenth and even
at the beginning of the twentieth century there existed
everywhere in the Levant a double system of education :
a mainly religious system, possessing numbers of
elementary schools connected with the mosques or
churches, in which the teaching consisted of not much
more than merely making the children learn religious
texts by heart ; and a mainly secular system, virtually
confined to secondary schools for the children of the upper
class undergoing preparation for a career in the public
service. The vast majority of the population in Turkey,
as elsewhere in the Levant, could neither read nor write.
This was not merely the fault of Turkish misrule. Even
in so thickly populated and prosperous a country as
Egypt, where for forty years, from 1882 down to the
declaration of independence in 1922, the British adminis-
tration had been responsible for education, the census of
1927 gave the number of men who could read and write
as 20 per cent, of the population, and of women as only
4 per cent. Of the boys of five to nineteen yeaxs 26 per
cent, were attending school, and of the girls 8 per cent.
Conditions were still worse in the rural districts. In
Cairo 43 per cent, of the men and 20 per cent, of the
women could read and write ; 50 per cent, of the boys
and 30 per cent, of the girls from five to nineteen were
attending school (these figures show the progress made in
recent years) : provincial figures were far behind these.
In the province of Gerga, in Upper Egypt, there were
89 per cent, of illiterates among the men and 99 per
cent, among the women ; only 17 per cent, of the boys
and 4 per cent, of the girls between five and nineteen
years of age were attending school. Only in recent years,

104 CHANGING MAN

with the growth of nationalism and the secularization of
the educational programme, has the struggle against
ignorance been taken up with energy by the national
governments. In the few years of at least formal
independence there has been a rapid advance in education
in Egypt :

Number of

School year.

Number of

o/*J) /i/i/o

children

Boys.

Girls.

attending. I

1921-22

6,175

454,755 i 383,580

71,175

1924-25

7,240

570,423

479,420

91,003

1927-28

8,205

772,888

619,622

153,266

(These statistics include only the Egyptian schools, not
the many foreign schools in the country.) The expen-
diture on education since the declaration of independence
has steadily increased :

Expendititre (E*),

Year.

Ministry of
Education.

Provincial
Councils.

Mohammedan
Theological
Colleges.

1921-22
1925-26
1929-30

1,209,653
2,091,664
3,163,038

703,324
1,082,852
1,158,317

189,937
198,057
321,033

Special attention has-been given to the development
of secondary schools and to the creation of as com-
prehensive a system as possible of elementary and
advanced technical and industrial training* This is
connected with the efforts to assist the Egyptians in the
modernizing of their industry and in making it indepen-
dent* In Turkey, Iran, and Iraq the independent
national governments have attached the same primary
importance as has Egypt to the development of popular

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 105

education and the economic training of the people. In
the .first year of Iraqi independence seventy new
elementary schools were opened, and fifty in the second,
and the teaching has been modernized. In contrast
with this, the British administration in Palestine has
scarcely any serious progress to show in this field in ten
years. In 1922 there were 303 government schools in
Palestine, with 17,966 children attending; in 1932
there were still 303 schools, though the number of children
attending had grown to 24,153. The government itself
admits that, in spite of the excellent financial progress
of the country, about half of the Arab children applying
for admission to school in the towns and villages have
had to be turned away. No attention has been paid to
the wishes of the population, and the mandatory govern-
ment itself has to admit in its report for 1932 that
" Government was actually charged with a deliberate
policy of keeping the Arab population in a state of
illiteracy and ignorance." There is only one complete
government secondary school for boys, and not a single
secondary school class for girls. Only in 1934 was
provision made for the opening of the first school giving
craft or industrial training to the Arab youth.

In Turkey the introduction of compulsory school
attendance meets with the same difficulties as in other
backward countries : lack of teachers, of suitable school
books, and of financial means to enable the necessary
reforms to be carried out at the desired rate. Yet in
1928-29 there were already 6,836 elementary schools in
Turkey with 484,748 pupils and 155 secondary schools
with 31,484 pupils. Many of the secondary schools were
craft or occupational special schools. In the elementary
schools co-education is general, and in the secondary
schools it is frequently to be found. In 1928 there were
also 2,683 continuation schools for adults, with 59,314
students. As long ago as 1927 one of the best-informed
writers on Anatolia, Richard Hartmann, wrote : " Even
in remote country villages, far from a railway, the most
serious efforts are being made to carry the (educational)

106 CHANGING MAN

programme into execution. Model schools are first set
up in the centres of the various districts, schools which
really have no need to fear comparison with Western
schools. The standard of the teachers at these model
schools, to whose training the state devotes special care,
is quite excellent. The schools are often run also as
boarding schools a measure of the utmost importance
so long as it is not possible to erect in every village a school
adequate to modern requirements. It seems to be
characteristic of the new Turkey that attention is con-
centrated on the hitherto neglected field of elementary
education, especially girls 5 education, which in the past
had scarcely even a nominal existence. It is not less
significant that the educational authorities are at work
in the remotest districts, which are those most in need,"

It was determined to facilitate the struggle against
illiteracy by the introduction of the Latin alphabet.
On June 26th, 1928, a committee was set up in Ankara
to examine the possibility of the use of the Latin letters ;
on November 3rd Latin type and script were introduced
by law ; on and after December 1st all street signs,
placards, and newspapers had to be in Latin type ; from
January 1st, 1929, all books had to be printed in the new
type and public offices and all businesses were to make
exclusive use of the new writing ; on and after June 1st,
1929, the authorities were only to accept correspondence
written in Latin letters. The nation was turned into a
school, and in this national school all the men and women
in Turkey between sixteen and forty-five years of age
were set to learn to read and write. The " head
teacher " was Mustapha KemaL The great number of
illiterates made it easier to turn over to Latin writing.

The secularization and nationalization of education
raised another important problem in the Levant the
placing of all education under the control of the state*
Owing to the entirely inadequate provision made by the
state in the field of education, foreign institutions, mostly
Christian missions, had played a great and important
part. In many directions they did a great deal of good.

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 107

Such schools as Robert College, near Constantinople, and
the American University in Beirut did pioneer work in
bringing new ideas of science, the training of character,
initiative and democracy, to the Near East. In countries
like Palestine and Syria, where to this day the govern-
ment does little or nothing to meet the educational needs
of the population, the foreign educational institutions
continue to play an important part. But this can only be
a transition stage. The modernization of the idea of the
state and the growth of national solidarity in the countries
of the Near East demand the subjection of the foreign
educational institutions to state control and the shaping
of the educational system in accordance with the national
spirit. In this respect also the Turkish and Iranian
governments have been able to go farther than the other
states. Foreign schools in Turkey have been placed
under strict government supervision, teaching through
the medium of the Turkish language has been made
obligatory, and history, geography, and the Turkish
language have to be taught by Turkish teachers. In
March 1931, the Great National Assembly passed a law
requiring all Turkish boys and girls to be given elementary
education in Turkish schools ; all mission activity is
strictly prohibited.

The strengthening and modernization of the national
state has made a clean sweep of many obsolete and
harmful institutions which had hampered the economic
and cultural developments of the country. The capitula-
tions in the countries of the Near East had withdrawn the
foreigners, in whose hands the economic power lay, from
the juridical and financial sovereignty of the state. These
states had been required, in the interest of European
trade, to maintain in force low and undifferentiated
customs tariffs, which prevented the growth of a native
industry and the modernizing of industry and trade.
The Turks were enabled by their victory over the Greeks
to shake off the capitulations and the tariff treaties (Persia
followed their example in 1928), From then on it at last
became possible for Turkish trade and industry to make

108 CHANGING MAN

progress. The obsolete tithe system, which had weighed
very heavily on agriculture, was repealed in 1925, and in
the following year a new income tax law was decreed.
Egypt also has won fiscal sovereignty in recent years, but
the system of capitulations continues in full force in that
country, and makes impossible any modernization of the
taxation system.

Those of the countries of the Near East which are now
independent, and the native population of which is thus
no longer prevented from making rapid progress by a
foreign administration of the colonizing type, are under-
going complete economic and social transformation. The
changes that have taken place in the past ten years in the
constitutional, juridical, and cultural fields, are finding
their necessary completion in the economic field. Into
that field also a new spirit has entered. The countries
of the Levant are thinly-settled agricultural regions with
a very poor and primitive population and with ill-
developed communications. Now that they have set up
a modern system of administration, they are beginning
to modernize their economic system and to bring it
technically up to date. Agriculture has largely worked
to this day by methods thousands of years old ; they
have to provide it with adequate capital and the necessary
direction in order to intensify it and to enable it to produce
bigger and better crops. They have to provide a national
industry, itself working up the natural resources of the
country and gradually making it, with its growing require-
ments of industrial goods, more independent of imports
from abroad.

This difficult transition from a semi-feudal and
primitive agricultural system and from urban trade of
the early capitalist type (such capital as exists in these
countries is almost entirely trading capital) to modern
capitalism and industrialization, is only possible, much
as in the mercantile period of continental Europe, with
state assistance. These states, which hitherto were
only passively involved in the modern world economic
system, and whose financial institutions were almost

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 109

exclusively foreign companies, are now beginning to
prepare their indigenous resources, with the help of the
state,f or active participation in the modern world economic
system. They are beginning to set up national financial
institutions, to work against the alienation and vassalage
of their economic life, and so to turn their political
independence to practical account. Turkey has advanced
farthest along this road ; Iran and Egypt are following
her example ; and Iraq also is following suit. The same
lines are being followed wherever independent national
governments are at the head of the country, entrusted
with the task of training their peoples and developing
their country's trade and industry.

In those countries, on the other hand, in which the
administration is in foreign hands, the governments are
either neglecting the task of modernizing indigenous
social and economic life or are embarking on it only with
reluctance and hesitation. The lack of active encourage-
ment often results in this case in no development at all of
indigenous trade and industry. For at the social level at
which these countries are existing the necessary economic
and instructional resources, capital, gift of organization,
and initiative, are in the hands of the state alone, and the
modernization of trade and industry is only possible with
state aid, through the provision of national financial
institutions, through subsidies to native industries and
the provision of small credit for artisans and craftsmen,
through organization on a grand scale of agricultural
credit, of co-operation, and of technical training.

The transition to a new social level, the necessity for
gradual formation of capital, the indispensable pre-
condition of educating and training a newgeneration,have
the result that the transition period is one in which the
native trade and industry are greatly weakened. The
newly strengthened nationalism of the indigenous
governments regards it as essential to protect the
indigenous trade and industry from irreparable alienation
and agriculture from the sale of potentially rich and
fertile lands, and to grant concessions and monopolies

110 CHANGING MAN

only in the general interest of the whole population. Here
again Turkey has led the way. The rigorous nature of
the steps she has taken can only be understood when all
the danger of alienation, such as took place in the Otto-
man empire, is borne in mind. Under the Turkish
laws coastal shipping is reserved exclusively to Turkish
vessels, Turkish is the exclusive language of business,
there is a whole series of occupations which foreigners
may not carry on in Turkey, and they are forbidden to
acquire agricultural land. Similarly in Japan the great
danger of being bought up, of the alienation of the
bitterly impoverished country in the critical period of
the transition from a barter to a money basis has been
avoided by laws and protective governmental decrees.

The defensive measures of the new nationalism in the
economic field often take rigorous and regrettable forms,
but it should not be forgotten that in this respect Europe
was the teacher of the Near East, and that it is only under
the influence of bitter experience that the Orient has given
up its past passivity and adopted the new language which
is astonishing and sometimes shocking the West. The
old laissez-faire has given way to a new passion for
independence, a desire for self-respect and self-assertion.
This, no doubt, is unpleasant for the West with its
ambition for predominance and economic expansion in
the Levant. In the states that have won their indepen-
dence the European is no longer able to count on the
privileged treatment and the submissiveness he found
everywhere no more than twenty years ago. But it is
from the West that the Orient has learnt its new deter-
mination to " keep its end up " : it is now at work
liberating itself from the domination of the West with the
means of the West. I

In all these countries the national industry is being
encouraged by exhibitions and by efforts to train tha
masses in the accumulation of capital and in the purchase
of home products. In April 1929, there was a demon- ;
stration in Stamboul University in favour of the use ot]
national' industrial products; exhibitions in Stamboulll

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 111

and Ankara followed. At the beginning of the Moham-
medan fast month in January 1930, electric signs were
placed on all the mosques of Stamboul with the inscrip-
tions "Waste is Sin " and "Buy Native Goods", At
the end of 1929 an Association for National Trade and
Saving was formed at Ankara, under the chairmanship
of the president of the Great National Assembly. At
the end of 1930 the first " National Savings Week " was
organized under his direction. Its appeal contained this
sentence : " Citizens ! In the past it was regarded as
dishonouring to make use of native products, but in the
past it was also regarded as dishonouring to call the
Turks Turks." So the spirit of the new nationalism, the
new self-confidence, the new treasuring of the past and of
the nation's individuality is penetrating every sphere of
public and business life at the very moment of European-
ization and under its influence.

Advance to an international civilization and pride in
the nation's long history, in the historical or mythical
roots of the nation's character, go hand in hand as in
Europe's age of nationalism. The new programme of
the Republican People's Party of 1931 contains the
sentence: "The fatherland is the region within our
present political frontiers, within which the Turkish
nation lives with its long and glorious history and with
the imprints which have sunk deeply into the soil."
According to the official theory of the Turkey of to-day,
the Turks didnot migrate into Anatolia some nine centuries
ago, but are identical with the peoples which inhabited
Anatolia in ancient times, especially the Hittites. Thus
Anatolia is their historic and original home, and the old
civilizations of Asia Minor axe their own. As many
Teutons have traced back the whole history of human
civilization to the migrations and the influence of Nordic
Teutons, and have regarded the Teuton North as the
cradle of all civilizations, so a Turkish author, Yussuf
Ziya, in his book Arietr und Turanier, published in German
in 1932, comes after a comprehensive linguistic, ethno-
logical, and mythological inquiry to the conclusion that

112 CHANGING MAN

the so-called Indo-Germanic and also the Semitic peoples
must be traced back to an original Turkish race, and that
they migrated from the original seat of the Turkish race
in Central Asia. " If the civilization of the whole world
is the work of Turanian peoples, the c Aryan ' peoples
also have their full share of the glory, for they too belong
by descent and speech to the Turanians : the stem ar is
a Turkish stem. . . . (The) civilization which
originated in Siberia and spread over all Asia and Europe
is the common work of all the Turanians. This explains
the almost simultaneous appearance of the same civiliza-
tion in China, India, Babylonia, Egypt, and the
Mediterranean basin. And the language of the human
groups, like their civilization, has also grown up, even in
the farthest corners of the world, out of the same basis
the Turkish language."

So Turkish nationalism is providing itself with its
own national and racial myths, just as European
nationalism has done ; its own past is given a legendary
interpretation and extension, and so the Turks, in entering
into the universal civilization, consider that they axe
entering only into a portion of their own heritage. They
are not being absorbed in this civilization, but retain
their historic national personality. In the programme
already mentioned of the Republican People's Party
there is also this passage : " Although the Party desires
to advance along the path of progress and development
and in international relations and rapprochements at the
same pace as all nations of the present day, it desires in
principle to preserve the character of Turkish society and
its essentially independent personality."

The development of the national personality, the
training of the people in the spirit of the new Turkey, was
served by the Turk Odjagi, an organization founded in
1912 " to renew the national life through the youth of
both sexes on the basis of a new national culture on the
pattern of the ideas of Western civilization ". At first
the association pursued pan-Turanian aims, carrying on
Turkish cultural propaganda also among the Turks outside

IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 113

Turkey. With the victory of Mustapha Kemal it came over
entirely to his programme of reform confined to Turkey, and
in 1931 it amalgamated with the Republican People's
Party. This party founded in February 1932 a new society,
the " People's House ", to carry on the educational work
the Turk Odjagi had done. In all the Turkish towns this
house was to become the centre of the whole work of
popular education and to carry on Europeanization and
national development concurrently. The " People's
Houses ", in which alcoholic drinks and card games are
forbidden, are to have departments for language and
literature, the fine arts, the theatre, sport, social aid, and
work on the land ; popular education courses, libraries,
museums, and exhibitions. Such educational centres
can do more even than legislation in exercising a profound
influence on the transformation of the new generation and
of the life of the people.

The new age is revealing itself also in personal life, in
a new way of thinking and feeling, in the changed status
of women, in their entry into social and public activities,
and in the ending of the old seclusion of the family. In
recent years women's emancipation has made great
progress in all the countries of the Near East, but it has
been fully carried out only in Turkey, which here again is
in the van of progress. Women have full access to Stam-
boul University, including its Medical Faculty ; the
woman is the man's comrade in student and professional
life. There is still a difference in the status of women
in the big towns and the countryside, but women have
appeared everywhere as officials and teachers. In 1930
the women of Turkey received the municipal franchise
and the first woman publicly exercised the office of judge.
At the end of 1934 the Turkish Republic granted Turkish
women the vote for the Great National Assembly, and
also made them eligible as members. The first elections
under this new regulation, on February 8th, 1935, brought
seventeen women members into the Turkish Parliament,
out of a total of 399. Most of these were professional
women, but one was a peasant ; she was at the same time

114 CHANGING MAN

mayor or head of her village. These women members
participated in the International Women's Congress held
in Istanbul in April 1935, in the former imperial palace
of Yildiz. The Congress was able to record with satis-
faction the complete emancipation of Turkish women.
In the legal, political, and economic fields, women in
Turkey have become the equals of men.

The relationship between the sexes is beginning to
change entirely through the new manners, through
co-education, and through association in society and in
sport. A youth movement has come into existence and
has brought sport and games, rambling and the love of
Nature, as new elements into Oriental life. Perhaps
to-day the differences between the generations are more
marked in the East than anywhere else in the world.
There is no longer any stopping the association of the East
in the general trend of world civilization and world trade.
The new means of transport and the incorporation of the
Near East in the world system of communications will
further accelerate the process.

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OF
WORLD COMMUNICATIONS

IN regions dotted with inhabited oases, where the human
groups are separated from one another by wide desert
areas, uncultivable steppes, or barren and precipitous
mountains, the improvement of communications is the
first condition of modern state administration and of an
intensification of trade* Civilized men can overcome
the natural difficulties of their environment in regard to
communications, but not until they have done so does
it become possible for them to live at a higher level of
civilization. Friedrich Ratzel rightly says : " Modern
communications are a symptom of civilization and
promote civilization." The Ottoman empire and Persia,
both states of wide territorial extent, suffered severely
until the present century from the lack of a developed
system of communications. The various parts of the
country were widely separated from one another, the
central power was inevitably weakened, all reform was
impossible, and the exchange of goods was faced with
cttfficulties. The regions at a distance from the
Mediterranean were cut off from the world even in the
nineteenth century, remote from all the great trade
routes, and could not be opened up to trade and civiliza-
tion, with the increase of population they bring. The
mountain passes were impassable for months in winter,
the deserts and steppes accessible only to the cameL
The only means of rapid transport then known was the
railway. In the United States, in Siberia, and in other
regions, the railways had promoted territorial unification
and the development of economic relations to an extent
undreamed of before their coming. They had become
the means of the penetration of civilization.

But the building of railways was an extraordinarily
expensive undertaking. If they were laid through

116 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

sparsely inhabited regions the return on the expenditure
was doubtful, at least for the first years. The Ottoman
empire and Persia were only able to raise the necessary
sums for railway construction under burdensome financial
and political conditions. The granting of loans to the
states of the Near East (whose situation in this respect
was similar to that of the states of South America) was
one of the most usual means of gaining influence over
their financial, economic and political affairs, and of
making ruthless use of this influence to increase the
political and economic power of the lending state. Rail-
way concessions in Turkey, as in China, proved to be the
principal levers for political control. Friedrich List had
declared years before that " those who own a country's
means of communication control the country ".

The pressure of the Powers on the Constantinople
government induced it, regardless of all objections, to
grant railway concessions under which the Turkish state
actually guaranteed a definite revenue on working per
kilometre, so that it would have paid the railway com-
panies best to run no trains at all, since their revenues
were assured to them in any case. In the eastern part
of Asia Minor the Russian government claimed the
mpnopoly of railway construction, and refused to allow
Turkey to build railways herself or to give contracts for
railway construction to any other than Russian companies.
It was not surprising that Russia took no steps to build
railways connecting the east of Anatolia, which she hoped
soon to conquer, with the main centres in Turkey, when
such railways would have given the country strategic
security and have strengthened its trade and industry ;
the Turkish government thus had to leave the eastern
regions of its country without any connection with the
Bosphorus. The Turkish government built only one
railway, the Hedjaz railway, out of its own resources ;
this was also the only railway which directly served
Turkish interests.

But in addition to the problem of internal com-
munications, the Oriental states were faced by a second

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 117

problem, that of their connection with the outer world.
Regarded from a general point of view, this problem
was of even greater importance. Its solution could
undoubtedly be, at least indirectly, of advantage to those
Oriental territories which were affected by it ; but at
the same time it drew them into a field of tension in
world politics which held grave dangers for their indepen-
dence and progress. With the coming of the industrial
epoch and the rapid growth of population Western Europe
required constantly increasing quantities of raw materials
and constantly extended markets for the sale of its pro-
ducts. Atlantic trade was no longer enough ; the
tendencies to universal world trade steadily grew in
strength. Ways and means had to be sought of con-
necting the raw material countries and markets in
southern Asia and in the Far East with Europe as
rapidly and securely as possible. The world trade
routes of ancient and medieval times through the Levant
offered themselves as means of reducing distances in
comparison with the sea route round the southern point
of -Africa. The Levant was to be enabled to recover its
old importance as a country of transit between the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. With the growth
of capitalism, and its entry into the epoch of imperialism,
world trade made successful efforts " to open up the
intermediate countries between the principal regions of
civilization and intercommunication, using all the means
of transport, and finally to conquer the whole world.
Similarly it tries to bring more and more articles of trade
within its sphere and to control continually increasing
quantities of goods, men, and news." (Kurt Hassert.)
The number of people involved in world trade, the
quantity of goods required, the quality of the means of
transport, and therewith the possibilities of overcoming
space and time, grew incredibly. Concurrently, however,
there grew the importance of communications in world
politics. The control of the great trade routes became
one of the central problems over which the Powers
wrestled with one another. Only by safeguarding the

118 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

functioning of the transport and news services could the
world empires as they expanded be effectively cemented.
The struggle broke out between the European Powers
over the construction and safeguarding of these routes.
The penetration and conquest of the Oriental countries
followed the course of the routes and helped to safeguard
them. Steamship and railway were the means of
transport of the nineteenth century ; French enterprise
built the Suez Canal and German the Baghdad Railway.
Germany had come late into the struggle for world power
and world influence, and her geographical situation as
well as the coming trend in world politics made her
natural line of penetration that of the south-east, Berlin-
Belgrade-Byzantium-Baghdad (-Bombay). But neither
of these great routes, neither the Suez Canal nor the
Baghdad Railway, remained within the control of the
states whose subjects had dreamed them and made them
realities : both were taken over by Great Britain and
fitted into her imperial network of communications.

In recent years motor car and aeroplane have been
added to steamship and railway. They have revolution-
ized the problem of communications for the very countries
in which communications were difficult and population
sparse. Just as railway construction in the countries
of the Levant had served trade only secondarily, and
primarily policy the assurance of world domination
so the institution of the air lines has served world policy
and trans-continental domination. The struggles which
broke out over the development and guarding of sea and
land routes are beginning to reappear in connection with
air routes. Aeroplane and motor car have altered the
aspect of space and time in wide territories which until
now had known no change for thousands of years, and
have brought changes in the importance of various
localities in their relation to the principal lines of world
communication. Through their situation in regard to
the main air lines, various towns and countries have
gained an " unearned increment " ; the new means of
transport have awakened them out of an enchanted

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 119

sleep of many centuries ; and the new lines of com-
munication, following geographical laws, have brought
new life into immemorial trade routes. But whatever
may be their importance in the future, none of the later
routes approaches in importance the cutting of the
Isthmus of Suez.

THE SUEZ CANAL

The Isthmus of Suez unites two continents, Asia and
AMca. It is the most important link in the Old World.
Before long it will be crossed by the great direct land
route from Europe through Asia Minor to Cairo and
thence through eastern Africa to Cape Town. But the
Isthmus of Suez also divides two seas, the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. It thus blocked the shortest sea
route from Europe to the wealth of southern Asia and the
Far East. Here the old Egyptian kings tried to cut a
canal ; Darius, King of the Persians, was the first ruler
to succeed. Later Roman and Arab rulers restored
the canal after periods of neglect and silting up ; in the
eighteenth century it finally became unusable.

The purpose of these canals was to link up the Nile
with the Red Sea, not to provide a direct route from the
Mediterranean into the Red Sea. The possibility of this
was first investigated by engineers of Napoleon's Egyptian
expedition. Napoleon's breadth of vision, embracing
the future of countries and continents in a measure
unique among the statesmen of his epoch, recognized the
importance of Egypt and of the Suez Canal ; but he had
not time to devote himself to the execution of the project.
It was taken up by another Erenchman, Ferdinand de
Lesseps. Lesseps had been consular agent for his
country in Egypt from 1831 to 1838 ; he had made
himself familiar with the terrain, and by 1852 he had
worked out his project. On November 30th, 1854, the
Egyptian viceroy, Mohammed Said Pasha (in whose
honour the port of entry of the Suez Canal is called Port
Said) signed the concession which conveyed the right of

120 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

property in the Canal for ninety-nine years after its
opening that is, until November, 1968 to the Com-
pagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez. On the
expiry of the concession the Canal becomes the property
of Egypt. In 1910 the company tried to get an extension
of the concession for forty years, but in spite of British
pressure the Egyptians rejected its proposals.

The company is constituted as a French joint stock
company with its headquarters in Paris. Its share
capital of 200,000,000 francs, divided into 400,000 shares,
carries 5 per cent, fixed interest, together with 71 per
cent, of the net profit as dividend. Originally the
greater part of the shares was acquired by France ; they
had been offered internationally for subscription, but
England, Germany, Austria, and Russia took up no
shares. The British saw in the cutting of the Canal a
continuation of the Napoleonic policy and a French
threat to the sea route to India, and looked unfavourably
on the scheme ; the Viceroy of Egypt had to take up the
176,602 unallotted shares. They brought no benefit to
Egypt, and did not long remain in the Viceroy's possession.
He was constantly in financial difficulties, and in the end
was forced to sell. Beaconsfield, whose gaze was fixed
on the Empire in the East, seized the opportunity. In
1875 the shares were acquired by England. The price
was high, but the deal proved extraordinarily profitable,
and gave Britain decisive influence over this water route,
so vital to her, which originally was constructed in spite
of her protest.

The construction of the Canal was begun on April 15th,
1859. Ten years later, on November 15th, 1869, it was
formally opened. Enormous technical difficulties had
had to be overcome in this desert area, where everything
required had had to be brought at great expense, and
where water shortage and epidemics had continually
menaced the progress of the work. The Canal runs with-
out locks through its whole length of 168 kilometres.
It has a depth at present of 12 metres along a channel at
least 45 metres in breadth ; the surface breadth is between

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 121

100 and 135 metres. With the aid of electric lighting and
signalling plant it is possible for ships to pass through the
Canal by night as well as by day. The average time
taken in passing through is thirteen hours, speed being
reduced to 10 kilometres an hour in the actual Canal
channel, apart from the salt lakes.

There are three towns by the side of the Canal. Port
Said, at its Mediterranean entrance, is the third largest
city in Egypt, with over 100,000 inhabitants, and is one
of the greatest coal and oil bunkering stations in the
world. Ismailia, named after the Viceroy Ismail, is a
pleasant garden city with 25,000 inhabitants, and is the
seat of the administration of the Canal. Suez, with
40,000 inhabitants, is the old northern port of the Bed
Sea. Port Said is connected via Ismailia with Cairo by
railway, and Ismailia is similarly connected with Suez.
Between Ismailia and Port Said lies Kantara, where the
immemorial caravan route leads from the Nile valley
to Syria. During the world war the railway from
Kantara to Haifa was buUt, but it has no direct con-
nection with the Egyptian railway system. The Suez
Canal is crossed by ferries ; a project has been under
consideration for the construction of a tunnel under it.
In recent years a new port and entrepot, named Port
Fuad, after King Fuad, has sprung up opposite Port Said,
on the other bank of the Canal ; it is intended to be the
point of departure of the railway to Palestine and of a
railway through the Sinai peninsula to Akaba.

The cost of construction of the Canal amounted to
472,000,000 francs, but the constant danger of silting and
of collapse of the banks demands continual heavy expen-
diture. Nevertheless, the company has earned steadily
increasing surpluses since 1872, and the value of the shares
has risen to many times the nominal value. The transit
dues were fixed in 1884 at ten francs per registered ton,
7-5 francs for ships in ballast. In the following years,
as the use of the Canal increased, these dues were steadily
reduced, ships in ballast always enjoying the reduction of
2-5 francs per registered ton. The dues are now 7s. 6d.

122 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

per registered ton, in English, money, and 3s. 9d. for ships
in ballast. The canal dues for passengers have remained
unaltered at ten gold francs, with a reduction for children.
The total revenue of the company amounted in 1928 to
1,167,112,000 francs, and the net profit to 713,146,000
francs. In 1934 the corresponding figures were 860,760,000
and 546,750,000. Of the net profit 71 per cent, is dis-
tributed to shareholders, 15 per cent, to the Credit Foncier
de France, 10 per cent, to the foundation shareholders,
and 2 per cent, each to the board of directors and the staff.
The Egyptian government ceded its 15 per cent, to the
Credit Foncier in 1880, so that Egypt gains no financial
advantage at present from the Canal. The nominal
value of the shares was halved and their number doubled
in 1924. In 1928 the dividend amounted to 510 francs
per share, and in 1934 to 525 francs.

THE IMPOBTANOB OF THE SUEZ CANAL

No other artificial waterway approaches the Suez
Canal in importance to world trade and world com-
munications. It made the greatest revolution in transit
by sea since the discovery of the sea routes to America
and India. It helped the steamship to its final victory
over the sailing ship. In the Bed Sea with its frequent
calms the sailing ship was at a hopeless disadvantage,
while on the long route round the west coast of Africa,
with its few harbours, the steamship had proved less
serviceable. Before the cutting of the Canal the route
from Europe to India, Australia, and the Far East had led
round Africa. This route was almost entirely under
British control. The few coaling stations were in British
possessions. The route was mainly used, however, by
sailing ships, as the large quantity of bunker space for coal
reduced the cargo capacity. It was the Suez Canal that
brought the supremacy of the steamship on the East
India passage.

Great Britain proceeded at once to safeguard this sea
route. In 1839, to make sure of the future, she occupied

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 123

Aden, at the south-western extremity of Arabia ; the
possession was extended by the acquisition of adjacent
territory in 1869. This small rocky peninsula is entirely
barren and waterless, but it dominates the route to India
and East Africa as a fortress, cable station, and fuelling
station of the first order. Further acquisitions sub-
stantially added to this safeguard. In 1857, when the
construction of the Suez Canal had been begun and the
risks of the Suez route to India had become real, the small
island of Perim, in the Bab el Mandeb, the narrow entrance
to the Red Sea, was occupied and fortified. Once before,
at the time of the French occupation of Egypt, the
British had sent troops to the island as a precaution, from
1799 to 1801. Perim commands the actual Red Sea
route. The adjacent strips of Arabian territory, the
protectorates of Aden and Hadramaut, are under British
supervision. Of more importance are the Kuria Muria
Islands, off the southern coast of Arabia, and the Socotra
Islands, off the African coast ; they were acquired by
Great Britain in 1854 and 1886 respectively. The
Socotra Islands, the " Fortunate Islands " of the ancients,
had been a meeting place for Indian and Greek traders,
and were fortified in 1507 by Tristan da Cunha, the
Portuguese navigator, to serve as a base for the trade
with India. To-day the Socotra Islands are depen-
dencies of an Arabian sultan of the Hadramaut coast,
who, with the other sultans of the southern shores of
Arabia, came under British protection in 1888. In the
Red Sea itself Great Britain has possessed a quarantine
station on the island of Kamaran since 1827 ; she has
beacons on three small islands, and during the world
war she occupied two uninhabited islands of considerable
size. So, in a consistently pursued policy which was
completed by the occupation of Egypt and the Soudan,
the Sinai peninsula, and Palestine, the Red Sea was made
a British sea. The aim Napoleon's far-sightedness had
sought was attained by Britain.

The Suez Canal may be regarded as a British water-
way, not only because the number of vessels sailing under

124 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

the British flag is greater than that of all other vessels
taken together, but also because the bulk of the goods
supplied to the East and the raw materials coming from
the East are consigned from or to England. It was the
Suez Canal that brought the British possessions in India
into the main stream of world trade, and this applies
also, in rather less degree, to the territories lying farther
east. It was only after the completion of the Canal, with
the consequent shortening of the period of transit, that
it became possible for many of the products of these
countries to be brought to Europe without risk of spotting.

The volume of goods coining through the Suez Canal
from the East is nearly double that of the eastward
bound goods. Of the countries of origin and consign-
ment east of the Canal, British India and Ceylon still
take first place, followed by the Far East and, at a con-
siderable distance, by the Malay peninsula with the Sunda
Islands, the Persian Gulf region, and Australia with New
Zealand. Next, again at a distance, come East Africa
and, finally, French Indo-China and Siam. The economic
relation between East and West is reflected once more
in the Suez Canal traffic : the West sends mainly industrial
manufactures, textiles, machinery, and ironware ; the
East raw materials oil-seed, petroleum, rice, wheat,
ores, and textile raw materials.

For Egypt the Suez Canal has had little economic
importance ; politically it has been a heavy burden on
the country. On the other hand, the Canal has been of
great importance to the European Mediterranean ports,
Marseilles, Genoa, and Trieste. The shifting of the centre
of gravity of trade after the discovery of the ocean routes
had seemed to relegate the Mediterranean to the state of
an inland sea, until the Suez Canal turned it into an
important channel for trade with the East. The change
restored the importance of the old ports in comparison
with the Atlantic ports, and the Italian coastal towns and
Phoenician Marseilles awoke to new life. The passage
from London to Bombay via Suez is 4,881 nautical miles
shorter than the passage round the Cape ; the saving for

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 125

Hamburg is much the same. The saving for Marseilles
is 6,280 miles and for Trieste 7,404. The greatest saving
effected by the cutting of the Canal is on the passage to
India ; the saving to the Far East is rather less, but still
very considerable ; the saving between London and
Australia is only slight. To escape the high Canal-dues
many cargo boats still use the longer route round the Cape.

From 1870, when 486 vessels passed through, until
1913, the number and tonnage of vessels using the Canal
continually increased. The 1913 figure was 5,085 vessels,
with a registered tonnage of 20,033,884. During the wax
and the years immediately following it the figures fell,
but they soon recovered, and the 1929 figure was 6,274
vessels with a tonnage of 33,466,000. In 1930, with the
effects of the world crisis beginning to show themselves,
there was a slight weakening to 5,761 vessels totalling
31,668,759 tons, and in 1931 a further weakening to
5,366 and 30,028,119. The 1934 figures were 5,663
vessels and 31,751,000 tons. The number of passengers
was 325,855 in 1929, 305,202 in 1930, and 262,122 in
1934.

Great Britain has an enormous lead in the Canal
traffic. In 1930, 3,125 vessels, out of the total of 5,761,
were under the British flag. The dominant position of
Great Britain is shown equally plainly by the tonnage
figures :

Total registered tonnage of vessek
passing through the Suez Canal.
(OOO'a omitted.)

Tonnage of British
vessels.
(OOO's omitted.)

1930
1933
1934

31,668
30,677
31,751

17,600
16,733
17,238

Germany came next in the years before the world war,
though at a great distance. After the war Germany
began to recover her position. In 1923 she took fourth
place in number of vessels and in tonnage, following Great
Britain, Holland, and France ; in 1927 she came third,

126 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

close behind Holland, and in 1930 she was again in the
second place as before the war, with 600 vessels aggregat-
ing 3,338,842 registered tons. Then followed Holland,
France, Italy, Norway, Japan, and the United States.
Austria-Hungary, which came fifth before the war, has
disappeared ; Russia, which before the war was seventh,
now shows only an inconsiderable figure.

The overwhelming importance of the Suez Canal
seemed to be challenged for the first time when the
Baghdad Railway, planned by Germany, showed the
possibility of reviving the immemorial land route to
India. The outcome of the world war, in the course
of which the Suez Canal was threatened by Turkish and
German troops, fulfilled the British desires for the safe-
guarding of the Canal and the removal of the threat to it
from the Baghdad Railway. At the same time the land
and air route through Asia Minor to India has begun to
gain importance. This land route will enter into com-
petition with the Suez Canal in the future, but for most
sorts of freight traffic the Suez Canal will remain of
primary importance for India, just as it will continue
to be for the Far East in spite of the Trans-Siberian Rail-
way and other Eurasian railways to come.

THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY

The Suez Canal followed the great route of ancient and
medieval times which had led from south-east to north-
west, round the Arabian peninsula and through the Red
Sea to the Mediterranean. The other route, east of Arabia
and from the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia to the
Mediterranean and Asia Minor, was still awaiting revival.
As early as the eighteen-f orties Great Britain had made the
first preparations for opening it up ; with this in view she
had already countered Napoleon's expedition and
Mehemet Ali's thrust from Egypt in the direction of
Syria. In the capable and energetic Mehemet AK Britain
saw a potential reformer of the Ottoman empire, who
might lift it out of its lethargy and the chaos of its

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 127

provincial administration. That would have reduced the
chances of a future conquest of Arabia and of the land
route to India. This land route, whose strategic points
were the Bay of Acre in the Mediterranean and Basra on
the Persian Gulf, continually occupied the attention of
British imperial policy, which during the nineteenth cen-
tury became more and more definitely a policy of safe-
guarding the Indian possessions. In the second half of
the nineteenth century there began the struggle between
Britain and Turkey for Arabia, which was decided finally
in the world war. It was waged on the British side at
first only from the Persian Gulf, the waters nearest to
India, but later also from the Bed Sea. The German
plan of securing the concession for a railway line from
Asia Minor to Baghdad, and on to the Persian Gulf, was
thus bound to arouse suspicion and meet with resistance
in England, as it did also, though not to the same extent,
in Russia and France. Russia herself aimed at extending
her influence as far as the Persian Gulf, regarding
Armenia, Kurdistan, and Persia as her sphere of influence,
and seeing in the new railway line a threat to it. France
put forward claims on Syria and Cilicia, the Phoenician
ports, and the Gulf of Alexandretta, with the hinterland
of Aleppo and Antioch, territories which were largely to
be served by and opened up through the Baghdad
Railway. This railway also threatened to contribute to
the economic and strategical strengthening of Asiatic
Turkey. Iraq had until then been a neglected part of the
Turkish empire, situated at an enormous distance from
Constantinople, and hardly more than nominally subject
to the Sublime Porte ; British influence had been able to
penetrate here from the Persian Gulf without hindrance :
the railway threatened to unite it closely with the central
points of the Ottoman empire. Finally it would carry
Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic propaganda nearer to India*
British nervousness about any military strengthening of
Turkey, particularly along the land route to India, was
increased by the speeches of Emperor William II, in which
he represented himself as a friend of Turkey and as the

128 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

protector of all Mohammedans. These circumstances,
together with the growing importance of oil supplies,
made the Baghdad Railway one of the most hotly con-
tested issues in foreign policy in the years immediately
preceding the world war. The railway would have been
able to open up the rich oil region of Mosul, and in the
south it might have come dangerously close to the British
oil concessions in Persia.

As in the case of the Suez Canal, the British govern-
ment tried at first to make impossible the carrying out of
the Baghdad Railway project by refusing to provide any
part of the required capital. Only when the building
of the railway showed signs of succeeding without British
aid did Great Britain try to gain effective influence over
it. Negotiations were carried on in 1913 and 1914, in
the course of which the Ottoman government compen-
sated Britain and France by the grant of valuable con-
cessions in Anatolia and Syria ; the outcome was an
agreement which took full account of British interests
in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf. The terminus of the
railway was not to be Kuweit, which lies actually on the
Persian Gulf, but Basra, on the Shatt-el-Arab, which was
more accessible to British influence. This long and
obstinate struggle seemed to be finally disposed of on
June 15th, 1914 ; six weeks later the world war broke out
and decided the fate of the Baghdad Railway,

At the outbreak of the war the railway had been con-
structed as far as the Taurus mountains and northwards
from Baghdad as far as Samarra. During the war the
Germans and Turks laid down the difficult stretch
through the Taurus mountains as far as Aleppo, and
pushed on in the direction of Mosul as far as Nissibin.
The British connected Baghdad with Basra and built
a railway north-eastwards to the Persian frontier and as
far as the oil region of Kirkuk, But the Baghdad
Railway remains uncompleted to this day ; the section
from Samarra to Mosul has not been laid. The interest
in the railway has considerably diminished* The Berlin-
Byzantium-Baghdad scheme belongs to the past;

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 129

Baghdad's relations with Constantinople and Berlin no
longer exist. With the dissolution of the Ottoman
empire the railway itself has come into the possession of
three states and is under three separate administrations.
The completion of the stretch from Baghdad to Mosul is
not now to be built via Samaxra as originally planned,
but via Kirkuk and along the Tigris through the fertile
parts of Kurdistan. There exists now a "Taurus
Express ", belonging to the International Sleeping Car
Company, which runs (in connection with the Orient
Express from Paris to Constantinople) via Aleppo to
Baghdad, but the section from Nissibin via Mosul to
Kirkuk has to be covered by car. Great Britain is not
interested in a direct connection of Baghdad and the
Persian Gulf with Turkey ; her efforts are directed toward
the connection of Baghdad with a British Mediterranean
port ; it is impossible to-day to build the "all-red railway"
to India via Constantinople and Aleppo, but the war has
made possible the realization in coming years of another
project, that of an all-British railway from the Gulf of
Acre to Basra, a route which Napoleon in his day wanted
to conquer. The German Baghdad Railway policy has
become a British policy, and Berlin-Constantinople-
Baghdad has become London-Haifa-Baghdad, The
Iraqi Government's policy, however, is to Imk Baghdad
and the railway system, which is now in the possession of
the Kingdom of Iraq, with Iran, Turkey, and the Syrian
ports, instead of with Haifa, and thus to strengthen the
nascent alliance of the Near Eastern states.

THE HEDJAZ BAILWAY

The Hedjaz Railway, like the Baghdad Railway, was
intended to strengthen Turkey in her struggle for Arabia.
The Baghdad Railway encircled Arabia from the north-
east, the Hedjaz Railway from the north and north-
west. The two railway systems met at Aleppo, and
forked there to surround Arabia and join up with
Constantinople* The Hedjaz Railway was conceived as a

130 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

pilgrim's railway ; the Mohammedan pilgrims from
Turkey and other countries were to assemble at Damascus
and travel thence by railway to Medina and Mecca,
Abdul Hamid, the great protagonist of Pan-Islamism,
built this railway as a Mohammedan ecclesiastical founda-
tion, a waqf. The construction was made possible through
contributions from pious Mohammedans of all countries
and through a stamp duty in the Ottoman empire. The
line was laid, in spite of the great difficulties, entirely with
Turkish resources, a demonstration that under efficient
leadership Turkey was able to overcome difficult transport
problems unaided.

The railway also helped Turkey to keep her hold on
the Hedjaz and the Yemen, whither the Turkish govern-
ment had had formerly to send troops through the Suez
Canal, which was only nominally under Turkish
sovereignty. The railway opened up the valuable cereal
region of Hauran, in eastern Syria, but except for that it
was only of slight economic importance, since it ran through
desert country or along the border of the desert, far from
the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, in order to be out of
range of naval guns and expeditionary forces under their
cover. Two important branch lines connected the rail-
way with the Mediterranean, one from Damascus through
Lebanon to Beirut and the other from Deraa to Haifa,
which through the building of this railway soon outgrew
in importance the more famous Acre, lying on the same
bay.

The Hedjaz Railway was begun in 1901, In 1904
it was completed from Damascus to Maan, where the
south-west direction parallel to the Mediterranean coast
turns into a south-east direction parallel to the Red Sea ;
in 1908 the section from Maan to Medina was completed.
The Hedjaz Railway also remains unfinished. The
section from Medina to Mecca and the three important
branch lines from Maan to Akaba, from Medina to Yanbo,
and from Mecca to Jidda have not yet been begun,

Britain saw in the Hedjaz Railway a potential threat
to her domination of the Red Sea and the Sinai peninsula.

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 131

She was concerned above all for the port of Akaba, at the
north-east end of the Red Sea, which may at some time
acquire a crucial strategic importance in regard to com-
munications similar to that of Haifa. During the world
war a large part of the railway in the Hedjaz itself was
successfully destroyed; Britain's Arab allies advanced
along it and conquered Transjordania and Syria. To-day
the railway has completely lost its strategic value ; the
line from Constantinople via Damascus to Medina has
become of no importance. Like the Baghdad Railway,
the main line of the Hedjaz Railway runs through three
different states Syria, Trans jordania, and Hedjaz. In
Syria there is very little traffic ; in Transjordania only a
couple of trains go every week between Amman and
Maan, and the section from Maan to Medina is entirely
out of use, having been in an unserviceable condition since
the war ; the French and British mandatory adminis-
trations carefully concentrated the locomotives and
rolling stock in their areas, and the Hedjaz government
has none left.

The Mohammedan world conference at Mecca (1926)
and Jerusalem (1931) demanded the conveyance of the
Hedjaz Railway as a Mohammedan waqf to Islamic
administration, and drew up plans for the continuation
of the railway to Mecca and Jidda. These projects could
only be carried into execution after a union of the Arab
states of Syria, Transjordania, and Hedjaz, just as the
union between these states and Iraq would make possible,
with all its potential importance, the completion of the
whole Arabian system from Aleppo via Mosul and
Baghdad to Basra on one side and via Damascus and
Amman to Mecca on the other side. (The Aleppo-Basra
line would not then go via Nissibin, which would mean
crossing the Turkish frontier, but would be carried through
Deir-ez-Zor, to open up the fertile grain lands along the
Upper Euphrates.) But the revival of this plan is not
in British interests, and the various Arab states are much
too weak to be able to carry it out with their ownresources.
The British victory has left the Baghdad and Hedjaz

132 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

railway projects uncompleted. Their place is to be taken
by a British scheme which has been maturing for decades,
that of the all-British railway from the Mediterranean
to the Persian Gulf , the British land route to India.

THE ALL-BRITISH RAILWAY

The Baghdad Railway and the attack of Turkish

troops on the Suez Canal in the course of the world war

opened British eyes to the urgency of safeguarding the

land route to India and the access to the Suez Canal from

the east. With the occupation of Egypt there was bound

up the natural tendency of all strong rulers of Egypt to

bring Palestine also into subjection. In the years 1892

and 1906 matters came to a head between Turkey and

Great Britain, Britain successfully enforcing the claim to

Egyptian possession of the Sinai peninsula. The

Palestine Exploration Fund founded in England for

archaeological studies did preliminary work of the utmost

importance for the conquest, of the country. It began its

work with a cartographical survey of the Holy Land,

carried out by British officers, one of whom was Kitchener,

who later was British High Commissioner in Egypt.

In the last year before the world war the Palestine

Exploration Fund carried out survey work for strategical

purposes in the Sinai peninsula* Among those who took

part in this was T. E. Lawrence, who a short time later

was to become known as the leader of the Arab rising

against the Turks. Thus the conquest of Palestine, for

which the world war provided the opportunity, had long

been in preparation. As long before this as the end of

the nineteenth century a British company had secured

a railway concession in Palestine, the execution of which

would, with very slight exceptions, have anticipated the

all-British railway now planned from the Mediterranean

to the Persian Gulf. The railway was to lead in one

direction from Haifa via Damascus to Mesopotamia ; in

the other direction it was to connect Haifa with Port

Said. This second part of the original plan was carried

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 133

out during the world war. Haifa is connected with the
Suez Canal by a railway running southwards along the
Mediterranean coast. The immemorial caravan route
from Egypt to Syria, a route alike for armies and for
traders, has been revived by this modern means of
transport in its double significance. The building of this
railway and the possession of Palestine render the eastern
bank of the Suez Canal safe from future attacks on the
part of enemy Powers.

But Palestine is of importance for a second reason,
and one which renders the Palestine mandate of more
importance to the British Empire than even the control
over Egypt. Palestine (not Alexandria) is the Mediter-
ranean point of departure of the land and air route to
India. With the aid of a British loan which Palestine
had to accept, the railway built by Britain during the
war from the Suez Canal to Haifa was paid for and
acquired by the Palestinian-British government. The
loan also provided the means for the construction of the
modern port of Haifa, which is to become the great
British oil depot and airport of the eastern Mediterranean
basin. Part of the oil from northern Mesopotamia is
conveyed by pipe-line through the Syrian desert to Haifa.
Haifa is to be the point of departure of a railway to Bagh-
dad, leading through Palestine, Transjordania, and Iraq
entirely through territory which is either, like Palestine,
directly under the administration of the British crown or
brought indirectly under its influence by treaties. In
order to safeguard the communications and the pipe-line
through the desert, the British government has cultivated
friendly relations with the Arabs since the world war ;
friendship with the Arabs, though without over-promoting
their state organization, is an element of critical impor-
tance in Great Britain's India policy. The route to India
is to be under British influence. Transjordania and Iraq
received a long stretch of common frontier, so dividing
the French mandated territory from inner Arabia.

