The New World of Islam

sense, and calls up visions of embattled armies subduing foreign lands and lording it over distant peoples. Such political conquests in the Orient did of course occ

was paralleled by an economic conquest perhaps even more complete and probabl

r eighteenth century which inaugurated the Industrial Revolution gave Europe the economic mastery of the world. These inventions in fact heralded a new Age of Discovery, this time into the realms of science. The results were, if possible, more moment

thers was merely a logical elaboration of the horse-drawn Egyptian chariot; the wind-driven clipper-ship traced its line unbroken to Ulysses's lateen bark before Troy; while industry still relied on the brawn of man and beast or upon the simple action of wind and waterfall. Suddenly all

der were the rise of machine-industry with its incalculable acceleration of mass-production, and the correlative development of cheap and rapid transportation. Both these factors favoured a prodigious increase in economic power and wealth in Europe, since Europe became the workshop of the world. In f

is, the economic unit being the self-supporting, semi-isolated village. Oriental "industries" were handicrafts, carried on by relatively small numbers of artisans, usually working by and for themselves. Their products, while often exquisite in quality, were largely luxuries, and were always produced by such

ion were virtually unknown. Agriculturalists and artisans followed blindly in the footsteps of their fathers. There was no competition, no stimulus for improvement, no change in customary wages, no desire for a better and more comfortable living. The industries were stereotyped; the apprentice merely imitated his master, and rarely th

hidden in strong-boxes, buried in the earth, or hanging about the necks of women must run into billions. Says a recent writer on India: "I had the privilege of being taken through the treasure-vaults of one of the wealthiest Maharajahs. I could have plunged my arm to the shoulder in great silver caskets filled with diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies. The walls were studded with hooks and on each pair of hooks rested gold bars three to four feet long and two inches across. I stood by a great cask of diamonds, and picking up a handful let them drop slowly from between my fingers, sparkling and

e can then realize the utter lack of capital for investment purposes in the East of a hundred years ago, especially when we remember that political insecurity and religious prohibitions of the lending of money at interest stood in the way of such far-sighted individuals as might have been inclined to employ their hoarded wealth for productive purposes.

xtiles was literally annihilated by the destructive competition of Lancashire cottons is only one of many similar instances. To be sure, some Oriental writers contend that this triumph of Western manufactures was due to political rather than economic reasons, and Indian nationalists cite British governmental activity in favour of the Lancashire cottons above mentioned as the sole cause

ce-margin is the deciding factor. Of course there is also the element of novelty. Besides goods which merely replace articles he has always used, the West has introduced many new articles whose utility or charm are irresistible. I have already mentioned the way in which the sewing-machine and the kerosene-lamp have swept the Orient from end to end, and there are many other instances of a similar nature. The permeation of Western industry has, in fact, profoundly modified every phase of Oriental economic life. New economic wants have been created; standards of living have been raised; canons of taste have been altered. Says a lifelong

elled ironware imported from Europe.... There is also, pari passu, a transformation of the tastes of the consumers. They abandon gur for crystal sugar. Home-woven cloths are now replaced by manufactured cloths for being too coarse. All local industries are attacked and many have been destroyed. Villages that for centuries followed customary practices are brought into contact with the w

fluid capital of its own, the Orient was bound to have recourse to Western capital for the initiation of all economic activity in the modern sense. Railways, mines, large-scale agriculture of the "plantation" type, and many other undertakings thus came into being. Most notabl

ves to a consideration of its economic side. Furthermore, this book, limited as it is to the Near and Middle East, cannot deal with industrial developments in

ls that the more forward-looking among them were ready to risk their money and to acquire the technique necessary for success. At the close of Chapter II, I described the development of modern business types in the Moslem world, and the same is true of the non-Moslem populations of India. In India there were several elements such as the Parsis and the Hindu "banyas," or money-lenders, whose previous activities in commerce or usury predisposed them to financial and industrial activity in the modern

ndia: "In the city of Bombay the industrial revolution has already been accomplished. Bombay is a modern manufacturing city, where both the dark and the bright side of modern industrialism strike the eye. Bombay has insanitary slums where overcrowding is as great an evil as in any European city; she has a proletariat which works long hours amid the din and whir of machinery; she

me years ago by a Hindu, who wrote in a leading Indian periodical:[214] "In one sense the Orient is really menacing the West, and so earnest and open-minded is Asia that no pretence or apology whatever is made about it. The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gauntlet, and from now on Asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the Occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East, and the Oriental endeavouring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy vi

