Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa [individual assignment]
MIDDLE EAST, CENTRAL ASIA and AFRICA
MIDDLE EAST
This was a time of decline for the Middle East, as the glory days of the once-mighty “gunpowder empires” faded away.
Persia
Safavid Persia had disappeared in the early 1700s. Technically governed by the Qajar dynasty between 1794 and 1925, Persia suffered a fate of semi-colony. It was dominated by foreign powers in the 1800s without being formally colonized. Although they kept the Qajar rulers in place, Russia and Britain cynically divided the country into northern and couthern spheres of influence – an arrangement that lasted until the end of World War II.
The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was in decline and came to be derided as the “sick man of Europe.” Algeria was taken by France in the 1830s.
The chief dilemma was that sultans and reformers who wished to modernize met with resistance from Islamic traditionalists or influential conservative groups.
For instance, janissaries, now privileged but outdated, blocked any attempt to improve the military, to the point of assassinating the sultan in 1807. Janissary power was broken only in the 1820s.
From 1839 to 1876, a series of changes known as the Tanzimat reforms took underway: the government promoted greater religious tolerance for non-Muslims; introduced Western science and technology into the educational system; boosted industrialization and built railroads and telegraphs; the army and navy were upgraded and Westernized. Sultan Abdul Hamid II even proclaimed the constitution of 1876 and agreed to share power with an elected legislature. Unfortunately, in 1878, the sultan suspended the constitution for 20 years.
Ottoman domestic policy in general was handicapped further by rebellions and wars that threatened the empire with disintegration. The Greek War of Independence (1821– 1832). The Balkan Crisis of 1876– 1878, when Bulgarians, Serbs, and others revolted. Russia warred against the Ottomans on the rebels’ behalf. Finally, the rebel nations went free.
Ottoman control over North Africa likewise weakened. Egypt remained outside the Ottomans orbit, and then, after 1850s, fall under European influence. The 1854 – 1869 construction of the Suez Canal was financed by the French-dominated Suez Canal Company.
In 1908 – 1909, the pro-Western Young Turks led army officer Enver Pasha, removed Abdul Hamid II in 1908– 1909. Young Turks installed a figurehead sultan and restored the constitution of 1876. The Young Turks pursued a program of industrialization, secularization, and socioeconomic reform. However, they continued to lose territory in North Africa and the Balkans. Also, they took side of Germany that would determine their fate in the First World War.
CENTRAL ASIA
As for Islamic Central Asia, home to the Silk Road khanates (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan), Russia waged long wars of imperial conquest here throughout the 1800s. The Russians fought to gain natural resources (Central Asia is a great cotton-producing center), to secure their open southern frontier (a longstanding strategic concern), and to further their dream—never realized—of winning warm-water ports on the Indian Ocean coast. As noted above, Russia’s ambitions in this region brought it into diplomatic conflict with the British, who feared any possible interference with their lines of communication to India. The resulting Great Game (primarily over Afgahanistan) caused bitter Anglo-Russian rivalry until the early 1900s.
AFRICA
Africa remained comparatively free of direct outside influence until well into the 1800s. The Ottomans controlled North Africa, Omani Arabs – most of the East African shore and Swahili ports. Many African societies, such as Benin, Dahomey, Kongo, and the Ashanti (Asante) kingdoms played roles in the Atlantic slave trade; in exchange for gold and guns, they took prisoners from enemy peoples and sold them to slavers. Among this era’s most powerful African states were the Barbary states of Islamic North Africa (present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). Formally subordinated to the Ottomans, corsairs from these states threatened European and American shipping.
As the century progresses, nearly every part of Africa lost its freedom to European states. South Africa which had been colonized by Dutch Boers (or Afrikaners) as early as the mid-1600s came under British control after the Napoleonic Wars. Displaced by the British, the Boers made a Great Trek to the north during the 1830s and founded their own states on the border of British South Africa. The Boers and British periodically clashed with each other, and more regularly with the local Xhosa and Zulu until the capitulation of the latter in the Zulu War of 1879.
The French colonization of Algeria was carried out during the 1830s and 1840s.
Despite all of this, only about 10 percent of African territory fell under European control before 1880. At that point, the so-called Scramble for Africa began, lasting until the eve of World War I and rapidly subjugating the entire continent. Thanks to geographical knowledge gained between the late 1700s and the nid-1800s, and also to industrial-era weaponry and effective medical treatments for tropical diseases, Westerners were now able to press fully into the African interior. A pivotal moment in the Scramble for Africa was the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), convened by the German statesman Otto von Bismarck to defuse diplomatic tensions to carve up Africa.
In the Americas, Africa, and Asia, growing demand for sugar, cotton, rubber, tea, and other raw materials encouraged environmentally destructive plantations, often worked by quasi–slave labor.
In wars that pitted machine guns against spears and assegais, European powers carved up Africa and ruled it for the best part of a century.
Questions for experts
1. What factors influenced on the considered regions’ history?
2. What were the main events in the given regions’ history?
3. What distinguishes the given regions from other regions considered in this topic? (Before answering read about other region in the topic 9).