It was difficult at first for Great Britain to reconcile
herself to the idea of French possession of important

134 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

sections of the Mediterranean shore after the world war
Aleppo, Antioch, Alexandretta, and Tripoli, the very
ports and cities which in ancient and medieval times had
formed the natural and the nearest means of access to
the Mediterranean for Mesopotamia and Persia. As
" historic heir of the Crusaders " France had tried to
include Palestine in her sphere of influence, but the
safeguarding of the eastern bank of the Suez Canal from
the neighbourhood of another Great Power, and the
possession of the Bay of Haifa, were vital to Great Britain
if she was to be able to protect the route to India.

The contemplated all-British railway would pass round
the French mandated territory, losing economic value
but gaining in strategic importance. From Haifa the
railway will lead to Baghdad and to Basra on the Persian
Gulf. It will run through the level plain ; to the north
it will be excellently safeguarded strategically from
Turkey and the Soviet Union by the range of Kurdish
mountains in the Mosul area, for which, for this reason,
Great Britain struggled with Turkey for many years,
finally succeeding in forcing a decision in her own favour.

The continuation of the railway through southern
Iran and its linking with the railway network of
Baluchistan is resolutely opposed by Iran, which has no
desire to see the southern part of her territory turned
once more into a glacis for British India. Baghdad is,
however, to be connected with the future Iranian railway
system and so with Teheran, so that Iranian trade may
find an outlet through Iraq and not through the Soviet
Union.

Haifa, however, is connected not only with Asia but
through Kantara with Cairo and with the future British
line through Africa, the Cape to Cairo railway. The
all-British railway from Cape Town to Cairo and on
through Haifa to Baghdad and India will connect the
important British possessions in the Old World like a
girdle ; the last obstacles to its completion, Germany in
East Africa and Turkey in Arabia, have been removed by
the world war. Before this railway has been completed

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 135

it has been beaten by air transport. The narrow line
from Cairo to Haifa is the apex of a tremendous angle
whose other extremes are at Cape Town and Calcutta.
The bold territorial and imperial planning of the British
has pursued this vast strategic plan of communications,
perhaps the greatest in history, for decades with a
tenacious logic and a mastery which have been accom-
panied by good fortune. They have prepared the way
for its execution through a policy which appears full of
improvisations and strokes of good fortune, but for all
that with an intrinsic and almost intuitive logical con-
sistency and an unfailingly clear-headed realization of
what they were after.

British imperial policy first developed into conscious
planning after 1874, when Beaconsfield inaugurated the
policy of imperialism and, under pressure from him,
Queen Victoria adopted the title of Empress of India.
From then on, for the sake of the Empire, in which
Liberal England had had little interest, the safeguarding
of the routes to India became a principal concern. The
possession of Palestine, and the strategic enclosure of the
Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and their
conversion into British lakes, have established British
control of the sea and land routes to India and to East
and South Africa with a firmness which, to all appearance,
could only be shaken from without through an entire
collapse of the present system of Great Powers.

While the firm linking together of the various parts of
the British Empire is of great importance to Great Britain,
the linking up of the new railway with Europe interests
her much less. Just as she has not completed the
Baghdad Railway via Mosul, with the result that there is
no direct link between Europe and the Persian Gulf via
Constantinople, so again the direct landroute fromEurope
via Constantinople, Aleppo, and Haifa to Cairo is not being
completed. The Taurus Express, in connection with the
Orient Express, is only able to take passengers to Baghdad
by motor traffic past Mosul ; the Cairo Express of the
Sleeping Car Company takes its passengers only as far

136 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

as Tripoli in Syria, where motor cars take them on via
Beirut to Haifa ; there they entrain again for Egypt.
The all-British railway, however, from Haifa to Baghdad
itself threatens to remain unbuilt owing to its costliness
and its long uneconomic stretches. A motor road is to
be constructed instead. The nature of the country
seems to suggest an alternative to the British plans in the
connection of Iraq and Iran with Beirut and Tripoli
in Syria, the geographical and economic conditions being
more favourable. More probable than a railway from
Haifa to Baghdad is one from Beirut and Tripoli to Mosul,
whence it would go on to Teheran and Baghdad. The
French are planning the connection of the Syrian railway
system, with its normal gauge track from Aleppo via
Horns to Tripoli, with Mesopotamia. From Horns the
railway is to go to Mosul via Palmyra (which was once an
important centre for caravan traffic and the seat of an
empire in the Syrian desert), and via Deir-ez-Zor on the
Euphrates. The port of Beirut is being developed and is
to out-distance Haifa, and Tripoli will receive the same
oil supplies from Iraq as Haifa. So the rivalry of the
Powers along the old trade routes of the land of the
Levant is springing up again : Britain and France are
both exerting themselves to develop their " own "
Mediterranean ports as entrepots for European trade and
communications with Mesopotamia and Iran, and to push
their trade and their power into the interior of Asia
along rival routes, both familiar to the ancients and
to the Crusaders. This is the purpose of the railway
planning.

But the indigenous national governments are them-
selves trying to develop railway systems which they intend
to make independent of the imperial routes of communica-
tion. Ibn Saud wants to connect Mecca with Medina
and Jidda. The Iraq government wants to connect
Baghdad with Mosul and Syria. Beirut is to be a free
port for transit trade from the Mediterranean to Iraq and
Iran. This will make the Haifa-Baghdad Eailway a
still more doubtful matter. But motor car and aeroplane

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 137

have awakened the old trade routes of the Levant to new
life more rapidly than the railway.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE MOTOR OAR

Without question the motor car has made the greatest
of revolutions in transport in the Levant. Its introduc-
tion required no heavy outlay. Native workers quickly
developed into skilled chauffeurs, not easily tired, and
often wildly reckless. The motor car was soon no alien
introduced and driven by foreigners ; it acquired citizen-
ship and was soon able to adapt itself to difficult roads, or,
rather, to the lack of roads. It conquered deserts and
steppes, mountains and stony fields. Its coming led in a
few years to the rapid spread of good roads. In most
cases it did not run alongside the railway as in Europe ;
it ran alongside the camel, competing with it in endurance
and in the overcoming of difficulties. Along the great
strategic main routes it is the forerunner and pioneer of
the railway and the aeroplane. In the Levant it serves
not only for short distance travel but often for regular
communication in the regions without railways over
distances of hundreds of miles. In the thinly populated
regions, where it is impossible to find custom for a full
service of trains, the railway cannot be made to pay ; in
the absence of inland waterways (only Egypt and Iraq
have inland water communication on any important
scale), railways are of service only for such little goods
transport as is to be had and for strategic needs. Apart
from the very closely settled Egyptian river oasis, it is
difficult for railways to get used to capacity. The
situation of the motor car is different ; it is precisely in
the thinly settled and difficult regions that its versatility
makes it indispensable.

In the Arabian desert and in Iran the introduction of
the motor car has strengthened the central power ; its
mobility has lengthened the arm of the executive and
made possible a well ordered administration directed
with a consistent purpose. King Ibn Saud can cross the

138 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Arabian peninsula from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf
by car in a few days ; a little while ago it would have
taken him several weeks. His capital Riyadh, in the
heart of central Arabia, is connected with Mecca and El
Hasa by motor roads. There is no need for expensive
roads in the steppes ; on the hard soil the direction is
shown by tracks running parallel with one another, often
over a breadth of a kilometre. Traffic through the deserts
and vast steppes requires special preparation ; there are
no water sources or reserves, and water, petrol, and spare
parts must be carried in the car. But in recent years
there has been remarkable progress. Strong rulers like
Riza Shah in Iran and Ibn Saud in Arabia are fully alive
to the fact that the independence and the internal peace
and order of their states depend on the construction of a
network of communications, and for the immediate
future this means motor communications.

The most important motor route in the Levant is that
from Damascus to Baghdad. Damascus and Baghdad
the two great centres of medieval times, Damascus itself
one of the oldest cities of humanity, Baghdad united
with the very earliest times through the neighbouring
Babylon and Seleucia. Both command key positions on
the route from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean*
A few years ago the waterless and uninhabited steppe,
500 miles long, between these two cities was crossed only
by the camel. Since 1923 there has been a regular postal
motor connection, and to-day motor cars, motor buses,
and motor lorries go twice a week in each direction. On
those days there is busy life in the desert. The cars leave
Damascus early in the morning ; they run for a few miles
through the green and thickly populated oasis; then
they enter the steppe, after passing the Syrian frontier
post of Khan Abu Shemat, about thirty miles from
Damascus, where the telegraph line ends. Here there
begins the infinity of the steppe. The motor vehicles,
mostly of American manufacture, dwindle in it to small
black points and disappear. Their 500-mile journey soon
leads over firm sandy soil, which might be imagined to

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 139

have been rolled ; over this the car can proceed at forty-
five miles an hour ; but soon difficult shingle is reached,
reducing speed to twenty miles an hour. In the evening
Rutbah is reached a solitary fort in the desert, built in
1926, 200 miles from the nearest human settlement, but
an assemblage of the most modern technical achievements,
filling station and hotel, airport and wireless transmitting
station. The car goes on through the night, an astonish-
ing achievement on the part of the one chauffeur, who sits
for twenty-four hours at the wheel. In the early morning
the long stream of the Euphrates may be seen across the
desert. Baghdad has thus been brought within a day's
journey from the Mediterranean. Formerly it took three
weeks to go from Baghdad to Europe via Basra and
Bombay ; now the old overland route has been revived.
Here the automobile has not followed the railway but has
done creative work of its own of the utmost importance
in the field of communications.

Postal traffic along this route has shown rapid growth
in recent years :

From Beirut to
Baghdad.

From Baghdad to
Beirut.

1927.

1930.

1927.

1930.

Letters (kilograms)
Parcels (number)

8,440
3,521

42,940
9,379

9,393
1,484

40,728

3,782

The number of passengers carried in 1930 was 15,800.
Special motor lorries carried 2,133 tons of goods ; but the
expensiveness of this method of transport leaves the field
still open to the old caravan route for cheap goods, With
the laying of the pipe-line from Iraq to the Mediterranean
a telephone line has been carried along the motor route
from Baghdad to Syria and Palestine. The asphalting
of the route will reduce the duration of the motor
journey from Damascus to Baghdad to some twelve hours.

In spite of their importance to internal communica-
tions in the Levant, the motor routes are of little political

140 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

interest. Competition, on the other hand, in the newest
means of transport, air transport, is of a highly political
character. Unlike steamships, railways, and motor
vehicles, which have more or less arrived at finality,
aircraft may be expected to show very important advances.
This prospect of revolutionary discoveries itself increases
the political importance of air traffic.

AIR TRAFFIC

In March 1924, Imperial Airways was founded in
London, the only great aviation company supported by
the British government. It was granted a government
subsidy for the period of ten years. In the course of these
ten years the company, which originally had run air lines
only in Western Europe, has reached the ends of the earth.
In April 1929, it established the first regular world air
service, between London and the East Indies. By 1932
it had connected up the portions of the Empire in Africa,
Asia Minor, and southern Asia, in an organized network
of air services, which in 1935 was extended to Australia.
The network of air routes from London to Cairo and the
Cape and from London to Baghdad and India sets out to
serve the same strategic purpose as the railway system
(not yet completely developed and so overtaken by the
new means of transport) connecting the Cape with Cairo,
Baghdad, and India.

Aircraft, of course, will never supplant railway and
steamship ; their advantage in speed is set off by their
inability to transport goods in bulk. The various forms
of transport have to be co-ordinated and made use of as
required by the geographical and economic conditions and
by the conditions in regard to the size of the population.
In the short period of twenty years the aeroplane has
been so perfected and has brought such savings of time
that, especially in regard to regions where communications
are ill-developed or difficult, and for world routes, one can
only agree with Richard Hennig's remark that " the world
is on the threshold of changes in regard to communications

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 141

which are probably of the most revolutionary nature that
the history of human civilization has known ".

At the same time world political relationships are
taking on a new aspect. From Ternes in the Soviet
Union to Cabul in Afghanistan used to be three or four
weeks 5 caravan journey ; the aeroplane takes as many
hours. The almost impassable barriers which Persia
and Afghanistan with their high mountains and few
passes placed between British India and Russian central
Asia are disappearing before the aeroplane. This will
necessarily mean that strategic positions in regard to
Eastern policy hitherto regarded as impregnable may no
longer be so. There are still many difficulties to be
overcome ; but .the time is not far distant when in
regard to communications, but also in regard to the
security of frontiers and spheres of influence, the geogra-
phical conditions will become more and more irrelevant.
Mountains and deserts which in the Near East have
formed strategic bastions of the first rank, and which
still represent serious obstacles to railway and motor
car, are of no service against aircraft. Great Britain
has quickly recognized this. As once she went in search
of naval bases, coaling stations, and cable stations, and
later of oilfields with pipe-line routes and railways to
serve them, she is now concentrating her attention on
airports and air lines. Germany has concentrated on
the development of her home air lines, so that to-day
she has the closest network in the world, and after the
relaxation of the restrictions in the Treaty of Versailles
in 1926 she rapidly came to the fore in European air
communications : Great Britain has concerned herself
first with the development of long distance oversea
communications in every part of her Empire. These
great trans-continental air lines are to span the earth
like her world-wide realm. At the same time they are
to be of strictly national character and are to be as little
dependent as possible on landing places under other
than British sovereignty. But already there are rivals
for the trans-continental dominion of the air, and before

142 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

long there mil come a straggle similar to those for the
dominion of land and sea.

The first international conflict over air routes was
associated with the organization of the East Indies
line of Imperial Airways. The first regular air-mail
service in the Near East was organized by the British
Royal Air Force, in August 1921, between Cairo and
Baghdad. It was a fortnightly service. Imperial
Airways took it over in January 1927, extended it to
Basra, and turned it in April 1927 into a weekly service.
This was itself an important advance, for the length
of journey from Cairo via Gaza (in the south of Palestine),
Rutbah, and Baghdad to Basra was now only twenty-
seven hours. The Indian mail could thus reach London
with a very substantial saving of time. Baghdad
could be reached from the Mediterranean by daylight.
Imperial Airways saw in the Cairo-Basra air line only
a section of the East Indies line, which was to be opened
in 1928 over the south of Persia, As early as 1926,
at the Imperial Conference, the line from Cairo to Basra,
Bushire, Bandar Abbas and Karachi was announced
as " an approach towards a system of Imperial air
communications ".

But the Persian government entered a protest
against any flying over south Persian territory. Tedious
negotiations followed, and not until December 1928
was an agreement arrived at, permitting Imperial Air-
ways to fly over southern Persia and to land in Persian
airports for the period of three years, under very
burdensome conditions. Consequently it was not until
1929 that the air route from London to Cairo, Baghdad
and Karachi could be inaugurated. Meanwhile air mails
to and from Baghdad had steadily grown in volume.
The number of postal packets carried was 63,883 in 1926,
306,674 in 1927, and 536,775 in 1928.

On April 1st, 1929, the Iraq government took over the
control of passenger, mail, and commercial air com-
munications within its territory, and the aerodrome at
Baghdad- West, which thus became accessible to civil and

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 143

foreign aviators. Baghdad became a junction for impor-
tant air routes. Under the British-Persian treaty the
German Junker air service in Persia was extended, on
and after April 1st, 1929, from Teheran via Kasr-i-Shiran
to Baghdad. Thus Baghdad was finally brought out of
its isolation ; it was connected with India, Egypt, and
Persia, the seats of ancient civilization, and also with
London and (via Teheran) with Moscow and Berlin.
In April 1930 the Erench Air Union instituted a weekly
air service from Damascus to Baghdad. The automobile
had reduced the distance between the two cities to some
twenty-six hours ; the aeroplane reduced it to little more
than four. In October 1930 the Dutch air lines began a
weekly air service from Amsterdam via Baghdad to
Batavia. Aircraft of four nations met in the airport of
Baghdad, which had become of international importance
in world communications.

At Cairo the Imperial Airways lines branch off to the
Cape and to India. In Africa and Asia Imperial -Airways
use only landing places in territory under British influence.
The single exception was Iran, with which the British
treaty concerning air communications expired in 1932 ;
from then on Imperial Airways have no longer flown via
southern Persia but over the Persian Gulf, where groups
of islands off Arabia under British influence have been
selected as landing places. Asia and Africa are ultimately
to be connected through British territory by a line from
India via southern Arabia (Oman, Hadramaut, Aden) to
British East Africa. The security of all these air lines,
with that of the all-British railway from Haifa to Basra
and another railway intended ultimately to run from
Akaba to Kuweit, requires the maintenance of peace in
the Arabian peninsula ; here again the importance to
the Empire is revealed of the Pax Britannica in Arabia,
one of the war aims in the world war.

But the British air lines have no monopoly in the Near
East. Air communications are being developed with
great energy in Soviet Central Asia, and carried up to the
borders of India. In 1927 the Persian government

144 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

granted a concession to the German Junker company for
a regular service of air mails and communications for the
period of five years. The Junker company fulfilled its
task very well under difficult conditions ; it established
four air lines from Teheran, via Resht to Baku (connecting
with Moscow), to Meshed (with connection to Herat and
Cabul), via Hamadan and Kermanshah to Baghdad
(with connection to Cairo), and via Ispahan and Shiraz to
Bushire (with connection to India). Thus the great
Russian and German networks of communication were
extended to the Persian Gulf and to Afghanistan.

Iran has not only been connected in this way with
world communications in all directions, but has also been
given by the aeroplane new opportunities of control of
her own territory. A caravan going from Teheran to
Bushire, the principal port on the Persian Gulf, took
some seven weeks ; the motor car took ten days to a fort-
night ; the aeroplane takes seven hours. The German
Lijifthansa is planning an air line from Berlin via Athens,
to Baghdad, Teheran, and Kabul. Baghdad will thus
be brought within two days' journey from Berlin, India
within four. What a shortening in comparison with the
days of the Baghdad Railway !

The French lines originally intended to extend their
air service via Istanbul (Constantinople) and Ankara to
Aleppo in Syria. But Turkey refused to permit foreign
aviation companies to fly over her territory. She is
considering the development of a national air service, to
connect Istanbul and Ankara with the mountain regions,
at present difficult of access, in eastern Anatolia. For
years a national aviation society has been carrying on
busy propaganda, and preparations are being made for
the opening of a regular line, purely Turkish, from Istanbul
via Eskishehir, Ankara, and Konia to Diarbekir. The
western and eastern regions of the republic will thus be
brought within nine hours' flight of each other. An
extension from Diarbekir to Teheran is proposed. A
national Turkish line from Istanbul via Ankara and
Teheran to Kabul would mean a strengthening of the

OF WORLD COMMUNICATIONS 145

alKance of the three independent Near Eastern states.
The other states of the Near East are also considering
national aviation ; Egypt, Iraq, and Iran are training
young officers and students as aircraft pilots and
engineers. All these states, and even Nejd, have already
purchased aircraft and built up the nucleus of an air
fleet of their own. These efforts are part of the general
policy of emancipation of the Near Eastern states. The
young Egyptian or Iraqi, Turk or Iranian has learnt to
drive a car ; he is now learning to pilot a plane. Students
are being sent for this purpose to Europe by their govern-
ments, and Egyptian and Iraqi aviators have already
flown their craft from London to Cairo or Baghdad.
Aircraft were unknown in the Near East a few years
ago ; now they are being naturalized.

France has in Syria the base of a trans-continental
air system. The Air Union has a regular service by
flying boat from Marseilles to Beirut. The Syrian airport
is to be transferred later to Tripoli, where the French
pipe-line from Mosul reaches the Mediterranean, and
where the normal gauge railway from Anatolia via
Aleppo ends. From Damascus French aircraft fly to
Baghdad, whence there is air mail connection with
Saigon and French Indo-China. Dutch aircraft connect
Amsterdam with Sumatra in eight days. The three
great air lines are trying to arrange their time-tables so
that there may be a daily air service from western
Europe to India and south-east Asia. But no effort of
the other Powers approaches the breadth of the British
imperial conception, which has already created a per-
manent framework to connect up the British world
empire in the , organization and safeguarding of world
routes by water, land, and air. In the Old World the
Levant is the base and the junction of this system of
communications, which in the last decade has been
developed on a grand scale. The system is beginning to
restore the old importance of the Levant, which lay so
long isolated from world traffic. The result has been the
final completion of the inclusion of the Near East in the

10

146 WORLD COMMUNICATIONS

world-wide economic system initiated by Europe. The
process of Europeanization, begun only superficially by
means of the lines of communication opened in the
nineteenth century, is now penetrating every field of
social and individual life.

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OF
WORLD ECONOMICS

COTTON

COTTON has played the principal part in the history of the
Europeanization of economic life in the Near East.
Clothing is one of man's principal needs, and accordingly
the textile industry, 80 per cent, of which is concerned
with cotton, has played a decisive part in economic
history and is to this day one of the principal elements in
world trade and industry. With the Oriental's liking for
clothing and materials of fine quality and varied colours,
the trader in piece goods and clothing has been the
pioneer since the end of the eighteenth century in the
economic transformation of the East. It was through the
textile dealer that mass production first replaced
individual production in native trade, through him that
imports grew, and therewith the need of capital, through
>nni that ^trade began to take the place of barter, that a
class of traders grew up and began systematically to exploit
the opportunities of business.

Cotton, which is of Indian origin, was known in the
Mediterranean region in the time of Herodotus. But it
was not until the time of the Crusades that it began to
play its important part in economic life and to penetrate
Europe from the Levant. It was the creator of the
wealth of the Italian cities and of their superiority over the
Flanders wool trade, and it was responsible for the revival
of the trade routes of the Levant. The great demand for
the highly valued coloured cotton fabrics was one of the
principal causes of the industrial revolution of the
eighteenth century in England. Between 1764 and 1800
the cotton consumption in England doubled every ten
years. Its cheapening increased the demand and
increased the incentive to cotton cultivation. There was

147

148 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

a rapid growth of slave plantations in the southern states
of North America ; until then the centre of the plantation
industry had been in the West Indies. In 1784 no more
than seventeen bales of raw cotton were exported from the
United States ; in 1852 the States were already producing
three million bales, two-thirds of the total being exported,
mainly to England.

In England in the second half of the eighteenth century
there grew up in the southern part of Lancashire, in an
old wool-working area, the most important cotton manu-
facturing centre of the whole world. The mild and
damp climate was regarded as particularly suited to this
manufacture. Lancashire had already been specially
favoured by its geographical situation and by its coal-
fields ; it was in Manchester that in 1789 the first steam-
driven factory began operations. Liverpool, with its
great natural advantages as a port, had become famous
in the eighteenth century as a port of departure of the
fleets engaged in the slave trade ; the industrial develop-
ment of Lancashire was made possible by the profits from
this trade. In the nineteenth century Liverpool attained
world importance through the import of raw cotton
and the export of cotton piece goods. Since 1760
Lancashire had had a splendid system of navigable
canals, and seventy years later the first railway was
built there, from Manchester to Liverpool.

The population of the county grew from 673,486 in
1801 to 4,406,409 a hundred years later. Between 1769,
the year of Arkwright's epoch-making invention, and
1860, the import of raw cotton was multiplied four hun-
dred times. In 1860, owing to the Civil War in the
United States, there began the five hard years of the
Cottoji Famine. The Lancashire industry was crippled
by the absence of cotton imports, and the many thousands
of working families who depended on cotton for their
whole living suffered real starvation.

These years of want demonstrated to the Lancashire
industry and to the British Empire the urgent necessity
of making the supplies of raw cotton as far as possible

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 149

independent of imports from the United States. More-
over, with the victory of the industrial North over the
agricultural South in the American Civil War there began
a rapid industrialization in the United States, and the
country began itself to spin the bulk of its own production
of raw cotton. Raw cotton imports had become a vital
matter for the Lancashire cotton industry, and so became
one of the main concerns of British imperial policy, which
directed its efforts more and more to securing imports of
raw cotton from the Empire and from Egypt. The prin-
cipal Empire source was India, producing a cheap cotton ;
Egypt produced cotton of high quality.

The competition for the raw material supply con-
tinued with increased intensity in the twentieth century.
In 1914 the world cotton production was about 25,500,000
bales (of 500 Ibs.) ; Empire and Egyptian supplies
totalled 6,250,000 bales or about a quarter of the world
production. On the other hand, the Empire and
Egyptian production of high quality cotton (Egyptian
Sakellaridis and American Sea Island) was 89 per cent,
of the world total. The Lancashire cotton mills are the
principal consumers of the long-fibred Egyptian cotton,
which requires special machinery. In Great Britain
there was founded in 1902 the British. Cotton Growing
Association, and in 1921 the Empire Cotton Growing
Corporation, both concerned with promoting British
self-sufficiency in raw cotton supplies. After the turn of
the century there were similarly increased efforts in
Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, who began active
promotion of cotton cultivation in their colonies.

Russia had begun a similar policy years before, after
the conquest of her Central Asian territories in Turkestan,
where, since 1884, American medium qualities had been
introduced in place of the short-fibred native cotton. In
Fergana, the principal cotton-growing district in
Turkestan, the area under native cotton in 1888 was
56 per cent. ; by the end of the century the area under
cultivation had been multiplied by five and the propor-
tion under native cotton had fallen to 7 per cent. By

150 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

1914 the cotton production in Turkestan had reached
1,270,000 bales. During the War and the years of
revolution it steadily fell until in 1921 it was no more than
43,000 bales. The Soviet Union has energetically
promoted the recovery of cotton cultivation, and by
1928-1929 it had already reached the fifth place
among the cotton producing countries of the world,
after the United States, British India, China, and
Egypt. In 1934 the raw cotton production of the
Soviet Union reached 1,850,000 bales, surpassing
Egypt and accounting for about 8 per cent, of the total
world production.

The highly industrialized countries exerted themselves
to induce their supply countries to standardize cultivation,
concentrating it mainly or almost exclusively on the
production of a single raw material. This happened in
Egypt, originally a wheat-growing country, which had
itself produced the whole of the food needed by its popu-
lation; it became dependent for its existence on the
export of raw cotton to Lancashire and the import of
foodstuffs. In this way colonial or semi-colonial countries,
confined to a single type of production, became entirely
dependent on the industrial countries economically and,
therefore, politically.

Restriction to cotton cultivation involves many
dangers for the planter. His dependence on the world
market, on the state of the harvest in other countries, and
on international price movements makes his business
highly speculative. The standard of living of the cotton
cultivators is everywhere extremely low. The fact that
they only get payment for their produce once a year
makes the credit problem specially acute.

Alongside the struggle for raw material territories
comes the competition for markets. Cotton manufac-
tures are to this day the principal imports in Oriental
countries. In India and Egypt cotton goods are much
the most important imports as raw cotton is the most
important export. In China in 1931 the value of cotton
goods imported was nearly four times that of the next item

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 151

of imports. In all the countries of the Near East, Turkey,
Iran, Syria, Palestine, cotton goods head the imports.

The importance of cotton to Great Britain is no less
than to the Orient. In British exports cotton yarns and
piece goods have for many years held much the most
important position. British exports of cotton goods
amounted in value to 126,000,000 in 1913, and in 1924 to
199,000,000. Iron and steel products came next and
their value was much less than half that of the exported
cotton goods. Recent years, with the growing economic
crisis, have brought a fall in the absolute value of the
exports of cotton goods, but they remain the principal
British exports. The exports of cotton yarns and
cotton piece goods in 1930 totalled 87,000,000, in 1931
66,000,000 and in 1935 60,000,000. Raw cotton
similarly takes the first place in the importation of raw
materials into Great Britain. The figures, like the export
figures, reflect the general movement in volume of trade
and price levels :

1913 .. .. 70,000,000

1924 .. .. 121,000,000

1930 .. .. 45,000,000

1931 .. .. 34,000,000
1935 .. .. 37,000,000

These figures show the immense importance of cotton
in British trade and industry. Cotton is of the greatest
importance to world trade, and no less important on
the political side is the struggle for raw cotton supply
regions and for markets for cotton goods. In the era of
Imperialism there is no separating the political from the
economic struggle in world affairs. "Nothing is more
characteristic of the transformations of the raw material
supply system than the fact that its conduct is visibly
determined by political considerations under the influence
of political ideas. This is a fact of fundamental impor-
tance in the present phase of world economic development/ 9
(Walther Pahl.) In the nineteenth century equilibrium
seemed for a time to have been attained : colonial or semi-
colonial countries produced the raw materials ; the

152 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

industrial countries transported them in their ships,

worked them up at home, and then supplied the whole

world with their manufactures. This structure of the

capitalist trade and industry of the nineteenth century

underwent two fundamental changes in the twentieth,

which are still working themselves out in the struggle

for raw material supplies and in that for markets. Both

axose out of the increase or awakening of nationalism

in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, which found

expression in the struggle both for political and for

economic independence, the latter by means of the

organization of a national economic system as nearly as

possible self-sufficient and independent of the outside

world. A very important part in this transformation

in world trade was played by the world war. It largely

destroyed the connection between raw material countries

and industrial countries ; at the same time it increased

bhe demand for cotton and so led many new countries

bo embark on cotton cultivation or the manufacture of

cotton goods. Colonial or semi-colonial countries which

hitherto had confined themselves to exporting raw cotton

began to manufacture it.

The awakening or growing nationalism set out to
liberate its countries from dependence on the developed
industrial countries, and saw in industrialization a means
of attaining economic independence. In the old European
centres of the textile industry production fell in com-
parison with pre-war times ; it grew in the countries
which formerly had either supplied the raw material or
been dependent on imports of the finished goods.
Between 1913 and 1926 cotton manufacture was nearly
trebled in China. It was more than doubled in Japan,
which has developed a new Lancashire in Osaka and
grows cotton in its colony of Korea, and which also is
favourably situated in regard to freight to India. In
British India and in Brazil cotton manufacture increased
more than 50 per cent, in the same period. Between
1913 and 1925 the number of spindles in Europe increased
from 99 to 101 millions ; in the same period the number

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 153

in Asia increased from 8 to 17 millions. This evolution
has since continued. In 1934 the number of spindles in
Europe had decreased to 96 millions ; the number in Asia
had increased to 23 millions. The corresponding evolu-
tion in regard to looms is no less striking. In 1913
Europe had 1,857,000, America 804,000, and Asia only
121,000 looms. Twenty years later, in 1933, the
European and American figures had fallen to 1,847,000
and 766,000 ; the number in Asia had grown to 515,000.
The world consumption of raw cotton in 1925 totalled
some 23,000,000 bales ; of this America manufactured
7,000,000, Europe 9,500,000, Asia 6,500,000. In 1933 to
1934 the world consumption totalled about 25,000,000
bales, of which America manufactured 6,600,000, Europe
9,900,000 and Asia 8,100,000.

The United States mainly manufacture their own
cotton, and have so great a home market that exports
are not of critical importance to them. Great "Britain
still imports most of its cotton from America, which is
still the greatest of the world's producers of raw cotton,
and it is inevitable that Great Britain should fear depen-
dence on American price dictation. Hence the British
concentration on the development of new sources of raw
cotton supply, in spite of falling sales. But the hope
of self-sufficiency is still far from realization. For the
present Great Britain is able only to draw a small part
of her cotton supplies from Egypt, India, and other
cotton countries. Unlike America, she is mainly
dependent on sales abroad. In 1934 to 1935 she con-
sumed about 2,500,000 bales of raw cotton. Of this,
1,049,000 bales came from the United States, 520,000
from South America, 362,000 from Egypt, 342,000 from
India, and 107,000 from the Soudan. Not only for her
raw material supply but also for her sales Great Britain,
unlike America, is mainly dependent on foreign markets.

Originally the new textile industries manufactured
the cheap sorts of cotton, but they are gradually embark-
ing on the more complicated stages of manufacture.
The fall in raw material prices forms a strong incentive

154 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

to the industrialization of the raw material countries, as
they keep for themselves the substantial margin of
manufacturing costs. At the same time there is setting
in an interesting retrograde movement in transport. In
the nineteenth century the cheapening and speeding up
of transport had made industry more and more independent
of its situation in regard to its raw material source. This
independence was largely reinforced by the superiority of
the West in capital, technical equipment, and supply of
skilled labour. The penetration of capitalism and
of technical equipment and knowledge of the countries of
the East is gradually levelling away this former advantage.
With it is proceeding a return of manufacturing industry
to the site of its raw material supply. " The advantages
to industry of working where it has direct access to its
raw material are once more exercising a strong influence.
This shifting of industrial sites to the source of the raw
material supply is, of course, damaging those manufactur-
ing industries which had been built up through technical
experience of production and the skill of the workers
and had drawn their raw material from oversea colonial
territories. The growing supply of Asiatic markets
by their own mills has plunged the British textile industry
into a serious sales crisis. The circumstance that a large
part of the Indian cotton crop is now manufactured in
India is compelling Britain to look round for new sources
of cotton supply. Textile machinery can only work at
a profit when it has an adequate supply of raw cotton."
(Walther Pahl.)

Nationalism not only works for industrialization but
also combats specialization in crop production. Egypt
had become a cotton country, to the prejudice of its food
production. It had so been made wholly dependent on
world trade, though only participating passively and
without any initiative of its own. It had become entirely
dependent on foreign countries for the feeding of its
population. Lancashire bought its raw cotton ; if prices
fell or if Lancashire declined to buy, Egypt was threatened
with destitution. The country produced little of what

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 155

it could consume itself. It had to import almost every-
tliing it lived on, foodstuffs as well as manufactured goods.
Cotton planting in Egypt had been begun in 1821 by
Mehemet Ali, the great modernizer of his country. The
American Civil War brought an increase in cotton prices
which stimulated cotton growing in Egypt. But only
after the British occupation of the country was cotton
cultivation systematically promoted to the neglect of all
else. In 1920 in Lower Egypt more than 45 per cent,
of the cultivable area, and even in the less fertile Upper
Egypt more than 34 per cent., was planted with cotton.
The Egyptian cotton crops grew as follows :

Tear.

Cantors.

1821 (Introduction of cotton cultivation)

1830

1863 (American Civil War)
1882 (British occupation)

944

213,585
1,181,888
2,912,073
8,531,172
7,780,000

Not until Egypt achieved at least formal independence
and, in 1929, fiscal sovereignty, was she able to take
steps to make an end of these conditions. While trade
was booming, and with the rise in raw-cotton prices
during the world war, Egypt's concentration on cotton
brought her great wealth, but with the fall in price
during the years of crisis it threatened the economic
existence of the country. This explains the efforts to
broaden the economic basis and to go over to the produc-
tion of the country's own food. The national govern-
ment is trying to promote and develop grain and
especially fruit and vegetable cultivation by means of
tariff measures, instruction, and material assistance.

With her growing political independence and her
detachment from the Imperial connection and the sphere
of direct British influence, Egypt is ceasing to be a
dependable source of Lancashire's raw material supply.

156 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

The British government has accordingly taken steps to
introduce and increase cotton cultivation in recent years
in those parts of East Africa which are climatically suit-
able for it and are under British control in the Soudan,
and in Uganda. The Soudan produces cotton of a similar
excellent quality to that of the best Egyptian, the black
labour is even cheaper than Egyptian, and the political
and economic conditions enable cultivation to proceed on
a vast scale under uniform leadership, with suitable
irrigation. The cultivation has also direct political
advantages for Great Britain : while Egypt is beginning
more and more to slip out of her control, Great Britain
is establishing herself in the Soudan, whose growing
cotton production is threatening the livelihood of the
Egyptian fellaheen and whose growing consumption of
Nile water threatens to sever the vital nerve of Egypt's
existence. Through her possession of the Soudan Great
Britain remains the unchallengeable controller of Egypt
and her destiny. The possibility of the extension of the
irrigated area in the Soudan hangs over Egypt like a
sword of Damocles. Great Britain has also made the
Soudan commercially independent of Egypt by building
a railway from Khartoum to Port Soudan on the Red Sea,
and so has provided the Soudan with direct access to the
sea for its imports and exports.. As recently as 1910
Egypt's share in African production of raw cotton was
96 per cent. ; by 1929 it had fallen to 77 per cent. For-
merly rubber was the principal commercial product of
the Soudan; the growth of raw-cotton production is
shown by the following figures :

Year.

Ginned Cotton.

Cotton Seed.

Rubber.

1922
1923
1930

1934

341,796
458,188
3,046,330

63,437
71,235
205,746

- 530,023
1,006,623
980,157

494,740

2,173,557

OF WORLD ECONOMICS

157

These figures, bearing in mind the fall in raw material
prices, show the rapid development in the importance of
cotton cultivation for the Soudan. As in all other eastern
countries, imports of cotton goods into the Soudan are
much the most important item of all. Uganda also shows
a steady growth of cultivation. The area under cotton
increased between 1923 and 1930 from 418,600 to 739,690
acres. In 1934 it was 1,170,000 acres. The cotton crop
grew from 14,000 bales in 1913-14 to 102,000 in 1925 and
198,000 in 1934.

Egypt is the only important cotton country in the
Levant ; cotton is planted in Turkey, Iran, and Syria,
but is of much less importance than other products. Its
importance is greatest in Turkey. In Iraq cotton
cultivation has been fostered by the British Cotton Grow-
ing Association, but without much success as yet. France
claimed the fertile cotton area of Cilicia in the Treaty of
Sevres, but had later to give it back to nationalist Turkey ;
now she is trying to promote cotton cultivation in Syria
through the Association Cotonniere Coloniale, and has
introduced high-grade cotton plants from Texas into the
Alauite territory. A Societ6 Cotonni&re de Syrie has been
formed at Mulhouse, in Alsace.

Hand in hand with this struggle for raw material
sources goes the struggle for markets. In 1929 Great
Britain was much the largest importer into Egypt, with
21-2 per cent, of the total imports ; Italy came third.
With both countries cotton manufactures were the
predominant item of imports, Italy has become a
serious rival of Great Britain in the Levant market.
Egyptian imports in 1929 were as follows :

From Great
Britain.

From Italy.

Cotton piece goods
Mixture fabrics (cotton and
artificial silk)
Cotton yarns

E.
3,059,000

169,000
140,000

E.
1,524,000

588,000
164,000

158 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Recently Japan has come more and more to the front
in the importation of manufactured goods. In the
French mandated territory of Syria the imports of cotton
manufactures in 1930 were :

From French

francs.

Great Britain . . 65,000,000

Italy .. .. 49,000,000

Japan .. .. 48,000,000

France .. .. 6,000,000

Germany .. .. 4,000,000

In 1930 Japan came tenth among the countries import-
ing into Syria. Four years later, in 1934, she had come
up to the third place, the value of her imports of cotton
manufactures into Syria being more than twice that of
the combined imports from Great Britain and Italy.
In Egypt in 1933 Japanese imports came next after
British, surpassing those of Italy, Germany, and France.
British exports of cotton goods fell from 3,434,862 in
1929 to 1,053,499 in 1933 and 625,453 in 1935.

There is a further serious competitor in the importa-
tion of cotton goods into the Iranian market the
Soviet Union. Its share of the total imports of cotton
goods grew from 24-4 per cent, in 1927-8 to 46-9 in
1928-9. In the same period the British percentage fell
from 41 -6 to 27-3 and the Indian from 23-4 to 17-8.

ECONOMIC TEANSFORMATIONS

In his book on the problem of the Europeanization
of economic life in the Orient, Reinhard Junge has
remarked that the importation of Western textiles and
other articles of consumption stimulates the extravagance
of the Oriental, impoverishing Tn>n and preventing the
formation of capital; and that "the absence of any
national consciousness, typical up to quite recent times
of all Islamic territories, must be regarded as, among
other things, the absence of one of the defences against
those dangerous influences ". Indigenous consumption

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 159

was increased and new needs were aroused, but nothing
was done to increase indigenous production. Thus the
growing but unproductive luxury of a small upper stratum
of society brought progressive impoverishment of the
general economic system in Oriental countries.

In the era of capitulations and concessions the Ottoman
empire, Persia, and Egypt were brought into passive
association with world trade and world finance. The
fiscal and customs systems were administered in the
interest of European creditors and European trade, not in
that of the indigenous trade and industry and its active
development. With the growth of national consciousness
the situation began to change. The modernization of
the state and the growth in its strength in relation to the
outer world had their effect in the economic field. Any
active entry into the economic field, any deliverance
from vassalage to the European capitalistic states, was
dependent on a rational formation of capital and pro-
vision of credit and on a choice of imports, with a corre-
sponding organization of foreign trade, made in the
interest of the development of indigenous trade and
industry. Resources that had been merely hoarded
needed to be put to use as productive capital, and at the
same time the formation of capital through thrift had to
be promoted. All economic reforms in the Orient are
dependent on the training and instruction of the popula-
tion, under state guidance by precept and practice, and
with active state assistance in the modernization of the
economic system.

As without the guidance and assistance of the state
neither the educational nor the psychological conditions
axe provided for inducing the Oriental landowner, towns-
man, or peasant, to take the risk of radically changing his
methods of business, it becomes necessary for the state
to do the pioneer work of economic transformation. For
this reason the economic system in Turkey and Iran
approximates to state capitalism, partly under the
influence of the example of the Soviet Union on the other
side of the frontier, which is going through a similar

160 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

process of transformation. The modernization of the
economic system has made the greatest advance in these
independent states. Egypt and Iraq are following the
same path, but in a less thorough-going way, owing to
capitulations and to foreign interference in Egypt, and to the
presence until recently of the mandatory government in
Iraq. In Syria and Palestine the governments have
done very little as yet to promote any thorough
modernization of the indigenous economic and educa-
tional systems. The measures taken by the national
governments, to which detailed reference will be made in
dealing with the various countries, may be summarized
under the two main heads of creation of an indigenous
industry and intensification of agriculture.

In the first of these two fields Turkey decided in the
spring of 1932 to found an industrial credit bank on the
pattern of the agricultural bank. The new bank is to
make advances on industrial buildings and for the pro-
vision and working of industrial machinery, to assist the
purchase of raw material for the country's industries, to
facilitate and regulate the provision of credit for
industrial enterprises, and to take over and offer for
subscription their debenture issues. In Turkey and
Iran many industrial enterprises have been started with
state assistance. Egypt is the only country rich enough
for an Egyptian bank to be founded (in 1920) by the
initiative of a private individual out of private means, to
undertake the tasks undertaken in Turkey and other
countries by state institutions the training of a native
staff in finance, commerce and industry, and the encourag-
ing and financing of indigenous industrial, trading and
transport companies. This bank, the Bank Misr, received
state assistance after Egypt had gained her indepen-
dence.

But no less important than the provision of credits
and of financial assistance in the starting of industries
and the modernization of native industry, which can thus
be made able to withstand competition, is the develop-
ment of trained staffs through the organization of

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 161

industrial and trade schools and the provision of oppor-
tunities for the indigenous population to take up positions
in trade and industry which hitherto have been mainly
occupied by foreigners, and so to acquire the needed
capacity and experience. Industrialization incidentally
performs a great educative function, promoting a psycho-
logical and social transformation. The level of education
and the standard of living of the lower strata are gradually
raised. The states of the Near East are faced now with
the task of enacting a modern code of labour legislation.
This industrialization of the colonial and semi-colonial
countries makes them less dependent on imports from older
industrial areas, and must thus lead to a transformation
of European industry and trade so far as it has been
engaged mainly on exports overseas.

The intensification of agriculture also presupposes an
adequate provision of credit and a general educational
and occupational training of the fellah. The Turkish
Agricultural Bank, a national Turkish enterprise set up
by the government and carried on under government
supervision, helps in the starting of agricultural credit
societies, co-operatives for buying and selling, and the
provision of improved marketing opportunities. In
Egypt the government has set up an agrarian bank for
the provision of credits for small peasants, and also to
assist in improving farming methods, to buy manure and
seeds, and to help with credits and advice in the
acquisition of agricultural machinery and animals for
breeding. But an intensification of economic activity is
only possible if the new credit institutes organize selling
in the interest of the producers which is part of their
task. Co-operation has proved one of the principal
means of giving economic training. But before it can
be effective it is necessary for the peasant to be relieved of
his burden of indebtedness, often more than oppressive,
owing to the usurious rates of interest to which he has
had to submit in the absence of any organized agricultural
credit ; it is also necessary for the tenants to be protected
from arbitrary treatment by the landlords and from

11

162 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

expulsion from their holdings. Every agrarian reform

must include regulation on a fixed plan of the agrarian

taxation and the conditions of ownership. The technical

work of increasing production must go hand in hand with

the extension of the market, and the peasant must be

placed by a suitable co-operative organization in a

position to dispose freely of his products and to obtain the

actual market price at a favourable moment. The

co-operatives must see to it that the peasant actually

receives the true yield of his production and is so enabled

slowly to build up Ms capital, which will make it possible

for him to re-invest his profits. The intensification of

agriculture will lead to the increase of working capital in

the countryside and will so help in turn in the creation of

industries which will find their market among the

increasingly prosperous peasantry.

But this depends on an improvement in the general
level of education, on training the peasant in methodical
labour, and on accustoming him to watch and be guided
by the opportunities open to him. With the trans-
formation of economic life there sets in a human change ;
the two are dependent on one another and condition one
another just as in the economic sphere the intensification
of labour precedes the intensification of capital, but each
is a condition of and a promoter of the other. The
modernization of the economic system is an extra-
ordinarily complicated process, the many elements of
which must be carefully attuned to one another, a gradual
progress from stage to stage, the easing and execution of
which requires the application of all the intellectual and
moral forces of the nation, of its state organization and its
leading personalities.

It is here especially that there is felt in all the countries
of the Levant the lack, so frequently to be noticed, of an
intellectual and moral 61ite, numerous enough as a class
to be able to bear the heavy burden of the process of
transformation. There is a lack of the hard work of
intellectual and psychological preparation, of under-,
standing of economic relationships and their function in

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 163

political life ; the sense of responsibility for the whole
community has not yet by any means overcome every-
where and at all times the old sense of common interest
of families, cliques, and friendships. Yet the example
of the ten years and more of allegiance of the great
majority of the Egyptians to Saad Zaghlul Pasha and to
the Waf d has shown that, at all events in the presence of
a great and unselfish leading personality, the national
idea can bring the peoples of the Near East, like other
peoples, to a unity rare in history and to the subordination
of all personal and party interests. On the other hand,
the awakening of national consciousness has often led to
an exaggerated self-confidence, and has thus interfered
with the due realization of the extent to which the
Oriental peoples have still to gain a deeper understanding
of the forces of modern civilization, of the elements of
citizenship, to gain technical efficiency and to learn
economic discipline, before they can become active and
equal partners in the general complex of civilization. The
countries of the Near East still offer a wide field for
European assistance and advice in economic and state
organization and education.

But the first condition of this must be that this help
is not offered from selfish motives arming at political or
economic control, but from genuine readiness to be of
service. The Oriental was never so suspicious as to-day.
All the disguises of self -seeking under the cloak of man-
dates, all the hollow talk of furthering the prosperity and
progress of the backward peoples as a sacred mission of
civilization, that is to say of the stronger civilized nations,
only go to strengthen the suspicion, and to magnify the
mistakes made in the Near East instead of minimizing
them. One of the strongest reasons advanced for the
effort of the Oriental peoples to achieve full independence
lies in the fact that it is only on that condition that they
are willing to accept the help of the West, that it is only
when that has been achieved that there can be any question
of real assistance. Experience has shown that indepen-
dence is an essential condition for any thorough-going

164 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

economic and cultural advance, for the European-
ization and modernization of the native economic system
in the interest of the native peoples. Given that condition,
fear and suspicion can gradually fade in the hearts of the
Orientals, the mental and moral inadequacies resulting
from centuries of oppression, undernourishment, and
ignorance, can be lessened and removed by steady and
persistent educative work, and the old civilized countries
of the Near East, once the cradle of culture and the
centre of world trade, can once more enter fully into
the community of civilized nations.

CTTBBENCY PROBLEMS

Two currency problems faced the countries of the Near
East after the world war in their commercial relations
with the world currency vassalage, and the fall in the
price of silver. Currency vassalage, a symptom of the
economic weakness of these countries and of their lack of
capital, showed itself in one of two ways either through
the currency unit being tied to that of an economically
stronger country, or through the right of bank note issue
belonging to a private banking institute entirely or mainly
under foreign control. Often both conditions are found
together. Thus the Egyptian, Palestinian, and Iraqi
currencies are in a state of vassalage towards sterling, and
the Syrian towards the French franc. The principal
foreign commercial banks which have had the right of
note issue are the National Bank of Egypt, the Banque
Lnp&riale Ottomane, and the Imperial Bank of Persia.
The National Bank of Egypt, with a share capital of
E3,000,000 under British control, has possessed since
June 25th, 1898, the monopoly of the issue of bank notes
in Egypt. Before the world war this privilege was of no
great value, as gold coin was in free circulation and the
bank notes had to have a 50 per cent, gold cover. Up to
the outbreak of war the bank note circulation scarcely
exceeded E2,500,000. On the outbreak of war the cur-
rency was pegged, and the decree of October 30th, 1916,

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 165

made fundamental changes. The obligation of pay-
ment in gold and the obligation of gold cover were
removed ; British state securities were permitted as cover
instead of gold. This established the currency vassalage
of the Egyptian pound, which, once it was taken off the
gold basis, followed every fluctuation of sterling. After
the abandonment of the gold standard in England in the
autumn of 1931, efforts were made in Egypt to break
away from this currency vassalage and to create an
independent Egyptian currency, but in view of the
intimate economic relations between the two countries
the Egyptian Ministry shelved the plan.