, "we must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment."[215] Another American observer of Asiatic economic conditions reports: "All Asia is being permeated with modern industry and present-day mechanical progress."[216] And Sir Theodore Morison concludes regarding India's economic future: "India's industrial transformation is near at hand; the obstacles which have hitherto prevented the adoption of modern methods of manufacture have been removed; means of transport

nd Middle East. Writing of Egypt in 1908, the English economist H. N. Brailsford says: "There was then no Factory Act in Egypt. There are all over the country ginning-mills, which employ casual labour to prepare raw cotton for export during four or five months of the year. The wages were low, from 7?d.

ice and flour mills twenty to twenty-two hours, and an extreme case was found in a printing works where the men had to work twenty-two hours a day for seven consecutive days. As to wages, an adult male operative, working from thirteen to fifteen hours a day, received from 15 to 20 rupees a month ($5 to $6.35). Child labour was very prevalent, children six and seven years old working "half-time"-in many cases eight hours a day. As a result of this report legislation

, and assiduity sufficient to undercut the industrial workers of Europe and America. In India, for example, despite a swarming and poverty-stricken population, the factories are unable to recruit an adequate or dependable labour-supply. Says M. Métin: "With such long hours and low wages it might be thought that Indian industry would be a formidable competitor of the West. This is not so. The reason is the bad quality of the work. The poorly paid coolies are so badly fed and so weak that it takes at least three of them to do the work of one European. Also, the Indian workers lack not only strength but also skill, attention, and liking for their work.... An Indian of the people will do anything else in preference to becoming a factory operative. The factories thus get only the dregs of the working class. The workers come to the factories and mines as a last resort; the

level. Some even now threaten the Western world with a vision of the vast populations of China and India rising up with skilled organization, vast resources, and comparatively cheap labour to impoverish the West. To the present writer this is a mere bogey. The peril is of a very different kind. Instead of a growing approximation, he sees a growing disparity. For every step India takes toward mechanical efficiency, the West takes two. When India is beginning to use bicycles and motor-cars (not to make them), the West is perfecting the aeroplane. That is merely symbolic. The war, as we know, has speeded up mechanical invention and produc

ethods, and the peasant masses are in little better shape. It is not merely a change in technique but a fundamental difference in outlook on life that is involved. The life of the old Orient, while there was much want and hardship, was an easygoing life, with virtually no thought of such matters as time, efficiency, output, and "turnover." The merchant sat cross-legged in his little booth amid his small stock of wares, passively waiting

not merely of Westerners but of the native Christian elements, Armenians and Greeks, who had partially assimilated Western business ideas and methods. Under the old state of things, he says, there was in Asia Minor "no economic progress and no mercantile development; things went on in the old fashion, year after year. Such simple business as was carried on was inconsistent with the highly developed Western business system and Western civilization; but it was not oppressive to the people. There were no large fortunes;

nancies. On the other hand, new classes are rising and taking their place.... Both ryots and zamindars[228] are involved. The old-type nobility has not advanced with the times. It remains idle and prodigal, while the peasant proprietors, burdened by the traditions of many centuries, are likewise improvident and ignorant. On the other hand, the economic conditions of British

careers. The middle classes also leave their villages and get scattered all over the country to earn a living. The peasants also leave their ancestral acres and form a class of landless agricultural labourers. The villages, drained of their best blood, stagnate and decay. The movement from the village to the city is in fact not only working a complete revolution in the habits and ideals of

p with the times. A good instance is the growth of rural co-operative credit societies. First introduced by the British Government in 1904, there were in 1915 more than 17,000 such associations, with a total of 825,000 members and a working capital of nearly $30,000,000. These agricultural societies make loans for the purchase of stock, fodder, seed, manure, sinking of wells, purchase of Western agricultural machinery, and, in emergencies,

