Lecture 4
September 11
Defensive Modernization
Muhammad Ali of Egypt (1803-40)
o
Destruction of the Mamalukes; greater state role in development: military
reorganization; expanded state role in education; expanded and organized the
bureaucracy
o
Emerged as leader of Egypt after French occupation
o
He invited all other senior commanders to dinner and then killed all of the artillery to kill
them all
o
Tried to modernize Egypt
Ottoman Tanzimat “reorganizations”
o
Imperial decrees in 1839/1856, Ottoman constitutions 1876
o
Reforms in human rights, justice, taxation, legal codes, land tenure, military recruitment,
education, economic policies
Generally unsuccessful because of:
o
European interest in weak Middle East
o
Nature of capitalist penetration
o
Costs of modernization
o
Uneven local support for reform
Ideological responses
Islamic conservatism
o
Sultan Abd al-Hamid II (1878-1909) Sultan of Ottoman Empire “We shouldn’t be going
the way of Europe we should be reforming back to the way the Ottoman Empire used to
be –conservative”
Revivalist/fundamentalist movements
o
Wahhabis (Arabia), Mahdi (Sudan)
o
The problem is that we lost correct path of the time of the prophet, we don’t need to go
back to Ottoman glory days but days of the prophet
o
ISIL ideology of today is we’ve lost our way and need to go back to this time
Islamic modernism
o
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; Muhammed Abduh (forward looking Islam which adapts to the
modern age); Rashid Rida
Nationalist responses
o
Local ethnic nationalism
o
Ottoman nationalism (Young Ottomans)
o
Turkish nationalism (Young Turks)
Committee on Union and Progress
Young Turk Revolution (1908)
Increasing authoritarianism
“Turkification” policies – uniting the Ottoman empire by a sense of
Turkish identity
In turn, spur growth of Arab nationalism, fanned ethnic centers in
Balkans
Middle East and WWI
Ottoman Empire sides with Germany and Austria against Britain, France and Russia