The Banque Imp6riale Ottomane was established in
1863 by an Anglo-French banking consortium, with the
privilege of note issue. Its privilege was renewed in 1925
up to March 1st, 1936, the name of the bank being altered
to Banque Ottomane. The national government in
Turkey set up a number of commercial banks for the
promotion of Turkish industry, and to enable the control
of Turkish trade to be transferred into Turkish hands ;
and in January 1932, the Turkish State Bank was
founded with a capital of T15,000,000. The State
Bank is gradually to increase its gold reserve, so that this
reserve, together with the holding of gold bills, may give
the necessary cover for the Turkish bank notes in cir-
culation from 1936 onwards.

The branches of the Ottoman Bank in the Erench
mandated territory were constituted the Banque de Syrie
et du Liban in 1919, with a share capital of 10,000,000
francs ; on April 1st, 1924, the bank received the privilege
of nobe issue for fifteen years.

The development in Persia is also characteristic. The
Imperial Bank of Persia, under British control, with a
share capital of 650,000, received its original concession
as a note issue bank in 1889 ; the concession was pro-
longed in 1924 for a further twenty-five years. " Before
the War the whole of the country's banking system was
dependent on foreigners and served (their) economic
expansion. The new men in Persia therefore directed

166 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

their efforts from the first to recovering national

independence in this field also." In 1928 the Persian

National Bank was founded with a share capital of

2,000,000 toman. The first governor of the bank was the

German Dr Kurt Lindenblatt. " The National Bank,

which has worked with great success, is likely in the course

of years to secure for the Persian government the

independence it desires in banking as elsewhere. It is

proposed also to establish an agrarian bank to grant

mortgages and therewith to facilitate the modernization

of agriculture. The European banks are mainly devoted

to financing foreign trade, and so do not assist the

industrialization of the country. It is the task of the

National Bank to promote industrialization." (Fritz

Hesse.) The Iranian government has bought up the note

issuing privilege of the Imperial Bank of Persia and has

transferred it to the National Bank. This transfer " was

regarded by the Iranians as one of the most important

steps along the road to financial independence". So in

every country the efforts are increasing to follow up the

achievement of political independence with that of

economic and currency independence. Often these

efforts go hand in hand with attempts at currency

stabilization, which, especially in the countries with

a currency on a silver basis, has become an urgent

necessity owing to the extraordinary fall in the price of

silver.

Since 1928 silver has lost more than half its value,
measured in gold. Between 1835 and 1875 the price of
silver had averaged 1-30 dollars an ounce in New York.
Then, owing to the introduction of the gold currency by
the Latin Monetary Union and the United States, it lost
about half its value. It remained at this level, with only
slight variations, until the world war, in the course of
which it rose greatly in price,, reaching a top 'quotation
in New York of 1-388 dollars towards the end of 1919.
It then became stabilized once more, from 1921 to 1928,
at the same level as at the end of the nineteenth century ;
it was still worth 0-58 dollar in 1928. But from the

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 167

spring of 1929 it fell incessantly, until on February 16th,
1931, the ounce was worth only 0-25 dollar in New
York.

As in other wide regions of Asia, silver was the basis
of the currency in Arabia and in Persia. In Arabia, as in
Abyssinia, the standard coin had for 170 years been
the Maria Theresa dollar, which had first been minted
in 1751 by the Vienna Mint. As recently as 1927 the
Vienna Mint struck 15,561,000 dollars for circulation
in these countries. In 1929 the figure fell to 2,846,000.
The depreciation of silver led Persia to go over to a
gold currency and to carry out a fundamental reform
of the currency at the end of 1931. The Hedjaz also
has gone over to a currency based on gold. Thus the
same process has been going on in regard to the currency
in the Near East as everywhere else. In the nineteenth
century silver had been a general basis of currencies until
the highly industrialized capitalist countries of the West
went over to the gold standard. Many of the eastern
countries remained on the silver standard, and are only
now, with their active entry into world trade, following
the western example. At the same time they are trying
to liberate their currencies from foreign tutelage, and to
bring their commercial banking system and their currency
system under national control.

OIL

Like its cotton, the oil of the Levant has involved it in
the great world struggle for raw material sources.
Petroleum was known to the ancients Herodotus men-
tions oil springs in the neighbourhood of Babylon, and
Plutarch mentions springs at Kirkuk but petroleum
working first began on a commercial scale in the fifties of
the last century. Ty* the eighty years which have passed
since then the oil industry has changed the economic face
of the world. The United States was the first country
to start an oil industry, and it still produces some

168 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS
70 per cent, of the total world supply. The production
in the United States has grown as follows :

Tear. Barrels.

1859 2,000

1879 19,914,146

1899 57,084,428

1906 126,493,936

1923 732,407,000

1929 1,007,300,000

1934 908,100,000

The industry has grown correspondingly all over the
world. Petroleum was originally used only for lighting ;
now it is mainly and increasingly used for power produc-
tion. This, in the age of machinery and motors, has
brought oil into the world economic struggle as its decisive
factor, taking the place of coal ; for anyone who has
control of power-producing material has control of power.
England's monopoly position a century ago as the ruling
industrial power was based on her coal resources, and
particularly on their remarkably favourable situation in
the neighbourhood of ports and trade routes. With
the coining of the new source of energy, the struggle for oil
became one of the principal factors in world politics. The
United States, the greatest oil consumer, had within their
frontiers nearly three-quarters of the world production.
Great Britain, who came next as an oil consumer, had
within her empire at the outbreak of the world war barely
two per cent, of the world's oil production* The principal
oil cotmtries after the United States Mexico, Russia,
Persia, the Dutch Indies, Roumania and Venezuela-
were all outside the political control of the British Empire,
although British oil companies owned oilfields in all
quarters. Thus it became vital to the maintenance of
Great Britain's power that she should increase her source
of supply of crude oil, should discover oilfields that could
be brought under her immediate control, and simuk
taaeously, should bring within her control the transport
oi pUfrom the fields to favourably situated ports. Oil has

OF WORLD ECONOMICS

169

the great advantage over coal that it can be more rapidly
and more cheaply mobilized from territories difficult of
access through a pipeline than the more expensive and less
easily transported coal, with its need of railways. Hither-
to coaling stations had been of critical importance to the
command of the seas ; now they shared their importance
with oil-bunkering stations, which had to be placed at
suitable points for ocean traffic in order, in conjunction
with oil tankers, to safeguard the supply of oil for ship's
engines, and especially, in time of emergency, for warships.
The world extraction of petroleum in 1934 reached
once more the record figure of 1929 of about 1,500,000,000
barrels. The development of the extraction of crude
petroleum in the principal producing countries of the world
has been as follows :

Year.

United
States.

Soviet
Union.

Venezuela.

Roumania.

Iran.

Mexico.

Dutch
Indies.

1910

209

70

__

9

3

11

1920

442

25

7

12

157

17

1925

763

52

19

16

35

115

21

1930

898

135

136

42

45

39

41

1931

851

162

116

49

44

33

35

1932

785

154

116

53

49

32

39

1933

905

154

117

54

54

34

42

1934

908

168

142

62

52

38

42

(Millions of barrels.)

But geographical distribution alone does not determine
the ownership of oil. The oil in the United States bglongs
not only to American but largely to British companies.
Only in the Soviet Union and in some of the South American
states is the oil supply nationalized ; everywhere else it
belongs to private and often to foreign companies. Two
enormously powerful trusts are competing with one
another for oil supplies the American groups, represented
above all by the Standard Oil Company, headed by John
D. Rockefeller, and the British companies, the (Anglo-
Dutch) Royal Dutch Shell Trust, headed by Six Henri
Deterding, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, part of the
capital of which is directly owned by the British govern-
ment. The Royal Dutch Shell Trust came into being in

170 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

1911 through the fusion of the Koninklijke Nederlandsche
Petroleum Maatschappij with the Shell Transport and
Trading Company. These two great trusts are in com-
petition both for markets and for sources of supply. Tlie
struggle for markets has very little to do with the countries
of the Levant, which, with their poverty, backwardness
and sparse population, consume relatively little oil. But
these countries come into the foreground in the struggle
for oil sources between the American and British companies,
supported on both sides by their states.

This struggle is rendered more acute by the fact that
the known oil deposits of the world are limited ; the
estimates vary but are all within a maximum of some fifty
years' supply at the present rate of consumption. It is
calculated that the United States, which account to-day
for about two-thirds of the world's oil yield, have little
more than one-eighth of the world's oil resources, so that
their reserves will soon be exhausted. The deposits in the
Iranian and Iraqi oilfield are believed to be not much less,
but they are being worked at a far slower rate, at which it
is estimated that they will last more than two centuries.
The battle for oil resources is thus concerned less with
present extraction than with the provision of reserves for
the future. In this field the British oil interests have once
more shown themselves more far-sighted and enterprising
than all the rest. The British were very successful in the
acquisition of foreign oilfields, they husbanded their own
reserves, and they have brought within their possession a
large part of the remaining world resources.

There was a particularly tough battle between the
British and the American oil interests in the Levant. The
struggle began at the outset of the present century ; it
continued for years after the world war and determined
the distribution of Mandates and the international policy
in the Arab and Kurd territories of the Ottoman empire.
America had renounced all gains from the war, all annexa-
tions and reparation payments, in Europe ; but she de-
manded her share in the gains from the war in the Levant.
At the back of the bitter struggles between the victors in

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 171

the world war for territory in the Levant stood the struggle
for oil. It was inevitable that Great Britain should regard
the penetration of foreign and especially of American oil
interests into the territories, so important to the Empire,
around the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf as a particu-
larly serious menace. Great as is the importance of
oil in peace time, it is still greater in war. Consequently
it is not enough to possess oil sources ; it is necessary
to have political and strategic control of them, and the
means of drawing upon them.

In addition to the great petroleum fields in Iran
and Iraq, there is oil in the Red Sea region. Egypt
has three oilfields on the coast of the Gulf of Suez ;
the oldest one has been worked since 1907 and the most
important one, Hurghada, since 1914. The fields belong
to the Anglo-Egyptian Oilfields Company, formed in
London in 1911 with a capital of 1,808,000. Output
has been growing in recent years* In 1929 279,607
tons of crude oil were extracted. Of this something
over 78,000 tons were consumed in Egypt and the rest
exported. The company possesses a refinery at Suez ;
in 1929 the dividend paid was 22 per cent. In
Palestine geologists had been prospecting for petroleum
before the war in the service of the Standard Oil Company.
After the war there were years of conflict between the
British administration of the country and the American
oil company, which so far has been unable to resume
its exploration on any important scale.

The struggle between the British and American oil
companies began in the Levant about the turn of the
century. At that time the American Admiral Colby
M. Chester came to Constantinople and tried to secure
railway and oil concessions in Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
More fortunate was the Australian engineer William
d'Arcy, who obtained from the Shah of Persia in 1901
the monopoly for all Persian provinces with the exception
of the five northern ones along the Caspian. This
concession was granted for sixty years for the sum of
40,000 dollars. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now

172 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) was founded, originally
as a subsidiary of the Burma Oil Company, to work the
concession. Since then it has extended its activity to
many other countries. The British government acquired
a majority of its shares, so that it has become virtually
a British government undertaking. The purchase was
made at the instance of Mr Winston Churchill, who
at the time was First Lord of the Admiralty. In laying
his Bill before the House of Commons in June 1914 he
was moved by much the same sort of consideration as
Beaconsfield had been in his purchase of the Suez
Canal shares. He wanted to safeguard the oil supply
of the British navy.

The oilfields lie in the south-west of Iran, north of
Dizful and east of Ahwaz. Dizful and Ahwaz are now
connected by a railway which goes on to the new port
of Bandar Shapur the first section of the great trans-
Iranian railway. Bandar Shapur is a port newly laid
out in a small sheltered bight at the northern end of
the Persian Gulf. The Iranian government refused to
carry the railway on to the more important town of
Mohammerah, on the Iranian side of the Shatt-el-Arab :
it was much too close to the British influence centred
in Basra. The pipe-line from the oilfields of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company leads, however, from the main
field at Maidan i Naftun to Abadan, not far from
Mohammerah, on the Iranian banks of the Shatt-el-
Arab. At Abadan there are large storage tanks and
the company's refinery. From here the oil is shipped
through the Persian Gulf. Abadan lies between Basra
and Fao. Not far from Basra, about 140 kilometres
from the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris join
to form the Shatt-el-Arab. Basra before the world
war was a shallow roadstead, difficult of access for sea-
going vessels. During the war, when Great Britain was
landing her troops there for the Mesopotamian cam-
paign, Basra was developed into a modern port. With
the aid of a loan issue of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
a ship canal was dredged; by its completion at the

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 173

end of 1930 the Shatt-el-Arab was made accessible
through its whole length to ocean-going ships.

Fao was a Turkish fortress at the point where the
Shatt-el-Arab flows into the Persian Gulf. Immediately
after Great Britain's declaration of war on Turkey, on
November 7th, 1914, British and Indian troops captured
the fortress, and on the 21st they took Basra. The
declared purpose of the British in the Mesopotamian
campaign was the protection of the oil plant of the Anglo-
Persian Oil Company and the occupation of the Shatt-el-
Arab throughout its course. For some time the British
thought it would suffice to dominate southern Meso-
potamia ; later on the recognition of the importance of the
oil sources in the mountain country of northern Meso-
potamia, and of the strategic importance of that mountain
country for the defence of the southern lowlands, induced
them to occupy the whole of Iraq. Thus Abadan lies
on Iranian soil, but is directly controlled by whoever
dominates the Shatt-el-Arab. Abadan is also the
principal port on the Shatt-el-Arab. In 1930 the arrivals
in the port of Basra were 177 vessels with a total tonnage
of 799,000 ; at Abadan, 643 vessels, of tonnage 3,578,000.
In the treaty of alliance of June 30th, 1930, between
Great Britain and Iraq, Iraq binds herself to convey to
Great Britain for the duration of the alliance, that is for
twenty-five years after its ratification, an airport in
or near Basra, and to permit its garrisoning by
British troops. The port of Basra is under an adminis-
trative authority in which Great Britain and Iraq are
represented.

Thus Basra, like Haifa, is important in two ways to
the British Empire ; both are strategic points on the route
to India ; Basra is of strategic importance for the protec-
tion of the Anglo-Iranian pipe-line, and Haifa for the
protection of the pipe-line conveying Anglo-Iraqi
petroleum from Mosul to the Mediterranean. But already
there is associated with the Haifa-Baghdad line a still
bolder plan, which depends on the attainment of more
far-reaching security in the Arabian peninsula through

174 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

co-operation with Ibn Sand. From Kuweit, the originally
intended terminus of the Baghdad Railway on the
Persian Gulf, a British railway is to be laid to Akaba on
the Red Sea, and the Anglo-Iranian oil is to be led to the
Mediterranean through pipe-lines, either to Haifa or to
Akaba*

There has been rapid growth in recent years in the
output of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The output
in 1912 was 80,000 tons, in 1929 5,700,000 tons, and in
1934 7,650,000 tons. The oil yield is also of the utmost
economic importance to Iran. Oil accounts for more than
half of the Persian exports and gives Iran a large credit
balance of foreign trade. In 1929 the company paid the
Persian government 1,250,000 in dues, about one-sixth
of the Persian state revenue. In the following years,
in consequence of the fall in petroleum prices and the
restriction of output by the Anglo-Persian, its payment fell
to some 300,000. In an agreement of August 1932, it
was provided that the company should pay the Persian
government at least 1,250,000 a year. But at the end
of 1932 the Persian government terminated the concession.
It was of the opinion that the concession granted in
Persia in 1901, under entirely different circumstances
and without regard to the most important national
interests of the country, by a powerless and corrupt
government, could no longer be maintained under the new
conditions by an Iran (as Persia now calls herself) actively
engaged in modernizing her country. The government
has also introduced amendments into the new con-
cession agreement which correspond to the transformation
which is taking place in every field in Iran as in Turkey.
The aim of the Iranian government is to make the great
plant of the Anglo-Iranian in south-west Iran, under the
joint control of the Iranian government an important
factor in the industrial training and modernization of the
region and its inhabitants.

The new concession was signed at Teheran on
April 30th, 1933, for a period of sixty years. Under this
new agreement the concession area was reduced from the

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 175

original 500,000 square miles, which. William Knox
d'Arcy secured tinder his concession of 1901 for a sum
of 4,000, to 250,000 square miles and from 1938 to 100,000
square miles. A low price was fixed for oil sold in Iran,
as cheap oil is of importance for the modernization of
agriculture and of transport. The Iranian government
is to be given a discount of 25 per cent, and Iranian
nationals of 10 per cent, on the price fixed. The Company
is required progressively to replace all its foreign employees
by Iranians, and to spend 10,000 a year on the education
of Iranians in Great Britain in engineering and research
connected with the oil industry. The Company is to pay
the Iranian government taxes amounting to 225,000
a year for fifteen years and 300,000 a year for a further
fifteen years. Finally the government is to receive a
royalty of four shillings gold for every ton of crude oil
extracted, and 20 per cent, of the net profits after the
payment of a fixed sum to stockholders.

In recent years both the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
(which has formed a subsidiary, the North Persian Oil
Company, for the purpose) and the Standard Oil Trust
have been in competition for the concession for borings
in the five northern provinces of Iran, But their real
field of battle was not Persia, whose principal oilfields
had already been dealt with by the concession of May
28th, 1901, to William Knox d'Arcy, but Mesopotamia,
where the American Admiral Chester had had less success
than d'Arcy had had in Persia. The concession area of
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company extends into Iraqi terri-
tory, in consequence of the frontier regulation between
Persia and Turkey in 1913. The oilfield of Naft Khana
lies on the Iran-Iraqi frontier. On May 24th, 1926, the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company concluded with the Iraqi
government an agreement under which the concession,
originally granted until 1961, was extended for a further
thirty-five years until 1996. A subsidiary was formed
under the name of the Khanaqin Oil Company ; a pipe-
line was laid along the fifty kilometres from Naft Khana
to the nearest railway station, Khanaqin, and in 1927

176 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

a refinery was set up by the river Alwand. At present
the Anglo-Iranian is extracting little oil in Iraq, for sale
only within the country. The Basra district is supplied
from the refinery at Abadan. Oil extraction on a large
scale only began when the pipe-line from Iraq to Haifa
had been laid. Thus the oil yield in this district did not
approach the potential yield until 1935. The yield in
1930 was 80,000 tons and in 1933, 122,000 tons, but in
1934, the first year in which work really started, the yield
reached 978,000 tons. During 1935 there were shipped
from Haifa 1,823,426 tons of oil, and from Tripoli 1,625,773
tons. The yield of Iraqi oil has considerably cheapened
the supply in the country, and in view of the growing
importation of motor pumps for irrigation and of motor
cars the cheapening has been of considerable economic
importance.

The struggle for the oilfields of northern Mesopotamia
has lasted a quarter of a century. After Admiral
Chester's failure the Germans, who were busy at the time
with negotiations concerning the Baghdad Railway
concession, tried to secure oilfields in Mosul and Anatolia/
and so to make an end of Germany's dependence on foreign-
companies, which was bound to be serious for her, especi- j
ally in war time. (Germany's lack of oil deposits in her '
own territory was one of the main reasons for the efforts
made by German chemists to produce synthetic spirit.
If this process could be so cheapened as to enable the
synthetic product to meet the commercial competition
of natural petroleum, this would mean a further great
revolution in the field of motor fuel supply, and would
bring changes in the international situation in regard to
economic policy,) The Sultan, and after him the Young
Turks, refused for a long time to grant this important
concession. Not until Great Britain and Germany
united in 1912 to form the Turkish Petroleum Company
was their joint political pressure at the Sublime Porte
sufficient to compel the grant of the concession. Half
of the shares were to be held by the Turkish National
Bank, a British financial institution (its place was soon

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 177

taken by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company), a quarter
by the Royal Dutch Shell group, and a quarter by the
Deutsche Bank.

After the world war Great Britain seemed to be mistress
of the oil supplies of the Near East. With the ending of
the German participation the Turkish Petroleum Com-
pany had become purely British, and British troops were
not only in occupation of southern Persia, but also of
the north Persian provinces, whose oil resources were
awaiting development. British troops had also pushed
into Transcaspia and the Caucasus, where it was impor-
tant for them not only to stave off the menace from the
Russian Revolution but to obtain control of the rich
oilfields of Baku. Not all these hopes attained fruition.
North Persia and the former Russian territory had to
be evacuated ; the Soviet Union has nationalized the
oilfields by the Caspian and increased output by per-
fecting the technique of extraction and rationalizing the
industry ; and even the British monopoly of the Turkish
Petroleum Company was broken down and foreign
interests had to be granted shares in it. After 1919
there began the struggle over the natural wealth belong-
ing to the peoples of the Levant who had been " freed
from the Turkish yoke ". Only the course of historic
events prevented a similar struggle over the natural
wealth of "liberated" peoples of the Soviet Union.
The Treaty of San Remo envisaged both possibilities.

France and the United States were competitors of
Great Britain. The secret agreements concluded between
France and Britain during the world war concerning the
partition of Turkey in Asia had promised Mosul to the
French as a sphere of influence. At the San Remo
Conference of April 1920, in which the Asiatic spoils of
the world war were shared out in various forms, as
spheres of influence, Mandates, or concessions, France
agreed to transfer Mosul and its oil to Great Britain in
return for a 25 per cent, share in the Turkish Petroleum
Company and for the recognition of the French Mandate
over the whole of Syria, including even Damascus, which

12

178 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

was then under the rule of Britain's ally King Faisal.
The agreement ran as follows :

" In the territories which belonged to the late
Russian Empire, the two Governments will give their
joint support to their respective nationals in their
joint efforts to obtain petroleum concessions and
facilities to export, and to arrange deli very of petroleum
supplies. . . . In the event of a private petroleum
company being used to develop the Mesopotamian
oilfields, the British Government will place at the
disposal of the French Government a share of twenty-
five per cent, in such company. ... It is under-
stood that the said petroleum company shall be under
permanent British control. . . . Should the
private petroleum company be constituted as afore-
said, the native Government or other native interests
shall be allowed, if they so desire, to participate up to
a maximum of twenty per cent, of the share capital
of the said company." State Papers, 1920, p. 350.

It was also stipulated in the agreement that pipe-lines
should be laid from Persia (Iran) and from Iraq to the
Mediterranean and should be carried through the French
mandated territory to a Syrian port. This stipulation
gave rise later to an Anglo-French dispute, as Great
Britain decided to lay the pipe-line from Iraq to Haifa,
in territory under its own administration.

France appeared to be satisfied, but American oil
interests claimed participation in the oil of Mesopotamia.
Their demands were energetically pressed by the American
government under President Harding, himself intimately
associated with the American heavy industry and oil
combines. His Cabinet included Albert B. Fall, who later,
together with his business friends Harry F. Sinclair, the oil
magnate, and Edward L. Doheny, was involved in the
Teapot Dome scandal. The British government sent
Sir John Cadman, the British negotiator at San Remo and
one of the heads of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, to
Washington to try to win over the Standard Oil Company

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 179

by the offer of a 25 per cent, share in the Turkish
Petroleum Company.

The battle of the oil interests produced political
.conflicts. The Americans had no direct territorial
interests. They were fighting for the principle of the
open door, which Henry U. Hopli has described as " the
theory under which the economically stronger is enabled
to exploit the economically weaker ". The Anglo-
French conflict in the Levant was over territorial issues,
and it did not at once abate in the years that followed.
Great Britain felt that her route to India would not be
secure unless she had possession also of the Syrian ports ;
France had not forgotten her historic claims to Palestine
and Mosul. And France in her turn had been taught
by the world war how necessary it was to have reserves
of petroleum. During the war she had been almost
entirely dependent on American oil supplies. Immediately
after the Armistice the French government founded the
Compagnie Fra^aise des P6troles, to develop the French
oilfields abroad, present and future. The Anglo-French
conflict was disguised in 1921 in the form of a Turco-Greek
war : as Ludwell Denny says in his We Fight for Oil,
" France and Great Britain hit upon the idea of fighting
one another through third parties." France supported
Turkey and Great Britain the Greeks. After the defeat
of the Greeks the British were afraid that France would
support Turkey in her claims to the Mosul region. This
led Britain to agree in 1923 to the French occupation of
the Ruhr, in return for which France allowed Great
Britain a free hand in the Mosul region.

Mosul is important strategically as well as for its oil.
The struggle for it between Great Britain and Turkey
dragged on for more than two years. Not until Decem-
ber 1925 did the League of Nations Council decide
in favour of Great Britain. Turkey agreed to the
frontier delimitation in June 1926, perhaps under the
threat of an Italian attack on Asia Minor with British
approval* Great Britain had won. It was true that
she no longer had a monopoly in Iraq; French and

180 INTEB-RELATIOJST AND IMPLICATIONS

American interests had a share in its development. But
she had a controlling majority ; under its statutes the
company for the exploitation of the oilfields in Mosul,
which changed its name to Iraq Petroleum Company,
was a British company. An Armenian, Mr Gulbenkian,
received 5 per cent, of the shares, the Anglo-Persian
31-25 per cent., and the British Shell, the American
group, and the lYench group 21 25 per cent. each. Thus
Great Britain holds 52 5 per cent, of the shares. But the
essential thing is that in the event of war this oil will be
available for the British navy.

On March 14th, 1925, a concession agreement was
concluded between the Turkish Petroleum Company and
the Iraqi government. The agreement runs for fifty-seven
years, at the end of which the whole of the property of
the company in Iraq comes into the possession of the
state. The company was given the right to select within
twenty-three months, on the strength of its experimental
borings, twenty-four rectangular plots of land, each of
eight square miles, in the districts of Mosul and Baghdad.
The company had to undertake to carry out a fixed
of borings each year, and to pay to the govern

ment a fixed royalty for every ton of oil extracted. In
the San Remo agreement it was originally provided that
the indigenous government should receive 20 per cent.
of the shares, but the Iraqi government failed to secure the
fulfilment of this provision. The company bound itself
to meet the requirements of Iraq in the first place, to
employ as far as possible only Iraqis, and so far as possible
to train Iraqis in the occupations for which there were not
yet sufficient qualified indigenous workers. In all future
share issues subscription lists were also to be opened in
Iraq, and the Iraqis were to be given preference in the
allotment of at least 20 per cent, of the new shares. The
Iraqi government received the right to nominate a member
of the board of directors. Under Article 32 of the
concession agreement the Iraq Petroleum Company was
to remain a British Company registered in Great Britain,
was to have its head office within the British Empire,

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 181

and was at all times to have a British subject for its
chairman.

The company began its experimental borings in 1927,
and as early as October of that year it found at Baba
Gurgur, near Kirkuk, an extraordinarily rich gusher.
Large installations were set up, roads built, pipe-lines
laid, and workings developed which cost the company
in all more than 4,000,000. The company only
extracted, however, enough oil for its own needs ; com-
mercial exploitation could only begin when transport was
made possible by the completion of the pipe-line to the
Mediterranean. With the fall in oil prices the British
and American oil interests showed no great inclination
to expedite the development of the Mosul oilfields ; it
was more important to them to have reserves for years
to come than to increase the sales in an already over-
burdened market.

The Compagnie Franaise des P^troles, on the other
hand, was interested in obtaining as large an output of oil
as soon as possible, in order to be made independent of
imports by its own petroleum reserves. The Iraqi govern-
ment was equally interested in an adequate output, as
only that would provide it with substantial royalties,
which it urgently needed for the development of Iraqi
agriculture and industry. It put pressure on the Iraq
Petroleum Company to select the fields it wanted as quickly
as possible, so that the government should be able to give
concessions to other companies for the remaining plots
and so be able to increase the revenues of the state. The
collapse of grain prices brought Iraq into a worse financial
situation, and King Faisal took the opportunity of a
journey in the summer of 1930 to get into touch with
financiers in the European capitals and to pave the way
for a settlement in regard to oil concessions that would be
in his country's interest. The joint efforts of the French
and Iraqi governments brought them a victory over the
policy of making development depend on price move-
ments and market conditions. On March 24th, 1931, a
supplementary agreement was concluded between the

182 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Iraq Petroleum Company and the Iraqi government.
Under this agreement the company received as its con-
cession area all the land east of the Tigris in the provinces
of Baghdad and Mosul. The company bound itself to
complete the pipe-line to the Mediterranean by December
31st, 1935. This pipe-line was to be capable of conveying
at least 3,000,000 tons a year. The company bound
itself also to pay the Iraqi government a sum of 400,000
in gold every year until regular export to the Mediter-
ranean began, 200,000 of this being on account of future
royalties in so far as these exceeded a certain minimum.
After the opening of the pipe-line the company guarantees
the government for a period of twenty years a royalty
of four shillings gold per ton for a minimum annual output
of 2,000,000 tons, that is to say, at least 400,000 a year.
The pipe-line was completed well ahead of the stipulated
time, and was opened in January 1935. The prices of
petroleum products in Iraq have been substantially
reduced ; oil fuel required for agricultural machinery
and pumps is reduced in price by one-third.

The San Bemo agreement originally envisaged tJtr^

pumping of oil from Iraq to a Syrian port,' but Grear^

Britain soon insisted in taking the pipe-line to the Bay of

Acre, where in the event of war she had the exclusive

right of use of all port plant. Great Britain also insisted

in bringing the pipe-line entirely through territory under

British military supervision. France, on the other hand,

was naturally interested in bringing the petroleum to a

port under her own military control. A compromise

was finally effected through the active mediation of King

Faisal, and preparations were able to be begun in 1931

for the laying of the pipe-line. It runs from the oil region

around Kirkuk across the Tigris to the Euphrates, which

it crosses at Haditha. From there one branch crosses

via Abu Kemal through Syria to Tripoli, and the other,

which must convey at least 50 per cent, of the oil output,

through Transjordania to the Bay of Acre. The Bay of

Acre with the port of Haifa, and the Shatt-el-Arab from

Basra to the Persian Gulf, will thus form in every respect

OF WORLD ECONOMICS 183

Great Britain's strategic bases in the Near East ; Haifa,
on the Mediterranean, will also guard the Suez Canal,
and thus outstrips Basra in importance.

The work of leading the pipe-line through the desert
has changed the aspect of the desert. Workmen's
settlements have been built, machines of the most
complicated sort brought in, drinking water provided,
asphalt roads built, and telephone lines laid. Thousands
of Bedouins have found work, though this has only been a
temporary palliative for the impoverishment of the owners
of the herds of camels through the arrival of the motor

car.

The definite settlement of the concession to the Iraq
Petroleum Company gave the Iraqi government the
opportunity of granting the concession for the oil deposits
west of the Tigris, where the Iraq Petroleum Company
had already had success with experimental borings near
Kaijara, some sixty miles south of Mosul on the right
bank of the Tigris. In 1932 the Iraqi government
granted the concession to the British Oil Development
Company, which, under British leadership, also represented
German, Swiss, and Italian oil interests. The agreement
resembles that with the Iraq Petroleum Company in
providing substantial royalties for the government, requir-
ing that the company shall always be a British company
with a British chairman, and imposing on it the obligation,
among others, of giving a number of suitable Iraqi
students a training abroad at its own expense in geology
and as petroleum technologists.

In a few years' time Iraq wiJl become one of the most
important petroleum countries of the world. The
oilfields in southern Iran and northern Iraq, associated
together and largely under unified control, will take the
third or fourth place in the world's oil extraction. The
pipe-lines to Abadan near Basra, to Haifa and to Tripoli,
are making possible exportation from regions which in
earlier times were difficult of access. Their situation by
the Suez Canal and by the Persian Gulf increases the
strategic importance of these oil supplies.

184 WORLD ECONOMICS

But oil extraction is also of more than merely fiscal
importance to Iraq herself. She is concerning herself
more and more for the gradual creation and advancement
of an industrial working class in a country hitherto con-
fined to peasants and nomads ; she is working in the
direction of industrialization and the transformation of
her economic system. Cotton and oil are the two great
economic interests which have involved the countries
of the Levant in the modern world economic system and
thereby in world politics. But over and above them
there is at work the ambition of their peoples for political
and economic autonomy, an ambition which has filled
their minds in consequence of their contact with Europe.

INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS OF
WORLD POLITICS

ECONOMIC CONQUESTS

THE characteristic feature of the age of Imperialism, and
the basis of its conflicts, is the search for sources of raw
materials and for markets of vast extent, and for strategic
positions commanding the routes to them. But this is
not all. The conflicts arise out of two contradictory
sets of ambitions, whose course it determines the
ambition of the great empires for expansion, and that of
the smaller nations for independence. Since the time of
Napoleon the country between the Bosphorus and the
Indian Ocean, the Nile and the Caspian, has been one of
the principal fields of tension in world politics. In
execution of the aims of the French Revolution, the genius
of Napoleon had brought to Europe from Cadiz to Moscow
a new self-confidence, a sense of freedom and energy :
he made an end of the fusty provinciality, the isolation
and backwardness of Italy and Germany, and the con-
ception of Europe, which had gained a footing in courts
and among a small caste of aristocrats and men of learning
in the era of the Enlightenment, became an active force
in the life of the peoples. These processes extended, in
a very dilute form, as far as the Levant. Napole6n's
expeditions and missions to Egypt not only made the
Egypt of his day directly acquainted with its immemorial
civilizations, but also laid the foundation for the awaken-
ing of modern Egypt which began under Mehemet Ali, the
Albanian of humble origin who became an officer in the
Turkish army and rose to be the founder of the dynasty
that rules to this day in Egypt. Through Napoleon
Egypt was brought within the field of the Anglo-French
rivalry for the control of India and of the land route to
India; and the rivalry over Egypt continued, though

185

186 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

for different reasons, until in 1904 King Edward VII
arrived at an understanding with France, for which
Egypt (and Morocco) had to pay.

Napoleon's activities also brought Persia for the first
time within the field of Anglo-Russian rivalries ; the
rivalry over Persia continued in full force until 1907,
when King Edward VII arrived at an understanding with
Russia at Persia's expense. After Napoleon had failed
in his plan of controlling the route to India through
the conquest of Egypt and Syria, he tried in his struggle
with England to strike through Persia, with Russia's
help, at the heart of the second British Empire which
was then beginning to grow. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century French, English, and Russian missions
were sent for the first time to Persia, to bring that
country within the field of world politics. The result
was a century of progressive weakening for Persia.
Russia penetrated into the Caucasus and into central
Asia, conquered Georgia and Azerbaijan, which had been
Persian provinces, and weakened Persia's influence in
central Asia. Great Britain protected Afghanistan,
which formerly had been Persian territory, in its struggles
against Persia, in order to preserve it as a bulwark against
the advance of Russian influence through Persia ; she
extended the frontiers of British Baluchistan at Persia's
expense, and established her influence in the Persian
Gulf and over the Bahrein Islands, which had once
belonged to Persia. The country was even more fatally
weakened by the economic penetration that began with
the Russo-Persian Treaty of Turkmanchai (1828), which
introduced the regime of capitulations into Persia and
compelled the country to give Russia a free hand in
commerce.

While Napoleon's emergence in Europe roused the
nations of Europe from their lethargy, it accelerated the
process of decay and dissolution in which the countries
and peoples of the Levant were involved. These countries
were brought within the sphere of world policy in the
nineteenth centurv, but, just as in the economic field.

OF WORLD POLITICS 187

only passively. It was a universal assumption in
European policy that the states of the Near East were
destined to be " liquidated ". Since, however, the
interests of the European Powers conflicted, the essence
of the Near East question consisted in carrying through
this liquidation if possible without endangering world
peace, and with due regard to the interests of each
individual Power. It was not by their own strength and
not by virtue of any national will to self-preservation that
the Ottoman empire and Persia continued in existence
during the nineteenth century, but through the conflict
of interests of the European Powers. But it was a
precarious existence. The formal independence of these
countries was robbed of all reality by complete financial
and economic dependence. Scarcely anywhere was the
influence of foreign capital greater than in Turkey, Egypt,
and Persia. In this respect the histories of these three
states were identical ; they were repeated in a slightly
milder form in China and South America. The
extravagance of princes free of all popular control, not
seldom encouraged and exploited by Europeans, resulted
in their acceptance of a steady succession of loans, which,
being applied to unproductive purposes, rapidly swelled
the burden of state debt into disastrous proportions.
The loan service itself necessitated the acceptance of new
loans, the grant of which was made subject to the grant
in return of economic concessions, especially for the
building of railways, the development of water power, and
the exploitation of mineral wealth. The political power
of the various states was brought to the support of their
nationals in this hunt for concessions. The corrupt
Oriental officials were tempted to more and more serious
neglect of their duties toward their own country. The
system of loans and concessions led not only to the
exploitation of the countries in the interest of European
capitalism, but to the further increase of corruption and
of the internal weakness of the Oriental administrations.
It is true that some of these enterprises and concessions
assisted in the development of indigenous economic

188 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

resources, but this was only an incidental and chance
result ; the immediate purpose was the economic advan-
tage of the European Power, which also, through its
financial and capitalistic domination, secured political
control. The countries quickly became bankrupt, and
their financial administration was taken over by the
European creditors* In Egypt the Caisse de la Dette
Publique was set up in 1876. In December 1881, the
Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt was con-
stituted in Turkey ; it had seven members, six represent-
ing the European creditors and one the Banque Imp6riale
Ottomane; the Turkish representative was appointed
only in an advisory capacity.

The Treaty of Sevres of August 10th, 1920, envisaged
the setting up of a Financial Commission, to consist of a
French, a British, and an Italian member, to control the
whole financial and economic life of the state. The annual
Budget was to be laid before it and only to be presented
to the Turkish Parliament in the form approved by it ;
the Parliament was to make no changes in the approved
Budget without the assent of the Commission. The
Commission was to supervise the administration of the
Budget and of all financial legislation in Turkey. To
this end the Turkish financial inspectorate was directly
subordinated to the Commission, whose assent was
required to the appointment of members of the inspec-
torate. The assent of the Commission was required for all
external or internal loans, and all Turkish sources of
revenue were placed at its disposal, as the Commission
alone was to take measures for developing the economic
potentialities of the country. The Turkish government
was to grant no concession either to a Turkish national
or to a foreigner without the assent of the Financial
Commission. The Administration of the Q|toman
Public Debt was to continue in office, but the Russian,
German, and Austro-Hungarian representatives were
excluded, leaving only those of France, Great Britain, and
Italy. The Customs administration was to be entrusted
to a Director General who was to be appointed by the

WORLD POLITICS 189

Financial Commission and to be subject to dismissal by
it, and no change was to be made in tariff rates without
the approval of the Financial Commission,

In the Treaty of Sevres, which was never ratified, the
control of Oriental states by foreign capital and its interests
reached the theoretical maximum ambition of the
European Powers, an ambition they were never able to
carry into practice on such a scale. This past experience
makes intelligible the aversion of Turkey and Persia to
the acceptance of foreign loans since they have won their
independence. They have preferred to put up with
delays in carrying out important economic reforms and
public works rather than incur the risk of falling again
into economic tutelage. Next to the Soviet Union,
Turkey and Persia have given the strongest evidence of
their determination to preserve their independence by
definitely emancipating themselves from the position of
semi-colonial countries serving European economic
interests.

There are plenty of semi-colonial countries economi-
cally dependent on foreign capital outside the Orient. The
special feature in the East was that this dependence was
clinched and reinforced by the system of capitulations,
which not only secured to foreign capital and its holders
freedom from taxation and placed them under courts
of justice of their own, but prevented the economic and
social development of the country and its administrative
and juridical modernization. A special means of sub-
jecting Oriental trade and industry to the domination of
European and American capitalism was provided by the
tariff legislation. Under this Turkey was only permitted
to levy a uniform fiscal duty on imports of 8 per cent,
ad valorem. She was not permitted to make any sort of
differeiriiation between different categories of goods or
countries of origin. European industry had in Turkey
a permanently open market, an international free trade
area at the service of foreign capital, while Turkish
production could enjoy no protection either through
tariffs or through treaties with particular states. When

190 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

the Turkish government wanted to raise the general
rate of duty from 8 to 12 per cent., in order to increase
its revenue, it had to purchase the assent of the
Powers by a series of valuable concessions and heavy
sacrifices.

Even after the world wax the European Powers hoped
to be able to retain their old position of advantage in the
Near East ; they were ready to agree to a relaxation of
the capitulations, the misuse of which, they were unable
to deny, had often been carried to grotesque lengths ;
but they regarded the abolition of capitulations as
impossible. In the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 Turkey
insisted on the complete abolition of capitulations, and
Persia denounced them in 1928 without meeting with any
serious resistance. Egypt secured tariff independence in
1929, but the capitulations continue in full force. The
desire for the maintenance of capitulations, which are in
the interest of the foreigners and not in that of the native
population, finds very significant expression in the League
of Nations Mandates, which may serve as an interesting
type of camouflage and paraphrasing of the methods of
imposing colonial status familiar in the' Near East in the
century before the world war, bringing them up to date
or at least up to the date of the immediate post-war
period. According to the Covenant the well-being and
the development of native peoples is a sacred task of
civilization, but nevertheless the interests of foreigners
and of foreign capital are given first consideration. Thus
until 1935 Palestine was entirely under British adminis-
tration, and had no native authorities against whose
" corruption " or " incompetence " the foreigner might
need special protection ; yet the foreigner in Palestine
was better situated in many ways than the native, as he
still is in Syria. The capitulations are formally suspended
for the period of the Mandate ; but the statute of the
Mandate (which, of course, was created in order to train
the country, which is "not yet entirely ripe ", until it
reaches a cultural and social level at which it could take
its place on terms of equality in the modern world)

OF WORLD POLITICS 191

contains this provision in regard to the event of the
termination of the Mandate :

" Unless the Powers whose nationals enjoyed the
aforementioned privileges and immunities on August
1st, 1914, shall have previously renounced the right
to their re-establishment, or shall have agreed to their
non-application for a specified period, these privileges
and immunities shall at the expiration of the mandate
be immediately re-established in their entirety or with
such modifications as may have been agreed upon
between the Powers concerned/ 9

The old Ottoman empire collapsed long ago, the
Turkish Republic has swept away the last vestige of the
capitulations, but the League Mandate serves to maintain
" in their entirety " the principles of this system, described
by so many observers as an abuse, if the interest of the
Powers demands it and if the Powers so determine.

But the Mandate not only maintains the obsolete
system of the capitulations for an indefinite period in the
interest of the Powers; it also, in the interest of the
Powers, restricts the fiscal sovereignty of the mandated
territories. The Mandates for Palestine and Syria lay
down that " there shall be no discrimination in Palestine
against goods originating in or destined for any " State
Member of the League of Nations. These two countries
are thus prevented from negotiating mutual tariff
privileges, quotas, and so on. All States Members of the
League of Nations enjoy most-favoured-nation conditions
in mandated territories,' without such territories being
permitted to claim a corresponding advantage. Instead
of promoting the economic progress of the mandated
territory, which should be the purpose of the Mandate,
the " sacred task of civilization ", the lack of complete
tariff sovereignty restricts the economic activities of the
mandated territory in favour of the importing countries.

POIJTICAL TENSIONS

Ultimately the interests of six Powers came into
competition in the international arena of the Levant. It

192 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

was Austria and Russia who originally, in the eighteenth
century, brought to an end the victorious advance of the
Ottoman power in central and south-eastern Europe and
loosened Turkey's hold of her European possessions.
Austria's attention, however, was soon diverted from
the Turkish scene ; so long as her rulers wore the German
imperial crown or she belonged to the German Confedera-
tion, Austria's interests lay in the west. Only after 1866
did she seek compensation for her losses in the west
through an extension of her influence toward the south-
east. This necessarily brought her into conflict with
Russia, who since the time of Peter the Great had regarded
the Balkans, where peoples allied to her in faith and race
were living under Turkish rule, as her own field of expan-
sion. For Russia the possession of the Bosphorus and
the Dardanelles would have broken down the barrier that
isolated her from the ocean. In the north she possessed
only inadequate ports, ice-bound during the winter;
the natural outlet for the south of Russia with its great
exports of grain was the Black Sea, but this remained
an inland sea so long as its one narrow outlet was not
under Russian control. Constantinople, however, was
more than the object of economic ambitions ; it was the
romantic dream of the Russian people, its Church, and its
Tsar. Only in Constantinople would they be able to feel
that they had won the full spiritual self -integration which
united them with the cultural development of centuries,
and the undertaking and consummating of which they
regarded as their mission. Thus for the Russians the
Bosphorus was a strategic, an economic, and a spiritual
desideratum. While Austria-Hungary contented herself
with influence in the Balkans, Russia's ambition went
much farther ; she wanted the break-up of Turkey and
the final expulsion of that state from Europe and from
the Straits ; she wanted to restore the Byzantine empire,
regarding herself ate its true heir.

In the nineteenth century Russia had a rival in this
ambition : a rival, indeed, who hardly counted politically
Greece, who was consumed by the " great idea " of the

OF WORLD POLITICS 193

liberation of Thrace and Constantinople, the Aegean
Islands and Asia Minor, the southern shores of the Black
Sea, and Cyprus, and of their re-union in the glory of the
Pan-Hellenic past and future. But Russia pushed on
not only west but east of the Black Sea ; she climbed
over the Caucasus, where she came into conflict with
Persia and Turkey, and she found south of the Caucasus
a Christian people under the dominion of the Turks and
in need of liberation the Armenians. Southward from
the Caucasus, and later through the steppes of central
Asia, the way seemed to open for her to the Persian
Gulf, and to the Indian Ocean, in rounding off her
continually growing Asiatic possessions.

While Russia thus became the great adversary of
Turkey in the nineteenth century, Great Britain had
little interest in Turkey herself. All that was of economic
importance was the cotton cultivation in Egypt ; scarcely
a thought was given in the nineteenth century to the oil
deposits of Persia and Iraq. For Great Britain the
Ottoman empire and Egypt were of importance as transit
countries between Europe and southern Asia ; her policy
was dictated by the fear of a closing of the route to
India. She sought to prepare the way for the creation
and safeguarding of a land connection with India. Great
Britain's policy in the nineteenth century was directed
to the preservation of Turkey ; in this she was also con-
cerned for her seventy million Mohammedan subjects
in India, who represented there the best support of
British role against the growing unrest of the Hindus.
On the other hand, Great Britain could not permit Turkey
to grow stronger. A weak Turkey on the route to India
mattered little, while any other Power in possession in
her place of important regions of Asia Minor might be a
very serious obstacle. The " Sick Man " was to be kept
alive, but must not be allowed to get well.

As with Turkey, so with Persia : Great Britain was
interested in her preservation, but not in any increase in
her strength. Persia and Afghanistan were necessary to
Great Britain as buffer states between India and Russian

13

194 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

penetration from tlie north. The safeguarding of India
was served by the transformation of the Indian Ocean
and its two approaches, the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf, into British waters, surrounded on all sides by
British possessions or spheres of influence. The Red Sea
was enclosed through the possession of the Sinai peninsula
and of Aden ; this process was completed in recent years
through the acquisition of Akaba. The Persian Gulf,
which has only two good ports, Kuweit and Muscat, was
converted into a British sphere of influence even more
thoroughly than the Red Sea, which has remained an
international traffic route ; British governments have
repeatedly emphasized Great Britain's special strategic,
political, and economic interests in the Persian Gulf.
This policy was given its most decided expression in the
declaration of the British government of May 5th, 1903,
that "His Majesty's Government would regard the
establishment of a naval base or a fortified port in the
Persian Gulf by any other Power as a very grave menace
to British interests, and would certainly resist it with
all the means at their disposal."

As long ago as 1798 the English concluded a treaty
with the Sultan of Oman, to exclude the French from
there. In 1903 Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Persian
Gulf assumed threatening forms. In November of that
year Lord Curzon, then Viceroy of India, undertook a
voyage from Karachi into the Persian Gulf, accompanied
by British warships, which had much of the nature of a
naval demonstration. The whole of the trade and shipping
in the Persian Gulf was in British or Anglo-Indian hands ;
it was bound, therefore, to arouse apprehension in Great
Britain when it was proposed to extend the Baghdad
Railway to Kuweit, the best port in the Gulf. But Great
Britain had already protected herself. All the states on
the shores of the Persian Gulf have come through a series
of treaties under British, or, rather, Anglo-Indian
protection the Bahrein Islands, which Persia also claims,
the principalities of Qatar and Kuweit, which until 1914
werenominaUy under Turkish overlordship, the sultanateof

OF WORLD POLITICS 195

Oman with its capital Muscat, and the six principalities
of the so-called Pirate Coast, off which there lie a number of
islands which are in dispute between Persia and Great
Britain. The Persian Gulf is of importance to Britain
not only as a sea route but as an air route : the air line
from Iraq to India makes use of the islands of the Persian
Gulf, and that from India via Aden to East Africa, will
perhaps do so.