he result is agitation for emancipation from Western economic as well as Western political control. At the end of Chapter II we examined the movement among the Mohammedan peoples known as "Economic Pan-Islamism." A similar movement has arisen among the Hindus of India-the so-called "Swadeshi" movement. The Swadeshists declare that India's economic ills are almost entirely d

the higher costs which native rule and native capital would impose. As Sir Theodore Morison well says: "The advantages which the British Navy and British credit confer on India are a liberal offset to her expenditure on pensions and gratuities to her English servants.... India derives a pecuniary advantage from her connection with the British Empire. The answer, then, which I give to the question

." And in proof of this he cites conditions in other Oriental countries, especially Japan.[234] As warm a friend of the Indian people as the British labour leader, Ramsay Macdonald, states: "One thing is quite evident, a tariff will not

d Indian officials who already exist have acquired European standards of living, so the new official corps would cost almost as much as the old. Also, "the influence of the example set by the well-to-do Indian officials would permeate Indian society more largely than at present, and the demand for Western articles would rise in proportion. So commercial exploitation by foreigners would not only continue almost as if they were Europeans, but might even increase." As to a protective tariff, it would attract European capital to India which would exploit labour and skim the profits. India has shown relatively little capacity for indigenous industrial develo

he chief causes of our impoverishment." Neither has elementary education "on the whole furthered the well-being of the multitude. It has not enabled the cultivators to 'grow two blades where one grew before.' On the contrary, it has distinctly diminished their efficiency by inculcating in the literate proletariat, who constitute the cream of their class, a strong distaste for their hereditary mode of living and their hereditary callings, and an equally strong taste for shoddy superfluities and brummagem fineries, and for occupations of a more or less parasitic character. They have, directly or indirectly, accelerated rather than retarded the decadence of indigenous industrie

vely." Therefore, according to Mr. Bose, the only thing for India to do is to turn her back on everything Western and plunge resolutely into the traditional past. As he expresses it: "India's salvation lies, not in the region of politics, but outside it; not in aspiring to be one of the 'great' nations of the present day, but in r

e vainest fantasies. Whole peoples cannot arbitrarily cut themselves off from the rest of the world, like isolated individuals forswearing society and setting up as anchorites in the jungle

to concur in the conclusions, still try to evolve a "middle term," retaining everything congenial in the old system and grafting on a select set of Western innov

t to reconcile irreconcilables and about as profitable as trying to square the circle. As Lowes Dickinson wisely observes: "Civilization is a whole. Its art, its religion, its way of life, all hang together with its economic and technical development. I doubt whether a nation can pick and choose; whether, for instance, the East can say, 'We will take from the West

-avoiding some of our more patent mistakes, perhaps, but, in the main, proceeding along similar lines. And, as already stated, this transformation is modifying

TNO

ia's Silent Revolution,

Economic Changes in Asia,

rveyor of the nati

undations of Indian Econo

Sir Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest (London, 1910); D. H. Dodwell, "Economic Transition in India," Economic Jo

Mirage oriental, pp.

The Economic Transit

ted by Jo

ian Review (M

the Orient can Teach Us,

Modernizing of the Orien

son, op. c

The War of Steel and Gol

'aujourd'hui: étude soci

, Trois Ans en Pe

rd, op. cit.,

y discipline and working ability of the Chinaman, see my Rising

n, op. cit

fe and Labour in India

rs 1917-1918" (official

, India in Conflict, pp

rkish Peasantry of Anatolia," Q

peasants a

roblems of British India, p. 339 (

rjee, op.

umber of Indian economists, some of whose writings are extremely interesting. Some of the most noteworthy books, besides those of Mukerjee and Yusuf Ali, already quoted, are: Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (London, 1901); Romesh Dutt, The Economic History

: A Symposium (Madras, 1910). See also writings of the economists Gosh, Mukerjee, Ray, and Sarkar, above quoted, as well as the various writings of th

240-241. Also see Sir Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest, pp.

Khan, India of To-day,

d, The Government of Ind

ndustan Review

in the writings of Mukerjee

n the Civilizations of India, China,