Great Britain has tried to penetrate Arabia from the
Persian Gulf and from the Red Sea. During the world
war the Anglo-Egyptian administration entered into
negotiations with the Arabs of the Hedjaz ; the Anglo-
Indian administration negotiated with the Arabs of
Nejd, whose leader, Ibn Saud, had conquered the coastal
regions of El Hasa and Hofuf , on the Persian Gulf (until
then nominally Turkish), in 1913, becoming thus a
direct neighbour of the British sphere of influence. In
1915 the British High Commissioner in Egypt, General
MacMahon, came into touch with the Sherif of Mecca,
Hussein Ibn Ali, and on December 28th, 1915, Great
Britain concluded a treaty with Ibn Saud, in which he
was recognized as ruler of Nejd and Hasa^ ^epting in
return a loose British protectorate. During^d&e world
war British troops not only penetrated through the
Shatt-el-Arab, the only stream of fresh water running
into the Persian Gulf, past Basra into Iraq, but also into
southern Persia, where Great Britain held a strong posi-
tion in Bushire and Mohammerah. The British purpose
in the occupation of Persia was to prevent an anticipated
Turco-German attack on India. Neutral Persia became
a field for struggles and intrigues between Russians and
British on one side and Germans and Turks on the other.
After the collapse of the Russian front the British occupied
the whole of Persia, together with Baku and Georgia on
the west of the Caspian and Transcaspia on its east. Great
Britain's power in the Near East appeared then to have
reached its zenith. British troops controlled Constanti-
nople and the Caucasus, Egypt and Syria, Iraq and
Persia. This whole immense block of territory seemed

196 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

destined to form an assured bridge to India, and the
German and Russian perils seemed to be at an end for all
time. The Treaty of Sevres, the Mandates over ex-
Turkish territories in Asia Minor, and the treaty with
Persia of August 9th, 1919, which amounted to the
establishment of a veiled British protectorate over the
country, especially over its army and its finances, aimed
at permanently establishing this unhoped-for and to
some extent unintentionally acquired position, resulting
from the world war, and, of course, only made possible
by Russia's collapse. But Russian rivalry was soon to
emerge in a new and more dangerous form, as an ally of
a new and totally unexpected factor, the will to self-
determination of the Oriental peoples, which had started
at the outset of the twentieth century as a movement of
the intellectuals on the European model, and began amid
the disasters of the world war to spread to the masses
of the people and to win their active support.

Germany had turned her attention to the south-east
comparatively late. It is doubtful whether the ultimate
purpose of the Baghdad Railway and other projects of
economic expansion in Turkey in Asia was to gain any
increase of territory. What Germany was seeking was
sources of raw material and markets for the industry of
this youngest of the capitalist Powers, an industry which
hadjnade such enormous advances in so short a period but
was faced everywhere with older competitors. German
trade with Turkey had been insignificant just before the
outset of the present century, but had grown with great
rapidity. According to figures published by Eliot Grinnell
Mears, German imports into Turkey grew from 1,239,000
dollars in 1894 to 22,915,000 doUars in 1912. The bulk of
this advance, from 5,831,000 dollars to 22,915,000 doUars,
took place in the six years 1906 to 1912. Up to 1906
Germany had imported only about half as much as
France or Italy ; by 1912 she had far out-distanced both
of these countries. The building of the Baghdad Railway
was to open access to more distant Asiatic countries for
German trade and finance, This plan coUapsed during

OF WORLD POLITICS 197

the world war through the British conquest of
Mesopotamia, and the attacks against the Suez Canal
proved insufficiently prepared ; Germany's political and
economic leaders then, after the Russian collapse, tried
to find a way to the south-east through the Caucasus.
" The politicians who advocated these plans promised
themselves for Germany, given a strong position in the
Caucasus, predominant influence in the Black Sea and the
ability to close the Straits at any time, without being
dependent for this purpose on Turkey. The Caucasus
seemed to them to serve as a springboard for political
activity in Persia and central Asia ; the control of the
Caucasus seemed to them to be nothing less than the
keystone of German policy in the Near East. From there
it would be possible to threaten India, and after Baghdad
had fallen into British hands the slogan Berlin-Baghc^
was very simply converted to Hamburg-Herat. TL>
imagined route led via the Black Sea, Batoum, Tiflis,
Baku, and Teheran to Herat in Afghanistan." (Kurt
Ziemke.) So the collapse of Russia allured both Great
Britain and Germany into Caucasian dreams, both of
which quickly vanished into thin air.

France's interests in the Levant are more difficult
to define in territorial terms. In all the countries of the
Levant France was the leading European Great Power in
the cultural and financial fields. Among the investments
in the Ottoman empire French capital held first place,
ahead of British and German. French was the language
of culture and literature of the educated classes of all the
peoples of the Levant ; Paris was for them the centre of
Europe ; French ideals of sovereignty, democracy, and
the lay state, had won the minds and the hearts of the
progressive Turks, Egyptians, Arabians and Persians.
France's cultural and financial interests in Syria were
particularly great. They were further strengthened by
the memories of the Crusades, by France's traditional
position as protector of the Catholics in the Ottoman
empire, and by the effort of the strongest Mediterranean
Power in the western basin of the Mediterranean to obtain

198 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

a firm footing also in the eastern basin. Next to France
as a Mediterranean Power came Italy, a late-comer like
Germany in the creation of a unified national state and a
powerful industry. She was interested in the Ottoman
empire at three points, in the Adriatic, where she success-
fully competed first with Austria-Hungary and then with
Serbia over predominance in Albania ; in the eastern
basin of the Mediterranean, where as long ago as 1912 she
occupied the important Turkish island group of the
Dodecanese, with Rhodes, which is mainly inhabited by
Greeks (these islands, together with the island of
Castellorizo, just off the coast of Asia Minor, which has
been developed into an air base and naval base, are a
menace to south-western Anatolia) ; and in the Red Sea,
where she attempted to penetrate Yemen and Asir from
Eritrea. Italy is seeking opportunities of colonization in
the Levant for her growing population. But these
countries, now that national consciousness has been
awakened in them and has penetrated the masses of the
people, are a thoroughly unsuitable field for attempts at
colonization. Even in Tripolitania, which is much more
backward than the countries of the Levant and is every-
where thinly populated, Italy had to overcome the greatest
difficulties for the most modest of success in colonization.
Even without political penetration, the influence of
Italian trade in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean
grows through the country's advantageous geographical
situation. Since the reconciliation with the Vatican,
Italy has been trying to take over the protectorate over
the Levantine Catholic Christians, hitherto exercised by
France alone, and^has begun to compete with Prance in
the development of a comprehensive missionary and
cultural propaganda.

DURING A]STD AFTER THE WORLD WAR

Turkey's support of the Central Powers in the world
war seemed to provide the opportunity for Russia, Great
Britain, and France to agree upon their plans for dealing

OF WORLD POLITICS 199

with the Ottoman empire in the event of their victory.
The future territorial division of the Ottoman empire
was partly determined by secret treaties (which only
came to public knowledge in the autumn of 1917, after the
opening by the Soviet government of the archives of
the Russian Foreign Ministry) ; and partly by promises,
deliberately left in vague terms, which the Allied Powers,
and especially Great Britain, made in the course of the
war to Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Kurds, and other peoples
whose support they endeavoured to gain in this way.
These secret treaties and promises were made in the spirit
of the greatest imperialist war ever known ; and all of
them were only binding so long as the relative strengths
of the Powers that made them required or permitted
their observance. Henry U. Hopli writes of Great
Britain's promises that " it may be said in general that
there was no intention of observing any of the treaties
concluded in the course of the military operations if they
ran counter to her interests ", and this is equally applicable
to all the other states. The coming years were to show
the extent to which the small nations of the Levant were
in reality " only pawns on the chessboard of the victorious
Powers ".

As early as March 1915, Russia, Great Britain, and
France concluded an agreement under which Constanti-
nople and the Straits were to fall to Russia and the neutral
zone in Persia to Great Britain. The Holy Places in
Arabia were to be put under an independent Mohammedan
government. In the Treaty of London of April 26th,
1915, Italy^adhered to these agreements, being promised
in return the section of the south coast of Asia Minor
around the Gulf of Adalia. At the end of 1915 the
negotiations were concluded between Great Britain and
the Sherif of Mecca, the independence of the Arabs being
agreed to, subject to certain limitations which were not
clearly defined. So soon after this as May 1916, Sir
Mark Sykes and Georges Picot, the British and French
experts in Levant questions, concluded a secret treaty in
which the general idea was accepted of an " independent

200 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Arab state or a federation of Arab states ", but at the
very outset, while this Arab state was still entirely non-
existent, it was divided on the model of the old Turkey
or Persia into British and French zones of influence which
made any sort of independence illusory. In addition to
this, Erance received the Syrian coast and Great Britain
southern Mesopotamia for administration as colonies,
subject to no restrictions, while, with the agreement of
Russia and of the Sherif of Mecca, an international
administration was to be set up in the region west of the
Jordan, with Jerusalem as its centre. Great Britain also
received the ports of Haifa and Acre and the right to build
a railway from Haifa to Baghdad. Eor a period of
twenty years the Turkish Customs tariff, with its uniform
ad valorem duties, was to remain in force in the
" independent " Arab state. The importation of arms
into the independent Arab realm was to be under the
control of Great Britain and Erance, so that this state was
deprived not only of all economic but of all military
freedom of action.

In the spring of 1916 Russia gave her agreement to
these plans of partition, being promised Armenia and
Kurdistan in return. In order that Italy should not be
left empty-handed, she was promised, in April 1917, the
western coast of Asia Minor, with Smyrna, to which Greece
subsequently made claim. This dispute led to the Greek
occupation of Smyrna, and this in turn to the Greco-
Turkish war, out of which the new Turkey was to emerge.
On November 2nd, 1917, Great Britain, through a letter
from Balfour to Lord Rothschild, promised her support
for the creation of a National Home for the Jewish people
in Palestine, a country which the Arabs regarded as a
part of their future realm. Armenian delegations had
repeatedly been solemnly promised by Britain, Erance,
and America that an Armenian state should be set up
after, Russia's collapse ; this state was also to include
the historic regions of Armenia, although these were
inhabited by a majority of Turks.

OF WORLD POLITICS 201

Wlien the time came for carrying out these agreements
and promises, the situation had fundamentally changed.
Russia had retired from the war ; and the victory over
Turkey and over the Central Powers had been more
complete than was expected. In the Levant Great
Britain was dominant, as it had been her troops that had
carried on the campaign in Mesopotamia and in Syria
and had pushed on victoriously to the limits of Asia
Minor. In view of the completeness of the victory, the
Lloyd George Government departed from the view of
earlier British governments that Turkey must be kept
alive as a " sick man ". But the sharing of the spoils
among the various Powers was hampered by mutual
suspicion; France and Italy, the two Mediterranean
Powers, had no interest in an excessive strengthening of
Great Britain in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Not
until April 24th, 1920, was an agreement arrived at at
San Remo. This agreement was the first public instru-
ment after the war in which the oil question was opened
up; it also laid the bases of the peace treaty of Sevres
of August 10th, 1920. This treaty partitioned Asia Minor
into Greek, Italian, and French spheres of influence;
it assigned Mesopotamia and Palestine to Great Britain,
subject in the case of Palestine to the obligation of
facilitating the creation of a Jewish National Home;
Syria was assigned to France, and provision was made
for setting up an Armenian and a Kurdish state.

But the Treaty of Sevres had become out of date at
the very time when it was drawn up. As T. E. Lawrence
caustically wrote of the drawing up of the treaty by the
victor states, " Each party making the terms considered
only what it could take, or rather what would be most
difficult for her neighbours to take or to refuse her, and
the document is not the constitution of a new Asia, but a
confession, almost an advertisement, of the greeds of the
conquerors. No single clause of it will stand the test
of three years practice, and it will only be happier than
the German treaty in that it will not be revised it will
be forgotten."

202 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Lawrence's forecast has in the main been confirmed.
In the course of the two years that followed the San Remo
Conference the situation in the Levant was completely
changed. The Treaty of S&vres disappeared from view.
A new factor had unexpectedly come into play, the
nationalism of the Oriental peoples, a new determination,
strengthened by experiences of the war and its diplomacy,
to maintain their independence. The Allied Powers had
done much by their own conduct to awaken this national-
ism. The contrast between their promises and their
true aims had been too gross. As early as November 9th,
1918, after the armistice which had brought the war
with Turkey to an end, Great Britain and France had
made a declaration to the Arab peoples on the future
destiny of their countries, in which freedom and
independence were promised, but there were also promised
an unasked " support and effective assistance " :

" The aim which Great Britain and France have
in view in conducting in the East the war which was
unchained by German ambition is the complete and
final enfranchisement of the peoples which have for
so long been oppressed by the Turks and the setting
up of national governments and administrations,
drawing their authority from the initiative and free
choice of the native populations.

" In order to give effect to these intentions, Great
Britain and France have agreed to encourage and
assist the establishment of native governments and
administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia, now
liberated by the Allies, and in the territories where
the Allies are still carrying out the work of liberation,
and to recognize these governments and adminis-
trations as soon as they are effectively established.
Far from desiring to impose upon the populations of
these districts any particular institutions, Great
Britain and France have no other concern than to
assure, by their support and effective assistance,
the normal working of the governments and

OF WORLD POLITICS 203

administrations which these territories will give
themselves of their own free will.

" To assure impartial and equal justice for all, to
facilitate the economic development of the countries
by stimulating and encouraging local initiative, to
favour the spread of education, to put an end to
divisions too long exploited by Turkish policy such
is the role which the two Allied governments claim for
themselves in the liberated territories."

After this the peoples to whom all this was promised
certainly had the right to wonder in the years that fol-
lowed how far national governments would be permitted
to be set up in accordance with the free choice of the native
populations, and how far economic initiative on the part
of the native populations would be encouraged and the
dissensions between the various sections of the population
no longer accentuated and exploited.

The first step in the revision of the Treaty of S&vres
came with the practical settlement of the Armenian
question. It had already been settled at the time when
the signatories to the Treaty of S&vres were still holding
to the policy of setting up an independent Armenian
state. Simultaneously with the signing of the Treaty of
Sevres, a treaty was signed by the Allied Powers with
Armenia, containing various provisions in regard to the
protection of minorities, most-favoured-nation treatment,
and so on. It was no more than the ghost of a treaty.
The Turks under Mustapha Kemal began in the autumn
of 1920 an attack on the Armenian Republic, which had
been called into existence by the agreement of May 28th,
1919, between the Russian and Turkish provinces of
Greater Armenia. In the Turco-Armenian peace treaty
of December 2nd, 1920, Armenia had to forgo the
provisions of the Treaty of Sevres and to content herself
with a section of Russian Armenia. It was the last
important official act of thd Armenian Republic. A few
days later Soviet Russian *oops occupied its territory.

The Turkish resistance jp Asia Minor to the Treaty of
Sevres, under the Ieadersh!i3 of Mustapha Kemal, served

204 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

as an example and a stimulus to the other nations of the
Near East. A period of unrest and ferment set in in all
these countries, and was only brought to an end by the
agreement of the Allied Powers to a series of concessions
which set limits to their domination over this wide terri-
tory, a domination which at the beginning of 1919 had
seemed to be secure and absolute. France renounced
the economically important territories of Cilicia and
southern Kurdistan and gave them back to Turkey.
In the Treaty of Lausanne Turkey won her entire
independence. On February 21st, 1919, a new Persian
government came into power, under the leadership of
Zia Eddin and Riza Khan, commander of the Persian
Cossack brigade ; on March 8th, 1921, this government
denounced the Anglo-Persian agreement of August 9th,
1919, without protest from the British government.
Persia was soon entirely cleared of British troops.

In Egypt, Great Britain had declared a Protectorate
during the world war, and in 1919 she was unwilling to
bring the Protectorate to an end. After months of unrest,
and under the pressure of the changed situation in the
Near East, she decided on February 28th, 1922, to
recognize Egypt's formal independence and to make an
end of the Protectorate. In Palestine the British govern-
ment modified the interpretation of the Balf our Declara-
tion through a statement made by Sir Herbert Samuel
and repeated by Winston Churchill. The statement
interpreted the words " National Home " as meaning that
"the Jews, who axe a people scattered throughout the
world, but whose hearts are always turned to Palestine,
should be enabled to found here their home, and that some
amongst them, within the limits fixed by the numbers
and the interests of the present population, should come
to Palestine in order to help by their resources and efforts
to develop the country to the advantage of all its
inhabitants."

In June 1922, before the conferment of the Mandate
by the League of Nations, the official interpretation of the
British policy in Palestine was defined in a White Book.

OF WORLD POLITICS 205

In Iraq the Mandate was replaced by a treaty with a
parliamentary government ; the treaty contains no
mention whatever of the Mandate. Meanwhile Great
Britain had agreed to the French Mandate over Syria,
and allowed King Faisal, son of Hussein of Mecca, to
fall: Faisal had founded a Syrian-Arab kingdom in
Damascus. The British aim in this was not only to fall
in with the French claims but also to drive a wedge
between the various Arab countries. But Great Britain
established Faisal as king in Iraq and his brother Abdullah
as Emir in the country east of the Jordan. This latter
move was regarded by the French as a menace to their
possession of Syria. The after-effects of the old conflict
between British and French policy in the Levant were
still at work.

In general, however, the end of 1922 saw a completely
changed situation in the whole of the Near East. It was
reflected in declarations made by two statesmen of the
Allied Powers, which throw a characteristic light on the
extent to which valuations of one and the same event
may differ. On November 22nd, 1920, at the first sitting
of the League of Nations, Lord Balfour described
Mustapha Kemal as a " bandit " who was utterly insen-
sible to all the motives which the League brought to bear.
In the French Chamber on July llth, 1921, Briand said :
" The Turkish Nationalists are suspicious like all
nationalists ; they are men who, perhaps owing to the
immoderation of some parts of the Treaty of Sevres, have
plunged into nationalism in a burst of violent excitement.
In France, when French affairs are concerned, we call this
patriotism. But when it happens in other countries it is
often called fanaticism, although the cause is the same
in both cases. 55

Briand's speech was a sign of the dawning of an under-
standing of the new movements in the Near East ; so
also was the change in the British policy in Egypt, Persia,
and the countries of Arabia. It is one of the fundamental
characteristics of British policy that it is skilled in
adapting itself to changed circumstances, and that it

206 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

takes pains to keep to the path of agreement and for-
bearance, if it is able in this way to attain its purpose.
In this it not only shows an eminently practical sense, a
refusal to be led entirely by theories and an unfailing
readiness to learn from experience, but also gives expres-
sion to those ideas of liberty and humanity which found
their earliest and still find their most powerful embodi-
ment in England and have also given to British
imperialistic efforts the consecration of a civilizing mission.
In the British character there is a strange mixture of a
hard and unswerving pursuit of power, such as is to be
found among other peoples as well, and a religious idealism.
Britain's rule and influence in the East rested not only
on the high degree of ability and integrity of her officials,
who in many cases set a standard unknown until then in
the Near East, but also on the ideas of liberty, manliness,
and patriotic idealism of which they were an embodiment
and which they transmitted to the best elements among
the Orientals.

As the Europeanization of the East, this supreme
triumph of the social and intellectual world of the West,
seems to be turning against Europe and to be leading at
the very moment of her triumph to her political
dethronement, so the acceptance and development of the
British model by the East has turned in a certain sense
against British control in the East. In the extremely
difficult years that followed the world war, and seemed
likely to bring the collapse of the whole economic and
political system of the world through a violent dynamic
impulse fed from many sources, the British imperial will
to self-preservation was forced into a position in conflict
with the ideals on which it rests. The uncertainty as to
what was coming and the desire to do all that was possible
to safeguard the position won in a century and a half of
unparalleled advance, explain the fluctuations which
came in the British policy toward the new nationalism
of the Oriental peoples, once the intoxication of the
Lloyd Geoige period, produced by the unexpected scale
of the victory, had passed.

OF WORLD POLITICS 207

THE SOVIET UNION AND THE NEAB EAST

Great Britain would never have been able to deal so
freely with Persia and the Ottoman heritage in 1919 if the
Russian empire had still been in existence. But Persia
and Turkey would not have been able to offer effective
resistance to the British plans and so completely to throw
off the Anglo-Persian treaty of 1919 and the Treaty of
Sevres of 1920, if the Russian empire had not given place
to the Soviet government. With the arrival of the Soviet
regime there began a new epoch in the history of the
relations between East and West. Russia had been the
European Great Power which had most seriously menaced
the independence of Turkey and Persia. Now there rang
out from Russia .an entirely new note :

" Mohammedans of the East, Persians and Turks,
Arabs and Indians, all those with whose heads and
with whose freedom and homelands the greedy robbers
of Europe have traded between themselves for
centuries, all those whose countries the plunderers
who began the war want to share out;

" We declare that the secret treaties of the fallen
Tsar concerning the forcible acquisition of Con-
stantinople are now torn up and abolished. We
declare that the treaty concerning the partition of
Persia is torn up and abolished. We declare that the
treaty concerning the partition of Turkey and the
taking away of Armenia is torn up and abolished.
Lose no time in shaking off your shoulders the robbers
who have pillaged your countries for centuries. Yield
to them no longer the soil of your native land for
plundering. You must be yourselves the rulers of
your countries. You have the right to this. Your
destiny is in your hands/ 5

This manifesto was an encouragement of the national
liberation movements of the Oriental peoples. No doubt
Communism had further aims : the national revolution
was to become a social revolution, it was to be the
peasants and workers of the Oriental nations who should

208 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

set up their state. At the Congress of Eastern Nations
at Baku in September 1920, this declaration was made :

" Our main blow must be aimed at British capital-
ism. But at the same time we want to arouse the
working masses of the Near East to hatred, to the
determination to struggle against all rich classes
without discrimination. The revolution which is now
beginning in the East does not aim at asking the
British imperialists to take their feet off the table in
order to permit the rich Turks to stretch their own
legs with more comfort. No, we shall very cour-
teously request the rich to lift their feet off the table
so that there shall be no more vain luxury among us,
no more contempt of the people, no idling, but that the
world shall be governed by the horny hand of the
worker. 55

This attitude, however, was soon changed. The
national revolutions in the Near East had replaced
effete and corrupt monarchies, politically and economically
dependent on Western Imperialism, by a young bour-
geoisie which was out to secure political and economic
emancipation, and the Soviet Union saw in them natural
allies in the struggle against Western Imperialism and
Great Britain. There was no community of ideas ; the
new states were actively occupied, with nTi-miatfi.Trii.hle
success, in keeping all Communist propaganda outside
their frontiers. But the Soviet government was suffi-
ciently realist to recognize the natural historic process,
and adroitly adapted its policy to the situation. It most
carefully avoided all exercise of Communistic influence
that went beyond the miniTirmTn felt to be necessary for
form's sake. Mustapha Kemal for his part entirely
renounced all Pan-Turanian propaganda (which had
figured so prominently in the programme of the Young
Turks) among the numerous Mohammedan peoples of
Turkish race who inhabit the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union and the states of the Near East were united in a
defensive relationship, since all of them imagined

OF WORLD POLITICS 209

themselves to be threatened by " Western Imperialism ".
But the states of the Near East not only strenuously
shut themselves off from any sort of Communist propa-
ganda, but also emphatically asserted their independence
again and again in their relations with the Soviet Union.
They refused to allow themselves to be drawn under its
leadership ; they merely accepted its support in order to
hold their own against the West, taking care at the same
time on no account to come to a breach with the West,
whose support was necessary to them in order to enable
them to hold their own against the Soviet Union.

All these states are undergoing a process of European-
ization and industrialization similar to that of the Soviet
Union, though at a much slower pace and on a much
smaller scale. As this process is taking place in the Near
East with the assistance of the state and under the leader-
ship of the state, it has many features in common with
state capitalism. The Soviet Union is prepared to
encourage this development in Turkey and in Persia ;
in the Near East it finds a useful market at its door for
its own growing industries, just as Turkey, as the pioneer
of industrialization in Asia Minor, will seek for markets
in the neighbouring Asiatic states. Thus there is an
economic as well as a political community of interest.
Both are exceeded in importance by the strategic com-
munity of interest, as Turkey and Iran, owing to their
situation along the Straits and the Black Sea, are of great
service in covering the flank of the Soviet Union, just as
their friendly relations with their great neighbour in the
north give Turkey and Persia the assurance of oppor-
tunities of peaceful development. Thus a relationship
has developed between the Soviet Union on one side and
Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan on the other, which is
built up on co-operation between the two groups, while
preserving the complete independence and the funda-
mentally divergent structure of each party. The leaders
of the Soviet Union recognize that any strengthening of
political and economic independence of the former colonial
and semi-colonial peoples represents in itself a weakening

210 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

of the imperialist capitalism against which they are
struggling ; and they consider that there can be no
question of a social revolution in the countries of the Near
East until those countries have completed their bourgeois
movement of national emancipation.

In the critical years during which they were establish-
ing their position with regard to Europe, Turkey and
Persia found in the Soviet Union an ally without whom
they would have been unable to maintain their stand.
The very existence of Tsarist Russia would have made
their emancipation impossible or very nearly so. The
Soviet government not only did not continue the policy
of the Tsarist empire, but entirely reversed it, making a
complete break with the past policy of all the European
Powers in the Near East. It accepted and carried into
execution all the demands of the national movements of
the Near East in regard to their relations with Europe :
the renunciation of territorial acquisitions and spheres
of influence and the abolition of all capitulations and
concessions. A European Great Power which until then
had been regarded in the Near East as one of the most
dangerous aggressors now voluntarily renounced every-
thing that could in any way restrict the full independence
of the states of the Neax East. Russia did not give up
her century-old struggle against Great Britain in the
Near East, but took up the struggle in another sphere.
Hitherto Britain and Russia had faced one another as
rivals in the same field of ideas, and had competed with
one another in limiting the political and economic indepen-
dence of the states of the Near East : Russia now placed
herself on the side of the national struggles for indepen-
dence of these states, continuing in this way to pursue
her struggle against Britain. Thus it was that the
success of Turkey and Persia in their struggles for
independence and in the abrogation of capitulations was
at the same time a success for Soviet policy. This attitude
of the Soviet Union has also influenced the attitude of
the other European Powers in the Near East ; Britain
herself, in her later spirit of accommodation in Persia

OF WORLD POLITICS 211

and in other countries, has been at pains to take account
of the changed situation.

The new situation dates from the treaty concluded in
Moscow on February 26th, 1921, between Soviet Russia
and Persia. This treaty not only recognized Persia's
entire independence and the abrogation of all capitula-
tions and concessions, but also declared Persia's debts to
Russia to be wiped out, and transferred to the Persian
government the roads and railways which Russia had
built in northern Persia. On March 16th, 1921, there
followed the treaty of friendship with Turkey, Article 4
of which runs as follows :

" Recognizing that national movements in the
Orient are similar to and in harmony with the struggle
of the Russian working men for the new social order,
the two contracting parties assert solemnly the rights
of these peoples to freedom, independence, and free
choice of such forms of government as they themselves
desire to have,"

This treaty was an important step in Turkey's struggle
for freedom. It recognized for the first time the Turkish
Great National Assembly and the Turkish national pact,
together with the frontiers it established, the demarcation
of which involved a Russian renunciation of territory.
On the strength of this treaty Turkey was able to stand
out against the Powers at the peace conference of
Lausanne. On many subsequent occasions Turkey was
able to take advantage of this entrenchment of her
position. After the decision of the League of Nations
that handed over the Mosul region to Great Britain,
Turkey concluded with the Soviet Union the Treaty of
Paris of December 17th, 1925, which was to draw still
closer the bond between the two countries. In the
additional protocol signed at Ankara on July 1st, 1926,
it was expressly stated that the Treaty of Paris rests on
the same principles as the Treaty of Moscow of 1921.
On December 17th, 1929, the treaty was renewed. The
policy of the two states follows the same lines, resting on

212 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

a common conception of the independence of the Oriental
nations. As between the Soviet Union and the Western
Powers themselves, Turkey intends to remain neutral,
while preserving her friendship with the Soviet Union.
Without desiring to imperil this friendship, Turkey
wishes to keep open all the roads to the West. With this
view she entered the League of Nations in July 1932.
In doing so she became in effect a bridge between the
Soviet Union and Europe, which itself began to put out
feelers in the direction of the League. In the autumn
of 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League. It had
further reason for doing so in view of the completely
altered conditions in Europe since 1933. Afghanistan
joined the League in the same month ; Iraq had already
become a Member State in 1932, and thus the Soviet
Union, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq are now all
represented in the League of Nations.

In its intervention on behalf of Turkey, Persia, and
Afghanistan, the Soviet Union not only gave support to
their independence but worked to bring these three states
into closer relations with one another. It is thus the
originator of the loose coalition which these three states
have formed. The first treaty of this nature was
significantly signed in Moscow, as early as March 1st,
1921, between Turkey and Afghanistan. In this treaty
the contracting parties declare " that all Oriental peoples
have the right to entire freedom and independence, that
each of these peoples is free to govern itself in the manner
it desires, that each of them, if there should be any
aggression on the part of an imperialist state in the pursuit
of a policy of expansion or spoliation in the Near East,
regards this aggression as directed against itself and
will resist it with every means." Afghanistan declares
in this treaty that Turkey is a model of national liberation,
and Turkey binds herself to assist Afghanistan by supply-
ing instructors.

This treaty also breathes the new spirit which has
been brought by nationalism and Bolshevism into the
relations of the states of Asia Minor with one another

OP WORLD POLITICS 213

and with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has
surrounded itself in the south with a zone of neutral
states, bound to it and to one another by treaties of
friendship. This association of countries of Asia Minor,
which makes impossible any menace to the Soviet Union
in the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and central Asia, came
into existence on the initiative of Soviet Russia and is
under her patronage. It is one of the most important
achievements of the Soviet Union in Asia, though it is
exclusively a political and economic achievement and not
one of Communist propaganda. But this achievement
was only possible because the Soviet Union was guided
by ideas which placed the relationship between East and
West, between Great Power and semi-colonial country,
on a new basis. This policy enabled the states of the Near
East to preserve neutrality in the Anglo-Russian conflict
and to maintain their independence. These states, once
the plaything of international politics and of world
industry and finance, have attained to an existence of
their own, the independence of which is carefully guarded
on all sides.

MINOEITIBS

In the occasions of political tension in the Levant the
problem of minorities has always played an important
part. It has served again and again as a ground for the
intervention of the Powers in the internal affairs of the
states of the Near East. The minorities have thus become
a means of weakening the states in which they lived, an
obstacle in the way of the efforts at consolidating and
strengthening these states and at gaining their emancipa-
tion and independence. The Treaty of Sevres itself, after
carefully defining the right of the ethnic, religious, or
lingual minorities in Turkey, expressly provides that the
Powers, in unison with the League of Nations, have
unrestricted authority themselves to take the necessary
measures to assure the protection of the minorities,
independently of the Turkish state, which declares its

214 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

agreement in advance with any step they may take. The
treaty aimed in this way at perpetuating the Powers'
right of intervention and extending it at any time if they
so desired. The policy of the Powers and its application
on behalf of the minorities was of little advantage to the
minorities, certainly of no permanent advantage to them.
It prevented the natural process of integration of these
minorities in the state, and the social and economic
advance that would bring ; and often it brought the
minorities into a very dangerous situation, as it accen-
tuated the hostility between majority and minority and
increased it beyond endurance. Such apparent advantages
as accrued to the minority turned in the last resort greatly
to the disadvantage not only of the state but also of the
minority. Sources of conflict were created and attained
a more and more menacing character. The internal peace-
of the Oriental states, and with it often the peace of the
world, was endangered by nothing so much as by the
policy not seldom followed of strengthening the minorities
at the expense of the majority and playing off the two
against one another. The minorities were often only too
willing to permit themselves to be used in this way, blind
to the potential ultimate consequences.

While the national process of integration in the Levant
eliminated certain minorities as political factors, especially
such purely religious minorities as those of the Copts in
Egypt and the Christian Arabs in Syria proper, it increased
the differences where there were diversities of race or
nationality. Various differences grew in acuteness through
the policy of the Great Powers. The most important
example in the past of the political effects of the Powers'
minority policy is provided by the Armenians, in whose
favour the Berlin Congress of 1878 imposed reforms on
Turkey and invested the Powers with a right of inter-
vention. From then on the aiding of the Armenians and
the prospect of their being able to regain their existence
as a state in their historic homeland, in which the over-
whelming majority of their race still lived as peasants,
became the subject of vigorous propaganda among the

OF WORLD POLITICS 215

Christian peoples, especially in England. The Armenians
were not only a Christian people but had a high level of
culture ; they were always keenly interested in the
advancement of education and of their school system,
their sense of their historic past as a nation was particularly
highly developed, their church, a national church, was the
loyal guardian of the national traditions and aspirations,
and the Armenians placed themselves with the utmost
devotion at the service of these aspirations. But the
propaganda and the sympathy in the Christian states,
especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, for the Armenians
and their cause were of service to them only for a period.
The American writer Eliot Grinnell Mears has said not
without justice in bis book Modern Turkey :

" The Armenian tragedy in Turkey is the inevit-
able outcome of uncontrolled propaganda. Stimu-
lated into a sense of growing independence and of false
security because of the extensive publicity in foreign
countries and the successful appeals for charity, these
people were led to believe the time had come when
they would be partitioned off entirely from their
oppressive ruler, the Ottoman Government. How
long will it take minorities or weak countries to
understand that in practical politics outside assis-
tance is a mere gamble ? Yet, if ever a people
thought that they were well supported from
abroad, the Armenians ,were justly entitled to this
opinion/'

The Armenians received repeated promises from the
Great Powers and from public opinion, and large sums
of money were collected abroad for them, with the result
that many Armenians were actually pauperized by being
made dependent on foreign support. During the world
war the Armenians were military allies of the Western
Powers, and even after the armistice they took an active
share in CiKcia in the fighting against Turkey. The
Armenians have a past filled with suffering and martyrdom

216 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

such as few other nations have borne. On March llth,
1920, Lord Chirzon said in Parliament :

" Armenia is really an international interest,
and it ought not to fall to the duty or to the charge
of any individual nations to be solely responsible
for this people in the future. Their sufferings have
touched the whole world. The obligation to restore
them has been given by the fighting powers of the
world, and it is no unreasonable thing to ask the
world and by the world I mean the Allied Powers
in the recent war to show their interest in the future
of that country."

These words of Lord Curzon's were spoken in order to
shift Great Britain's moral responsibility on to a
collectivity which found itself just as unable to do any-
thing as Great Britain herself. This melancholy inter-
ment of the Armenian hopes, in so far as they were based
on British promises, was completed by Sir Austen
Chamberlain when he declared in the House of Commons
on December 5th, 1928 :

" The history of this question is, I think, one of
the saddest phases of the War. If there has been
failure to carry out all the obligations undertaken by
ourselves jointly with other Powers, I think the blame
is not upon this country."

It is true that Great Britain was not alone in having
promised help to the Armenians. Boghos Nubar Pasha,
who represented the Armenian cause at the Peace
Conference, has said : " The Armenians remember, and
will never f orget, the wonderful enthusiasm shown in our
favour by the American people, and how greatly it was
promoted by the personal action of President Wilson."
The consequence was that the Armenians fully trusted
the United States, and hoped for their assistance in regain-
ing the Armenian soil with which they felt themselves
to be united by all the sacred memories of their history.
Nubar Pasha defended their claim for the allocation to

OF WORLD POLITICS 217

them of the territories which in their opinion had always
been Armenian geographically, historically, and ethno-
logically, even though they were now inhabited only by a
minority of Armenians, on the ground that the country
of their forefathers could not be denied them because
there were now too few of them, especially since this
minority condition was the result of massacres and
expulsions through a long period of tragic history. The
resettlement of the Armenians in their old homeland, in
which the majority of their nation had always lived,
would not only mean the recovery of this country through
Armenian industry and enterprise, the Armenians would
not only regain their place among the civilized nations of
the world, but they would also become, " as they were
in the past, an element of peace and prosperity in the
Near East ".

Before the war the Armenians had set all their hopes
of liberation, and of union with the Armenians in Russia,
on the Russians, Meanwhile the British had made
genuine efforts to improve the situation of the Armenians
by means of reforms. In the agreement of February 8th,
1914, the Armenian parts of Turkey were granted a
measure of autonomy under international control. But
this agreement brought the Armenians fresh hopes of
entire independence, and on the other hand it opened
the eyes of the Turks to the danger represented by the
Armenian question to the security of their empire. During
the world war France promised that the Armenian problem
should be settled " in accordance with the high dictates
of humanity and justice". But with the collapse of the
Russian empire, to which it had been proposed to assign
Armenia, the Armenian question became acute, especially
as it was proposed that Armenia should form part of the
buffer zone providing security against Soviet Russia,
and should at the same time form a wedge between
Turkey and Persia. In his speech of January 5th, 1918,
Mr Lloyd George placed Armenian independence in his
programme. A delegation chosen in the spring of 1919 by
a Pan-Armenian Congress in Paris demanded from the

218 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Peace Conference the creation of an independent Armenia,
to be placed as a Mandated territory under one of the
Allied Powers for the period of twenty years. "It is
noteworthy that the Armenians asked of their own accord
to be placed under a Mandate, in entire contrast to the
Arabs, who rejected the mandate system. This provided
the Allies with a really splendid opportunity of carrying
through the idea of mandates to success in entire accord
with the mandated nation as one which, by its own
confession, had not yet attained maturity." (Kurt
Ziemke.)

Thus the Armenian Mandate would have come into
existence in genuine agreement with the terms of. Article
22 of the League of Nations Covenant, whereas the other
mandates were not in accordance with its provisions.
But nobody could be found to accept the Mandate, and 39
Armenia became a fully sovereign state against its will
under the Treaty of Sevres, of which it was one of the
signatories.

But while the Powers and, later, the League of Nations
were still debating the destiny of Armenia, it was in fact
already decided. Armenia, already recognized as a
sovereign state, applied for admittance to the League of
Nations. Through the intervention of the Great Powers
the application was rejected, though the hope was
expressed that it would be possible to admit Armenia
at the next League session. This hope was not fulfilled,
although at subsequent sessions in the years that followed
platonic resolutions in favour of the Armenians and their
national home were repeatedly adopted by the League.
The Armenian delegation at the peace conference at
Lausanne was reduced to the bitter remark that the
belligerent nation which had suffered most in the world
war, and, trusting the Allied Powers, had lost one-third
of its population in fighting for its independence, now
found itself completely isolated, and surrounded by a
silence in strong contrast to the propaganda which once
had so greatly encouraged the national hopes of the

OF WORLD POLITICS 219

In the end all the goodwill and readiness to help, which
originally existed beyond question in Great Britain and
America, was reduced to capitulation in face of the facts,
and was unable to do anything to modify the fate of the
Armenians. Armenia also exemplifies the wide gap
between intentions and the actual execution of the man-
datory idea in the former Turkish communities. The
mandates were intended to bridge over the conflict between
the secret agreements made by the Allies for the partition
of Turkey in Asia and the Wilsonian principles of the
independence of the small nations. The proposed
mandated territories were Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia,
Palestine, and Syria. The distribution of mandates was
preceded by long and bitter struggles between the Allied
Powers. The provision in the Covenant, framed in the
Wilsonian spirit, that in the choice of the mandatory
Power the wishes of the population should be the primary
consideration, found no practical application. President
Wilson did make an effort to put it into practice by
sending two Commissions, one under Charles Crane and
Henry King to Syria and Palestine, and one under James
Harbord to Armenia. But the two reports were kept
secret by the Peace Conference, and no notice was taken
of their recommendations. The delimitation and dis-
tribution of mandates was decided neither by the interests
nor by the desires and needs of the mandated peoples,
but by the interests, desires and needs of Great Britain
and France. The Powers were not interested in the
mandates for Armenia, whose inhabitants wanted one,
or for Arabia, whose inhabitants were certainly more
backward and more in need of guidance than, say, the
Syrians. The remaining mandates, arranged in the
interest of the Great Powers, had to be imposed by force
and maintained by force over the " liberated " peoples.
The practical application of the mandate principle has
little in common with Wilsonian idealism.

Nevertheless the relaxation of colonial rule which lay
at the root of the mandate principle has been productive
of good and has assisted progress. Great Britain in

220 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

Iraq, in wise application of her art of adaptation and
progressive development of political forms, has given
effect to the original intention of the mandatory idea,
over-riding the spirit of San Remo and Sevres, and France
has had to follow her example to some extent in Syria,
although only with reluctance and half-heartedly. There
seems a prospect of many further struggles and difficulties
in Syria before Ifrance will proceed to carry out the
mandate idea as has been done in Iraq, but it is of great
importance that in Iraq the mandate has developed in
the direction originally intended that of a compromise
between the interests of the Great Powers and the national
aspirations of the Oriental peoples.

3STEAR EASTERN ALLIANCES AND COLLABOBATION

The nations and rulers of the Near East know that in
isolation from one another they are too weak to be able
to defend their interests in face of the interests of the
Powers. The economic and social transformation they
are undergoing, the transition from an agricultural barter
system to the use of money, involving them in the com-
plexities of capitalism and industrialization, is calling for
the recruitment of elements which can only be supplied
by communities of a substantial size, as only such com-
munities possess population, organizing ability, and
economic and cultural resources and sources of energy on
the needed scale. This naturally raises the question of
union and mutual assistance. The idea of this forces
itself particularly on popular attention in cases in which
racial and lingual unity are present, the existing territorial
divisions being the result of dynastic rivalries or the
interests of foreign Powers, as has been the case in the
countries of Arabia. Thus we find in the Near East two
types of effort, one, among the countries of Arabia, directed
to close union, even to union in a single state ; the other,
embracing peoples of entirely different language and
origin, directed only to collaboration and a loose form of
alliance and mutual assistance. The former of these

OF WORLD POLITICS 221

two movements, the Arabian unity movement, has been
the work of the peoples, their governments, either in
subservience to foreign Powers or out of concern for
dynastic interests of their own, often working against
the movement ; the latter movement, working for the
formation of a system of alliances between powers of the
Near East, is at present being engineered entirely by the
governments, which are national independent govern-
ments, while their peoples, differing in language and race,
are strangers to one another and in many cases mutually
uncomprehending.

A third " pan-movement ", the Pan-Turanian move-
ment, which came into prominence some twenty years
ago, has since vanished from sight. After the Balkan
wars and the loss of the bulk of its possessions in Europe,
the centre of gravity of the Ottoman empire shifted into
Asia Minor. The transfer of the centre of activities in
Turkey from the European shore of the Bosphorus to
Anatolia dates virtually from that period. The Young
Turks were beginning to fear the loss of the Arabian
provinces, and worked for union with the Turkish peoples
of the Caucasus and central Asia, who were allied with
them in race and language. Mustapha Kemal entirely
dropped the Pan-Turanian idea. Instead, at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, the Arabian idea had
emerged, and it steadily gained in concreteness.

The beginning of the movement for the liberation and
union of the Arabs dates from about thirty years ago ;
it embraced the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Syria and
Palestine, and the rest of the Arabian peninsula, but not
the Arabic-speaking races of the north of Africa. At the
head of the movement there stood Arab officers of the
Turkish army, who were influenced by the example of
the Young Turks, and Arabian inteUectuals, especially
Syrians, who had begun to come under the influence of
European thought. If the world war had not come, the
preparations of their secret societies would have grown
by 1920 or so to the stage when a general rising of Arabian
countries would have come, with the aim of liberation

222 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

from Turkish rule. The war hastened developments,
but at the same time put difficulties in their way. During
the war the League of Arabian officers which existed in
Mesopotamia rigorously avoided all association with the
Entente Powers, considering that any European inter-
vention would be much more dangerous to their future
than was Turkish rule. A different policy was adopted
by the Syrian nationalists, and by the Sherif of Mecca,
Hussein ibn Ali, who was under their influence : they
entered into negotiations with the Entente. Hussein's
rising against the Turks first brought into the public eye
the Arabian national movement for unity and freedom ;
the movement was recognized by Great Britain and the
Allied Powers. Hussein adopted the title of King of the
Hedjaz. His rising brought valuable assistance to the
British in the protection of the Suez Canal. His troops
served as the right wing of the allied army against the
Turks, and under his son, Faisal, and T. E. Lawrence, the
English organizer of the " revolt in the desert ", they
conquered Transjordania and Syria from Akaba to Aleppo.
Hussein was a romantic dreamer, out to obtain not
only Arab unity and freedom but the restoration of the
Khalif ate to its original holders. But he proved too little
of a realist, too inexperienced in the ways of European
diplomacy. Instead of insisting on precisely drawn
agreements, he contented himself with vague promises
from the British and started the revolt before treaties in
clearly defined terms had been drawn up between him and
Great Britain. About the same time Great Britain and
France had concluded the Sykes-Picot agreement, dis-
posing of the Arab countries regardless of the assurances
given of their independence, and there began the inter-
play between incompatible public promises and secret
agreements, in the meshes of which Hussein found himself
entangled. No attention was paid to the protests of this
aged Arab leader, and in the end he refused to sign the
Treaty of Versailles and to join the League of Nations.
There was an end of the dream of Arab unity and freedom ;
Arabia had been partitioned.

OF WORLD POLITICS 223

But under the changed circumstances of the post-war
period the Arabs kept alive their ambition for unity and
freedom. Their experience had taught them that they
could only win independence by unity among themselves.
Hussein's heritage was taken over under these new con-
ditions by Ibn Saud, the leader of the Wahhabites, and by
Faisal, son of Hussein. Ibn Saud, after wresting the
Hedjaz from Hussein's hands, founded a unified central
Arabian state reaching from the Persian Gulf to the Red
Sea. Faisal, as King of Iraq, stood at the head of the
first Arab Member State of the League of Nations. These
two rulers have beyond doubt been the ablest political
leaders of the Arabs, incomparably more realist and more
experienced than Hussein. Ibn Saud has succeeded in
enlisting the religious energy of his Wahhabites in the
service of the Arab unity movement and in bringing order
and state cohesion into the former chaos of the desert,
the essential preliminaries for the bringing of central
Arabia into a unified Arab realm and at the same time for
a gradual modernization.

Under Ibn Saud Mecca has once more become one of
the centres of the Arab national movement, the centre
that is most firmly anchored in the tradition of life and
faith of the nation. Baghdad, under the able and
statesmanly leadership of Faisal, has become another
centre, more open to European influence and to social
and economic modernization. Both of these rulers axe
working deliberately and with tenacity toward the goal
of Arab unity, and their reconciliation in February 1930
brought this goal nearer. From the first Ibn Saud
regarded his state as the nucleus of Arab unity, regardless
of its poverty and backwardness. In Italy and Germany
in the nineteenth century unification proceeded similarly
from regions which originally were backward in economic
and cultural conditions and had built up their power on a
military basis. In 1932 Ibn Saud changed the name of
his dual kingdom of Hedjaz and Nejd to Saudi Arabia, thus
introducing the name of the new national unit. In 1934
he successfully demonstrated the military superiority of

224 INTER-RELATION AND IMPLICATIONS

his realm by defeating the only strong rival still remaining
in the Arabian peninsula, the Imam Yehya of Yemen.

The Peace Treaty of Taif , concluded in June 1934,
confirmed Ibn Saud's rapid and decisive victory. But
its main purpose was to strengthen Arab unity. It was
therefore described in the preamble as a "treaty of Moslem
and Arab brotherhood, to promote the unity of the Arab
nation, to enhance its position, and to maintain its dignity
and independence ". Both parties declared that " their
nations are one, and agree to consider each other's interest
as their own ". The desire expressed in the treaty to
form a united front against any attack on the Arabian
peninsula marks a distinct progress, which ten years ago
would have seemed almost incredible, in Arab national
consciousness. Only a few years ago the two sides were
divided by traditional feuds and by a vehement
antagonism arising from narrow religious dissension, and
both were regarded as moved only by an obstinate sec-
tarian spirit and as completely alien to any broad
nationalism. Now the tribal and sectarian particularism
has given way, largely through Ibn Saud's efforts, to a
new sense of community. Growing ties of solidarity
and national feeling are beginning to unite the peninsula
with the Arab countries of the fertile crescent in which
Baghdad, under the leadership of King Ghazi (who suc-
ceeded to the throne on his father's death in September
1933), has become the rallying point of the national
aspirations of the Arabs of Syria, Palestine, Trans-
jordania, and Iraq. But nobody can say when or how
the unity and freedom proclaimed thirty years ago by the
first protagonists of the Arab national idea will be
attained.

Baghdad also formed the link between the future
Arab league and the much looser association of the states
of Asia Minor, which originally embraced Turkey, Persia,
and Afghanistan, and which is seeking the support of the
now independent Iraq. All these states are passing
through the same process of social and economic trans-
formation. The country which has made most progress

OF WORLD POLITICS 225

in this respect, Turkey, is for that reason becoming the
leader of the association and the model for the process
of development. It is a process that has swept away
the differences between the various states, some of which
had lasted for hundreds of years. For decades the
relations between Turkey and Persia were clouded by
frontier disputes : the Turks claimed Persian Azerbaijan,
which was inhabited by Turks, and the Persians regarded
the Kurds as racial brethren who should be included in
the Persian realm. There was also friction between
Persia and Afghanistan, which had earlier been under
Persian influence. In the Peace of Paris of 1857 the
Persians had been compelled by Great Britain definitely
to abandon the conquest of Afghanistan. But until
quite recent times Persia had been trying to gain posses-
sion of the important region of Herat in north-west
Afghanistan, and Afghanistan in her turn wanted to gain
possession of Persian Baluchistan and so to secure access
to the sea.

These differences were removed through the friendly
offices of the Soviet Union, The Turco-Af ghan Treaty of
March 1st, 1921, first announced the intention of the
Oriental powers, who were now assured that their rear
was covered by the Soviet Union, to pursue an active
policy. The treaty was followed by a new treaty of
friendship and co-operation, signed in Ankara on May 25th,
1928 ; the first Article of this new treaty, which is not
subject to denunciation and is to be regarded as valid for
all time, provides that there shall be perpetual peace and
sincere and unchanging friendship between the two states
and the two peoples. On April 22nd, 1926, the treaty of
friendship and security was signed at Teheran between
Persia and Turkey, and there followed on November
28th, 1927, the Persian-Afghan Treaty. These are not
alliances in the narrow sense but mutual undertakings
of friendship and goodwill. This association and
co-operation has become still closer in the last two years,
through many visits and meetings at Ankara and Teheran
and in the Soviet Union, though for a time at all events

15

226 WORLD POLITICS

Afghanistan took no active part in them. Turkey has been
trying to bring in Iraq, so far as this is possible in view
of the special position of this country with regard to
Great Britain. Turkey cleared away her own quarrel
with Iraq by accepting the arbitral award over Mosul, and
has been trying to smooth away the elements of friction
between Iraq and Iran. In recent years the former
strained relations between Turkey, Iran, and Iraq have
been influenced by the progress of new ideas and a fresh
outlook, and the closer political association will also lead
to economic co-operation. The national Turkish com-
mercial bank, Ish Bankasi, intends to set up branches
in Teheran and Baghdad, in addition to the one in Alex-
andria. The national Egyptian commercial bank, the
Misr Bank, has set up a subsidiary in Syria and intends
to set up others in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia. All this is
an entirely new development. The countries of the
Near East, hitherto only passive elements in world
economic and political movements, the arena in which
European interests competed with one another, are
becoming, as a consequence of their Europeanization,
active participators in history.

METHODS AND PROBLEMS OF
EUROPEANIZATION

THE Europeanizing forces at work in recent decades in
the Near East, as in other parts of the world outside
Europe, have been the same everywhere. The trans-
formation now in progress all over the world is thus
essentially a uniform process. For all that, there are
important differences of detail. For all their uniformity,
the forces at work have been operating in different
environments, and their detailed operation has been
conditioned by factors differing from place to place
such factors as the political system, the geographical
situation, the national character. Consequently the
process of Europeanization has followed, for instance,
varying courses in Turkey and in Egypt, in Syria and in
the Hedjaz. The fundamental process, however, has
been the same that of adaptation to the intellectual,
economic, and social elements of existence which have
spread over the world from Western Europe.

Europeanization has proceeded most rapidly and
most thoroughly in the states which have won national
independence, such as Turkey. Here the government
is devoting all its energies to the development of the
nation and the raising of its standard of living. In states
which are not independent, in colonial and mandated
territories, the foreign government directly or indirectly
responsible for administration has little interest in the
economic modernization of the country through the
energies of the native population itself, or in any rapid
improvement in the level of education. It may not
hamper these advances, but as a rule it does not actively
promote them. This is particularly the case in purely
colonial countries, countries, that is, which serve for the
settlement of European immigrants. In these countries
least progress of all is made with the Europeanization of

227

228 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

the native population, since the necessary functions of
Europeanization are fulfilled by the immigrants, with
whom the native population is entirely unable to compete
either in capital resources or in experience. Such countries
become Europeanized, but the Europeanization does not
proceed from the native population and in the main does
not affect it. The first essential for the raising of the
standard of living, for the awakening of a new sense of
freedom and worth, which Europeanization brings with
it for the indigenous masses, for the creation and
assurance of a fuller, richer, and finer human life, is the
possession of a government which feels itself to be
intimately associated with the native population and its
interests.

The pace of Europeanization and the form it takes are
also very largely determined by the geographical situation
of a country and its natural fertility. In regions which
for centuries have been accessible to world trade, in the
coastal districts of the seas crossed by European vessels,
in. countries rich in natural resources, the process of
Europeanization can develop more rapidly and more
thoroughly than in less favoured regions. Thus Turkey
has an advantage over Iran, the Syrian coast over Iraq,
Egypt over Abyssinia or the Hedjaz.

The third dominant factor is the character of the
people. Europeanization means training in initiative, in
activity, in discipline. It demands a steeling of the
character, an independence, a civic courage, a devotion
unknown or very rare under Oriental autocracies. A
strong race, used to domination, like the Turks, will thus
make its way more easily than softer and more pliable
races like the Egyptians. There are also the differences,
found all over the world, between the dwellers in the
mountains and highlands and the men of the plains, or
between country people and townspeople.

All these different factors reinforce or run counter to
one another in each particular case, so that the European-
ization of the Near East, like every other element of real
history, offers a variegated and multiform picture. The

OF EUROPEANIZATION 229

process embraces the whole of the Near East, with which
until quite recent times and in many cases even to this
day the Balkans may be included the countries, mainly
of the Orthodox Christian Church, which at the beginning
of the last century formed part of the Ottoman empire.
Intellectual and social stagnation, the absence of life and
change, and the adherence to an outlook on the world
bound up with cults and with magic, were characteristic
of Orthodox Christendom as of Islam or of Oriental Jewry
even in the nineteenth century. But now " Europe " is
penetrating everywhere. On its own soil " Europe " is
passing through a difficult crisis, embracing all intellectual,
social, and economic life ; but in the outer world it
preserves its power of penetration, it seems even to have
increased it in recent years, to have grown in range and
intensity, all at a pace never before known in 'history.
It is a repetition, on an incomparably greater, a world
wide, scale, of what happened to Hellenism, the conquest
of foreign countries by the fascination of an intellectual
system at a time when this system was already passing
through a severe crisis in the country of its origin. The
fascination of " Europe " is making itself felt by all the
world. The backward nations feel that there is only one
way of salvation for them adhesion to " Europe ".
Only at the price of this adhesion can they maintain their
existence and achieve renewal and growth in stature.
The direction is the same for them all, but the route varies
according to the situation of each country and people.
Out of the wealth of varied developments and efforts the
examples of Turkey, Iran (Persia), and some of the new
Arab states will be selected as characteristic of the
developments of recent years in the process of the
Europeanization of indigenous populations.

TURKEY

On October 29th, 1933, the new Turkey celebrated
the tenth anniversary of its birth. For this occasion the
citizens of the Republic had to learn the new national
hymn, the March of the Republic. It runs, in effect :

230 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

" Oh, what happiness have these ten years been for us !
We have set up a new home. The morrow is full of an
immense hope. We have torn up the wild tares ; we have
laid gleaming rails. In every struggle the Grhazi is
at our head. The place of this nation is at the head
of all."

This hymn celebrates the great achievement of the
construction of the system of communications. For
coming years Turkey has set herself a new task the
expediting of industrialization. Its purpose is the same
as that of the corresponding process in the Soviet Union,
which until recently was a member of the Orthodox
Christian and Islamic world but now is undergoing a
process of transformation similar to that of the Oriental
states, but more rapid. The Five-year Plan of Turkish
industrialization, published in January 1934, is entirely
under the influence of the example set by the Soviet
Union. This plan, too, according to the official statement,
aims at converting " an economically backward and
primitive agricultural nation into one of the most highly
civilized nations of the world ". Here, too, American
experts are to be brought in to help, and here, too, the
plan is to be executed under the direction of the state and
largely with the resources of the state. The agricultural,
mineral, and industrial potentialities of the country,
which until now have lain fallow, are to be developed.
The first Five-year Plan is to be followed by further
simttaT ones. The economic aspect of Turkey is to be
revolutionized. Hitherto Turkey was dependent on
imports of manufactured goods ; now, as in the Soviet
Union, only the means of production are to be imported*
the country becoming self-supporting in foodstuffs and
consumable commodities. In regard to many of these,
such as sugar, chocolate, woollens, and shoes, this aim has
already been attained. But the Five-year Plan has far
more ambitious aims. As a Turkish Member of Parliament
has declared, it represents Turkey's resolve to be out-
distanced by no other nation in the world in capacity for
progress, in activity, and in independence. When the

OF EUROPEANIZATION 231

Plan has been carried out Turkey * will possess new

factories for the production of paper, artificial silk, china

and earthenware, glass, chemicals, fertilizers, and steeL

The existing cotton mills, which employed 127,000 workers

in 1933, are to be added to so that in five years they shall

employ 350,000 workers. The number of spindles in

the cotton mills in 1931 was 72,000 ; by 1937 it will be

300,000. The Turkish textile industry will then be able

to provide 80 per cent, of the country's requirements of

cotton goods. Four large new cotton spinning and

manufacturing mills have been set up. New factories

have been erected for the manufacture of paper, artificial

silk, semi-coke, glass, and bottles. The erection of a

large iron and steel plant near the Zonguldak coalfield is

planned, to meet the requirements of the country's

industries and of national defence. Three electricity

generating stations will supply current to industry and

to the railways. Mining is to be substantially extended

and modernized. Railways will open up the principal

mining areas, such as the copper mines of Ergani, where

it is hoped to have an output of 10,000 tons in 1936 and

24,000 tons in 1940 (which would leave a surplus available

for export), and the Zonguldak coalfield, where the output

has grown from 70,994 tons in 1884 and 410,000 tons in

1922 to 2,288,000 tons in 1934.

An agrarian programme, to supply the country's
needs of raw material, will be carried out alongside the
industrial programme. Energetic government action
has turned Turkey from a grain importing country into one
with a surplus of cereals. Sugar-beet cultivation was begun
in 1926 ; already it covers the whole of the country's
requirements. In these two branches there has already
been a certain degree of over-production, which has led
to a restriction of cultivation. State assistance is intended
to be given for the improvement and extension of the
cotton crop and the wool clip, so as to cover the country's
requirements and provide a surplus available for export.
Thus there is growing in the Near East a busy internal
economic activity, hitherto unknown, on the European

232 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

model; the Near East is Europeanizing itself, and in
doing so is making itself independent of Europe.

The Turkish Five-year Plan sets the crown on the
preparatory work that filled the first decade. The Peace
of Lausanne of July 23rd, 1923, had set up in place of the
state of the Sultan and Khalif , resting on a medieval
religious conception of an empire, a modern national lay
state free from all outside control and all interference
in its sovereignty. The summoning of Mustapha Kemal,
the victor in the war of national independence, to be
President was the external symbol of this change. In
the place of the legitimist dynasty there came the leader
who had emerged from the people and was supported by
the national enthusiasm. The sureness of purpose and the
ruthless energy of a dominant personality were favoured
here by the general tendency of the time to subject the
constitutional, legal, economic and cultural life of the
people to fundamental transformation. The process
of Europeanization found a more receptive soil in Turkey
than in other Oriental countries because there had been
fifty years of preparatory work among the intellectuals.
The victorious national campaign had also awakened
national self-confidence and had created among the
masses the political and psychological conditions for
radical transformation. The conduct of the state in the
new Turkey is similar to that in Italy since 1922 and in
Germany since 1933 in that it rests on the personality of
a leader, but in this case the leader was able first to
satisfy his nation's claims in external policy and drew
from that achievement the power to proceed to internal
reforms. In its socio-political structure the Turkish
constitutional system much more closely resembles the
Italian than the German. Both were born at about the
same time, and both belong to the Mediterranean type of
civilization. The Turkish constitutional system draws
its programmes and its ultimate aims from the rhythm of
life and the intellectual system of the nineteenth century.
Turkey's task (and the same is true of southern Italy and
the Islands) is to replace the traditional pace of life of the

OF EUROPEANIZATION 233

Mediterranean countries, with their primitive agriculture,
by the rhythm of the industrial north-western Europe
of the nineteenth century. A close association of all the
forces of the nation in an intensified nationalism, conscious
of its distant past (which it magnifies to mythical dimen-
sions), and turning with indignation from the immediate
past in which the country was merely a picturesque
museum exhibit ; the exploitation of all economic oppor-
tunities by an expanding capitalism with state assistance
and control ; industrialism and better popular education
these aims are common to Fascism and the Republican
People's Party which Mustapha Kemal has created and
which, as in Italy, is the only party in the state. The
statutes of this party breathe the spirit of the nineteenth
century, secularist and liberal, which to-day is penetrating
the whole of the Near East and is fulfilling everywhere
the same task as in Europe a century and a half ago, that
of overcoming the darkness of the religious and feudal
Middle Ages through the Enlightenment. The first article
of the statutes runs : " The purpose of the party is a
government through the people for the people, and the
raising of Turkey to a modern state." They demand the
entire separation of religion and politics and the organiza-
tion of the national community on the bases of present-
day civilization and the empiric and positive sciences,
the full equality of rights of all citizens of the state, and
the removal of all privileges of any class, group, or persons.
Emphasis is laid on the importance of Turkish cultural
activity and on the equality of rights of women.

Thus the Turkish Constitution is radically democratic,
and the constitutional powers of the President, who in
point of fact is an absolute dictator, are exceedingly
restricted. Under the Constitution all legislative and
executive power is in the hands of the Great National
Assembly, elected by universal' suffrage. It elects the
President from among its own members by a simple
majority of votes ; the Ministry drawn from its member-
ship is responsible to it ; it decides peace and wax, and all
treaties of the state, and it can dissolve itself. The

234 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

President has a veto on laws passed by the National
Assembly, but his veto is over-ridden by a second passing.
Thus under the Constitution the popular representation
in Turkey, which has only one Chamber, is all-powerful.

But an ingenious mechanism has turned the con-
stitutionally impotent President into an actual autocrat.
The Chamber represents not only the will of the people
but the entirely uniform will of the people. All the
members of the National Assembly belong to the Repub-
lican People's Party, whose President under the statutes
is Mustapha Kemal. The President appoints the Vice-
President and the General Secretary of the Party, and
with them forms the Presidential Council, which deter-
mines who shall be the candidates at the parliamentary
elections ; its decisions are absolutely binding on all
members of the Party. The Presidential Council elects
twelve party inspectors, who are responsible for the
organization of the Party throughout the state. The
Republican People's Party, and it alone, has its organiza-
tion in every centre. Thus the Great National Assembly
has unrestricted control over the country and is the source
of all legislation and every state action ; the Republican
People's Party in its turn has unrestricted control over the
Great National Assembly, and President Mustapha
Kemal has unrestricted control over the Republican
People's Party. He has thus become the sole pillar of the
whole life of the state.

Mustapha KLemaPs internal policy, directed to the
building up of an entirely independent and industrially
modernized state, rests on three main principles :
nationalism, secularism, and industrialism. These are
not new ideas in Turkey. The Ottoman empire formed
a supernational unit up to 1908, held together by religious
and dynastic bonds. The head of the dynasty, the
Sultan, was at the same time the religious head of all
Mohammedans, the Khalif. His Mohammedan subjects
were supporters of the principle of his empire without
regard to their race or language, and Abdul Hamid II, the
last effective monarch of the Osman dynasty (which in

OF EUROPEANIZATION 235

former centuries had produced a series of powerful ruling
personalities), had tried once more to maintain Islam as
the basis of the state against the intruding influences of a
new age. All social and constitutional life in the Ottoman
empire rested on religious traditions and canonical
prescriptions. The many non-Mohammedan religious
communities formed states within the state, living in
accordance with their religious precepts and usages;
they were autonomous administrative groups under the
leadership of their religious head. The rule of the Sultan-
Khalif rested on a medieval constitutional principle which
in modern life was an anachronism, a principle which
could be maintained only through the selfish interests
and the mutual jealousies of the European Powers. Abdul
Hamid's romantic and reactionary policy of isolation was
unable in the long run to prevent the influx of new political
ideas and forces. Under their impact this empire, which
had endured for five hundred years, rapidly collapsed.

The new leaders who succeeded to power, the members
of the Committee of Unity and Progress, were, like
Mustapha Kemal, under the influence of modern Western
political ideas. Their ideal was the temporal national
state, maintained by the nation united by geographical
conditions, language, and historic ideals. Thus they
came into conflict with the religious principles on which
the empire had rested and with Pan-Islamism, and also
with the other Mohammedan and non-Mohammedan
racial groups within the empire. In place of the religious
" pan ' '-ideal they sought to put one of race and language :
Pan-Turanianism, under the leadership of the Ottoman
Turks, was to unite the Turkish races of the Caucasus,
south-eastern Russia, and central Asia. Enver Pasha,
who had become Emir of Turkestan, fell fighting against
the Soviet army in August 1922, in an effort to save out
of the wreckage of the Pan-Turanian dream and the chaos
of the world war at least the old home of the Turanians
in central Asia.

The Young Turks had vainly sought to create a modern
national state amid the chaos of a dying empire, torn by

236 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

nationalist and religious strife and under continual pressure
from external enemies stronger than itself. After the
war Mustapha Kemal pursued the same purpose under far
more favourable circumstances, and carried it into execu-
tion* He recognized that the Ottoman ideal of the
state was untenable and the Turanian racial ideal imprac-
ticable. With his keen sense of realities he confined
himself to the original Turkish territories in Anatolia,
and determined to devote his whole attention to the
Anatolian peasants, who in the past had borne the burden
of the imperial idea without any return for their devotion.
Mustapha Kemal would tolerate no rival, and in order to
secure his personal leadership against any possible opposi-
tion he dealt terribly in the summer of 1926 with the
former leaders of the Committee of Unity and Progress.
Yet Turkey's internal policy after the world war under
his leadership was only a continuation of the broad lines
by which the Young Turks had been guided fif teen years
before. But they had lost the Balkan wars and the world
war, they had been the grave-diggers of the empire, and
it seemed as if they were destined to make the very name
of Turkey fall into oblivion. Mustapha Kemal was the
victorious leader of the national struggle for indepen-
dence, and his Turkey was the only one of the states that
had been defeated in the war which had been able to
replace a dictated peace by an advantageous treaty of peace
negotiated between equal parties. This peace also created
for the first time a Turkey which satisfied all the con-
ditions for a modern national state. An end was made of
all foreign control and all interference in the sovereignty
of the country, which in the past had made all progress
impossible, as in every country of the Near East. Turkey
had become in regard to nationality and religion virtually
a uniform state. The Christian minorities scarcely
existed any longer. In 1923 there were living in Asia
Minor a million and a half Greeks, whose forefathers were
among the original inhabitants of the country and whose
towns and villages in Ionia and Pontus could boast of
descent from the old centres of Hellenic civilization east of

OF EUROPEANIZATION 237

the Aegean. Together -with the Armenians they had been
responsible for the modern economic life of the country
through their alertness, their industry, and their com-
mercial ability. The forcible exchange of populations
which began on May 1st, 1923, removed all these Greeks
to Greece and brought about half a million Moham-
medans from Greece to Turkey. This made an end for
all time of the Pan-Hellenic dream of restoring the old
Greece around the Aegean, a dream which had been
shattered by the military success of Mustapha Kemal
in 1922.

Before this the Armenian problem had been given a
still more radical solution by sinister means. In Asia
Minor there are now neither Greeks nor Armenians ;
the only national minority remaining is that of the Kurds,
who number about 1,200,000. Mustapha Kemal set
out to solve the Kurdish problem by ruthless Turkization.
With his vastly superior army he was able after sanguinary
battles to suppress the repeated risings of the Kurds in
defence of their freedom, and to break their spirit, at
least for a time, by means of drumhead courts martial and
by a policy of colonization. The modern Europeanized
national state he had set up had no room for national
minorities.

But this modern state could only exist if its productive
forces were utilized in the interest of the native popula-
tion. This depended on developing the network of rail-
ways and communications in the wide and relatively
thinly populated country, to make possible the exchange
of goods between its various provinces, with the varied
production of their different climatic zones and their
great mineral wealth, and the transport of commodities
from inland regions to the sea. In the fields of shipping,
banking, and commerce a campaign was carried on against
alien ownership and in favour of Turkish control. Turkish
shipping has made rapid advance ; as lately as 1926 it
held the fourth place in the port of Istanbul (Constanti-
nople) ; by 1929 it had risen to the first place. Coastwise
shipping has been reserved to Turkish vessels. The

238 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Turkish flag is also frequently met in foreign ports, in
the Piraeus and in Alexandria. The improvement of
Turkish roads is driving out the camel caravans in favour
of the motor lorry, even in the mountainous regions.
The aggregate length of roads in 1932 was estimated at
16,000 kilometres. The railway network had a total
length of 2,316 kilometres in 1923 and 6,150 in the spring
of 1931. In November 1935, two new railway lines were
opened. One, from Irmak to Filios, running 245 miles
through difficult mountain country, connects the coal-
basin on the Black Sea coast with the industrial region
of central Anatolia. The other, from Fevzipasha to
Diarbekir, is 315 miles long ; it runs close to the Ergani
copper mines and for the first time opens up the districts
of Eastern Anatolia and Kurdistan to economic and-
social development. It will be continued later into Iran.

On the completion of the railway building programme
there will be two great lines in Anatolia running right
across Turkey from west to east. They will be con-
nected together and with the three sea-coasts by numbers
of branch lines. There will thus be created a ring of
railways starting from Ankara, from which lines will
radiate in every direction, connecting with one another
and with the heart of the country provinces which, owing
to the difficulties of communication, have been entirely
isolated until now.

Until 1929, when Turkey was able to introduce her
autonomous tariff, she was like all other Oriental countries
in importing industrial products, especially cotton piece
goods and sugar, and exporting raw materials. The new
Customs tariff aimed at protecting the country's growing
industries, whose development requires the provision of
the necessary capital and the awakening of the initiative
of the population and its interest in technical advance.
For the initial period the state is affording facilities to
industry by admitting machinery into the country free
of duty, by exemptions from taxation, and by subsidies.
But the great bulk of the industrial enterprises are being
started by the state itself or financed by it through the
national banks. In this way the transition from a barter

OF EUROPEANIZATION 239

system to that of trade and industrialization is to be
facilitated, and a staff of organizers and of clerical and
industrial employees gradually trained to carry out the
new development among the Turkish people. This in
turn requires an intensification and rationalization of
agriculture. The farmer himself can only emerge from
present conditions and advance to modernized methods
of farming with the aid of the state, through the provision
of credit banks and co-operatives, capital and training.
The transition from an entirely primitive agriculture,
bound by tradition and trading within the narrowest
limits, to a rationalized, intensified, mechanized system,
capable of taking its part in world trade, is extremely
difficult. The Oriental peasant is intelligent and anxious
.to learn. But it requires all the care of the state to train
him in the new mentality required by a more highly
developed technique and system of farming. The
government has provided a network of good elementary
and secondary agricultural schools, has re-organized the
agricultural bank, has abolished the old tithe tax, has
founded a central bank for the agricultural co-operatives
which it is actively promoting, and is planning the erection
of great repair workshops for agricultural machinery.

Since 1929 the government has also secured a credit
balance of foreign trade. The import of many goods
that can be produced in the country or merely serve
luxury requirements is entirely forbidden ; on the other
hand, raw materials, machinery and tools, seeds, and the
like, may be imported without limit.

Among the many industrial works started in Turkey,
textile and sugar mills have taken the first place ; textiles
and sugar had been the principal articles of import, while
the country itself produced their raw material. The
national banks created or re-organized have played an
important part in the fight against the alienation of trade
and industry. Among these banks founded and financed
by the state, apart from the Central Bank, which has the
privilege of bank note issue, mention may be made of the
Industrial Bank, the Agrarian Bank, the commercial

240 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

bank Ish Bankasi, the Sumer Bankasi, and the Eti Bankasi.
The names of the two last reflect the new Turkish theory
of history, under which the Turks are descendants and
cultural heirs of the Sumerians and Hittites. The
" Hittite Bank " has been set tip primarily for the financing
of the electrification of the country and the development
of its internal resources.

Foreigners are shut out of many occupations in Turkey .
Turkish is required to be the exclusive business language
within the whole country. Foreign experts are only
appointed where no Turks are available with the required
training, and are made to undertake to train Turks who
can ultimately fill their place. Provision has been made
for supplying Turkey within a short period with native
experts through the re-organization of the Turkish col-
legiate and technical education system and by sendiqg
numbers of students abroad. Industrialization has also
brought to the fore the problem of labour protection
legislation. New measures under consideration provide
for progressive regulations on modern lines such as have
been unknown hitherto in Oriental countries. Rapid
progress has also been made in recent years in increasing
the productivity of native labour.

The Turkish government is also endeavouring to train
and give settled occupation to a class of industrial workers.
Many of the measures adopted in the field of education
and in that of the modernization of public life also serve
the rationalization and Europeanization of trade and
industry. The introduction of the Latin alphabet, the
simplification of the written language, the development
of the educational system, and the special attention paid
to occupational training in commercial, industrial, agri-
cultural, and normal schools have all contributed to raising
the general level of education. In 1933 there were
in Turkey 6,733 elementary schools with 10,440 men and
4,624 women teachers, and with a school attendance of
366,344 boys and 201,619 girls. In addition there were
228 secondary and technical schools with 2,081 men and
1,065 women teachers, attended by 36,891 male and

OP EUROPEANIZATION ,241

3,650 female students. The university system was
itirely re-organized. The old university in Istanbul
pas closed and a completely new institution opened in
December 1933, largely staffed by numbers of the leading
" non- Aryan " professors who had been driven out of
Germany under the Hitler regime. The agricultural
^university has also had the advantage of the selection of
eminent teachers.

Close co-operation is intended to be maintained
between scientific research and economic planning. The
Gregorian calendar has been introduced in place of the
Mohammedan ; the metric system has been introduced,
and in May 1935, Sunday was made the weekly day of
rest instead of Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath. All
Turks have been required to adopt family names in place
of the personal names formerly in use. Mustapha Kemal
himself took the name of Mustapha Ataturk. The old
titles, such as Pasha and Bey, Effendi and Hadji, so
characteristic of the old Turkey, have been declared
illegal ; Turkish men may only be addressed with the old
Turkish form of Bay, and women Bayin. Thus class
distinctions are to disappear in the new democratic
Turkey, at all events so far as their recognition through
titles goes.

For the new Five-year Plan close co-operation is
envisaged with the Soviet Union. Turkish workers and
engineers are to go through their training in Soviet Russian
works. As early as May 1932, Turkey concluded with
the Soviet Union a credit agreement which is characteristic
of the tendencies of Turkish economic policy since the
world war. The Soviet Union granted the Turkish
government a credit of 8,000,000 dollars for twenty years,
without interest, on the strength of which Turkey will
buy machinery for her industries from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union makes its appearance here for the first
time as a lender and as a country now able to export
industrial and agricultural machinery and so to help the
countries of the East which are emancipating themselves ;
Turkey shows her intention of accepting credits only in

16

242 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

order to enable her to procure means of production.
The credit agreement with the Soviet Union was incor-
porated in the Five-year Plan for the industrialization of
Turkey when the plan was worked out in detail.

Equally with her home and economic policy, Turkey's
foreign policy is guided by the effort to make a complete
break with the past. The " sick man " on the Bosphorus
had been for a hundred and fifty years a plaything of
European policy, and in his turn had tried to win over
now one and now another of the states that menagfijii
him, and to play each off against the others. The new
Turkey has maintained the freedom and independence
of its foreign policy, and has steadily pursued a policy
of peace, in order to assure itself the necessary breathing
space for years to come for the modernization of the state.
The neutralization and demilitarization of the Straits
has diminished the interest of the Great Powers in them.
On both sides of these Straits, this immemorial bridge
between Asia and Europe (by which the Entente armies
suffered a serious defeat in the war), Turkey is still
planted, to-day in a more real sense a bridge between two
worlds.

The country is on terms of close friendship with the
Soviet Union. It was the attitude of the Soviet Union
that enabled Turkey to make headway against Europe
in the difficult years between the Treaties of Sevres and
Lausanne, and it was the Soviet renunciation of capitula-
tions and of Russia's concessions in Turkey that prepared
the way for the country's constitutional and economic
renewal. When the national revolutions in the Near
East replaced decayed and corrupt monarchies,
dependent politically and economically on Western
imperialism, by the rule of a young bourgeoisie out to
emancipate itself politically and economically, the Soviet
Union regarded them, as has already been mentioned,
as its natural allies in the struggle against Western
imperialism. In this there was no community of ideas,
no success for Communist doctrines ; the new states of
the Near East had actively and successfully prevented

OF EUROPEANIZATION 243

ranist propaganda from crossing their frontiers.
Soviet Union and the states of the Near East, with
rkey at their head, were united by a community
interests, both parties being concerned to prevent
iy return of their past semi-colonial condition, and
make a complete change in their social condition
igh the introduction of industrialism and of modern
sonomic activities. On March 16th, 1921, Mustapha
Vernal concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia, Article 4
of which reads as follows :

" Recognizing that the national movements in
the Orient are similar to and in harmony with the
struggle of the Russian workingmen for the new
social order, the two contracting parties assert solemnly
the rights of these peoples to freedom, independence,
and free choice of such forms of government as they
themselves desire to have. 55

Her friendship with the Soviet Union did Turkey
service of the utmost importance in buttressing her
position during the peace negotiations at Lausanne and
also on later occasions. But the treaty of friendship,
which has twice been renewed, does not mean that
Turkish policy follows in the wake of Moscow's. The
policy of the two states runs on parallel lines, under the
influence of a common conception of the independence
of the peoples of the East. Now that Turkey has
acquired and is maintaining her entire independence, her
intention is to remain neutral as between the Soviet Union
and the Western Powers, while preserving goodwill and
friendship toward the Soviet Union. She cannot afford
to endanger this friendship, but she intends nevertheless
to keep open all the roads to the West. It was in
accordance with this principle that Turkey became a
Member State of the League of Nations in July 1932.

Under the influence of the Soviet Union a loose
association has also developed between the states of the
Near East, Turkey, Iran (Persia), and Afghanistan. The
first of the treaties between these states was signed in

244 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Moscow on March 1st, 1921, between Turkey and
Afghanistan. In this treaty Afghanistan already des-
cribes Turkey as a model for the national liberation of
Oriental peoples. Since then the economic and cultural
transformation of the new Turkey has become the modelt
for Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the rulers of these!
countries, Shah Eiza Pahlevi, King Amanullah, and King
Faisal, who became the leaders of the national indepen-
dence movements of their peoples about the same time
as Mustapha Kemal, have taken that leader and his
activities as their model. Iraq and the new Arabia, in
process of creation, which is to embrace the Arabian
countries, and Turkey and Iran, will form a common
front in the Near East. It will not be an alliance, but
there will be mutual obligations of friendship and good-
will, with which there will also probably be associated
economic co-operation. For the industries of the neigh-
bouring Soviet Union the countries of the Near East
form a natural market, and similarly any expansion of
Turkish trade must be southwards and eastwards.

While success was thus achieved in the north-east in

turning the traditional enmity between Turkey and

Russia into friendship, there was success also, under

much more difficult circumstances, in the south-west in

making an end of the tension between Turkey and Greece.

For nine centuries Turks and Greeks had faced one

another as bitter opponents in the struggle for the heritage

of the eastern Roman Empire ; the years 1919 to 1922,

with the Greek penetration into Anatolia and the atrocities

by which it was accompanied on both sides, and 1923

\vith the vast miseries of the compulsory exchange of

populations, had further accentuated the old hostility

and left a legacy of deep embitterment. Nevertheless

Mustapha Kemal succeeded in 1930 in concluding with

Venizelos a series of treaties of friendship, which swept

away all the old differences. The hearty reception

given in Ankara at the end of October to the Greek

plenipotentiaries was one of those statesmanlike acts

which are of epoch-making importance, determining

OF EUROPEANIZATION 245

the course of history for centuries to come. The Turco-
Greek rapprochement was at the same time the
consummation of the European peace policy which
Turkey has taken pains to follow in the last dozen years.

Turkey sought to place alongside the association of
the states of the Near East an association of the Balkan
states, to stave off the rival influences of the Great Powers
from the Balkans, where the old Austro-Russian rivalry
has been replaced since the war by I^anco-Italian
rivalry. She succeeded in this through the conclusion
of the Balkan pact in 1934, and her new r61e, in which
she has become no longer a passive subject of historic
change but an active collaborator in it, her strict policy of
independence and neutrality, has put a completely different
complexion on the " Eastern question " which filled the
political history of the nineteenth century.

Thus the ten years of the new Turkey under the leader-
ship of Mustapha Kemal have been filled in every field
with an almost uncanny activity. Like the whole of the
Near East, and at its head, Turkey has been going through
the process of advance from one stage of civilization to
another, a process which deeply affects every manifesta-
tion of social and personal life and aims at changing men,
their habits, and their ideas. This is a difficult period
of transition, full of inconsistencies, weaknesses, and
inadequacies. The men affected by it are being drawn
into a whirlpool of uncertainties. They are not finding
it so easy to penetrate the essentials of Western humanism,
the intellectual bases of science and research, and they
are trying first of all to assimilate the things that are
" practical " ; but all this belongs essentially to the period
of transition ; these axe symptoms of decay which are
mixed up with evidences of advance, a fateful process
with a double aspect, not to be retarded by any regrets
or any romantic glance backward into the past. In this
awakening out of centuries of passivity, narrowness,
lethargy, there lies a creative fresh start. At the same
time the men of the present day feel a hatred of the
country's immediate past, which is scarcely yet entirely

246 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

in the past, a period in which they felt that they were
despised, exploited, and humiliated, by " Europe ". All
the stronger is the growth of the desire to make an entire
break with this immediate past, ignominious as it is felt
to have been, to enter upon new paths, to take over in
their entirety the lessons learned from Europe and to use^
them for self-protection against Europe. MustapKa
Kemal is a son of this transition period. Like all great
non-tragic personalities of history he is an embodiment
of two elements, the outstanding energy and statesman-
like ability of the born leader and the tendencies, indepen-
dent of personalities, at work at a particular period of
history and serving to shape it. The new Turkey is
Mustapha Kemal's work, but he was only able to bring
this work to completion because he undertook the direction
of tendencies which had been striving for realization for
a quarter of a century in Turkish as in all Oriental life,
and allowed his course to be dictated by them, entering
then upon that course with unerring sureness of purpose
and with ruthless energy.

IRAN (PERSIA)

Turkey has preceded the other Oriental states along
the path of Europeanization. She was favoured in every
way, by her geographical situation, which had already
brought her intellectuals into contact with Europe through
many decades ; through the victorious war of indepen-
dence which assured her full sovereignty ; and by the
character of the people. In Iran, Arabia, Egypt the
conditions were much more unfavourable. The process
of Europeanizatkm is thus proceeding more slowly, amid
many obstacles, and often by indirect means. But in
these countries also there have arisen leading personalities
similar to Mustapha Kemal, who have initiated or
accelerated this process, Riza Shah in Iran, King Faisal
in Iraq, King Ibn Saud in the Arabian peninsula, Zaghlul
Pasha in Egypt. Each of them was faced by a different
situation, different geographically, politically, and

OF EUROPEANIZATION 247
psychologically. Each of them had thus to carve out
his own path. But all of them were instruments of the
common process of Europeanization.

Iran is in the most unfavourable geographical situation
conceivable. It is a basin without an outlet, surrounded
by high mountain ranges. A large part of the country
is desert. The permanently settled parts, in which
agriculture depends on irrigation, are typical instances of
oasis civilization. The nature of the soil and the climate
form exceptional obstacles in the way of any development
of a modern state in the vast but thinly settled country.
The lack of all modern means of transport prevents any
closely knit organization of the various tribes and regions.
The townspeople are Iranians, among whom the national
movement of recent years has re-awakened the memory
of their great past. The warlike element of the population
is formed by the non-Iranian nomad tribes. Since 1927
the Iranian government has begun gradually to induce
the nomads to settle, but not until there has been further
economic and agricultural progress in the country in
general will it be possible to bring the nomads out of their
deep poverty, and to incorporate them in the Iranian
community and associate them in its efforts for economic
and constitutional advance.

The difficulties in the way of communication, the
poverty of the country, misgovernment, corruption, and
above all the constant external pressure from Russia,
were the causes of Persia's condition as one of the most
backward countries of the Near East. The national
movement which has modernized the state in recent
years is engaged now in the effort to modernize the
economic and social conditions of the country. Every
economic advance is dependent on political and social
conditions, and these in turn depend on the independence
of the country, without which the government is unlikely
to have either the will or the capacity to act in the
interest of the population, instead of that of foreign states
or groups. Iran has suffered from her geographical
situation ever since Napoleon made her a pawn in world

248 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

policy and world economic activities. Only two states
had any tangible interests in pre-war Persia Russia and
Great Britain. Russia was out to incorporate Persia in
her empire, and pursued this aim by all available political
and economic means. Persia's history during the nine-
teenth century and up to the time of the Bolshevist
revolution is one long story of violation of the country
by Russia. In scarcely any other country of the East
or of Spanish America was such ruthlessness and
unscrupulousness shown as by Russia in Persia. Even in
the Ottoman empire this would have been impossible ;
there were other Powers too closely interested, and the
country was too close to Europe and too open to the gaze
of all observers. Persia was remote, outside the sphere
of the immediate interests of the European public, visited
by comparatively few Europeans, and reached only with
great trouble and difficulty. Thus Russia had a free
hand there. The extraordinary poverty of the country
in capital, the entire illiteracy of its population, the
fantastic corruption of its officials and of public life made
it easy for Russia to exploit her own political, cultural,
and economic superiority.

The only opponent Russia had to fear was not Persia,
but Great Britain. Great Britain was interested not in
the destruction but in the preservation of Persia, in
order to keep Russia away from India and from the
Persian Gulf. Great Britain wanted a formally indepen-
dent Persia under British influence. She did little to
strengthen or modernize the country, confining herself
in general to the methods of an economic penetration of
the sort carried on everywhere by the economically
stronger Power against the economically weaker. Lord
Ourzon, who later, as Viceroy of India, exercised decisive
influence over the Asiatic policy of the British Empire,
set out to show in 1892, in his book on Persia, which laid
the foundation of British policy in that country, that
Persia's interests are Great Britain's interests; "in
other words, the development of the industrial and
materialresourcesof Persia, the extension of her commerce,

OF EUROPEANIZATION 249

the rehabilitation of her strength, these are the objects of
British policy.' 5 " Unless, therefore, we are prepared
to see Persia fall into the plight of Bokhara and Khiva,
and to concede to a Power whose interests in Central
Asia may in the future, if they do not now, clash with our
own, an incalculable accretion of strength, Englishmen
must be up and stirring, and the preservation, so
far as is still possible, of the integrity of Persia must
be registered as a cardinal precept of our Imperial
creed."

Great Britain followed this policy until 1907, and
protected Persia against excessive pressure from Russia.
In 1907, to strengthen her European position, she
concluded an agreement with Russia, the price for which
had to be paid, and soon was paid, by Persia. The whole
of northern Persia, economically the most fertile and
politically the most important territory, with the capital,
fell to Russia, who exercised unrestricted authority in
this territory both in economic and political affairs.

Just at that period the Persian national movement
had begun. The Persians forced the concession of a
Constitution in 19Q6 ; they were the first Oriental nation
to do so. The Persian nationalists had gained courage
for this step in consequence of the weakening of Russia
by the Russo-Japanese war (in which an eastern nation
which had only shortly before thei* been organized on
European lines defeated a European Great Power), and
of the first Russian revolution, in which a people had
shown the possibility of rising against despotism and
corruption and compelling democratic reforms. They
had also had genuine assistance, before the Anglo-Russian
treaty, from the Liberal government of Great Britain,
which had pressed for reform in Persia. But the Persian
parliament had scarcely assembled and begun to enact
reforms, and especially to wrest the finances and the
administration of the country from a chaos of corruption
and incapacity, when Russia, in league with the autocratic
ruler of Persia and a section of the Persian aristocracy,
made all reform impossible.

250 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Shortly before the outbreak of the world war the final
dissolution of the Persian empire and a Russian annexation
of northern Persia seemed to be imminent. The Persian
nationalists had shown themselves, in the few years that
had elapsed since 1906, too weak to cope with the difficult
situation.

The situation changed with the Russian Revolution.
The Soviet government not only gave Persia back her
independence, but enabled a first beginning to be made
with constitutional and economic re-organization by
renouncing Persia's debts to Russia, declaring the
capitulations and concessions at an end, and restoring to
the Persian government the Russian state and church
property in the country. A Cabinet formed by the
nationalists then came into power, but in 1919 Great
Britain succeeded in once more forming a pro-British
ministry, which concluded a treaty with Sir Percy Cox
on August 9th, 1919. Under this treaty British advisers
were to be appointed in all the more important govern-
ment departments, British officers were to train the Persian
army, British capital was to build the railways and other
means of communication, and Great Britain was to have
controlling influence in the revision of the Persian tariff
policy. Great Britain was prepared to grant a loan, to
finance the reforms carried out under British supervision.
Under this treaty Iran would have shared the fate of
the old Ottoman empire, the only difference being that
Great Britain would have been placed in a position of
monopoly. But the victories of the Communists in Russia
against the White armies and of Mustapha Kemal in
Anatolia completely altered the situation. A new
government was formed in Persia under Zia Eddin, a
nationalist democrat, and Riza Khan, a Persian of humble
origin who had begun his career as a soldier in the Persian
Cossack Brigade and had risen to be its commanding
officer. The new government, which had overthrown the
pro-British ministry on February 21st, 1921, concluded
a treaty of friendship with Soviet Russia on February 26th,
1921, and denounced the treaty with Great Britain on

OF EUROPEANIZATION 251

March 8th. A few weeks later the last British and Russian
troops had left Iranian territory for ever.

Eiza Khan, a born leader like Mustapha Kemal, had
won such popularity in Iran through the success of the
coup tf&at that he soon became the unrestricted leader
of the country. He, too, in 1924, wanted to set up a
republic in Iran on the Turkish model, but abandoned
the plan in view of the opposition of the priests, who
feared any radical modernization of the country, which
until then had been shut off from European influences.
In the autumn of 1925 the Iranian parliament deposed
the Kajar dynasty, which at the last had had no more than
a shadow existence. On December 12th, 1925, a National
Assembly convoked for the purpose elected Eiza Khan
to be hereditary Shah. He took as the name of his
dynasty the Iranian name Pahlevi. On March 22nd,
1935, the Persian New Year's Day, the Persian govern-
ment declared the ancient name of Iran as the only
official name of what has hitherto been known as Persia.

In Iran as in Turkey the Constitution provides that the
legislative power shall be in the hands of Parliament.
But the Shah appointed the ministers and provincial
governors exclusively from among trusted intimates, and
so set up a personal dictatorship. In Iran, in her more
primitive stage of development, the process of moderniza-
tion depends even more than in Turkey on the energy
and determination of the ruler. The Shah depended from
the outset mainly on the army, with every branch of which,
as a soldier who had worked himself up from the ranks,
he was thoroughly familiar. The first condition both for
the modernization of the country and for the preservation
of its independence was the Europeanization of the army.
For the first time in modern Persian history, the country
possesses an army which is paid regularly and well and
is well equipped. The army succeeded in a few years in
establishing peace and order in the country and in
turning a loose association of provincial and tribal units
- into a realm in which it was possible to lay the foundations
of modern state organization and in which the orders

252 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

of the central government are carried out. Compulsory
military service was introduced and was made a reality.
The army was provided with modern war material, a
rapidly growing air fleet was developed, special care was
devoted to the training of officers, and the navy was
strengthened by ordering new gunboats. More than
one-third of the Budget is expended on the army, whose
mobility is the first condition for the reforms in the fields
of administration, economic life, and education.

The broad lines of the reforms in Iran follow those
of Turkey development of communications, moderniza-
tion of the country's economic system through industrial-
ization and through the introduction of intensive farming,
precautions against the alienation of trade and industry,
the setting up of the country's own financial institutions,
the introduction of a modern system of elementary and
higher education with special emphasis on technical and
industrial training, and the reform of the financial adminis-
tration and the judiciary, with the abolition of capitula-
tions and all foreigners' privileges. But the pace of the
reforms is slower than in Turkey. The country is much
poorer in capital resources than Turkey, and Iran had
not already in existence a staff of officials, teachers, and
judges, trained on modern lines. Riza Shah has shown
himself a realist in his policy; like Ibn Saud, he has
taken full account of the existing conditions and the
limits they set to the scope and the pace of all work of
reform. None the less, in the last ten years Iran, too,
has been revolutionized.

Iran is still in the transition stage from a theocratic
to a temporal state. In Turkey state and religion have
been entirely separated. Turkish civilization has cut
adrift from its historic bases ; the process of moderniza-
tion has been carried out with much the same radicalism
as among the Mohammedan peoples of the Soviet Union.
The abandonment of the Arabic alphabet has made the
Turk no longer able to read the Koran or the theological
literature of Islam. Instruction in the Arabic and
Iranian languages, the study of which was the basis

OF EUROPEANIZATION 253

of the whole of the Turk's humanistic education, has been
abolished. The practice of religion, the services conducted
by the clergy, have been placed under the supervision of
the state ; the priest has become an official, no longer
exercising any influence over the state but dependent on
it. In Iran, on the contrary, the influence of the priest-
hood is still very great, and their opposition has so far
made any radical reform impossible. Islam in its Shiite
form is still the state religion. The Shah must be a
member of the Shiite faith, and no law may be enacted
which is in conflict with the canon law of Islam. Under
Article 2 of the law of October 7th, 1907, amending the
Constitution, Parliament must always include among its
members five mujtdhids (experts in canon law), as only
they can say whether new laws are in consonance with the
teachings of Islam. These five members are required to
be men of proved strength of character and great learning,
and thoroughly familiar with the needs of their age.
The chief priests of Iran elect twenty eminent experts
in the law, and Parliament elects from among these
twenty the five men who form the Canonical Council to
which all important projects of law that touch on questions
of the Islamic faith have to be submitted.

In his zeal for reform the Shah at first aroused the
opposition of the clergy, and it was the clergy who refused
to agree to the setting up of a republic, as they feared that
the Turkish example would be followed. The Shah
succeeded, however, in conciliating the clergy and so
obtaining the necessary consent of this influential caste
to his mounting the throne. In 1927 he also expressly
confirmed the privilege of the canonical Committee of
Five in Parliament. The result has been to introduce
a certain dualism into Iranian legislation, leading to
ambiguity and half measures, since the Parliament, in
order to modernize the administration of the country and
its trade and industry, is enacting laws based on
European conceptions, while the Committee of Five has
to see to the maintenance of canon law, which permeates
the whole of the country's legislation and the whole

254 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

judicial system. Thus the process of secularization in
Iran, which is a constant accompaniment of the modern-
ization of public life, is being carried out more or less in
opposition to the traditional religious principles embodied
in the Constitution ; and the consequence is that some
laws are not placed before the Committee of Five, under
a restricted interpretation of the provisions of the
Constitution requiring this to be done, but the omission
permits doubt to be thrown on the legality of these laws.

The ulemas or clergy in Iran are independent of the
government. The government appoints and pays an
imam at every mosque to preach and intone the Friday
prayer, but the principal influence over the population
is exerted by the mujtahids. Most of these pious and
learned men live in the Shiite holy places in Iraq, outside
Iranian territory. Mujtahids are not officially appointed
but owe their title to the thoroughness of their canonical
learning, to the depth of their wisdom and the holiness
of their way of life. Thus the mujtahids and the ulemas
have an influence which is often applied in reactionary
directions and against radical reforms.

The Shah has pursued a path of moderate reform in
favour of which he has had, in addition to the support
of the army, that of the overwhelming majority of
Parliament and of the priesthood. But there are also
a left and a right wing, supporters on one side of radical
and democratic reforms and thoroughgoing Europeaniza-
tion, in whose eyes the Shah is too cautious and too
autocratic, and on the other side supporters of a con-
servative attitude, who see in every attempt at reform
and Europeanization a weakening of Islam and of the
traditional bases on which they consider that state and
society should be built up in Iran. But the opposition of
both these extremes is far too weak to be able to obstruct
the middle path the Shah has pursued. This path is
leading Iran cautiously but steadily on the way to
thorough modernization ; it is permitting the formation
of a unified national will and the creation of an Iranian
society which is slowly emancipating itself from its

OF EUROPEANIZATION 255

traditional bases and from the antagonisms of families
and guilds, nomads and town-dwellers, and is working
towards a unity composed of new sociological factors.

In its cultural reforms the Iranian government is
following the example set by Turkey. Numbers of
Iranian students are being sent abroad every year at the
cost of the state for scientific and technical study at
European universities. In 1934 a state university was
opened in Teheran, for scientific instruction on modern
lines. It has six Faculties, religion and philosophy,
science, education, medicine, law, and engineering. The
old Persian literature is being studied again, and a
language academy has been entrusted with the promotion
of the modernization of the Persian language on its
classic foundations and with the study of the question of
the introduction of the Latin alphabet.

The Iranian government has embarked, among other
things, on dress reform. A national Iranian head-dress,
the Pahlevi cap, had been introduced in order to give all
the subjects of the state the sense of unity and common
citizenship. In June 1935 it was abolished in favour of
European hats, which are removed from the head on
entering houses and as a greeting a breach with the
past Mohammedan tradition. The number of persons
permitted to wear priest's clothing has been rigorously
cut down, and the customary titles, forms of address, and
traditional elaborations of speech have been done away
with. Thus by 1935 the Iranian reforms have taken on
a radical character approaching more and more closely
to the Turkish model.

Iran's attitude, like Turkey's, in foreign policy has
entirely changed. Until 1921 her foreign policy was
entirely passive : she was the plaything of Russia and
Great Britain. To-day, like Turkey, she is pursuing an
active policy of independence and peace. In 1928 the
capitulations were abolished and foreigners were placed
in every respect on the same footing as Iranians ; the
country established its full fiscal sovereignty ; the note-
issuing privilege of the Imperial Bank of Persia, a British

256 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

financial institution, was withdrawn ; and in February
1931 the transfer of the telegraph lines of the (British)
Indo-European Telegraph Company to the Iranian
government was effected. On her own soil there is no
longer any limitation of Iran's sovereignty. The govern-
ment watches jealously over the country's full indepen-
dence. In view of its memories of no distant past, it
refused to allow southern Iranian territory to be crossed
by the aircraft of Imperial Airways on their way to
India. Only after long negotiations did it concede this
right for a short period and under burdensome conditions.
Where the Soviet Union voluntarily renounced all
concessions in Iran and all rights under the capitulations,
Iran won her entire independence in her relations with
Great Britain only through a series of trials of strength,
from all of which Iran emerged victoriously.

The last of these was the enforcement of a new
concession treaty with the Anglo-Persian (now Anglo-
Iranian) Oil Company in 1933. Iran is interested in this
petroleum concession, as it represents an important source
of revenue, and the company's widespread activities
contribute greatly to the industrialization of the country.
But here as elsewhere Iran tried as early as 1931 to secure
increased recognition of the claims inspired by its new
sense of independence, and to subordinate this British
company to Iranian control. The conclusion of the
negotiations in the spring of 1933 brought Iran entire
success and at the same time greatly strengthened Biza
Shah in his policy. Iran carried all three of her demands
the limitation of the area of the company's concession,
giving the Iranian government a free hand in the granting
of further concessions ; the increased employment and
training of Iranians in the extraction of oil, including
training for the higher posts ; and, finally, the securing
of increased royalties, independently of the level of oil
prices. The control exercised by the Iranian govern-
ment has been strengthened, all workmen, and as far as
possible the engineers also, must be Iranians, and the
company is to pay 10,000 a year for the training in

OF EUROPEANIZATION 257

England of young Iranian students selected by the
government.

In the economic sphere Iran sought co-operation
with the Soviet Union, and this eventuated in the trade
agreement of October 1931, on terms advantageous to
the Soviets. In order to preserve her economic indepen-
dence and to be able to carry out the modernization of
her economic system better and on a definite plan, Iran
followed the example of the Soviet Union and set up a
state monopoly of foreign trade. Her efforts to attain a
maximum of self-sufficiency have steadily and greatly
reduced the volume of her foreign trade. It is difficult
to get imported goods in Iran. The monopoly of foreign
trade has led to the conclusion of various agreements
with foreign trading firms permitting the importation of
certain goods in consideration of the export of Iranian
goods to an equivalent value. This has prevented the
import of luxury goods and other non-essential articles,
has reduced the flow abroad of the very limited Iranian
capital, has trained the Iranian public to pay due
attention to the products of the country's own industries,
and has permitted the setting up of industries in the
country without resort to foreign loans.

The first condition of progress in Iran is to bring it
into closer contact with the outer world and to develop
the system of communications within the country. Until
a little while ago Iran was remote from all important
routes of communication, and was touched only by two
seas, one of them an Asiatic inland sea and the other an
arm of the Indian Ocean. British and Russian railway
lines ran only as far as the Iranian frontier. The Iranian
government has now begun the construction of a railway
to cross the country from north to south, from the Caspian
via Teheran to the Persian Gulf. It has developed new
ports at both the terminal points, and it has decided to
build connecting lines from northern Iran into Iraq,
Syria, and Turkey, dose connection with the Mediter-
ranean and so with Europe is to be provided via Beirut,
which will become Iran's free port. The railway network

258 METHODS AND PROBLEMS
will be served by the motor roads which have been built.
These are an essential preliminary to the intensification
of agriculture and to industrialization. The lack of good
roads and railways has hitherto prevented the export of
crops and import of machinery and has made impossible
the development of Iran's rich mineral deposits, which
include coal and iron. The road-building has also enabled
caravan traffic to be replaced by motor traffic. Imports
of motor vehicles have steadily increased. In 1924-5,
529 motor cars and 103 motor lorries and motor buses
were imported ; in 1928-9, 1,369 cars and 1,783 lorries
and buses. Of the newly-introduced road-tax half is
being expended on road construction and half appro-
priated in aid of the estimates for education and public
health. The yield of the sugar and tea monopoly is
assigned to the accumulation of a special railway fund,
out of which the great railway lines are to be laid down in
sections. During a period of five years the German
Junker company has been organizing air traffic within
Iran ; now the Iranian government intends to follow the
example of the Turkish and Egyptian governments in
organizing its own air service through Iranian companies.
Aviation has made rapid progress in Iran as throughout
the Near East.

All this shows the efforts that are being made to bring
this country, hitherto remote and difficult to reach, into
touch with the world outside and with modern technical
progress. Imports of machinery are growing, and with
the aid of the Iranian National Bank milk have been set
up for the production primarily of the two principal
commodities imported into Iran, textiles and sugar.
The value of the imports of cotton goods into Iran in
1931-2 was 231,000,000 rials, and of sugar 73,000,000.
In the following year the imports dropped to 168,000,000
and 61,000,000 rials. In the same period the imports of
machinery rose from 33,000,000 to 50,000,000 and of
motor cars from 45,000,000 to 60,000,000 rials. Since
1929 agriculture has made very substantial progress
through the introduction of modern methods, the better

OF EUKOPEANIZATION 259

utilization of water supply, the improvement of cattle
breeding and the combating of the diseases of animals
and plants. Agricultural colleges and secondary schools
have been established, and in every province agricultural
institutes have been set up with experimental stations and
laboratories, which devote special attention to the
improvement of tea and cotton culture and to cattle
breeding and dairy farming. A veterinary college has
been founded. Special attention is being given to
afforestation. The industrial programme provides for
eight sugar mills, to provide the whole of the country's
requirements ; two had begun working in 1934. The
programme also includes the establishment of cement
works and textile mills ; in 1934 there were eight spinning
mills and three textile manufacturing mills at work. A
whole series of other works are contemplated in the very
ambitious programme of industrialization. Already there
are 17,000 kilometres of roads suitable for motor traffic.

This programme of rapid development is being carried
out without recourse to loans : Iran, like most of the
states of the Near East, has no internal loan and only a
small foreign indebtedness. But it is accepted, as in the
Soviet Union, that during a number of transition years
the standard of living of the population will be affected.
The Budget has been balanced, the balance of trade is in
the country's favour, and the three financial institutions,
the National Bank, which has thirty branches in the
principal towns, the agricultural bank, and the Pahlevi
commercial bank, serve as the financial instruments of
the economic development of the country.

The Iranian government has not only balanced its
Budget but carried out a currency reform, transferred
the privilege of note issue to the National Bank (in which
only Iranian capital is invested), set up an agrarian bank,
called into existence a government department of
industry, and issued a slogan never before heard in Iran :
" Buy Iranian Goods/' New legal codes have been
introduced. The number of schools has grown from
612 with 55,000 children in 1921 to 3,642 with 182,000

260 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

children in 1932. The expenditure on education has
been multiplied four times over in the past seven years.
Every year the Iranian government sends hundreds of
students to Europe at its own expense, to complete their
education in the various branches of science, under a
carefully worked-out scheme. Everywhere there are the
signs of a fresh beginning, though they are hindered and
restricted by the continuing influence of the heritage
from a still recent past. The national consciousness has
been greatly developed in recent years, though frequently
it is not matched either by practical ability or by dis-
ciplined readiness for personal sacrifice. But in recent
years the foundations have been laid on which, under
the impulse of the deepening national consciousness, the
modernization of the country and its economic system
can be organically and securely developed.

In the neighbouring country of Afghanistan, where
the conditions are even more unfavourable than in Iran,
the first beginnings of modernization have been embarked
on. In February 1934 an Afghan National Bank was
founded, with government participation. It has branches
in London and Berlin. It has been given the privilege
of note issue, and has been made responsible for the
organization of foreign trade, of government supplies,
and of the monopoly in the principal raw materials.

SYBIA

The varying forms of the process of Europeanization
in the Arabian territories of the former Ottoman empire
may be seen in Syria and Iraq. Conditions were incom-
parably more favourable for Europeanization in Syria
than in Iraq. The fertile coastal region of Syria by the
Mediterranean had long been accessible to European
influences, which had also penetrated into the four
important towns in the interior of Syria on the borders
of the desert. Iraq, on the contrary, is separated from
the Mediterranean by deserts which until recently were
virtually impassable for Europeans ; its natural outlet

OF EUROPEANIZATION 261

is the Persian Gulf. But in Syria the natives have had
little active share in the process of Europeanization, which
wasduetotheinitiativeandtheactivitiesof the Europeans;
the Syrians themselves have been expending their energies
during the last twenty years, as they are still doing, on
the demand for national independence, while the Iraqis
have won their national independence in recent years
and have been able to make an energetic beginning on
this foundation with the Europeanization of their country,
much more unfavourable though its situation is in every
respect. There is an entirely different atmosphere in
Baghdad to that of Damascus or Beirut, an atmosphere
of initiative, constructive work, and confident activity.

In Iraq a nation in the modern sense of the word is
coming into existence ; in Syria religious antagonisms
dating from the medieval, shackled conditions of the
immediate past are still alive and at work, and are being
kept alive by the alien government. Until quite recent
times the loyalties and the sense of community of the
inhabitants of Syria were not bound up with their country
or with the nation, which had no existence whatever in
the modern sense, but with the religious group. The
very numerous priests, many of them not very well
educated, were looked up to with reverence ; they were
the leaders of the community in political and economic
matters ; and they represented the rigid and conservative
element of medievalism, perhaps even more in the
Christian communities than in Islam. The people held
tenaciously to their various religious practices and
customs ; canon law, and the administration of justice
by ecclesiastical courts, controlled family life. Under
the Islamic Turkish rule this tendency of the various
groups to live in isolation from one another and to form
states within the state was recognized. There was no
national consciousness, no sense of common citizenship
of the state, no social intercourse, no common system of
education. Turkish policy played ofE the various groups
against one another ; from the nineteenth century, when
they began to take an active interest in Syria, the

262 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

European Powers were in no way behind Turkey in this
policy; and since the war the mandatory adminis-
trations have even developed this reactionary policy
further, and have made it the basis of their statesmanship.
This policy also plays a part in Syria in the adminis-
trative departments and in the educational system.
Officials are appointed less on account of their fitness
for their posts than of the group to which they belong,
and are often expected to work for the interests of their
group rather than for the general good of the state. The
centuries of oppression suffered by Syria under her foreign
rulers have prevented the population from developing any
sense of citizenship, and have not contributed to the
strengthening of character. Not until complete self-
government is won will self-reliance and initiative be
awakened, with a consciousness of unity between govern-
ment and people and a ready acceptance of responsibility
to the whole community, of which each will feel himself
to be a member.

At the same time, before the world war Syria was the
province of the Ottoman empire which had come most
of all under European influence. As early as 1649 Prance
had declared herself the protector of the Catholic
Maronites ; Maronite priests were educated in Rome and
Paris. American missionaries began their work in Syria
in 1821, and in 1862 they decided to found a college in
Beirut, the first centre of higher education on European
lines in the Levant. In 1875 the Jesuits followed with
the founding of the French University of St Joseph;
they had resumed missionary activities in the Lebanon
in 1831. Before long French, American, British, and
Italian missions in Syria, Catholic and Protestant, were
competing in the field of education, and to some extent
in medical work. The mission often pursued more than
merely religious and philanthropic aims ; it formed men
who remained loyal to the language, the stock of ideas,
and the political outlook impressed on them at school.
The states and the cultures to which the missions belonged
extended their influence in this way in the Near East ;

OF EUROPEANIZATION 263

the intellectual impress received by their pupils sub-
sequently had its effect in the political, economic, and
cultural fields. Many leaders of public opinion in Syria
and other countries of the Near East came from these
schools. The Maronite and other priests and prelates of
Oriental Catholicism who had passed through St Joseph's
University became the pillars of French influence in the
Levant.

But the European influence also found ways of
exerting itself politically by direct means. The European
Powers, in their competition for the extension of their
spheres of influence, played on sections of the native
population and engaged their sympathies not only in their
own support but also as weapons against other Powers.
The French relied on the support of the Maronites, the
British on that of the Druses, the Russians on that of the
Orthodox Christians. This rivalry between the Powers
exacerbated the existing religious antagonisms, and bore
the bulk of the responsibility for the sanguinary religious
struggles of the nineteenth century in Syria and Lebanon.
After the Napoleonic wars England exerted predominant
influence in Syria. " The Lebanese had yet to develop
acute antagonism of creed; and, so long as but one
European Power, whether France before 1800 or Great
Britain afterwards, was concerning itself with them at
one time, they lacked the external temptation to dissen-
sion which was to offer itself presently. British influence,
therefore, was doing as yet no more harm in middle and
south Syria than French interest had done before it ; but
the fact that two European Powers, with growing and
antagonistic interests in the Levant, had gained a footing,
where one alone used to be, foreshadowed danger."
(Syria and Palestine. Handbook prepared under the
direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office.)
Lebanon had experienced many struggles before, but
these had been feudal quarrels, not wars of religion, and
neither Maronites nor Druses had yet begun to aspire
to oppress their neighbours with the aid of foreign
protectors. They soon learned the art in the nineteenth

264 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

century this art which has produced such fateful results
in the Near East and a series of violent religious and
racial struggles turned the Lebanon from 1841 to 1864
into an arena of incessant bitter tension. The Great
Powers were united in blaming the Sublime Porte " for
what had been largely their own work ". Not until an
autonomous province of Lebanon was set up was this
territory removed from the interplay of the activities
of the Great Powers and given assured peace, until, after
the world war, it was brought once more into the strong
if not healthy light of European policy in the Levant.

In Abdul Hamid's time Syria enjoyed special treat-
ment at the hands of the Sublime Porte. His reactionary
despotism weighed as heavily on Syria as on the other
parts of the Ottoman empire ; but Abdul Hamid was
turning his attention more and more to Asia, and realized
the value of Syria as the necessary link in a realm it was
desired to extend to Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt.
Syria was better provided with railways than were other
parts of the empire. With the granting in 1888 of the
concession for the building of the railway from Jaffa to
Jerusalem, Abdul Hamid began an ambitious policy of
communications which in the course of the decades that
followed united Syria by rail with Constantinople and
gave the country the line from Aleppo via Damascus to
Beersheba in southern Palestine, with its five branch
lines to Alexandretta, Tripoli, Beirut, Haifa, and Jaffa,
uniting it with the Mediterranean. Syrians like Izzet
Pasha el Abd, the father of the first president of the
Syrian Republic, were among the most intimate advisers
of Abdul Hamid, and owing to their influence Syria was
one of the best-provided parts of the empire, though
the degree of the provision can only be regarded as
relatively good, in comparison with the other parts of
Turkey.

The strongest influence in the process of Europeaniza-
tion was that exercised by the foreign schools. It was
exerted mainly, but not exclusively, over the Christian
population. Great as was the service done in improving

OF EUROPEANIZATION 265

the condition of the population of Syria, the influence of
the schools had also in the long run fundamental disadvan-
tages. To this day there are twice as many children
taught in foreign or private schools in Syria as in the
state schools. This prevents or delays the growth of the
sense of unity among the younger population. In many
schools the teaching is carried on in a foreign language
unfamiliar to the children, and the country's own
language, Arabic, is given inadequate attention. This
works in two directions. The Armenian child who is
brought up in one of the Armenian schools gains insuffi-
cient acquaintance with the language of the country
in which he is to live and work. The Arab child, taught
in a foreign language, never gains a full knowledge of his
own, often is unable to read and write properly in it, and
yet in many cases only gains a superficial fluency in foreign
languages. In view of the poverty of modern Arabic
literature, and the lack of scientific books and periodicals,
the knowledge of European languages is indispensable
to any higher education, but this necessary knowledge
of the great languages of civilization is mostly obtained
at the cost of inadequate acquaintance with the pupil's
own tongue. This superficial Europeanization produces
the type of Levantine who over- values the knowledge of
languages and yet is without a really thorough knowledge
of them. In the absence of national governments the
mandatory administrations pay wholly inadequate
attention to the provision of instruction in the national
tongue in elementary and higher education ; thus the
foreign schools continue to be of great importance, as
they are often the only places in which the native popula-
tion can gain genuine education and be prepared to meet
the demands of modern economic life. In 1934 in the
French mandated territory of Syria there were 2,439
schools with 218,741 pupils, made up as follows :

Schools. Pupils.

State schools _ . . 684 73,689

Private schools . . . , 1,145 87,157

Foreign schools . . . . 610 57,895

266 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Of the 218,741 schoolchildren in Syria, 118,550
Christians, and of these only 10,329 attended the state
schools ; of the 80,815 Mohammedan children, 54,471
attended the state schools. The state education system
has only been developed in any substantial degree in the
Syrian Republic. There are seven higher schools, two
of them for girls, with 1,404 students in all, and a univer-
sity, the Arab University of Damascus, which has
Faculties of medicine, law, and philosophy, and schools
of pharmacy, dentistry, and midwifery. The teaching
at this university is in Arabic. The number of illiterates
in Syria is estimated at about 60 per cent, of the men and
80 per cent, of the women. In the Republic of Lebanon
private and foreign schools are in the majority, the state
schools playing only a small part; there is no higher
state school, but the country is very well provided with
private and foreign higher schools and colleges. The
number of illiterates among the adult population is not
very different from that in Syria, but almost all the boys
of school age and about 30 per cent, of the girls go to
school.

The methods of teaching in the foreign schools vary.
In the French schools the children are taught French
very thoroughly, and especially in Lebanon many of their
ex-pupils have become entirely French in language and
culture. There is strong insistence on the children
speaking nothing but French even out of school;
instruction in Arabic is neglected, the children are often
without a real knowledge of Arabic, and Arab literature
is beyond their reach. The French University, on the
other hand, has devoted special attention to the study
of the Arabic language and Arab history, and the members
of its Oriental Institute and the publications of the Insti-
tute have done great service to the promotion of Arabic
learning. The interest centres, however, mainly on the
past. The French system of education has aimed at
" Europeanizing " the children and so de-nationalizing
them. To a Frenchman it seems natural that a Syrian
should prefer French to Arabic. But in this attitude

OF EUROPEANIZATION 267
the Frenchman betrays the characteristic filing of
" Nordic " racial pride. He is ready to make the
Syrians French and to admit them as equals into the
French cultural community.

The schools of the Jesuits lay stress on the principle
of the hard, humanistic education of earlier times. Super-
vision and discipline are exceptionally severe in their
schools. The Anglo-Saxon schools proceed from other
principles ; especially so the American University in
Beirut. The Anglo-Saxon's racial pride leads Him to
hold aloof from the native cultures, and so he does not
fall into the error of attempting de-nationalization.
Special attention is given to English teaching in the Anglo-
Saxon schools ; English is made to serve as the medium
of association between European culture and science and
the natives ; but the pupil is allowed his own tongue and
his own national origin. It would seem to the Anglo-
Saxon scarcely natural for a Syrian to prefer English and
speak it better than his native Arabic. The Anglo-Saxon
system sets out to introduce the native population to
modern thought, to form a small 61ite to inculcate the
new spirit in the masses through their example, as teachers,
physicians, and writers.

The awakening of initiative, the strengthening of
character, training in fairness and truthfulness, the
inculcation of the sense of responsibility and of service
to the community are important first steps, especially
in the Orient, towards any modernization. A spirit of
tolerance, of enlightenment, of co-operation must be
brought into play to help to smooth away religious
antagonisms and to bring into prominence the elements
of unity. It is just these traits of the liberal and practical
American Protestantism that have made contributions of
great value in the forming of the new type of man in the
Near East. The Oriental has a natural inclination for
humanist studies and understands their value. On the
other hand, the upper classes of Orientals despise manual
work, look down on the professions of farmer and
industrialist, and are only ready to assimilate sufficient

268 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

technical knowledge to fit them for official careers.
Technical education was regarded in the past as a matter
for charity, enabling orphan children to do something
to earn their daily bread. Only recently has the necessity
begun to be understood of training engineers, skilled
workers, mechanics and foremen. Technical schools
of the modern type have been started by the Syrian and
Lebanese governments in Damascus, Aleppo, and especi-
ally Beirut, but Syria is far behind Turkey and Egypt in
this field.

There are still many obstacles in the way of economic
Europeanization in Syria. A growing section of the
population have either become entirely Europeanized as
consumers, or have had the desire aroused in them for
many elements of the European way of living ; but there
has been little change in the country's methods of produc-
tion. This rise in the standard of living without a corre-
sponding rise in the standard of production is making the
native population entirely dependent economically on
the capital and the knowledge of the Europeans. The
influence of the West has created new needs, but without
putting the inhabitants of the country into a position
themselves to carry out a systematic development of the
country's resources and so to satisfy these increased needs.
Western penetration has also contributed to the destruc-
tion of the existing industries through the competition
of European products and the introduction of new tastes.

It was impossible for the native industries to with-
stand the competition of the West. The hand-worker,
torn away from his traditional methods, was no longer
able to produce with the needed accuracy. In their
poverty the Oriental countries demanded cheapness of
goods rather than quality of finish. The lack of training
and of good models made itself felt, and also the truly
Oriental attitude of sovereign indifference " malesh ",
J " what does it matter ? " The Oriental showed equal
inaptitude at first for initiative in enterprise, for bringing
industries into existence. Here there came into play not
only the contempt for manual work but the reluctance

OF EUROPEANIZATION 269

to undertake responsibility, or to take a risk, and the lack
of organizing ability and of foresight. Undoubtedly the
great lack of capital plays its part as in other fields.
The lack of needs among the population adds to the
difficulty of the attempt to raise the standard of living and
the quality of output. The taxable capacity of the popu-
lation is too low to permit of good and comprehensive
schooling, while on the other hand only education can
increase the economic aptitude of the population and
therewith their taxable capacity. The lack of capital
makes difficult the starting of important enterprises.
There have been great difficulties in the countries of the
Levant in uniting in practical business activities the
capital, ability, and experience of groups of men of initiative.
The Syrian is individualistic by nature and suspicious,
especially of his own compatriots. There is a lack of
readiness for important initiatives and of the capacity
to wait and slowly to build up on a grand scale, to dispense
with small gains in order later to secure more important
ones. Thus the process of Europeanization of trade and
industry has led in the first place to a weakening of the
native economic system, stimulating consumption without
increasing productivity. Often the market has been
flooded by European commercial agencies, and the
Syrians have been unable to choose between them or to
choose what is good for themselves. The native trade
and industry stood doubly in need of encouragement ;
the system of capitulations has tended instead to sub-
ordinate it to foreign trade and industry. The govern-
ments have done nothing to promote native trade and
industry. In Turkey, in Iran, and in other countries
with national governments the situation now is funda-
mentally different, but the European governments in the
Levant have not the necessary knowledge and patience,
and often have not the inclination, to identify themselves
with the process of modernization of native trade and
industry.

Only in recent years has the example of the general
progress awakened a new spirit of activity in native trade

270 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

and industry in Syria. The need of co-operation,
rationalization, and initiative is beginning to be
appreciated. Native capital is taking a more active
part in the economic development of the country. Native
industries are coining into existence with modern equip-
ment, and technical schools are training staffs of skilled
native workers. The suspicion of limited liability com-
panies and other forms of impersonal and supra-personal
collaboration is being overcome, and native credit insti-
tutions are beginning to depart from their traditional
limitation of their activities to bill and loan business,
and to prepare and promote the founding of industrial
and trading enterprises. The appreciation of the
difference between credit for consumption and credit
for production is penetrating more and more generally
into the mind of the people. The Egyptian national
Bank Misr has set up a subsidiary in Syria, the Bank
Misr-Iiban-Syrie, in which it holds 51 per cent, of
the shares and Syrian investors 49 per cent. This
Europeanization is proceeding more rapidly, and with
state support, in states in which national govern-
ments have control of economic life. There is developing
here a neo-Mercantilism reminiscent of the Europe of the
eighteenth century. In the states administered by foreign
governments the Europeanization of the native trade
and industry has to proceed under incomparably greater
difficulties, without active governmental assistance, and
accordingly at a much slower rate.

Syria was always a centre of the textile industry. In
addition to silk it has its own supplies of cotton and
wool. There have long been famous textile manufactur-
ing firms in Syria, doing an extensive export trade with
their productions. Syria was also rich in other industries.
Damascus furniture, mostly inlaid in accordance with
Eastern taste, is famous, and so is the Damascus trade in
working copper and precious stones into trays and vases
and ornamented weapons. After the world war the
advance of Europeanization resulted in a progressive
decay of the native industries. Oriental clothing and

OF ETJROPEANIZATION 271

furnishing began to give place to European, and the
European styles were subjected to frequent changes of
fashion, which had not been the case with Oriental
clothing, or in the segregated women's quarters. Oriental
industries were unable to withstand the competition of
European industries with their great capital resources
and their perfected technique and organization. Only
in recent years is an industry of modern type beginning to
replace the traditional crafts ; wholesale production with
the aid of machinery is replacing the old home industries,
and new industries are coming into existence to meet
needs hitherto unknown. The modern industries are
employing some of the workers who have lost their liveli-
hood through the dying out of the old ones. But the
modern rationalized methods require fewer workers, and
the women are no longer earning the extra money they
used to be able to make by working at home with the
help of their children. In the new industries wages are
higher, especially for skilled workers. Some of the
workers thrown out of employment are employed on
public works, road-building, and housing, in which there
is growing activity. Nevertheless, the changing con-
ditions in trade and industry are bringing a great deal of
trouble in their wake, driving large numbers into poverty
while increasing needs and multiplying the use of money,
especially where there is no national government to lend
help. A national government is able to help by reserving
employment in the new industries to native workers and
by training them for skilled work. Only state control and
state investment of capital can remove the material and
psychological obstacles in the way of the founding of
modern industries and so place the native consumers in
a position to meet their needs from native production,
restricting imports from Europe to the high-quality
goods in which European industry will for a long time to
come have a monopoly in the Near East.

For all that, the Syrians have done notable work with
their own resources and their own capital, especially in
the field of electrification. To-day aH the towns and

272 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

very many of the villages are electrically lit. But a
further development of industry depends on increased
returns from agriculture, without which there can be no
extension of the market for the industries producing
high-quality products. But this in turn demands funda-
mental agrarian reform. The existing agrarian system
stands in the way of any intensification of agriculture,
as it gives the landholder no security and so deters him
from making any improvements. The obsolete tithe
tax also stands in the way of any intensification of
agriculture. The burden of taxation presses heavily
on the small farmer, while the prosperous classes in the
towns escape it almost entirely. The farms are often
much too small to support even the most meagre existence.
Native agriculture is without adequate supplies of natural
manure and has not the financial means for purchasing
fertilizers. Consequently the yield of the soil is very
poor. It could be increased by irrigation, where this is
possible, by manuring, and by better choice of seed. But
this depends on a reform of the taxation and leasing
system and the creation of a modern organization of
credit. Beginnings have been made in this direction in
Syria. Under a decree of 1926 the great areas of land
belonging to the state are being split up, the leaseholders
being given the right to buy their holdings and the purchase
price being made payable in annual instalments without
interest. An important advance would be the suppression
of joint ownership and the formation of co-operatives
for water supply. The fellah's great lack of capital,
which puts him at the mercy of the moneylender, can be
remedied in some degree by agrarian banks, which would
be responsible for the granting of loans to fanners and
leaseholders, the supply of cattle, seed, machinery, imple-
ments and manures on payment by instalments, and the
purchase of land for dividing up and sale to the peasants
by instalments over long periods. These agrarian banks
could be placed on a firm foundation and extended by the
forming of agricultural co-operatives.

OF EUROPEANIZATION 273

IRAQ

Incomparably more primitive than in Syria are the
conditions in Iraq, which the first waves of European
influence reached little more than ten years ago. Syria,
moreover, had established connection with Western
culture through emigration. Syrians were living in Egypt,
North America, South America, and Australia. While
Abdul Hamid's despotic rule was stifling all progress and
all freedom of intellectual and cultural life in the Ottoman
empire, a cultural revival was taking place in the Syrian
colonies abroad, which were producing the Arabic literary
renascence and the first symptoms of a modern national
consciousness. Syrians in Egypt founded the first
modern Arabic newspapers and reanimated the intellectual
life of the Nile valley. In America and Europe the
emigrants frequently acquired wealth, became familiar-
ized with European customs and economic ideas, and sent
money home or themselves returned at a later time.
There was none of this in the case of the inaccessible
ancient civilization of the Euphrates and Tigris, which
was sleeping the sleep of the dead.

The land between the two rivers is alluvial, and, since
it lies rather below the level of the rivers, it is overflowed
when the water begins to rise in April, after the melting
of the snow in the mountains in which they have their
source. The rainfall in the plain is too small to permit
agriculture without irrigation. To this extent Mesopotamia
resembles the other centre of an immemorial human
civilization, the Nile valley.

In a country which, in spite of the fertility of the
alluvial soil, is rainless and exposed to the burning heat of
summer for eight months of the year, irrigation is the most
important preliminary to any extension of the area under
cultivation and to the adoption of any sort of intensive
culture. The art of irrigation was known to the old
Babylonians, and brought fertility to the plain, which is
still covered with remains of the old system of canals.
Through the canals the two rivers of Mesopotamia have

18

274 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

frequently changed their course, even in historic times ;
when insufficient control was exercised, the water chose
the canal instead of its previous bed. It is difficult to
decide how far these canals justify the accounts ancient
writers give of the fruitfulness of Mesopotamia ; the
ancient system has not yet been investigated, and it is
not certain how far the canals were in use simultaneously
or at different periods. It is evident that the soil has
become exceedingly impoverished in the course of cen-
turies by excessive irrigation and lack of manuring, and
it will need not only a new irrigation system but heavy
capital expenditure and a great deal of labour to effect a
partial restoration of its former fertility. A great difficulty
for any irrigation system has always been that the flood
that comes with the thaw rushes down with great violence
and sweeps away embankments and irrigation works.
Since the Euphrates in its middle course lies higher than
the Tigris, the ancient canals were often led from the
Euphrates eastwards to the Tigris.

In Iraq the irrigation conditions are not the same as
in Egypt, where high water begins in the late summer and
continues into the autumn ; flood-time in Iraq is in April
and May, at the beginning of the very hot and completely
dry summer, which takes the moisture out of the ger-
minating seed. In Iraq the grain is sown in November,
the winter rains bring up the shoots, and the watering of
the fields from March onwards by means of canals or
pumps helps the crop to ripen. The usual method is to
pump the water up from the river to the banks, whence
small canals distribute it to the fields. The development
of the oilfields, which has brought a considerable fall in
oil prices in Iraq, and the good prices the grain fetched
immediately after the world war, induced many farmers
to buy and use motor pumps. The number of these had
grown by the end of 1929 to 2,047, with a total horse-
power of 54,000, sufficient to irrigate a million acres of
winter crop. Later, with the disastrous fall in grain
prices, the demand for motor pumps slackened off greatly,
and many farmers who were buying on the instalment

OF EUROPEANIZATION 275
plan got into difficulties. A system of continuous irriga-
tion in Iraq would call for lengthy preliminary scientific
study and the costly erection of dams, weirs, and regu-
lators. So far, very little has been done in this direction.
Egypt owes the great fertility of her irrigated land to
the extensive irrigation works and the careful attention
devoted to the upkeep of the system and the distribution
of the water. The work of the British irrigation engineers
and inspectors has produced important results, on the
basis of which the Egyptian government can build
farther. In Iraq the conditions were much less favour-
able ; the land is too thinly populated, and the financial
appropriation to the irrigation department was bound,
in view of the country's poverty, to be inadequate ; great
irrigation works can only be made to pay it accompanied
by improved and more intensive methods of agriculture,
to which the lack of education of the peasants is an
impediment, and the irrigation system must be kept
continuously in good order and under control, since in
Iraq there is a risk of the rapid choking of the canals
with mud.

The history of the modern irrigation plans dates from
1908, when the Turkish government commissioned Sir
William Willcocks to study the question. In 1911 he
submitted a comprehensive report, on the basis of which
the Turkish government carried out two important
works on the Euphrates, which up to the present constitute
the principal elements in Iraq's irrigation the TTindia
dam, not far from Kerbela, and the Habbania reservoir
at Eamadi. To-day the districts of central Iraq to the
north-east and west of Baghdad and to the south of the
TTindia dam are continuously watered by laxge canals
supervised by the irrigation department. The irrigation
problem cannot be dealt with separately from the other
elements of economic and social life in Iraq ; it has to take
its place in the general work of raising the cultural and
economic level of the peasant population. It is the basic
difficulty of the process of modernizing Oriental economic
life, that particular measures are essential preliminaries

276 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

to others and at the same time depend on them, that the .
complex process extends simultaneously into all the
ramifications of cultural and social life, and that all partial
attempts and reforms must remain incomplete, because
they are designed to call into being an attitude and a way
of life the existence of which is essential to their successful
introduction. The modernizing process requires firm and
skilful leaders, thoroughly familiar with and primarily
regardful of the interests and life of the people. During
the transition period there is need of the guidance and
example of European experts, but their work can only be
successful if they are able to win confidence and produce
an atmosphere of mutual sympathy. The new conditions
after the War, the extension of the network of com-
munications, which now includes even remote districts
and villages, and the encroachments of machine industry
have added to the urgency of the modernizing process,
while the world-wide economic crisis and the fall in the
prices of agrarianproducts and rawmaterials, on the export
of which most of these countries depend, have checked and
retarded the incipient modernization of industry, the
development of education, and the social advance of the
people, for which the national governments had been
working with energy. Their new association in world
industry and world politics has been the great inspiring
influence in these countries, rousing them out of their
lethargy, but it involves dangers to the rapid progress of
modernization; to overcome these there is need for
caution combined with wide vision and devotion to the
welfare of the people.

The cultivation of the soil in Iraq is even more
primitive than in Syria ; it is mostly in the hands of semi-
nomads settled peasants who have nevertheless retained
the social organization and the legal ideas of the nomadic
tribe. The peasant in Iraq still thinks in terms of barter,
preferring to be paid in kind with a share of the harvest ;
he is mistrustful of planting for the market. The sharing
system hinders the use of machines which in view of
the sporsity of population are the one thing needful for

OF EUROPEANIZATION 277

extending the area of cultivation and of chemical
fertilizers, which would raise the production per acre. In
recent years the intensification of the irrigation has
caused increased demand for agricultural workers, whose
wages have risen accordingly.

The Europeanization of Iraq after the war was made
possible by two circumstances the turning of the Turkish
province into the kingdom of Iraq, and the development
of communications, which brought the country within
easy reach of the Mediterranean. The kingdom of Iraq
was a mandated territory like Syria, but the mandatory
Power in Iraq aimed from the first at creating a sound
framework for the state, so that in 1932 Iraq was able to
secure full sovereignty. In Syria the old strife of religions
and races continues and finds encouragement ; in Iraq a
unified national consciousness has grown in a short time
out of a similar difference of religions and races, and has
especial power with the young, who have much more
influence over the fate of the country than in Syria.
Iraq also, unlike Syria, possessed a leader with high per-
sonal qualities in King Faisal. This son of the desert,
born in the Hedjaz, was the leader of the " revolt in the
desert " of the Arab troops in the world war. In an
extremely difficult situation he succeeded, with unusual
practical sense and tact, in turning a community of
primitive tribes and a few towns into a modern state, in
wresting its independence out of the negotiations with
Great Britain, and in securing to his country the full
benefits of modern technical progress. Faisal, whose
youth was spent among Bedouins, was one of the best
examples of the effects of Europeanization. Himself
an ardent Arabian patriot, he succeeded in mediating
between Europe and the unruly nationalism of his
followers, and won and kept the confidence of both sides
in the course of an obstinate and lengthy struggle. He
knew and in this he was distinguished from most of the
other Arabian nationalists, and resembled King Ibn Saud
that what was needed was something more than declara-
tions and rhetoric, or even conviction and appeal to moral

278 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

right ; what was needed was constructive activity, a long
and tireless struggle with recalcitrant interests and
traditions, a sense of realities, strength of character, and
endurance. In his use of aircraft, in his negotiations
with the European oil companies, in his journeys in
Europe, this son of the desert proved himself a modern
European ruler. Through him, Iraq has become not only
an independent kingdom but the nucleus on which the
hopes are rested of a future union of all the inhabitants
of northern Arabia in a single state, which alone would
possess sufficient men, intelligence, and capital to be
able to carry the process of Europeanization to success.

Parliamentary life and self-government have welded
the originally heterogeneous population of Iraq into a
unit. The only important national minority in Iraq,
the Kurds, enjoy a position incomparably more favourable
to their national development than the numerically
superior Kurdish populations in Turkey and Iran. In
August 1930 the Iraqi government issued the following
declaration : " The Iraqi government have, from the
time when they first took over the effective control of the
Kurdish liwas, 1 been firmly of the opinion that it is vital
for the future of the Kingdom of the Iraqi to work for
the unity of the two peoples and to discountenance any
proposals which would result in the separation of the
Kurdish liwas from the rest of the Kingdom. They have,
however, realized that the Kurds have a strong national
consciousness of their own, and that success is to be
gained, not by trying to stamp this out, but by recognizing
it in such a way that the Kurds may feel, in taking their
part as Iraqi, th$t their customs, their traditions and
their language are being preserved intact. 5 ' In the
Kurdish districts Kurdish is the official language and the
language of the courts and schools. Kurds are given
preference in the appointment of officials, and even the
Arab officials employed must know Kurdish. In the
Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and in that of Education,
there are special departments for Kurdish affairs. On

1 Regions.

OF EUROPEANIZATION 279

being received into the League of Nations, Iraq undertook
far-reaching obligations in regard to the protection of
minorities.

The government of Iraq has concerned itself above
all with perfecting the army, with popular education,
and with the creation of modern industries. In 1929
a law was passed for the promotion of industry : it con-
ferred freedom from import duties and taxation, and
assisted with protective duties those industries which
have favourable prospects of development ; it provided
that as far as possible government orders should be placed
with native contractors and Iraqi goods used. In April
1932 the first national exhibition was opened, to provide
publicity for the country's products and stimulate its
industries. The government watches jealously over the
preservation of the national industries. In its report
on Iraq to the League of Nations in 1929, the British
government pointed out that, at the present stage of
Iraq's development, legislation for the protection of the
agricultural tenant was much more pressing than legis-
lation for the protection of industrial workers. In Iraq,
as in the neighbouring countries, there was a growing
demand for economic independence and an increasing
feeling that native industries should be supported by the
state and by the patriotic citizen against foreign com-
petition. Thus any attempt by Great Britain to press for
the introduction of protective labour legislation might be
interpreted as an attempt to put difficulties in the way of
the development of a national industry. In 1929, without
any foreign influence, the first beginnings of the for-
mation of trade unions and provident societies among
workmen made their appearance in Baghdad.

On December 3rd, 1930, the first considerable strike
took place in Baghdad. The workmen from the railway
shops, most of whom were members of the mechanics'
union, went on strike as a protest against the introduction
of short time employment in consequence of the economic
crisis. They objected to the reduction of hours bringing
a lowering of their wages, while the foreign f oremen,

280 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

who had a yearly contract, were unaffected. The
Minister of Communications and Public Works received
a deputation of the strikers, and succeeded in settling the
trouble. A few days later a Member of Parliament, who
as a medical man had first-hand acquaintance with the
conditions of the workers, brought forward a motion in
Parliament that the Government should be called upon to
prepare a Labour Protection Law, which should make
provision for the limitation of working time, the pro-
hibition of child labour, medical attendance for sick
workmen, compensation for accidents, the grant of
invalidity and old age pensions, and payment for holidays
for men permanently employed. " Defence of the
worker's right against unjust encroachments by the
capitalists and preference for native over foreign workers
in foreign companies " were also demanded. After a
good deal of discussion the motion was unanimously
adopted, and referred to the government. The largest
employers in Iraq are the railways and the Harbour Board
at Basra, which maintain a forty-eight-hour week for
their men, and the oil companies, which work some
fifty hours a week. In all these enterprises the men
receive medical attendance, and compensation is paid in
case of accident or death. On the other hand, in the
traditional small industries the conditions of employment
are still primitive.

In view of the shortage of capital in the country, a
considerable loan would be necessary for any rapid
economic development. But a past still fresh in men's
memories has left behind it a strong aversion to any
external loan, which is suspected as a danger to Iraq's
independence. Iraq, like Iran, prefers to reduce the
pace of her economic development rather than make it
dependent on the foreigner. Yet, considering the great
poverty of the sparsely populated country, surprising
results have been obtained in a few years. Baghdad, the
ancient city of the Khalif s, after centuries of existence as
a decayed and somnolent provincial town remote from
international intercourse, is beginning to attract the

OF EUROPEANIZATION 281

interest of the Arab world, and to be regarded as a centre
and metropolis. This change is noticeable in externals.
The city's energetic and far-seeing municipal authority
has brought new modern districts into existence with
astonishing rapidity. The quality of the housing has
greatly improved, and modern conveniences which only
a few years ago were entirely unknown are beginning to
be a matter of course. In the interior of the city new
thoroughfares have been cut, and many of the narrow
lanes and alleys have been paved. A wide garden-belt
is being placed round the city, and a great stadium and
an entirely modern civil aerodrome testify to the rapid
infiltration of new life. The public health service and
the police make a good impression. Like almost all the
towns in Iraq, Baghdad is electrically lighted. Every-
where can be traced the energy of renascence. The whole
of existence is being modernized. An income tax on the
British model has been introduced, and a special
Parliamentary Commission is considering the introduction,
as in Turkey, of a modern code of civil law on the basis
of the Swiss code. The government of Iraq has called
in an American and a German expert, who are examining
the country's requirements in the realm of industry, and
are above all to assist in working out the syllabus of
instruction for the new technical and industrial schools
to be started.

Progress on a scale unknown in the other Arabian
countries has taken place since 1931 in the education
system. Every year many new primary schools are
opened in the villages, and since 1934 the government
has borne the expense of sending 100 students a year to
European universities. Modern methods of education
are being introduced, and great attention is being paid
to the training and the intellectual alertness of the
teachers. At the invitation of the government a com-
mittee of American teachers, familiar with conditions in
the East, visited Iraq under the leadership of Paul Monroe,
and presented a report on the reform and development of
the education system.

282 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Similarly the army has been placed on a new footing
A law introducing compulsory military service has beer
passed, and the first recruits were called up in September
1934. Iraq will thus have an army of twice the previous
strength at a much smaller cost, and in a few years sub-
stantial and well-trained reserves. The economies on
the army are to be devoted to the creation of a strong
air force. The same object is served by a voluntary
fund collected by the citizens in the towns. Like Turkey,
Iran, and Egypt, Iraq possesses native pilots in growing
numbers, and is planning the introduction of a national
passenger air service run by a native company, to connect
Baghdad with Mosul.

Iraq will shortly be connected with the Mediterranean
by aircraft, motor car, and railway. Junction with
the railway systems of Syria and Turkey is only a
question of a few years. The ancient harbours of the
Phoenician coast will gain new importance with the
acquisition of this hinterland. The extension of the
lines from Iran and Mosul to Beirut will assist in the
advance of the Europeanization which promotes them.
Thereby Syria as well, if the government takes appropriate
measures in the meantime, will regain her ancient impor-
tance. In the past considerable numbers of sailing vessels
called at the Syrian ports. This traffic has been greatly
reduced, and the smaller harbours, used only by coasting-
vessels, are losing their importance, since the develop-
ment of motor traffic and the improvement of the high-
ways permit goods to be brought direct to the main ports
from the various districts. While Turkish shipping has
been making steady progress in the last decade, since the
coasting trade there is reserved for Turkish vessels, the
shipping industry in Syria has been steadily decaying.
No attention is paid to the training of skilled seamen.
Syria, with her long and thickly-populated coast, whose
inhabitants in ancient days were pioneers of world
traffic, no longer plays any active part in shipping.
Improved facilities for loading and discharging in the
small harbours and the equipment of the sailing ships

OF EUROPEANIZATION 283

with auxiliary motors might at least revive the coastal
traffic.

Her political situation has prevented Syria from
playing in the process of Europeanization the part for
which she is suited by her geographical situation, by the
fertility of many of her districts, and by the comparatively
high level of education of a section of her population.
Once self-government and self -development are assured
to the country, Europeanization will be able to set in there
just as in Turkey. The necessary condition for this is
the growth, which may be observed everywhere now
among the young, of the spirit of tolerance, of initiative,
and of co-operation, in order to overcome the traditional
strife of groups and provinces and the consequences of
centuries of foreign rule and of lack of education. Iraq,
through her political independence and the statesmanship
and ability of King Faisal, has provisionally taken over
the leadership of the coming Arabian nation, thanks to
her organization as a state and in spite of the great poverty
of the country and the backwardness of its inhabitants.

SAUDI ARABIA

In contrast with the border territories, the Arabian
mainland is cut off from cultural and economic inter-
course with Europe by its position and desert character.
That is why its connection with the Syrian coast is of
such vital importance, for even though the " heart " of
the race is in the desert of Arabia, the essential elements
of the social and cultural development of an Arab nation
are contained entirely in the fruitful Mediterranean
regions, which alone are able to bridge the gulf between
the life of Europe, so infinitely more intensive and more
highly developed, and the primitive and conservative
penury which is all that the deserts and steppes of the
Arabian peninsula can sustain. Except for a few fertile
oases, the vast area of the peninsula is inhabited by
Bedouin tribes. Sandy desert, wild mountains, and
steppes which are only green for a passing moment in the

284 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

short spring, alternate with one another, with but few
wadis dry river-beds during the greater part of the
year to lend them life. It was not until the decade
after the war that modernization invaded the desert.
King Ibn Saud's rule has been the turning-point in the
history of Central Arabia. With it began the transition
from the anarchy of the desert and the poverty of nomad
life to order, the beginnings of civilization, and a more
productive economic life. The religious fanaticism of
the puritan Wahhabis was drawn upon to overcome tribal
particularism, to give the nomads a consciousness of unity
and of a common mission, and to cement the new order
by means of their settlement by wells and around mosque
schools. Ibn Saud aimed at the creation in the desert of
an Arab kingdom which should acquire a permanent
nature through the adoption of modern principles of State
organization. The settlement of the Bedouins as agri-
culturists around the wells in the desert, working partly
on irrigated soil, and their introduction to the more
civilized form of existence made possible by the mosque
and school in the centre of the settlement, were the first
steps to an economic and political stabilization of the
kingdom and to a fight against the appalling poverty and
ignorance of the Bedouins. In a few years Ibn Saud has
succeeded in changing their character. !Yom time
immemorial they were a disturbing element, opposed to
all settled government, and at the dictates of hunger
they sought their maintenance in raids, levies on caravans,
and mutual feuds. To-day exemplary order and safety
reign throughout the whole of the vast and only thinly
habitable region; the Bedouin is becoming a citizen,
and acknowledges the law of the realm as valid for himself.
Ibn Saud has introduced theaeroplane, wireless telegraphy,
and the motor car into Central Arabia. The moderniza-
tion of communications makes possible the maintenance
of the authority of the state and the gradual moderniza-
tion of economic life. Plans have been drawn, up for a
state bank, for the construction of a railway, and for the
exploitation of mineral resources.

OF EUROPEANIZATION 285

It is not only in Central Arabia that the position of
the Bedouin has become critical owing to contact with
a new age. Everywhere European civilization, which
forced its way into the East in the decade after the world
war, has destroyed the immemorial basis of Bedouin
life. Until the war, the Bedouins were a match for
regular armies. With approximately equal weapons,
they had the advantage of greater mobility and knowledge
of their country. The aeroplane and the other elements
of the modern technique of war have changed this
relationship, entirely to the disadvantage of the Bedouin ;
a small regular army can ensure order and safety over
large areas, and raids and levies on caravans, for thousands
of years a source of income for the Bedouins, are becoming
impossible. Moreover, the Bedouin lived by breeding
camels, and the camel, too, is being rapidly and systematic-
ally supplanted. Everywhere in the Near East the motor
car is taking its place. The Europeanization of the East
has confronted the Bedouin with an entirely new situation,
with which he is unable to cope without the help and
guidance of the state, which is indeed part-author of this
Europeanization. The Bedouin has always seized any
opportunity of settling, of escaping from the poverty and
insecurity of the desert to the prosperity and security, as
he sees it, of the agriculturist, and on the border between
the desert and the fruitful country one finds nomads and
semi-nomads in every phase of transition from a roaming
herdsman's life to a peasant's. In Central Arabia, Iraq,
and Syria, a beginning has been made with efforts to
furnish the Bedouins with the necessary land and stock,
initiation and instruction. Thus in Syria in May 1930
the chiefs of the great Bedouin tribes communicated to
the High Commissioner their needs in regard to the sinking
or renewal of wells in the desert, development of the
medical service, and establishment of an educational
system. The mandatory Power had already been paying
attention to the question of providing settled homes for
the tribes. The Bedouins have provided the labour for
the sinking of new wells, and the cultivated area has thus

286 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

been extended. Old Roman canals have been put into
repair once more, and in the neighbourhood of ruins,
which prove the fertility in ancient times of many a
stretch of desert, the Bedouins have begun to till the
soil. The government has started itinerant schools,
and policlinics have been established at Palmyra, once
the centre of a desert empire, and at other places.
Europeanization has not halted before the life of the
Bedouin, which has remained unchanged from the time
of Abraham almost to the present day. If the Bedouin
means to hold his own in the midst of the new change,
he also must take an active part in the process of
Europeanization.

EGYPT

Mustapha Kemal and Ibn Saud are soldierly figures,
but the great Egyptian national leader during this period
had the stamp of the bourgeois citizen. Saad Zaghlul
Pasha was already verging on old age when in the autumn
of 1918, after a long and distinguished but comparatively
uneventful career, he assumed the leadership of the
'Egyptian nation, which he held undisputed until his
death nine years later. Egypt is the typical country in
which Europeanization materializes in the form of the
rise of the middle classes and their struggle for participa-
tion in the direction of the state. Zaghlul Pasha, born in
a peasant village, received the traditional religious
education of the Mohammedan scholar of the nineteenth
century; later, as a barrister and political leader, he
personified the rise of the more gifted sons of the peasant
class to the intellectual bourgeoisie of the towns.

The character of the fellah in Egypt has altered
remarkably little since ancient times. His attachment
to the soil (with which he is bound more than almost any
other peasant), the oasis character of the country, and the
constancy of the climate have all contributed to this.
The country is as unique as the people. Egypt is a part
of the North African desert, in no way differing from it

OF EUROPEANIZATION 287

in appearance or in dryness of climate. But it becomes
unique through the Nile, which, owing to its enormous
energy, instead of drying up in the desert has converted
its valley into one great oasis. Long before it enters
Egypt, from a point where it still has more than 2,000
kilometres to flow to reach its mouth, it receives no
further tributaries. It parts with much more water by
evaporation than it receives from the scanty showers.
Yet, in an annual rhythm of flood and " low Nile ", it
converts along its course a thirtieth part of the Egyptian
desert into the most fertile of garden-land, one of the
most thickly inhabited regions on earth. The fertility
of this region does not depend on the amount and dis-
tribution of the rainfall, but exclusively on the annual
rise and fall of the Nile. The rise begins with the tropical
summer-rain in early summer in the region of the river's
source ; then the Nile overflows the land and deposits
fertile mud. The whole region was originally swamp ;
it became the country of the oldest civilization through
human organization. In the modern system of irrigation
the supply of mud is so regulated by reservoirs and a more
even distribution of water that two or more harvests
can ripen in a year. The irrigation works not only form
a protection against inundations and keep the river in its
bed, but distribute the water over the land through
innumerable canals, extend the cultivable area, and win
fresh habitable land from the desert. Great dams were
built in the nineteenth century to hold back the super-
fluous water during the time of " high Nile " in late
autumn, and to give it up again during the winter and
spring until the flood rises once more.

The Nile is the father of all life and civilization in
Egypt. In such river-oases the oldest human civilizations
were developed just because of the problem of irrigation.
Astronomy had to help to determine the time of arrival
of the flood season, the art of the land-surveyor had to
re-establish every year the boundaries washed away by
the water, careful laws and a good administration had
to regulate the use of the restricted soil and of the

288 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

all-important water. The wide stream offered the country,
which was no more than the river-valley, a convenient
means of communication, which connected together all
parts of the country and facilitated the organization of
the state.

To-day all the inhabitants of Egypt, Mohammedans
and Copts (the representatives of the age-old Mono-
physite sect of Christians), fellaheen, Arabs and Nubians,
form in their speech and manner of life, as they have
done for a thousand years, a part of the great Arabic and
Islamic civilization, which has shown itself in Egypt, as
elsewhere, a most powerful factor in proselytizing and
conversion. Alongside them the Europeans play an
important part, not through their numbers, but through
their dominant position in finance and industry and the
privileges conceded to them by the Capitulations. They
live in their own quarters of the towns, entirely apart,
without any share in the real life of the country.

Owing to Napoleon's expedition Egypt was the first
country in the Near East to be affected by the new spirit.
The founder of the present ruling dynasty, Mehemet All,
was an enlightened monarch who tried to re-organize,
arouse, and modernize the country with a strong hand.
But until the 'eighties of the last century this moderniza-
tion had the effect of disintegrating the higher strata of
society without penetrating into the depths. It was only
passively that Egypt suffered the effects of a Europeaniza-
tion that enriched a small upper stratum and a number of
foreigners and led to the complete disruption of the
Egyptian finances. Egypt presented the same picture
as all other Near Eastern countries during this transition
period. It was only at the beginning of the 'eighties that
resistance to this form of Europeanization began to be
offered by the fellaheen, at first in vague and uncompre-
hending ways ; it was aimed primarily at the Turkish
ruling class, and gave the British the opportunity of
occupying Egypt, and so for a long time suppressing the
emancipation movement. The British administration,
however, put the country on a higher economic plane

OF ETJROPEANIZATION 289

through its thorough modernization of the economic
and governmental machinery, through the execution of
great irrigation works, and through its ordering of the
finances and fight against corruption ; and in so doing
it indirectly improved the position of the fellah, although
little or nothing was done for Egyptian education and
public health. " Praise is due to the British occupation
for the Five Feddan Law, due to Lord Kitchener, under
which a landed property of five feddan (about five acres)
or less cannot be hypothecated; this has contributed
greatly to the improvement of the lot of the fellah, since
it put an effective check on usury, which had been gaining
ground for half a century." (George Schweinfurth.)
The difficult and dangerous transition from dealing in
kind to money transactions, which often causes the
peasants in Eastern countries to incur debt and so forces
them to sell their property, was facilitated by the British
administration, which protected the fellah alike against
the large landowner and the European capitalist.

During these years there arose from among the
fellaheen a native middle-class and a native intelligentsia,
who became the exponents of a modern national eman-
cipation movement, and who now saw their way much
more clearly than their predecessors thirty years earlier.
After the world war, with the wave of nationalism, caused
by its upheavals, which shot up suddenly throughout the
Near East, to the astonishment of observers, the move-
ment, which had previously been confined to the towns,
spread to the broad masses of the countryfolk, and their
pressure was successful in wringing from Great Britain a
formal recognition of Egyptian independence in February
1922. The leadership of the people was in the hands of
Saad Zaghlul Pasha, who had sprung from the class
of the fellaheen and might be considered their best
personification. The king's opposition to popular
representation and repeated British interference in
Egyptian politics hampered the due development of
Parliamentary life, and the death of Zaghlul in the
summer of 1927 robbed the popular movement of its

19

290 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

great leader, who had won recognition even from his
opponents.

About the end of the last century the British adminis-
tration laid the foundation of an ordered financial and
industrial development on the European model, and
thereby made possible not only the economic penetration
of the country by European capital but also the gradual
adaptation and elevation of native industry to this
process. A real Europeanization would have gripped the
life of the people themselves, but there was none. This
was due to the alliance of the British administration with
native reactionary circles, which prevented a thorough
reform of the traditional Islamic character of the state
and of the medieval structure of society, as well as to the
Capitulations, which existed not so much in the interest
of Britain as in that of international capital. The world
war, the presence of numerous troops in the country, and
the extraordinary rise in the price of raw cotton, brought
an unexpected stream of money into the country and
increased the value of land many times over. The
Egyptians now felt able themselves to take in hand the
modernization of their country ; but they were unable to
do this as radically as the Turks had done, partly owing to
the softer character of the people and to the milder climate
of the lower Nile valley, and partly because they found
themselves 'constantly checked by their merely partial
independence and by the Capitulations.

Finally, in recent years the world-wide industrial crisis
supervened. It was bound to have an especially powerful
effect in a country like Egypt, whose one product, raw
cotton, reacted most sensitively to the state of world
industry, and, just as in Turkey and Iran, it slowed down
the realization of all industrial, educational, and social
plans of reform. But the general lines of development
are as plainly recognizable in Egypt as in other independent
countries of the Near East. Here too it is a question of
active entry into world trade and industry, of emancipa-
tion from the power of the foreigner in capital as weU as
in personnel, of the training of the native population in

OF EUROPEANIZATION 291

the economic and technical fields, of the building-up of
native capital and its guidance to productive investment
in agriculture, industry, and commerce.

An obstacle in the path of the social and industrial
development of Egypt, and one which, perhaps, was even
more serious than the Capitulations, was the lack of an
independent Customs regime. Since 1884 all goods
imported into Egypt had paid an ad valorem duty of 8 per
cent, and all exports 1 per cent. If Egypt made a treaty
of commerce conferring most-favoured-nation treatment
on any state, this extended automatically to all other
states. Egypt could not make any distinction in Customs
duties between raw materials and luxuries, she could not
protect a promising native industry, nor could she promote
the cultivation of important agricultural products. She
could not distinguish, for the moral and material benefit
of her citizens, between necessary and less necessary
imports. The Egyptian market, in this respect a typical
Oriental market, stood open to every import ; it was
flooded with inferior goods, which did not educate the
purchasing public to pay attention to quality and solidity
of workmanship, as well as with luxuries that tempted
the purchaser to uneconomical expenditure. The rigidity
of the Customs system also involved unfortunate con-
sequences for the state finances. In 1922 the Egyptian
government tried to negotiate for an alteration in the
indefensible Customs tariff, but the Powers insisted on
their " rights " and refused any concession. Egypt had
thus to wait until February 17th, 1930, when the last of
the most-favoured-nation treaties expired. Then only
was it possible for a systematic Egyptian economic policy
to be embarked on. The new Customs tariff, which
introduced differentiated ad valorem duties, set out to
protect native agriculture and promising branches of
industry, to ensure the supply of cheap raw materials
and essential articles of consumption, and to put a high
tax on luxuries.

Egypt is a country with one product cotton. It is
the fourth country in the world as regards the quantity

292 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

of cotton produced, but the first in production per head
of population. Cotton has made Egypt a prosperous
country and brought wealth to a small top stratum of the
population, but what matters is not so much the increase
in the country's wealth as the distribution of the increase.
Whether the fellah has been able to improve his standard
of living materially through the cultivation of cotton is
doubtful. It is true that exceptional market conditions
like those of 1919 benefited even the fellah. The price of
a kantar (124 Ibs.) of Egyptian cotton was 15 dollars in
1914 and 200 dollars in 1920. In 1914 the mortgages
totalled E45,000,000 ; by 1920 a third of this had been
paid off, so that the total had faUen to E29,000,000.
Erom 1902 to 1914 the value of the cotton crop had
varied between E15,000,000 and E30,000,000 ; in 1919
it was E98,000,000. The fellah found himself in a posi-
tion to buy European imports ; his purchasing power
rose, although of course the general increase of prices in
Egypt was very great ; new needs were aroused and, for
the time, satisfied. All the more crushing was the effect
of the fall in cotton prices that then came. The fall was
considerably greater than the fall in other agrarian pro-
ducts in Egypt. The value of the cotton crop sank in
1930 to about E20,000,000, the pre-war level. Cotton
is by far the largest Egyptian export ; the drop in the
value of this item was not due to a decrease in quantity,
but to the fall in prices. The quantity of cotton exported
in 1931 was only 3 per cent, below that of 1929, but the
export value was 52 per cent, below.

This dangerous position strengthened the resolve of
the Egyptians to abandon dependence on this single
article, to extend the cultivation of cereals for home
consumption and of fruit and vegetables for export, and
alongside agriculture to start industries which could
utilize a part of the cotton crop in the country. As
recently as 1930 the imports of flour and wheat into Egypt
still amounted to E2,332,000, of cotton piece goods to
E5,160,000, of fodder to El,500,000, and of fruit to
E588,000. Protection, the granting of credits to

OP EUROPEANIZATION 293

agriculture and industry, special instruction for tech-
nicians, tradesmen, and farmers, are the means adopted.

The Misr Bank may be regarded as one of the most
important supports of Egypt's economic will-to-live.
Modern banks were unknown until recently in the Near
East. In the nineteenth century there were branches of
foreign banks in Egypt, but their clients were limited
to the members of the foreign colony whose government's
interests they represented. These banks were not to be
found in the provincial towns. It was only with the
foundation, in 1898, of the National Bank of Egypt, an
Egyptian company with British capital, that these con-
ditions began to change. The bank possessed the right
to issue notes, and served as the government bank ; it
was thus compelled to open branches in the provincial
towns. It also called into life the Agricultural Bank of
Egypt, which undertook the granting of credits to small
farmers. At first it was very difficult to persuade the
Egyptian Mohammedans to leave their money in the
bank at interest. The religious prohibition of interest
stood in the way, as well as the traditions, centuries old,
of an eminently feudal and peasant people. Only a short
time before the end of the last century, the Mufti of Egypt,
whose learning makes him the acknowledged exponent
of the canonical law, had to issue a fetwa, a canonical
decision, to the effect that the investment of money at
interest was not contrary to the divine law. It was only
then that a Post Office Savings Bank could be established,
giving the opportunity after 1890 for the depositing of sav-
ings through the extension of the Post Offices even into the
smaller centres. In 1930 there were 354,908 depositors
with deposits amounting to E2,346,187. But even the
National Bank of Egypt was foreign both in capital and
staff, and it did not primarily serve Egyptian interests.
It was not until 1920 that the first Egyptian bank, the
Bank Misr, was founded. Its capital was exclusively in
Egyptian hands ; it employed an exclusively Egyptian
staff, in order to train them in banking and educate
them to take responsible positions in economic life ; and

294 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

it set out, as a participating bank, to establish and
promote Egyptian industries and trading and transport
companies.

The bank was founded in 1920 under the chairman-
ship of Mohammed Talaat Harb Bey, with a capital of
E80,000, subscribed by patriotic Egyptians. According
to the articles of association the shareholders must be
Egyptians. Subsequent increases brought the paid-up
capital in 1927 to E1,000,000. In the course of its first
decade the Bank Misr quickly secured a great influence on
Egyptian economic life, and it has fully realized the hopes
of its founders. It has branches in Iftance and Syria,
and is considering an extension of its activities into the
countries of the Near East. Many patriotic Moham-
medans have deposited money free of interest, in compli-
ance with the religious prohibition of interest ; the amount
of these deposits is estimated at some E3,000,000. The
Egyptian government uses the Bank Msr as a central
bank for the agricultural co-operative societies, and
grants advances through the bank to Egyptian industry
and to the cotton planters. Among the industrial and
commercial companies the bank has founded, which all
bear the name of Misr, mention should be made of a com-
pany for cotton spinning and weaving and one for the
ginning and marketing of cotton. This latter is the
largest cotton-ginning organization in Egypt, possessing
six modern factories and ginning annually over a million
kantars of cotton. The bank has also founded companies
for silk-spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and a company
for the export of cotton. These companies serve the
development of the various branches of the Egyptian
textile industry. The Bank Misr has also founded a
river shipping company, an aerial navigation company,
which trains Egyptian pilots and has started an air service
between Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, and Palestine, and
a shipping company, which since 1934 has maintained a
regular service of fast passenger vessels between Egypt,
Naples, and Marseilles. All these companies serve the
same end and carry out the same idea as the Bank Misr

OF EUROPEANIZATION 295

itself the training of the Egyptians in the creation and
direction of independent industries of their own.

The emancipation of native trade and industry is
promoted by various government measures. Thus a law
of 1927 laid down that at least a quarter of the shares and
debentures of all joint-stock companies must be issued in
Egypt and four-fifths of this portion reserved exclusively
for Egyptians. This provision, however, has hardly been
put into force yet. The Department of Trade andlndustry
encourages native enterprises by arranging exhibitions
of model works and model stocks, by establishing
laboratories and centres for technical advice and instruc-
tion, by making efforts to find markets, and by calling in
European experts. Among the industries which have
already derived advantage from the protective duties and
technical assistance are tanning and leather-working,
glass manufacture, dyeing, and the production of clothing,
pottery, bricks, tubes, furniture, buttons, footwear and
sweetmeats. The oil and soap industry for the local
market has made rapid progress. Three large cement
factories at Cairo and a smaller one at Alexandria have
very substantially reduced the import of cement. In
the years between 1922 and 1931 there has been great
building activity, public bodies competing with private
house-owners in extending and beautifying the towns.
The Egyptian cement factories can now produce some
400,000 tons annually and thus make the country inde-
pendent of import from abroad. The same has been true
since 1931 of Egyptian sugar production. The Egyptian
sugar refinery company has carried out important irriga-
tion works in Upper Egypt and increased the area of
cultivation.

These are entirely new developments for Egypt. The
creation and promotion of Egyptian industry was first
envisaged in 1916 ; in 1920 a Bureau for Trade and
Industry was started in the Ministry of Finance, and at
the same time the Bank Misr was founded ; in 1922 there
followed the establishment of the Federation of Egyptian
Industries. Since 1927 home products and industries

296 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

have been given preference in all government contracts,
provided that their prices are not more than 10 per cent,
above those of foreign competitors. Egypt is, moreover,
distinguished among the countries of the Near East by the
numerous lower, middle and higher schools of industry,
handicraft and commerce, which have been established in
recent years with a view to providing qualified native
staffs in every sphere. An art-craft school has been
established to revive the once famous Egyptian glass and
pottery working.

In 1933 there were no less than 48 secondary schools
giving practical training in Egypt ; of these 35 were
occupational schools, 2 engineering schools, 5 commercial
schools, 4 agricultural schools and 2 schools for fine and
applied arts. In addition to the Egyptian University
there were colleges for agriculture, engineering, commerce,
fine arts and veterinary science. A higher normal school
trained teachers for the secondary schools and 30 training
colleges prepared teachers for the elementary schools.
There were 30 secondary schools under government
control with 13,722 boy and 1,299 girl students. There
were also many private secondary schools. A law of
April 1933, made education compulsory for all children
between 7 and 12 years of age.

Egypt imports increasing quantities of machinery, but
has as yet no engineering industry of her own, only a
number of engineering and repair workshops. A modern
working class has developed so far only in the large towns,
where the first trade unions have been started. The
workers in the cotton-ginning mills scattered over the
country are thoroughly primitive, still living entirely
under village conditions. Economic progress has brought
heavy migration of Egypt's rapidly growing population
from the countryside into the towns, and the economic
crisis has given the country its first experience of
unemployment of the modern type. This change in the
social structure has confronted the government with
entirely new problems, and application has been made to
the International Labour Office at Geneva for assistance

OF EUROPEANIZATION 297

in drafting labour legislation suitable to the altered
circumstances.

As with the rest of Egypt's economic life, the govern-
ment is trying to secure national control of communica-
tions. Shipping in the Egyptian ports and the air services,
which since the War have given Egypt a new importance
in world communications, were until recently entirely in
foreign hands. The Egyptian merchant fleet consisted
only of small steamers that traded in the Eastern
Mediterranean, bringing timber from Galatz and fruit
from Palestine, Syria and Cyprus. In 1931 the Egyptian
government made a contract for ten years with the
Alexandria Navigation Company, and granted it a
monopoly for the conveyance to Egypt of a large part of
the purchases of the Egyptian administration and the state
railways, combined with a premium system in relation to
the tonnage conveyed. Egypt is thus following other
countries in adopting a system of state subsidies in order
to promote the development of a national merchant navy,
which is to train the Egyptians as seamen and officers and
show the Egyptian flag in foreign ports. With the
co-operation of the Bank Misr a Soci6t6 Misr pour 1' Aviation
has been founded. The government grants it duty-free
import of machines, has offered prizes at the examination
of pilots, and has undertaken to bear half the cost of
insurance and replacements. The company has already
organized the whole of the inland air service and air con-
nections with adjoining countries.

This development was favoured by the good financial
position that existed from 1913 to 1928, The balance of
trade was in favour of Egypt in most of these years, and
left a considerable surplus over the whole period. This
favourable balance of trade was reinforced by other
factors, which still further improved the country's balance
of payments. During the War the large numbers of
foreign troops spent a great deal of money, and after it the
stream of tourists set in more strongly than ever. The
rising wealth of the country expressed itself in the drop in
debts on mortgage, in the increase in bank and savings-bank

298 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

deposits, in the purchase by Egyptians of Egyptian
state loans and other securities, and in the formation of a
national reserve fund available for the execution of great
irrigation and other works. The Egyptian public became
more and more accustomed to money dealings, money was
placed at interest, and from 1913 to 1926 the deposits in
the Post Office Savings Bank were trebled. The note
circulation of the National Bank of Egypt, which at
December 31st, 1913 amounted to E2,700,000, was
E31,800,000 at December 31st, 1928. In 1920 only
31 per cent, of the coupons of the Privileged and 33 per
cent, of the Unified State Loan were paid in Egypt ; by
1927 the share of the state bonds owned by residents in
Egypt had risen to 59 and 68 per cent. Little benefit, it
is true, came from this growing wealth to the overwhel-
ming mass of the population, the fellaheen. In spite of a
high rate of infant mortality the rural population of Egypt
shows a very rapid increase, and the recent material
improvement in sanitary conditions will further accelerate
the natural increase ; it will be many years before the
first beginnings are seen of the cultural and civic advance
amid which people think of birth-control. There are not
enough native industries to give the population adequate
employment apart from agriculture. The proportion of
rural to urban population is only slowly changing in favour
of the latter. The growth of the rural population and the
constant division of the small properties among heirs has
produced a steady reduction in the size of the holdings, so
that even in good years the peasant is hardly able to make
a living. To this land-hunger is added the rise in land
prices and rent that has been going on during the British
occupation of the country, and more than ever since the
world war.

The history of the public finances of Egypt has been
similar to that of most other states of the Near East. The
policy of borrowing brings the country to the verge of
bankniptcy, and in the interests of the foreign creditors
the Powers introduce a strict financial control, putting
the whole of the revenue and expenditure of the debtor

OF EUROPEANIZATION 299

state under the supervision of a Commission, which is
accorded the right to interfere in all sorts of ways in the
internal affairs of the state. This condition lasted in
Egypt until 1904, when the Anglo-French Agreement on
Egypt and Morocco left none but purely formal functions
to the Caisse de la Dette and placed the Egyptian financial
administration exclusively under the control of British
officials. It was only in 1922 that Egypt secured financial
autonomy, which was still limited in the most injurious
manner by the Capitulations. Since 1889, except for
three years, the Egyptian budget had regularly been
balanced, deficits being always easily covered out of
the reserve fund which had been accumulated in the
years of plenty. The world war almost exhausted
the reserve. In 1920 the formation of a fresh fund
began, and the prudent financial policy, continued by
the independent Egyptian government, had enabled
this fund to accumulate to over E40,000,000 by
1930.

Foreigners in Egypt are only allowed to be taxed on
their income from real estate ; and the urban industries
are largely in the hands of foreigners. Thus any direct
tax on the income of the Egyptian town population would
still further hamper the native in his struggle for economic
existence. Consequently the Egyptian taxation system
is extraordinarily inelastic. It is not possible in Egypt
for the revenue to be determined and regulated according
to needs ; so long as the Capitulations stand, needs must
be adapted to revenue, and this retards the cultural and
social development of the country. Apart from fees and
a tax on ginned cotton levied on the factories, the
government's only important sources of revenue in the
form of indirect taxation are the Customs and the tobacco
tax, and in the form of direct taxation the land and
house taxes. With the exception of the tobacco tax, all
these revenues are inelastic and uncontrollable. Thus
the tobacco tax plays much the same part that is played
in England by the income tax. The result has been,
however, that the cultivation of tobacco, which showed

300 METHODS AND PROBLEMS
great promise, has been forbidden in Egypt. The
Egyptian cigarette industry works exclusively with
foreign tobaccos. The question of the introduction of
new taxes and the increase of the state expenditure is a
vital one for Egypt. Only so will it be possible to carry
out within a reasonable period the great plans that have
already been adopted, and to lay the foundations of a
new Egypt universal school attendance for boys and
girls, extension of the public health services, provision
of drinking-water and consequent improved sanitary
conditions in all the villages (this is expected to cost
twenty millions), improvement of communications, and,
above all, the execution of great irrigation and land
reclamation works to satisfy to some extent the land-
hunger of the fellah. After the abrogation of the
Capitulations, inheritance duties and imposts on banks,
commercial companies, trades and professions, will open
up fresh sources of revenue, and, lastly, the expiration of
the Suez Canal Concession in 1968 will bring a considerable
addition to revenue.

The plans of agricultural development which the
Egyptians have sketched out for the near future have
already been referred to as a part of the general economic
transformation the gradual transition from the single
crop for the world market to a mixed cultivation which
will cover home requirements and permit of a varied
export (in view of the climatic conditions there are good
prospects for the shipment of early vegetables to Europe) ;
protection of native fruit and cereal cultivation by
duties ; improvement of the cotton cultivation ; and
better cultural, social, and economic equipment of the
fellah through the introduction of compulsory elementary
education and the extension of technical instruction,
through sanitary measures, through guidance and
instruction in agriculture, and above all through the
organization of an agrarian credit system. In 1931 the
government founded the Agricultural Credit Bank, one of
whose duties is to intervene in forced sales to prevent
the alienation of peasant property. The expenditure

OF EUROPEANIZATION 301

on public health has risen from E301,514 in 1910
to E1,638,689 in 1931. The fellah is an industrious
worker with few wants, devoted to his home. He usually
works his ground with only the assistance of his family ;
where outside labour is employed, the men are often
engaged for the whole year and paid in kind. The fellah
generally uses the maize and wheat crop for his own
needs, and his economic existence depends on the cotton,
the proceeds of which have to pay his taxes, rent, and
working expenses. The rent of good cotton soil has
risen considerably since the War ; the fall in the price
of raw cotton in recent years made it impossible for the
tenant to continue to pay this rent, and the government
has had to come to his assistance with various enactments
and with the grant of credits.

The industrialization of Egypt began with the private
initiative of the newly-arisen middle-class ; the modern-
ization of agriculture began through the work of the
co-operative societies. Omar Lutfi Bey founded the
first urban co-operative in Cairo in 1909 on the Italian
model, and the first rural one in 1910. His early death
robbed the movement of its leader, and the societies
started during the world war collapsed in consequence of
the lack of suitable legislation and of government support.
It was only after the attainment of independence in 1923
that the first legislative measures in this sphere were
passed ; they were followed by others in 1927. In the
Ministry of Agriculture a special section for the co-opera-
tives was created, and many financial privileges and
other aids were granted to these societies, loans being
conceded at a low rate of interest. The Ministry devotes
itself to the propaganda of the co-operative idea, gives
instruction in starting and ranning the societies, employs
a number of inspectors and organizers, and issues a special
newspaper. The co-operative movement not only brings
material economic assistance to the fellah, but is also of
great educational value. An association of co-operatives
is now to take over from the government the duty of
supervision and assistance.

302 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

The modernization of Egyptian economic life also
finds expression in tlie increase in the use of agricultural
machinery. The import of artificial manure is steadily
rising. The traditional wooden water-wheel worked by
animals has been displaced almost everywhere by the
motor, which soon pays for itself, even on small holdings,
in view of the high value of land. The growing industries
and the large number of electrical undertakings need an
increasing quantity of modern machinery. The raising of
the Assuan dam will provide a fall of level which will
represent a large and cheap source of power, sufficient to
supply the whole of Egypt with electric power. At
present Egypt does not possess an adequate field for the
full utilization of the great quantities of current the
electricity station at the dam will generate. The govern-
ment has made comprehensive plans to find a market for
the current as soon as possible by using it for irrigation,
for urban consumption, for industry, and, later on, for the
railways.

Thus the transformation of Egyptian life finds
expression in every sphere. The Egypt of 1935 is neither
politically nor economically the Egypt of 1910 or even
that of 1920. The change is not so drastic as in Turkey,
but it points unmistakably in the same direction in which
to-day all the peoples under colonial and semi-colonial
rule, all the nations which have been permanently or
temporarily without a history of their own, are beginning
to develop in the direction of an increasingly active
participation in the cultural and economic existence of
mankind, of entry into the great human society, of an
attempt to take in hand the shaping of their own lives,
to re-order them under the impact of the paramount

European civilization, and to give them their due place
, *

in it.

How far the Oriental and with him the South
American or the Russian or the Chinese will become
different as a result of this process, how far he will modify
the European civilization originally adopted by him in
self-defence and afterwards from inclination, nobody

OF ETJROPEANIZATION 303

can say. We are only at the beginning of the process ;
there is still very strong resistance to it from without,
from the stronger and more fortunate nations who are
the beati possidentes, as well as from within, in the form of
impediments due to history and character, to the lack of
an intellectual tlite, and to poverty. But the attraction
of the historical study of our period and of the analysis
of our times lies in following up and trying to realize the
spirit of the life which is stirring and surging toward the
future as it grows that spirit which dominates and
sways all life, whether life obeys or resists it.

The ever-closer contact of these very different civiliza-
tions and forms of life on the basis of a single civilization,
which is Western European in origin but universal in
compass and aim, is entering everywhere on its victorious
course in the most various forms and amid obvious and
strange contradictions, to shape the mind of man and
to awaken his initiative. From it there is arising in the
provinces of the Ottoman empire as in China, in the
Soviet Union as in South America, even in the steppes and
plateaux of Central Asia and in Africa, a new mankind.
It will receive, take over, and transform European
civilization, the inalienable intellectual inheritance from
the great historic development which started in Europe
with the centuries of the Renaissance, of the Enlighten-
ment, and of the revolutions. In the French Revolution
a nation realized for the first time that man was living no
longer in a stable and traditional world but in a changing
one, the modification of which is the task of man. This
new consciousness was translated into action and domin-
ated European political thought and the European
social attitude in the nineteenth century. The same
significance that the French Revolution had for Europe,
the contact with Europe which came of that revolution
has had for the Near East the recognition of the
inadequacy of the traditional form, and the awakening
of the determination to alter it radically.

With this world-wide spread of an active realization
of the need of a new age, the present is acquiring in the

304 METHODS AND PROBLEMS

East, as elsewhere, a unique and unprecedented signifi-
cance. Hitherto the past had determined life entirely ;
generation followed generation in the shackles of tradition,
working with the same tools and by the same methods.
To-day the struggle between the generations has set in,
as it set in some decades ago in Europe ; the present is
becoming the controlling life-force, transforming men and
calling them to its service.

For thousands of years human civilization, split up
between continents and wide geographical areas, developed
along entirely separate paths ; to-day for the first time
spatial and intellectual interconnection is established.
Mankind as a whole is beginning to confront the same
problems and needs. What was formerly, even in the
nineteenth century, the task of separate nations, is
increasingly becoming the task of mankind. Nationalism,
which first appeared as a formative principle in history
in Western Europe, has in the last few decades extended
its dominion over the whole earth. It stands to-day at
the height of its power: it rules history and destiny,
thought and action in all nations, in every latitude and
clime.

But for that very reason it no longer seems to suffice
in the changed situation. In the nineteenth century,
applied to geographically restricted regions of the social
and intellectual world, it signified a new order ; but it is
out of tune with the planetary extent of social and intel-
lectual life to-day. In a situation which, for the very
reason that it embraces the whole of the habitable globe,
is not comparable with anything in the past, all peoples
without exception share the feeling some in almost
painful clearness, others in dim presentiments that a
critical turning point has come for all humanity. All
have to find a way to subordinate national interest, in
which the will to live and the lust for power have become
sovereign and overweening, to the discipline of humanity
and of the spirit, which alone can give life a meaning and
save from chaos this age of unexampled portent and
promise. The entry of the Near East into this age has

OF EUROPEANIZATION 305

begun to be an accomplished fact during the last thirty
years, and this development, with the awakening of
nations of immemorial age, which had been imagined to
be long dead and petrified, but which were once the
centre of the most ancient civilizations on earth, is one of
the most significant events of the new epoch in human
history, which started in Western Europe and thence
took its triumphant way over the whole inhabited earth,
bringing all men under its spell.

20

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE following bibliography contains only a selection of
books which the author found helpful in clarifying the
various issues involved in the process of the structural
changes and the Europeanization of the Orient. No
books are included on the past history of the Mediter-
ranean countries and the Near East or on specific economic
subjects like cotton or oil. For a general introduction
to the nature and history of the Mediterranean countries
I may refer the student to the admirable book by Alfred
Philippson, Das Mittdmeergebiet, seine Geographische und
Kulturelle Eigenart (3. AufL, Leipzig, 1914), to Paul
Herre, Weltgeschichte am Mittelmeer (Potsdam, 1930),
which is beautifully illustrated, and to Marion Isabel
Newbigin, The Mediterranean Lands (New York, 1924).
An excellent bibliography on the general political and
economic aspects of Oriental countries is included in
William L. Langer and Hamilton Fish Armstrong,
Foreign Affairs Bibliography. A selected and annotated
list of books on International delations 1919-32 (New
York: Harper, 1933).

Neither have I included any books given in the biblio-
graphies in my History of Nationalism in the East (London :
Routledge, 1929) and Nationalism and Imperialism in the
Hither East (London : Routledge, 1932) and in the notes
in the later book. I have therefore included in the
present bibliography only a selection of recent books
dealing directly with the problems of changing civiliza-
tion, and refer the student for less recent or more general
books to the bibliographies mentioned above.

I have not included in the bibliography any articles
published in periodicals. Much of the most valuable
material, however, on the Europeanization of the Near
East is to be found in a number of periodicals, of which
I should mention first of all Oriente Moderno 9 which has

807

308 BIBLIOGRAPHY

been published as a monthly in Rome by the Istituto per
I'Oriente since June 1921, and deals with the Near and
Middle East and Mam in general, and Die Welt des Islam,
edited for the Deutsche Gesellschaf t fur Islamkunde in
Berlin by Professor G. Kampffmeyer. Periodicals of a
more general character are the quarterly Journal of the
Central Asian Society, published in London, the beautifully
illustrated monthly Asia, published in New York, which
frequently publishes contributions by Orientals inter-
preting the cultural trends of their countries, and the
weekly -Near East and India, published in London, which
changed its name in the autumn of 1935 into Great Britain
and the East. Some missionary periodicals show great
interest in the impact of Western civilization on Eastern
lands. Among them I may mention The Moslem World,
A Christian Quarterly Review of Current Events, Literature
and Thought among Mohammedans, edited by Samuel M.
Zwemer, The Missionary Review of the World, and World
Dominion : an International Review of Christian Progress,
The Open Court (Chicago) published in 1932 and 1933 a
monograph series of the New Orient Society, Foreign
Affairs, a quarterly, published by the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York, International Affairs, published
every two months by the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in London, Pacific Affairs, a quarterly, published
by the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York, and the
English monthlies like The Nineteenth Century and After
and The Contemporary Review, frequently contain relevant
articles on Oriental problems. The Foreign Policy Associa-
tion in New York devotes its fortnightly Reports from
time to time to Near Eastern and Oriental problems and
countries. The excellent reports on the Near East are
mostly written by Miss Elizabeth P. MacCallum.

The student will find much material and discussions
of great importance in some volumes of Professor Arnold
J. Toynbee's Survey of International Affairs (Oxford
University Press), especially in the volumes 1925
(Volume I), 1928 and 1930 ; in the Educational Tear Book
of the International Institute of Teachers' College,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 309

Columbia University, New York, edited by I. L. Kandel,
and in the Year Book of Education, edited by Lord Eustace
Percy (Evans Brothers, London). The Department of
Overseas Trade of the British Government publishes from
time to time reports on the economic conditions in different
countries of the Orient. The governments of Turkey,
Egypt, Iran, and India and some of their departments
publish comprehensive yearly statistical summaries and
reports. The yearly Reports of the Mandatory
administrations in Syria and Palestine to the Permanent
Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and the
yearly Statements Exhibiting the Moral and Material
Progress and Condition of India are convenient presenta-
tions from the official viewpoint.

In the following bibliography the first section contains
some books on the problem of changing civilizations in
general and on conditions in Africa especially. The
student will find for a general discussion of civilization
the three volumes of A Study of History by Arnold J.
Toynbee (Oxford University Press, 1934), and for African
conditions the two volumes on The Native Problem in
Africa by Raymond Leslie BueU (New York : Macmillan,
1928), full of suggestions and material. The second
section lists recent books on the Near East, published
since the completion of the bibliographies in my two
preceding books, mentioned above. The third section
gives some of the recent books on India and the Far East
which seemed to me to illuminate problems of social,
economic and intellectual conditions, which are changing
in India and in the Far East much in the same way
as in the Near East. In addition the Encyclopaedia of
the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1930-5, 15 volumes), and
the yearly Statesman's Yew Book, edited by Dr. M. Epstein,
should be consulted for their articles and statistics and
for their bibliographical lists of recent and older books.
The Zeitschrift fur Geopolitik (Berlin) has annotated
bibliographies of recent books on the Near East in its
issues of February 1931, July 1931 and September 1933.
The American University of Beirut publishes in several

310 BIBLIOGRAPHY

volumes (1933 sq.) A Post-War Bibliography of the Near
Eastern Mandates (1918-29). As nationalism forms more
and more the basic elements of intellectual and political
life in the Near and Far East, the student will find the
best introduction to an understanding of its implications
in the two volumes by Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on
Nationalism (New York: MacmiUan, 1926), and The
Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York :
Richard R. Smith, 1931), and a bibliography of books
on nationalism in Koppel S. Pinson, A Bibliographical
Introduction to Nationalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1935). The author of the present book
has in preparation a systematic treatise on nationalism,
its history and its implications.

Leonard Woolf : Imperialism and Civilization. (London : Hogarth
fress, 1928.)

C. Delisle Bums : Modern Civilization on Trial (New York :
MacmiUan, 1931.)

Sir Gilbert Murray and Rabindranath. Tagore : East and West.
(Paris : International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1935.)

Nathaniel Peffer : The White Man's Dilemma. Climax of the Age
of Imperialism. (New York : John Day, 1927.)

Herbert Adolphus Miller : The Beginnings of Tomorrow. An
Introduction to the Sociology of the Great Society. (New York : Stokes,
1933.)

William Ernest Hocking: JRe-thinking Mission. A Layman's
Inquiry after One Hundred Tears. (New York : Harper, 1932.)

Pearl S. Buck : Is there a Case for Foreign Missions ? (The John
Day Pamphlets, No. 18.) (New York : John Day, 1932.)

Archibald G. Becker : Christian Missions and A New World Culture.
(Chicago : Wfflett, dark & Co., 1934.)

Joseph H. Oldham : Christianity and the Race Problem. (New
York : Doran, 1924.)

Erancis S. Marvin (ed.) : Western Saces and ike World. (Oxford
University Press, 1922.)

Leopold Levaux : L'Orient et Nous. (Paris : de Brouwer, 1932.)
Basil Mathews : The Clash of Colour. (New York : Doran, 1924,)

Maurice Muret : The Tmlight of the White Saces. (New York :
Scribner, 1926.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 311

Ernst Sucher : Beseitigung der Kolonialmacht. (Wiesbaden :
Ittede durch Recht, 1927.)

John H. Harris : Slavery or " Sacred Trust " ? (London : Williams
& Norgate, 1926.)

Arnold D. A. de Kat Angelino : Colonial Policy. Two volumes.
(Chicago University Press, 1931.)

Aldobrandino Malvezzi : La Politica Indigena NeLle Colonie.
(Padova : Cedan, 1933.)

Der Orient und Wir. Seeks Vortrdge des Deutschen Orientvereins>
Berlin. (Berlin : Walter de Gruyter, 1935.)

M. Pavlovich : The Foundations of Imperialist Policy. (London :
Labour Publishing Co., 1922.)

Hans Kohn : Nationalism in the Soviet Union. (London : Rout-
ledge, and New York : Columbia University Press, 1933.)

N. Nikitin : La Literature des Musdmans en U.S.S.JR. (Paris :
Paul Geuthner, 1935.)

Thomas Jesse Jones (ed.) : Education in Africa. (New York :
Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922.)

Joseph H. Oldham and B. D. Gibson : The Re-rwUng of Man in
Africa. (Oxford University Press, 1931.)

Joseph H. Oldham : White and Black in Africa. (New York :
Longmans, 1930.)

Lord Olivier : White Capital and Coloured Labour. (London :
Hogarth Press, 1929.)

: The Anatomy of African Misery. (London : Hogarth

Press, 1927.)

Charles Roden Buxton : The Race Problem in Africa. (London :
Hogarth Press, 1931.)

Allan McPhee : The Economic Revolution in British West Africa.
(London : Routledge, 1926.)

G. St J. Browne : The African Labourer. (Oxford University
Press, 1933.)

L C. Greaves: Modern Production among Back/ward Peoples.
(London : AUen & Unwin, 1935.)

Diedrioh Westerman : The African To-day. (Oxford University
Press, 1934.)

Richard C. Thurnwald : Black and White in East Africa : the Fabric
of a New Civilization. A Study in Social Contact and Adaptation of
Life. (London: Routledge, 1935.)

Hilde Thurnwald : Die Schwwrze Frau im Wandd AfriJcas.
(Stuttgart : Kohlhammer, 1935.)

Georgina A. Gollook : Sons of Africa. (London : Student Christian
Movement, 1928.)

Pannenas G. Mockerie: An African Speaks for His People.
(London : Hogarth Press, 1934,)

312 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nnandi Azikiwe : Liberia in World Politics. (London : Stockwell,
1935.)

C. H. Becker : Educational Problems in the Far East and the Near
East. (Oxford University Press, 1934.)

Reinhard Junge : Das Problem der Europaisierung Orientalischer
Wirtschaft dargestellt an den Verhdltnissen der Sozialmrtschaft von
Eussisch-Turkestan. (Weimar, 1915.)

II

0. H. Becker : Islamstudien. Vom Werden und Wesen der islam-
ischen Welt. 2 Bd. (Leipzig : Quelle & Meyer, 1932.)

H. A. R. Gibb (ed.) : Whither Islam ? A Survey of Modern Move-
ments in the Moslem World. (London : Victor Gollancz, 1932.)

Eugene Jung : Les Arabes et V Islam en Face des Nouvelles Croisades.
(Paris : Eugene Jung, 50 Avenue Malakoff, 1931.)

John R. Mott (ed.) : The Moslem World of To-day. (New York :
Doran, 1925.)

L. Levonian : Moslem Mentality. A Discussion of the Presentation
of Christianity to Moslems. (London : Allen & Unwin, 1928.)

Henry Elisha Allen : The Turkish Transformation. A Study in
Social and Religious Development. (University of Chicago Press, 1935.)

Paul Gentizon : Musta$ha Kemal ou VOrient en Marche. (Paris :
Bossard, 1929.)

Dagobert von Mikusch : Oasi Mustafa Kemal. Zwischen Europa
und Asien. (Leipzig : Paul Last, 1929.)

H. 0. Armstrong : Grey Wolf : Mustafa Kemal. (London : Barker,
1932.)

A]i Shah Ikbal : Kemal, Maker of Modern Turkey. (London :
Joseph, 1934.)

Charles H. Sherrill : A Year's Embassy to Mustafa KemaL (New
York : Scribner, 1934.)

Jean M61ia ; Mustapha Kemal ou la Renovation de la Turguie.
(Paris : Fasquelle, 1929.)

Halid6 Edib : Turkey Faces West. (Yale University Press, 1930.)

Berthe Georges-Gaulis : La Question Turque. (Paris : Berger-
Levrault, 1931.)

Arnold J. Toynbee and K. Kirkwood : Turkey. (London : Benn,
1927.)

Sir Telf ord Waugh : Turkey : Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow.
(London : Chapman & Hall, 1930.)

Eugene Pittard : Le Visage Nouveau de la Turquie. (Paris :
Soci4t6 d'Editions G4ographiques, 1930.)

P. Di Roccalta : Angora et Kemal Pascid. Problemi Politici ed
Economici detta Moderna Turchia. (Roma: Society Anonima
Romana Editoriale, 1932.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 313

Leon Count Ostrorog : The Angora Reform. (University of London
Press, 1928.)

Hachim Nabid : Les Symptomes de la Crise Turque et son Remkde.
(Paris : Librairie Philosophique, 1931.)

Karl Kruger : Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East. (London :
Allen & Unwin, 1932.)

Kurt Ziemke : Die Neue Turkei. Politische Entwicldung 1914-29.
(Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1930.)

Oeschichte der turkischen J&epublik. Verfasst von der Gesdlschaft
zur JErforschung der turkischen Geschichte. (Istanbul : Devlet Matbassi,
1935.)

Schewket Raschid: Die Turkische Landwirtschaft ah Qrundlage
der Turkischen VolksivirtscMft. (Berlin : de Gruyter, 1932.)

Fritz Adolf Heyersberg : Maschinenvenvendung im Wirtschaftsleben
der Turkei. (Berlin : Emil Ebering, 1934.)

K. 0. Reshid Suffet : La Nouvdle Politique Econwnique de la Turquie
Kemaliste. (Paris : Fresco, 1934.)

Orhan Conker : Les Chemins de Fer en Turquie. (Paris : Sirey,
1935.)

The Turkish Press. Selections from the Turkish Press, showing
Events and Opinions, 1925-32. Translated and arranged under
direction of Lutfy Levonian. (Athens : School of Religion, 1932 ;
London : Kegan Paul, 1933.)

Basri Gftn Tekin : Le Monde Turc et sa Mission Historique. D&s
la " premiere humanite de langue turque " jusqu'd, nos jours. (Leipzig :
Breitkopf & Hartel, 1929.)

Rosita Forbes : Conflict : Angora to Afghanistan. (London :
Cassell, 1931.)

Ali Akbar Siassi : La Perse au Contact de I'Occident. Etude
Historique et Sociale. (Paris : Leroux, 1931.)

I. K. Sadig : Modern Persia and her Educational System. (New
York : Bureau of Publications, Teachers' College, Columbia University,
1931.)

Sir Arnold T. Wilson: The Persian Gulf. (Oxford University
Press, 1928.)

: Persia. (London : Benn, 1932.)

0. A. Merrit-Hawkes : Persia 9 Romance and Reality. (London :
Nicholson, 1935.)

Fritz Hesse : Persien, JEntwcklung und Qegenwart. (Berlin :
Zentralverlag, 1932.)

Arthur C. Millspaugh : The American Task in Persia. (New York :
Century, 1925.)

Ahmad Khan Matine-Daftary : La Suppression des Capitulations en
Perse. (Paris : Presses Universitaires, 1930.)

Moustaf a Khan Fateh : The Economic Position of Persia. (London :
King, 1926.)

314 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hans Doevel: Persiens Auswartige
(Hamburg : Friederichsen, de Gruyter & Co., 1933.)

Jamal ud Din Ahmad and Mohammad Abdul Aziz : Afghanistan, a
Brief Survey. (London : Luzac, 1934.)

Joseph Schwager : Die Entwicklung Afghanistan^ als Stoat und
seine z^chenstaatlichen Eeziehungen. (Leipzig : Nbske, 1932.)

K. H. Sorab Katrak : Through AmanullaWs Afghanistan. (London :
Luzac, 1930.)

Emil Rybitschka : Im Gottgegebenen Afghanistan. (Leipzig :
Brockhaus, 1927.)

Bruno Seifert: Der Anteil D&utschlands an der wirtechaftlichen
Entwicklung Afghanistan. (Stuttgart : Ausland und Heimat, 1929.)

Frank Alexander Boss and others : The Near East and American
Philanthropy. (Columbia University Press, 1929.)

William Ernest Hocking: The Spirit of World Politics. With
Special Studies of the Near East. (New York : MacmiUan, 1932.)

Tahir Khemini and G. Kampffmeyer : Leaders in Contemporary
Arabic Literature. Part I. (London : Kegan Paul, 1932.)

J. Achkar : Evolution Politiyue de la Syrie et du Liban, de la Palestine
et de VIrak. (Paris : Librairie du Foyer, 1935.)

Paul Ghali : Les Nations d&nch&es de V Empire Ottoman. (Paris :
Domat-Montchr6tien, 1934.)

Louis Jovelet : L'Evolwtion Sotidle et Politigue des Pays Arabes.
(Paris : Geuthner, 1935.)

Berthe Georges-Gaulis : La Question AraJbe. De FArabie du Soi
Ibn Saoud a rindependance Syrienne. (Paris : Berger-Levrault, 1930.)

E. Paret: Zur Frauenfrage in der Arabisch-Islamischen Welt.
(Stuttgart : Kohlhammer, 1934.)

Henry XL Hoepli : England im Nahen Osten. Das J&nigreich Irak
und die Mossulfrage. (Erlangen : Palm & Enke, 1931.)

A. Nblde : L'Irak, Origines Historigues et Situation Internationale.
(Paris : Librairie Generale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1934.)

Ernest Main : Iraq. From Mandate to Independence. (London :
Allen & Unwin, 1935.)

Henry A. Foster : The MaUng of Modem Iraq. A Product of World
Forces. (University of Oklahoma Press, 1935.)

Mrs Steuart Erskine : King Faisal of Iraq. (London : Hutchinson,
1933.)

Report of the Educational Inquiry Commission. Survey directed
by Paul Monroe. (Baghdad : Government Press, 1932.)

Muhammad FadhelJamali: The New Iraq. Its Problem of JSedouin
Education. (New York : Bureau of Publications, Teachers' College,
Columbia University, 1934.)

Sir Edward Hilton Young : Report on Economic Conditions and
PoUcy. (Baghdad : Government Press, 1930.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 315

Social Survey of Syria. (Beirut : American University, 1926.)
(Not printed.)

Raymond O'Zouk : Les Etats du Levant s&us Mandat Franpais.
(Paris : Larose, 1931.)

M. Farid Zeineddine : Le Regime du Controle des Mandate de la
Societe des Nations. (Paris : Les Presses Universitaires, 1933.)

Walter Holmes Ritscher : Criteria of Capacity for Independence.
(American University of Beirut.) (Jerusalem : Syrian Orphanage
Press, 1934.)

Stuart Carter Dodd : A Controlled Experiment on Rural Hygiene in
Syria. (Beirut : American University, 1934.)

Alfred Bonne : Paldstina. Land und WirtecJiaft. (Leipzig :
Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Buchhandlung, 1932.)

Harry Viteles and Khalil Totah (ed.) : Palestine, a Decade of
Development. (Philadelphia : The American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 1932.)

Lewis IVench : Reports on Agricultural Development and Land
Settlement in Palestine. (London : Crown Agents for the Colonies,
1932.)

Mrs Steuart Erskine : Palestine of the Arabs. (London : Harrap,
1935.)

Anis Saghir : Le Sionisme et le Mandat Anglais en Palestine. (Paris :
Les Presses Universitaires, 1932.)

Norman Bentwich : England in Palestine. (London : Kegan
Paul, 1932.)

Antoine Zischka : Ibn Seoud. (Paris : Payot, 1934.)

H. C. Armstrong : Lord of Arabia, Ibn Saud. An Intimate Study
of a King. (London : 1934.)

Kenneth Williams : Ibn Saud, the Puritan King of Arabia. (London :
Jonathan Cape, 1933.)

Rupert Donkan : Die Auferstehung Arabiens. Ibn Bauds Weg und
Ziel (Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann, 1935.)

H. de Monfreid : Les Derniers Jours de VArahie H&ureuse. (Paris :
1935.)

D. van der Meulen and H. von Wissmann : Badramaut, Some of
its Mysteries Unveiled. (Leyden : E. J, BriU, 1932.)

Taha Hussein: An Egyptian Childhood. The Autobiography of
T.H. (London: Routledge, 1932.)

C. Charles Adams : Islam and Modernism in Egypt. A Study of
Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Mohammad Abduh. (Oxford
University Press, 1933.)

Lord Lloyd of Dolobran: Egypt since Grower. Two volumes.
(London: Macmillan, 1933, 1934.)

Sir Arnold T. Wilson : The Sues Canal. (Oxford University Press,
1934.)

316 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Moustapha Sabry : Le Pouvoir Legislatif el le Pouvoir Executif en
Egypte. (Paris : Meohelinck, 1930.)

El Sayed Hassan : Essai sur une Orientation Nouvette de VEconomie
Egyptienne. (Toulouse: Vialelle, 1928.)

A. Soliman : L 9 Industrialization de I'Egypte. (Paris : Geuthner,
1933.)

Mohammed Ali Rif aat : The Monetary System of Egypt. (London :
Allen & Unwin, 1935.)

Siegfried Passarge : Agypten und der arabische Orient. (Berlin :
Zentralverlag, 1931.)

Ill

Ereda M. Houlston and B, P. L. Bedi (ed.) : India Analysed. Four
volumes. (London : Victor Gollancz, 1933-5.)

Congress Presidential Addresses from the Silver to the Golden Jubilee
(1911-34). (Madras : Natesan, 1934.)

F. M. de Mello : The Indian National Congress. (Oxford University
Press, 1934.)

K V. Eamasubrahmanyam : The Evolution of the Indian Con-
stitution. (Madras ; Raja & Co., 1935.)

Wolfgang Kraus: Die Stoats- und Vottc&rrechtliche Stdlung
Britisch-Indiens. (Leipzig : Noske, 1930.)

Edward Thompson : Reconstructing India. (New York : The
Dial Press, 1930.)

G. T. Gairatt : An Indian Commentary. (London : Jonathan
Caps, 1930.)

Edwaxd Thomson and G. T. Garratt: Rise and Fulfilment of
British Buk in India. (New York : Macmiflan, 1934.)

Subhas 0. Bose : The Indian Struggle. (London : Wishart, 1935.)

Lester Hutchinson : Conspiracy at Meerut. (London : Allen &
Unwin, 1935.)

R. G. Pradham : India's Struggle for Swaraj. (Madras : Natesan,
1931.)

David Graham Pole : India in Transition. (London ; Hocarth
Press, 1932.)

- Paramananda Dutt: Memoirs of Motilal Ghose. (Calcutta:
Amrit Bazar Patrika, 1935.)

P. Chandra Ray : Life and Times of <7. B. Das. (Oxford University
Press, 1928.) J

Charles F. Andrews: Mahatma Qandhi's Ideas. (New York :
Macmfflan, 1930.)

: Mahatow Gandhi, His Own Story. (New York :

Macmfflan, 1930,)

Sylvain L6vi : L'Inde et k Monde. (Paris : Champion, 1926.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 317

Alfred C. Underwood : Contemporary Thought of India. (New
York : Knopf, 1931.)

K. R. Luckmidas : Modern India Thinks. (London : Kegan
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H. C. E. Zacharias : Renascent India from Earnmahan Boy to
Mohandas Gandhi. (London : Allen & Unwin, 1933.)

Kanaiyalal M. Munshi : Gujarat and its Literature. (Bombay :
Longmans, 1935.)

M. M. Zuhuruddin Ahmad : Present Day Problems of Indian Educa-
tion. (Andheri, Bombay : The Ismail College, 1935.)

M. Siddalingaiya : Reconstructing Ehm&rutary Education in Mysore,
India. (Mysore : The New Education Fellowship, 1935.)

Bimanbehari Majumdar: History of Political Thought from
Eammohun to Dsyananda, 1821-84. Volume L. (Bengal : University
of Calcutta Press, 1934.)

R. E. Paranjpye : The Crux of the Indian Problem. (London :
Watts, 1931.)

B. T. Ranadive : The Population Problem of India. (New York :
Longmans, 1930.)

L. S. S. O'Malley : India's Social Heritage. (Oxford University
Press, 1934.)

Frederick B. Fisher : India's Silent Revolution. (New York :
Macmillan, 1919.)

Vera Anstey : The Economic Development of India. (New
York : Longmans, 1931.)

G. B. Jather and S. G. Beri : Indian Economics. (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1930.)

Daniel Houston Buchanan : The Development of Capitalistic Enter-
prise in India. (New York : Macmillan, 1934.)

S. G. Panandikar : Industrial Labour in India. (Bombay :
Longmans, 1933.)

Gladys M. Broughton : Labour in Indian Industries. (Oxford
University Press, 1924.)

Ahmad Mukhtar : Trade Umonism and Labour Disputes in India.
(Bombay: Longmans, 1935.)

P. Padmanabha PUlai ; Economic Conditions in India. (London :
Routledge, 1925.)

B. D. Dasu : Ruin of Indian Trade and Industries. (Calcutta :
R. Chatterjee, 1935.)

Chandulal Vakil and M. C. Munghi : Industrial Policy of India.
(New York : Longmans, 1934.)

P. S. Lokanathan : Industrial Organization in India. (London :
Allen & Unwin, 1935.)

H. R, Soni: Indian Industry and Its Problems. Volume I: Factors
in Industrial Development. (London : Longmans, 1933.)

318 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Margaret Read : The Indian Peasant Uprooted. (New York :
Longmans, 1931.)

Gertrude Emerson : Voiceless India. (New York : Doubleday,
1930.)

N. Gangulee : The Indian Peasant and His Environment. The
Linlithgow Commission and After. (Oxford University Press, 1935.)

Malcolm Lyall Darling : Rustics Loquitur. (Oxford University
Press, 1930.)

: Wisdom and Waste in the Punjab Village. (Oxford

University Press, 1934.)

B. K. Madan : Some Aspects of Rural Economy in the Punjab.
(Lahore : Rama Krishna & Sons, 1934.)

Radhakamal Mukerjee : Land Problems of India. (University of
Calcutta Press, 1933.)

Pnem Chand Lai : Reconstruction and Education in Rural India.
(London : Allen & Unwin, 1932.)

Hirendra Lai Dey : The Indian Tariff in Relation to Industry and
Taxation.. (London : Allen & Unwin, 1933.)

Sir Frederick Whyte : The Future of East and West. (London :
Sidgwick, 1932.)

G. E. Hubbard, assisted by Denzil Baring : East&rn Industrialization
and Its Effect on the West (Oxford University Press, 1935.)

Edwin R. Embree and others : Island India goes to School. (Chicago
University Press, 1935.)

J. T. Petrus Blumberger : De Nativnalistische Beweging in Neder-
landsche Indie. (Haarlem : Tjeenk Willnik, 1931.)

Amry Vandenbosch : The Dutch East Indies, its Government,
Problems and Politics. (Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B.
Eerdman, 1933.)

J. B. Alberti : Ulndo-Chine d'autrefois et d'aujourdhui. (Paris :
Soci<$t6 d'Editions Gteographiques, 1934.)

Kenneth Saunders : Whither Asia ? (New York : Macmillan,
1934.)

Paul Monroe : A Report on Education, in China. (New York :
The Institute of International Education, 1922.)

The Re-organization of Education in China. Report of the League
of Nations' Mission of Educational Experts to China. (League of
Nations, 1932.)

Stephen Duggan : A Critique of the Report of the League of Nations'
Mission of Educational Experts to China. (New York : Institute of
International Education, 1933.)

Kyoson Tsuchida : Contemporary Thought of Japan and China.
(New York : Knopf, 1927.)

Sophia H. Chen Zen (ed.) : Symposmm on Chinese Culture.
(Shanghai : China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 319

Nathaniel Peffer : China : The Collapse of a Civilization. (New
York : John Day, 1930.)

Lin Yutang : My Country and My People. (New York : John
Day, 1935.)

Lyon Sharman : Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its Meaning. A Critical
Biography. (New York : John Day, 1934.)

Sun Yat-sen : San min chu i, the Three Principles of the People.
(Shanghai : China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927.)

Tang Leang-li : China in Revolt ; How a Civilization became a
Nation. (London : Douglas, 1927.)

: The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution. (New York :

Dutton, 1930.)

Arthur Norman Holcombe : The Chinese Revolution ; A Phase in
the Regeneration of a World Power. (Harvard University Press, 1930.)

Hu Shih : The Chinese Renaissance. (University of Chicago Press,
1934.)

Paul Monroe : China. A Nation in Evolution. (New York :
MacmiUan, 1928.)

Wang Tsi Chang : The Youth Movement in China. (New York :
The New Republic, 1927.)

Hu Shih and Ian Yutang : China's Own Critics. (Peking : China
United Press, 1931.)

Lo Ren Yen : China's Revolution from the Inside. (New York :
Abingdon, 1930.)

Lee Teng Hwee : Vital Factors in China's Problems. (New York :
Stechert, 1927.)

Cyras H. Peake : Nationalism and Education in Modem China.
(New York : Columbia University Press, 1932.)

James B. Webster: Christian Education and the National Con-
sciousness in China. (New York : Dutton, 1923.)

Walter H. Mallory : China, Land of Famine. (New York :
American Geographical Society, 1927.)

Richard Wilhelm: Chinesische Wirtschaftspsychologie. (Leipzig:
Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Buchhandlung, 1930.)

Harold M. Vinacke : Problems of Industrial Development in China.
(Princeton University Press, 1926.)

Richard H. Tawney : Land and Labour in China. (New York :
Harcourt, 1932.)

Carl August Wittfogel: Wirts(faftund(faellsc^ Versuch

d&r loissenscJiaftlichen Analyse emer grosser Asiatischen Agrargesdl-
schaft. Bd. 1 : Produktivkrdfte, Productions- und Zirkulationsprozess.
(Leipzig: BKrschfeld, 1931.)

Victor A. Yakhontoff : The Chinese Soviets. (New York: Coward,
McCann, 1934.)

Fundamental Laws of ihe Chinese Soviet Republic. (New York :
International Publisher, 1934.)

320 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Violet Conolly: Soviet Economic Policy in {he East. (Oxford
University Press, 1933.)

: Soviet Trade from the Pacific to the Levant, with an

Economic Study of the Soviet Far Eastern Region. (Oxford University
Press, 1935.)

Ernst Schultze : Japan als Wdtindustriemacht 2 Bde. (Stuttgart :
Kohlhammer, 1935.)

Emil Lederer und Emy Lederer-Seidler : Japan-Europa. Wand-
lungen im Femen Oaten. (Frankfurt a.M. : Societats Verlag, 1929.)

Comao Murakami : Dos Japanische Erziehungswesen. (Tokyo :
Fuzambo, 1934.)

0. Tanm and E. Yohan : Militarism and Fascism in Japan. (New
York : International Publishers, 1934.)

Malcolm D. Kennedy : The Changing Fabric of Japan. (London :
Constable, 1930.)

Inazo Ota Nitobe and others : Western Influences in Modern Japan.
(Chicago University Press, 1931.)

Harry Emerson Wildes : Social Currents in Japan. (Chicago
University Press, 1927.)

: Japan in Crisis. (New York : Macmillan, 1934.)

Bertram Johannes Otto Schrieke : The Effect of Western Influence
on Native Civilizations in the Malay Archipelago. (Batavia : Kolff,
1929.)

INDEX

Abadan (port on Persian Gulf), 172,

173, 176, 183
Abbasids (dynasty of Arab khalif s), 30,

49, 56, 63

Abdullah (Emir of Transjordania), 205
Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Bahman (leader

of the Wahhabites) (see Ibn

Saud)
Abdul Hamid (Sultan of Turkey), 67,

127, 130, 234, 235, 264, 273
Abu Bekr (Arab Khalif), 34.
Abyssinia, 167, 228
Abyssinian church, 39
Acre, 59, 61, 62, 127, 129, 130, 182, 200
Adalia (in Asia Minor), 199
Aden, 123, 143, 194, 195
Adrianople, 63
Adriatic, 58, 198
Aegean, 2, 12, 193
Afghanistan, 141, 144, 186, 193, 197,

209, 212, 224, 225, 226, 243, 244,

260

Africa, 4, 11, 122
Aga Khan (Mohammedan religious

leader), 53

Agricultural Bank of Egypt, 293
Agriculture, 18, 75, 76, 108, 161f., 239,

272, 275, 298 (see also Cattle,

Credit system, Drought, Manure,

Bain, Taxation)
Agriculture, capital provision, 76, 77,

239, 301
Agriculture, reforms, 76, 77, 162, 239.

272, 301

Ahwaz (Persian town), 172
Aircraft, 118
Air lines : British, 140, 141, 142, 143,

145, 195, 256
Dutch, 143, 145
Egyptian, 145, 294, 297
French, 143, 144, 145
German, 141, 143, 144, 258
Iraqi, 142, 145
Soviet Russian, 141, 143, 144
Turkish, 144

Air traffic, 140-6, 256, 258
Akaba (Bed Sea port), 58, 121, 130,

131, 143, 174, 194, 222
Alauites (Syrian sect), 54, 59
Albania, 198
Aleppo, 58, 127, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135,

136, 144, 145, 222, 264, 268
Alexander the Great, 4, 25, 26, 27, 28,

31

Alexandretta, 54, 59, 127, 134, 264
Alexandria, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 38,

133, 226, 238, 295
Algiers, 63

AH (Arab Khalif), 51

Allenby, Viscount, 61

Amanullah, King of Afghanistan, 244

Amman (capital of Transjordania), 131

Anatolia, 13, 105, 111, 116, 128, 144,

145, 171, 176, 198, 221, 236, 238,

250
Anatolians, 6, 111 (see also Turks,

Committee of Unity and Progress)
Anglicanism (see Christianity)
Anglo-Egyptian Oilfields Co., 171
Anglo-Iranian (Anglo-Persian) Oil Co.,

169, 171f., 173, 174-6, 177, 178,

256
Ankara (Angora), 99, 101, 106, 111,

144, 211, 225
Antioch, 29, 30, 59, 127, 134 (see also

Patriarchs)
Arabia, 14, 17, 18, 73, 81, 85, 127, 133,

138, 143, 167, 173, 199, 205, 219,
220, 223, 226, 246, 264, 283-6

straggle for, 127, 129, 195
Arabic language, 10, 35, 36, 48, 101,

265, 266, 273
Arabs, 6, 10, 34, 45, 46, 47, 48, 73, 195,

197, 199, 200, 207, 214, 288
struggle for unity, 221f., 223, 224
Aryans and Turanians, 112
Armenia, 13, 200, 203, 207, 218, 219
Armenians, 61, 75, 199, 214-19, 237,

265

Armenian Church, 39, 43, 215
Army and military duty, 250, 282
Artistic sense in the East, 77, 79, 80
Asia, 3, 4, 39, 196, 197, 213, 249, 264
Asia Minor, 10, 24, 63, 111, 116, 179,

193, 196, 198, 200, 201, 209, 212,

213, 221, 224, 237
Asir (in Arabia), 63, 198
Assuan, 302
Assyria, 14, 56
Assyrians, 39, 43
Atlantic, 11, 117
Augustus (Roman Emperor), 32
Australia, 124, 125
Austria-Hungary, 64, 126, 192, 198
Autocracy, its results, 64, 79, 85, 187,

228, 233, 261
Azerbaijan (in Caucasus), 186, 225

Baba Gurgur (oil wells), 181
Bab el Mandeb (straits of), 123
Babylon, 14, 24, 30, 31, 138, 167
Baghdad, 30, 31, 56, 63, 80, 101, 118,
127, 129, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138,

139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 180,
197, 200, 223, 224, 226, 261, 275,
279, 280, 282

$21

322

INDEX

Baghdad Railway, 7, 118, 126-9, 132,

135, 194, 196
Bahrein Islands (in Persian Gulf), 1S6,

194

Baku, 7, 144, 177, 195, 197, 208
Balfour, Lord, 205

declaration, 200, 204
Balkan wars, 5, 221, 236
Balkan countries, 6, 63, 192, 229, 245
Baluchistan, 134, 186, 225
Bandar Abbas (in Iran), 142
Bandar Shapur (Iranian port), 172
Bari (Arab Sultanate in Italy), 48
Basra, 7, 10, 34, 62, 128, 129, 131, 134,

139, 142, 143, 172, 173, 183, 195,

280

Beaconsfield, Earl of, 120, 135, 172
Bedouins, 20, 26, 45, 73f., 183, 277,

283-6

Beersheba, 264
Beirut (Syrian port), 107, 130, 136, 139,

145, 257, 261, 262, 264, 267, 268,

282

Belgrade, 10, 118
Benedict XV (Pope), 44
Berlin, 118, 129, 143, 144, 197

congress of, 214
Black Sea, 3, 12, 18, 63, 192, 193, 197,

209, 213

Bombay, 118, 124, 139
Bosphorus, 7, 64, 192, 197, 199, 221,

242

Brazil, 152
Briand, Aristide, 205
British Empire, 5, 8, 133, 135, 145, 148,

168, 173, 186 (see also Anglicanism,

Great Britain, Suez Canal, route to

India)

British Oil Development Co., 183
British policy, 130f. s 141, 177, 183, 205,

206
British railway policy, 129, 132-7, 143,

174, 200

Brussa (in Asia Minor), 63
Budapest, 63
Burma Oil Co., 172
Bushire (Iranian port), 142, 144, 195
Business, Oriental attitude to, 71, 269,

289, 292

Byzantine Empire, 31-37, 192
Byzantium, 2, 10, 31f., 33, 36, 40, 63,

118 (see also Constantinople)

Cabul (capital of Afghanistan), 141, 144

Cadiz, 185

Cadman, Sir John, 178

Cairo, 34, 101, 103, 134, 135, 140, 142,

143, 144, 145, 295
Calendar reform, 241
Camel, 20, 137, 238, 285
Calcutta, 135

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 38, 43
Canton, 62

Cape of Good Hope, 62, 140, 143
Cape Town, 135

Capital, formation of, 86, 158, 159, 162

lack of, 77, 79, 108, 161, 228, 268
Capitulations, 59, 107, 159, 186, 189

190, 191, 210, 211, 252, 256, 288,'

290,300

Carlowitz, Treaty of, 64
Carthage, 24, 27
Caspian, 12, 18, 195, 257
Castellorizo (off coast of Anatolia), 198
Cattle, 20, 21, 73, 74
Caucasus, 7, 186, 193, 195, 197, 213, 221
Central Asia, 4, 186
Ceylon, 39, 124

Chalcedon, oecumenical council of, 39
Chaldeans, 39

Chamberlain, Sir Austen, 216
Charlemagne, 32, 55
Chester, Colby M. (American admiral).

171, 175, 176

China, 4, 39, 62, 150, 152, 187, 303
Chivalry, 60f.

Christianity, 10, 32, 33, 46, 47, 48
Anglican, 8, 38, 43, 44
divisions, 39, 40, 41, 43
Eastern, 8, 29, 33, 35, 36, 37-45, 229
Church (see Christianity, State and

Religion)

of the Holy Sepulchre, 55, 65
Churchill, Winston, 172, 204
Cilicia, 13, 127, 157, 204, 215
Citizenship, 25, 79, 228, 261
Citrus fruits, 18
Climate, 14-18, 69f.
Clothing industry, 79, 147
Coal, 168
Coffee, 18
Colonial countries, 7, 91, 150, 152, 161,

189, 213, 227, 302
Committee of Unity and Progress, 67,

221, 235, 236
Communications, significance of, 115f.

(see also Trade routes)
Compagnie Fran$aise des P^troles, 179,

181

Concessions, hunt for, 66, 177, 178, 187
Congress of Berlin, 214
of Paris, 65, 225
of Vienna, 66
Conrad (German king), 60
Constantino I (Emperor), 31
Constantino VI (Emperor), 32
Constantino XI (Emperor), 32
Constantinople, 7, 31ff., 62f., 68, 129,

135, 171, 192, 193, 195, 199, 207,

264 (see also Byzantium, Istanbul)
siege by Arabs, 34
plundered by Crusaders, 40f ,
conquered by Turks, 63
occupied after the Great War, 68
Constitutions in the Near East, 97f.,

100
Co-operative societies, 161, 162, 239,

301

Copts, 39, 47, 214, 288
Corruption, 64, 187, 190, 247
Corsica, 11

INDEX

323

Cotton, 18, 147-58, 193, 231, 270, 291f.,
300, 301

goods, 231, 238
Cox, Sir Percy, 250
Crane, Charles (American), 219
Credit system, 77, 160, 161
Crete, 3
Crimea, 10
Crimean War, 5, 65
Crusades, 4, 10, 11, 40, 55-62, 147, 197
Currency problems, 164-7

reform, 269

Curzon, Earl of, 194, 216, 248
Cyprus, 3, 61, 193
Cyrus, 32

Damascus, 49, 58, 78, 101, 130, 131,

132, 138, 139, 143, 145, 177, 205,

261, 264, 266, 268, 270
D'Aroy, William Knox, 171, 175
Darius, 32, 119
Date palms, 18, 73
Dead Sea, 58

Deir-ez-Zor (in Syria), 131, 136
Democracy, 233, 249
Deraa, 130

Dervish monasteries, 99
Desert, 14, 59, 74-84, 137, 138, 139,

141, 183, 222, 223, 260, 277, 278,

283, 284, 285, 287

Despotism, 233 (see also Autocracy)
Deterding, Sir Henri, 169
Diarbekir, 144
Dictatorship, 233
Dizful (in Iran), 172
Dodecanese, 198
Drought, 16
Druses (sect in Syria), 74, 263

East Africa, 143, 156, 195

cotton in, 156

Eastern Empire (see Byzantine Empire)

Eastern Question, 5, 65f., 187, 193,

235, 245 (see also War, Ottoman

Empire, Turkey)

East and West, in ancient times, 24-6,

39
relation of, 24, 33, 41, 47f., 54f., 56,

68, 107f., 110, 163, 207, 213f.
unity of, 5, 47f., 107
Economic transformations, 153-64
Edessa, 59

Education, 84, 85, lOOf., 106f., 239,
255, 259, 260, 262, 264-7, 281, 286,
296, 300

Edward VII, 186

Egypt, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 28, 24, 28, 30,
34, 39, 46, 47, 60, 84, 103f., 108,
109, 132, 133, 136, 137, 143, 145,
159, 160, 185, 193, 204, 205, 227,
246, 264, 268, 273, 274, 275, 286-
305

and the Soudan, 156
cotton in, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155,

156, 157, 158, 29H., 300, 301
currency policy, 164f.

Egypt, education in, 103f., 289, 296
finances of, 187
modernization of industry, 155, 160,

290-6 (see also Misr)
national debt, 188, 298f.
Egyptians, 6, 23, 38, 197, 228
Electrification, 231, 271, 281, 302
filite, formation or lack of, 6, 162, 267,

303
Encyclopaedists, 4 (see also

" Enlightenment ")
England, 11, 147f., 168, 206 (see also

Great Britain)
" Enlightenment,** the, 87, 102, 185,

233, 267, 303
Enver Pasha, 235
Ergani, copper mines, 231, 238
Eritrea, 198
Ertoghrul (ancestor of Osman dynasty),

63

Eskishehir, 144
Euphrates, 14, 131, 136, 172, 182, 273,

274, 275
Europe, as a historical and spiritual

entity, 3, 24, 54, 62, 87, 185,

206, 227f., 229, 246 (see also

" Enlightenment ", Technical

progress)
Europeanization, 4f., llf., 87, 89ff., 98,

113, 206, 209, 227, 228, 240, 245f.,

254, 261, 277, 285, 290, 302f. (see

also " Enlightenment ", Industry,

Religion, Secularization, Technical

progress, Women)
of education, 103f., 262 (see also

Education)

Faisal (King of Iraq), 178, 181, 205,

222, 223, 277f .
Famagusta (in Cyprus), 61
Fao, 172, 173
Farmers, 21, 239 (see also Agriculture,

Fatalism, 50f ., 72, 86
Fatimids (dynasty of Khalifs), 56
Fellaheen (see Peasants)
Fergana (in Turkestan), 149
Fertilizers (see Manure)
Fig tree, 18

Finances, disorganization through
loans, 116, 187f.

and political control, 116, 18Sf.
Five Feddan Law, 289
Flora of Mediterranean, 18, 19
France, 7, 58, 134, 136, 145, 149, 177,
178, 179, 186, 196, 197, 198, 199,
200, 201, 202, 204, 217

in Syria, 68, 197, 220, 262
Franks, 55, 58, 61
Frederick II (Emperor), 48, 61
French language, 11, 101, 197, 266
Fuad, King, 121
Fustat(m Egypt), 34

Gaul, 3

Gaza (in Palestine), 46, 142

324

INDEX

Genghis Khan, 62

Genoa, 12, 57, 59, 124

Georgia, 186, 195

Gerga (in Egypt), 103

Germany, 7, 118, 125, 126, 134, 141,
149, 176, 185, 196, 197, 198, 223,
232 (see also Baghdad Railway)

Ghazi, King, 224

Gibraltar, 10

Gnosis, 28

Goats, 17, 21

Godfrey of Bouillon (leader of Crusade),

Grain, 16, 18, 74
Grapes, 18

Great Britain, 7, 64, 129, 132, 136, 141,
151, 153, 154, 168, 171, 177, 178,
186, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199,
200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207, 208,
210, 211, 216, 219, 248, 249, 250,
256, 263, 277, 279 (see also British
Empire, England)

Great National Assembly (Turkey),
107,233,234 * h

Greece, 2, 192, 237
Greek citizens andl freedom, 25, 26
Church, nationalism of, 42
dispersion (" diaspora "), 28
efforts for unity, 192, 237
language, 35f.
wars of liberation, 29, 33
Greeks, 24ff., 28f., 61, 75, 83, 96, 107,

179, 198, 236f.
called Rumi, 33
Gregory XIII (Pope), 40

Hadramaut (on South Arabian coast)
123, 143

Hagia Sophia, 62, 102

Haifa (port in Palestine), 7, 61, 129,
130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136,
143, 173, 174, 178, 182, 183, 200,

Haifa-Baghdad Railway, 132-7
Hama, 58
Hamadan 144
Hanbalites (Islamic sect), 51
Harbord, James (American), 219
Haroun al Rashid, 30, 55
Hasa (on Persian Gulf), 138, 195
Hasan-ibn-Ali (grandson of the

Prophet), 52
Hauran (in Syria), 130
Health service, 85, 289, 300
Hedjaz, 131, 167, 195, 222, 223, 227,

277

railway, 116, 129-32
Hellas (see Greece)
HeUenism, 4, 8, 9, 23, 26, 34, 35, 36,

48,62,68,229
Heraclius (Emperor), 46
Herat (in Afghanistan), 144, 197, 225
Hindus, 193
Historical stage as determining factor,

Hitler regime, 241

Hittites, 111

Holland, 125, 126

Holy Places (see Palestine)

Home industries, 271

Horns (Syrian town), 58, 136

Hospitality, 73

Humanism, Eastern, 4, 5

Humanitas, 27

Hungary, 62

Hurghada (Egyptian oilfield), 171

Husain ibn Ali (grandson of the

Prophet), 52
(king of the Hedjaz), 195, 205, 222,

223

Ibn Saud, 74, 136, 137, 138, 174, 195,

224, 246, 252, 277, 284, 286
Ibrahim ibn Adham, 50
Idrisides, 53
Illiteracy, fight against, 103f., 106f

264-7
Imam, 52
Mahdi, 52

Yehya of Yemen, 224
Imperial Airways (see Air Lines

British)

Imperial Bank of Persia (see Persia)
Imperialism, 6, 87, 117, 135, 151, 177f.,

185, 199, 206, 208, 212
and reaction, 87, 249, 288
Independence, struggle for, 83, 110,

189, 261
value of, 90, 160, 163, 227f. (see also

Nationalism)
India, 4, 124, 125, 129, 133, 140, 143,

144, 149, 150, 153, 194, 195, 196,

route to, 7, 30, 127, 133, 135, 179,
185, 186, 193, 196 (see also Rail-
ways, Air lines, Suez Canal)

Indian Ocean, 117, 135, 138, 193, 194,
257

Indo-China, 124

Indo-European Telegraph Co., 256

Industrial centres, development, 30,
154

Industrialization, 152, 160, 161, 184,
209, 230f., 279

Industry, 79f., 160
modernization of, lOSff., 158-64
268-72

Intellectuals, 66, 88, 96, 197, 221, 232,
289

Iran, 96, 97, 109, 129, 134, 136, 137,
138, 143, 144, 151, 157, 160, 171,
174, 175, 178, 183, 209, 212, 228,
229, 246, 269, 280, 282, 290 (see
also Persia)

Iranian banks, 258

Iraq, 12, 104, 109, 129, 133, 136, 142,
157, 160, 171, 173, 176, 178, 179,
180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 193, 195
205, 212, 220, 223, 224, 226, 228,
254, 257, 260, 261, 273-83, 285,
(see also Mesopotamia)

Iraq Petroleum Co., 180-3

INDEX

325

Irene (Empress), 32

Irrigation, 81, 272, 274f., 287, 289, 295,

300, 302

Isch Bankassi (Turkish Bank), 226
Ispahan (Persian town), 144
Islam, 4, 8, 35, 45-55, 62, 66, 98, 229,
235, 261, 293

and Arabia, 45, 49, 55, 102

and Persia, 53, 102, 253

and Turkey, 92, 98f., lOlf.

democracy in Islam, 46, 99

equality in Islam, 46

Khalifate, 48f., 52, 98

law of, 99, 253f., 293

Mohammedan world congress, 131

religious conception of, 50

sects in, 5 Iff.

State constitution in, 51, 67, 93, 253

toleration in, 46, 49, 53, 55
Ismail (Viceroy of Egypt), 121
Ismailia (town on Suez Canal), 121
Ismailites (Mohammedan sect), 53
Istanbul, 62, 68, 144, 237, 241 (see also

Constantinople)

Italy, 7, 11, 27, 85, 126, 149, 157, 185,
196, 198, 200, 201, 223, 232

coastal towns, 3, 27, 57, 124
Italian language, 11

Jacobite Church (in Syria), 39

Jaffa, 264

Japan, 149, 152, 158

Jerusalem, 16, 46, 58, 60, 61, 131, 264

(see also Palestine, Crusades,

Patriarchs)
Jesuits, 262, 267
Jews, 24, 25, 58, 69, 88, 93, 199, 200,

201, 204, 229

Jidda (port in Hedjaz), 130, 136
John VIII (Pope), 48
Judaea, 58

Kajars (Persian dynasty), 66, 251

Kalbites (Arab dynasty), 48

Kantara (on Suez Canal), 121, 134

Karachi, 142, 194

Kasr-i-Shiran (in Persia), 143

Kemal (see Mustapha Kemal)

Kerak, 58

Kerbela (in Iraq), 52, 275

Kermanshah, 144

Khaled (Arab general), 34

Khalif, 34, 39, 47, 49, 51, 52, 67, 97,

222, 232, 234, 235, 280 (see also

Abbasids, Abdul Haxnid, Islam,

Omayyads)

Khan Abu Shemat (in Syria), 138
Khanaqin (in Iraq), 175
Khartoum, 156
King, Henry (American), 219
Kirkuk (in Iraq), 128, 129, 167, 181,

182

Kismet (see Fatalism)
Kitchener, Lord, 132, 289
Knightliness, 56
Arabian, 60f .

Konia (in Anatolia), 63, 144
Korea, 152
Kuds al Sherif , 60
Kufa (in Mesopotamia), 34
Kurdistan, 127, 129, 200, 201, 204, 238
Kurds, 6, 73, 74, 199, 237, 278
Kuria Muria Islands, 123
Kutchuk Kainardji, Treaty of, 64
Kuweit (on Persian Gulf), 128, 143,
174, 194

Labour, 18, 72, 184, 240, 279, 296

legislation, 161, 240, 279, 280, 297
Lambeth Conferences, 38
Lancashire, 148, 149, 150
Languages and their influence, 35, 101
Latin alphabet, introduction of, 106,

240, 252, 255
America (South America), 5, 83, 187,

248

language, 35
Latakia (in Syria), 59
Lausanne, Treaty of, 190, 204, 218,

242

Lawrence, T. E., 132, 201, 222
Leaders, personality of, 232, 234, 244,

251

Lebanon, 130, 263, 264, 266
Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 119
Leasing, 60
Levant, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 24, 26, 35,

56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 71, 74, 75, 85,

88, 96, 97, 103, 108, 117, 118, 137,

138, 139, 145, 147, 162, 170, 177,

184, 186, 197, 198, 199, 200, 205,

213, 214, 263, 264, 269
Sea, 2, 12, 24
Levantines, 29, 71, 72, 78, 79, 265 (see

also Franks)
Liverpool, 148

Lloyd George, David, 201, 206, 217
Loans, imperialist, 66, 116, 133, 187,

189, 250, 280
London, 124, 125, 129, 140, 143, 145

Treaty of, 199

Louis VII (king of France), 60
Lutfi Bey, Omar (Egyptian), 301
Luxuries, 1581, 239, 267, 291

Maan (in Transjordania), 130, 131
MacMahon, General, 195
Mahmudia Canal, 28
Maize, 18
Malaria, 85
Malay Peninsula, 124
Malta, 10

Man, Near-Eastern, 69-86, 267, 293
Near-Eastern, change in, 90f., 114,

162, 239, 245, 257, 268f.
pre-capitalistic, 71, 72, 293
social forms, 71, 90
time spirit of, 71, 72
Mandates in the Levant, 60, 77, 90,
105, 131, 133, 163, 170, 171, 177,
191, 196, 204, 218, 219, 220, 262,
277, 285

326

INDEX

Manure, 21, 161, 231, 272, 302
Maria-Theresa dollar, 167
Maronites, 39, 40, 59, 262, 263
Marseilles, 12, 124, 125, 145
Mecca (in Arabia), 130, 138, 199, 200,

222, 223

Medina, 130, 131

Mediterranean, unity of, 3, 5, 8-11, 69
Mehemet Ali, 11, 28, 126, 155, 185, 288
Meshed, 144
Mesopotamia, 3, 80, 81, 132, 134, 136,

171, 173, 197, 200, 201, 202, 219,

221, 222, 264, 273, 274 (see also

Iraq)

Middle Ages, 55, 62, 233
Middle Eastern Empire, 7, 195f .
Miletus (in Ionia), 24
Mind and power, 1, 24f.
Minorities, favour to, 59, 215, 263
protection of, 203, 204, 215, 278
religious, in Near East, 198, 215, 235,

261

Minority policy, 214-19, 237, 278
Misr (National Egyptian bank), 160,

226, 270, 293, 294, 295, 297
Mission of a people or a civilization, 6,

206

Missions, Christian, 106, 198, 262, 264-7
Modernization and Europeanization,

88ff., 98f., 107f., 227-303
of law, 100, 280

Mohammed (the Prophet), 45, 102
ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, 51
Said (Viceroy of Egypt), 119
Mohammerah (in Iran), 172, 195
Mongols, 63

Monoculture, 150, 154f., 291
Monophysites, 39
Monothelites, 39
Monroe, Paul (American), 281
Moscow, 36, 143, 144, 185, 212
Mosul, 128, 129, 134, 135, 136, 145, 173,

176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183,

211, 226, 282
Motor cars, 118, 137-40, 183, 238, 258,

259, 282, 284, 285
Mulberry tree, 18
Murad I (Sultan of Turkey), 63
Muscat (on Persian Gulf), 194, 195
Mustapha Kemal (Mustapha Ataturk),
99, 106, 113, 203, 205, 208, 221,
232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 241,
243, 244, 246, 246, 250, 286

Napoleon I and the Mediterranean, 7,
11, 119, 126, 129, 185, 186, 247,
288

Nathan der W&ise, 60
Nation and cultural origins, 11 If.
and language, lOOf., 240, 262
and religion, 39ff., 60, 93, 102
National Bank of Egypt, 164, 293
National character, 1, 69
Nationalism, 2, 5, 6, 60, 67, 86, 92, 112,

152, 163, 198, 203, 205, 232, 304
and cultural work, 107, 112f.

Nationalism and industry, 108-12, 152

154, 158-64
Navigation in ancient times, 27

in modern times (see Suez Canal)
Nejd, 145, 195, 223
Nestorians (Christian sect), 39
New Zealand, 124
Nile, 2, 121, 156, 273, 287
Nissibin (in Turkey), 128, 129, 131
Nomads (see Bedouins)
Nubar, Boghos Pasha (Armenian), 216
Nussayrians (see Alauites)

Oasis economic life, 78f., 81

Odessa, 29

Oecumene (see World State)

Officials, 187, 206, 252, 262

Oil, 141, 167-84, 193, 201, 256, 278, 280

Olive tree, 18

Omayyads (dynasty of Khalifs), 49

Oman (in Arabia), 14, 143, 194, 195

Open door, principle of the, 179

Orient and Occident, 3, 7 (see also East

and West)

Orient Express, 129, 135
Osman (founder of the Osmanic

dynasty), 63, 234
Osmaos, 63 (see also Turks)
Ottoman Bank, 165, 188

National Debt regime, 188
Ottoman empire, 10, 62-8, 116, 129,
130, 159, 170, 187, 193, 197, 198,
199, 221, 229, 234, 235, 248, 260,
262, 264, 273, 303
as heir of Byzantium, 37, 63
reforms in, 65, 92f .

Palestine, 12, 15, 46, 55, 59, 60, 94, 105,
132, 133, 135, 139, 151, 160, 179,
201, 204, 219, 221, 224, 263, 294,
297
Holy Places, 55, 61, 65

Palmyra (oasis in Syrian desert), 136,
286

Pan-Hellenism, 193, 237

Pan-Islamism, 67, 130, 235

Pan-Turanianism, 112, 208, 221, 235

Paris Congress, 65, 225

Parties, 82f., 97, 163 (see also Republi-
can People's Party, Wafd)

Patriarch of Antioch, 38, 42
Constantinople, 33, 38, 42
Jerusalem, 38, 42

Patriarchate of Eastern Church, 29, 37,
40

Paul, 24

Peasants, 73, 75, 76, 77, 239, 272, 276f,,
286, 288, 292, 298, 300, 301

Perim (in Bed Sea), 123

Persia (Iran), 12, 31, 47, 65, 85, 107,
115, 116, 134, 142, 143, 146, 157,
159, 166, 167, 171, 172f,, 174, 175,
177, 178, 186, 187, 193, 194, 195,
196, 197, 199, 200, 204, 205, 207,
209, 210, 211, 217, 224, 225, 246-60

INDEX

327

Persia (Iran), Imperial Bank of, 165,

166, 255

Iranian National Bank, 259
and Great Britain, 143, 173, 174,

175, 177, 195, 204, 207, 208, 248,

249, 250, 255, 256
and Russia, 66, 195, 196, 207, 208,

209, 211, 212, 248, 249, 250, 256,

257
Persian industrial emancipation, 166,

257ff.

nationalism, 250f., 260
railways, 172, 257
revolution, 66, 251
Persian Gulf, 12, 63, 124, 127, 129, 132,

134, 135, 138, 143, 144, 171, 172,
173, 183, 193, 194, 195, 223, 257

language, 101

Persians (Iranians), 6, 197, 207, 247
Peter the Great, 192
Petroleum (see Oil)
Philistines, 58
Phtto, 24
Phoenicia, 24
Phoenicians, 3, 9, 24, 58
Picot, Georges (French), 199, 222
Pipe-line, 133, 139, 172, 173, 174, 176,

178, 181, 182, 183
Pius XI (Pope), 44
Political interests and life, 81f., 163,

289

Ponente, 3
Pope, 32, 40, 57
Population, 84f., 298
Port Fuad (on Sues Canal), 121
Port Said (on Suez Canal), 121, 132
Port Soudan (in Soudan), 156
Press, 81f.

Qatar (in Arabia), 194

Railway concessions, 116
Railways, 116, 187, 237, 238, 284
Baghdad Railway, 7, 118, 126-9, 132,

135, 194, 196

Haifa-Baghdad Railway, 132-7
Hedjaz Railway, 116, 129-32
Iranian railway, 257
Turkish railways, 238

(see also British railway policy)
Rain, 16
Rationalism, 66
Red Sea, 12, 58, 73, 119, 122, 123, 130,

135, 138, 171, 194, 195, 198, 22$
Religion as a social, etc., factor, 36, 54,

93, 98 (see also Encyclopaedists,

Christianity, Islam, Middle Ages)
Renaissance, 4, 94, 303
Republican People's Party, 97, 111,

112, 113, 233, 234
Reaht (in Persia), 144
Revolution, influence of French, 185,

303

influence of Russian, 242, 250
Riza 8hah (Shah of Persia), 138, 204,

244, 246, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256

Rhodes, 198

Riyadh (capital of Nejd), 138
Rivalry of Powers in Near East, 67f.,
118

Anglo-American (see Oil)

Anglo-French, 120, 134, 179, 186f.,

Anglo-German (see Baghdad Rail-
way)
Anglo-Russian, 141, 186, 194, 195,

196, 207, 208, 213, 248-50
Franco-Italian, 245
Franco-Russian, 65
(see also Trade Routes)
Rockefeller, John D., 169
Roman empire, 3, 9, 31, 32, 33, 34
Rome, 9, 27, 33, 36
Routes (see Trade Routes)
Royal Dutch Shell Trust, 169, 177
Rumi or Rhomaioi, 33
Russia, 5, 7, 64, 149, 186, 192, 193, 196,
198, 199, 200, 201, 217, 247, 248,
249 (see also Soviet Union)
Russia as successor of Byzantium, 36,

192f.
as protector of Christian minorities,

64
Russia's policy in regard to Turkey and

Constantinople, 36, 64, 192f.
Rutbah (in Syrian desert), 139, 142

Saad Zaghlul (see Zaghlul)

Sabaeans (sect in Mesopotamia), 80

Safawids (Persian dynasty), 32

Saigon, 145

Saladin, 60

Samarra, 129

Samuel, Sir Herbert, 204

San Remo (see Treaties)

Sarmatia, 3

Sassanids (Persian dynasty), 32

Saudi Arabia, 283-6

Sayyid (descendant of Prophet), 52

Secret Treaties in the Great War, 177,

199f., 207, 222
Secularization, 94, 98f., 103, 233, 234,

254 (see also Encyclopaedists,

Religion)
Seleucia, 30, 138
Seljuks, 56, 63
Semi-colonial countries (see Colonial

countries)
Serbia, 198
Sevres (see Treaties)
Shatt-el-Arab (in Mesopotamia), 128,

173, 195

Sheep breeding, 21
Shell Oil Co. (see Royal Dutch)
Sherif (descendant of Prophet), 52
Shiites (Mohammedan sect), 513., 102,

253

Shuster, Morgan, 66
Sicily, 10, 48
Silver, 164-7

Sinai Peninsula, 121, 130, 132, 194
Smyrna, 200

328

INDEX

Society in the Near East, 69f., 90f.,
113,245,254f.,291

Socotra Islands, 123

Socrates, 25

Soudan, 153, 156, 157

South America (see Latin America)

Southern Arabia, 14, 17, 73

Southern Italy, 232

Soviet Union, 5, 134, 150, 158, 159, 169,
177, 189, 199, 207-13, 225, 230,
241, 303 (see also Russia)
and Persia, 207-13, 250, 252, 256,

257, 259
and Turkey, 207- 13, 241

Space in history, 1, 2, 118, 247

Spain, 10, 11, 12, 85

Stamboul, 101, 110, 111, 113

Standard Oil Co., 169, 171, 175, 178

State aid in modernizing industry, 77,
108f., 159, 209, 238f., 257, 269,
295ff.

State and Religion, 36, 98f., 233, 251,

252ff.

Debts (see Loans)
modernization, 92f., 107f., 159ff.

Suez, 119, 121, 171

Suez Canal, 4, 28, 118, 119-26, 130, 132,
133, 134, 171, 183, 197, 222

Sugar, 231, 238, 239, 295

Suleiman I (Sultan of Turkey), 63f .

Sumatra, 145

Sunda Islands, 124

Sunnites (Mohammedan sect), 52f .

Sykes, Sir Mark, 199, 222

Syria, 11, 12, 13, 56, 60, 127, 128, 130,
131, 133, 139, 144, 145, 151, 157,
158, 160, 177, 195, 197, 200, 201,
202, 205, 214, 219, 220, 221, 222,
224, 227, 257, 260-72, 273, 276,
277, 282, 285, 297 (see also
France)

Syrians, 221, 261, 264, 267, 269, 271

Talaat Harb Bey, Mohammed

(Egyptian), 294
Tariffs, 107, 155, 189, 190, 200, 238, 260,

291

Taurus, 128

Taurus Express, 129, 135
Taxation, 76, 189, 281, 300
Technical education (see Europeaniza-

tion of education)
progress, 1, 4, 67, 94f,, 160f., 183
Teheran, 134, 136, 143, 144, 174, 197,

225, 226, 255, 257

Tenure, security of (see Agriculture)
Ternes (in Bussia), 141
Teutons, 36, 111

Textile industry, modern, 239, 294
Thales, 24
Thrace, 193

Tigris, 14, 172, 182, 183, 273, 274
Tobacco, 18, 299f.
Toleration, 55, 60, 267, 283 (see also

Islam)

Trade, traditional, 71, 79, 80, 81

routes, 5, 30, 56, 115ff., 118, 136
Trade unions, 279, 296
Tradition, breach with, 6, lOOf., 244
Transcaspia, 195
Transjordania, 131, 133, 182, 205, 222,

224

Treaties (see also Secret treaties) :
Anglo-Iraqi (1930), 173
Anglo-Persian (1919), 143, 196, 204,

207, 250

Anglo-Russian (1907), 249
Carlowitz (1699), 64
Congress of Berlin (1878), 214
Congress of Paris (1856-7), 65, 226
Congress of Vienna (1815), 65
Kutchuk Kainardji (1774), 64
Lausanne (1923), 190, 204, 211, 218,

232, 242

London (1915), 199
San Remo (1920), 177, 180, 182, 201,

202, 220

Sevres (1920), 157, 188, 189, 196,
201, 202, 203, 205, 207, 213, 218,
220, 242

Turco-Grecian (1930), 244
Turkmanchai (1828), 186
Versailles, 141, 222
between Great Britain and Ibn Saud

(1915), 195

between Soviet Union and Near

Eastern States, 211, 241, 243, 250

of the Near Asiatic States, 203, 212,

225f., 244f.
Trieste, 124, 125
Tripoli (in Syria), 54, 59, 134, 136, 145,

176, 182, 183, 264
Tripolitania (Italian Colony), 198
Truce of God, 56
Tunis, 10
Turanians, 112
Turkestan, 7, 149, 150, 235
Turkey, 12, 77, 968., 129, 130, 1S2,
134, 144, 150, 157, 173, 179, 192,
193, 196, 198, 200, 201, 204, 207,
209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217,
224-6, 227, 229-46, 251, 252, 255,
257, 262, 264, 268, 269, 281, 282,
290, 302

education, 103, 105ff.
foreign policy, 225f., 242-5
industrialization, 11 Of., 160, 230f.,

239ff.

modernization of language, 101
reforms in modern, 92, 96&, 188
Turkish banks, 239f .
Turkization of Islam, 92, 96ft, 188
of trade and industry, 110, 160, 165,

237f., 239f,

Turks, 62, 75, 92, 107, 111, 112, 197,
200, 207, 217, 221, 222, 225, 228,
235, 236, 239, 241, 244 (see also
Anatolians, Committee of Unity
and Progress)

Turkish Petroleum Co., 176, 177, 180
Turkmanchai, (see Treaties)

INDEX

329

Uganda, 156, 157

Uniformity, tendency to, 2, 69, 91, 227,

SOSf.
United States of America, 115, 148,

149, 150, 153, 166, 167, 168, 169,

170, 177, 178, 179, 216, 219
Univerealism, 4, 10, 44, 304
Universities, 241, 262, 263, 266, 267,

281, 296
Usury, 76, 161, 289

Vasco da Gama, 62
Venice, 12, 57, 58, 59, 61
Venizelos, 244
Victoria, Queen, 136
Vienna Congress, 65

Wafd (Egyptian party), 163
Wahhabites, 51, 74, 223 (see also Ibn

Saud)
Wars : American Civil War, 148, 149

Balkan Wars, 5, 221, 236

Crimean War, 5, 65

Greco-Turkish War, 179, 200

Russo-Japanese War, 249

Wars: World War, 5, 68, 152, 172f.,
195, 197, 198-206, 215, 216, 217,
221, 222, 236

Water question, 17 (see also Drought,
Irrigation, Rain)

William II (German Emperor), 127

Wjllcocks, Sir William, 275

Wilson, Woodrow, 216, 219

Wine, 70

Women, position of, 70, 113f., 233
education of, 103-5, 106

Woodlands, 19

Wool, 21, 231, 270

Workmen (see Labour)

World State, 3, 5, 26, 304f .

Yanbo (port in Hedjaz), 130
Yemen, 14, 53, 130, 198, 224
Yussuf Ziya (Turkish author), 111

Zaghlul Pasha, Saad (Egyptian), 83,

163, 246, 286, 289
Zeydites (Mohammedan sect), 53
Ziya Goek Alp (Turkish author), 92
Zonguldak coalfield, 231
Zoroastrions, 35

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