by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright Feb 2015
This class is on Modern Middle East history. This month starts with the restructuring of the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One.
I'm now reading into the 1970's.
One of the repeating patterns this book reveals is how many times since the beginning of the 1800's these cultures/nations of the Middle East have tried to jump on the industrializing bandwagon and failed. Each of these regions have had many governments in succession who have attempted to invest big bucks into bringing the region into modern times in terms of military, business and agricultural institutions, and failed. And the failures were expensive -- these governments had borrowed big bucks and granted valuable concessions for little return. As an example, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought watershed social change to the Iranian people, and new possibilities to the region, but little prosperity.
I think about this in the context of the 1990/2000's and The Age of BRIC. The 1990/2000's were a time when commodity prices were booming and China was doing dramatic urbanizing and industrializing. The net result was that four countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- prospered mightily. But now -- in the mid-2010's -- times have changed again: the oil and other commodities booms have tapered off, and China's urbanizing boom has reached its peak and is now moderating.
Do these changes mean the Age of BRIC is also finished? Which of these countries will continue to prosper and which will fall off the industrializing bandwagon yet again, as the Middle East has been doing so consistently?
I'm reading on the creation of Israel. The lesson I take from this is how important having what I call The Big Vision is to the progress of a community in times when it is facing lots of social and technical challenges. An example of such a challenge is when a culture is moving from the Agricultural Age into the Industrial Age.
In the Interwar Middle East there were lots of "mandate states" created as the Ottoman turkish empire dissolved. Most of these floundered about -- there was little progress, lots of discontentment, some rioting and revolting, and lots of corruption and mismanagement. In sum, the citizens of these mandate states could not get their act together. In response to their lack of progress, most of the Arab leaders blamed their problems on the sinister machinations of the imperialist Europeans. They chose not to take much blame upon themselves.
The startling exception to the floundering was the Palestine mandate that would become Israel after World War Two ended. These people started getting their act together during the Mandate Period, and decisively demonstrated their effectiveness at doing so when their statehood was declared and the surrounding Arab states tried to stop that from happening. They, all five of them, declared war on Israel -- not just once, but several times. The surrounding states were themselves decisively defeated repeatedly from 1948 through the 1970's.
And beyond just the military miracles were the economic and social miracles -- Israel and its citizens thrived. The economy grew and became "developed nation" in its structure and prosperity.
What was the root of all this success? The Zionists who created Israel had a much clearer vision of what they wanted, and they were ready, willing and able to do a lot more cooperating to make their vision happen. When threats came they were answered with cooperation and innovation, and in between the threats the Zionists were cooperative and innovative in how they grew their country's economy and society. In this they had a lot in common with the American experience.
(There was a silver lining in all this Zionist success for Pan-Arabists and Pan-Islamists: They added Zionist Conspiracy to their "fine whine list" of reasons why they could not make similar progress in their own communities, and it became a big, spectacular reason.)
In sum, the history of the creation of the Israeli state is a good example of the benefits that come when a Big Vision is successfully created for a community, and in response much of the community enthusiastically backs it and works hard at making it happen.
This week the class discussion centered on comparing the religions of the region: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
One of the interesting patterns I have observed is that in all of the above, the "definitive" biographies of the major leaders are created many generations after these major leaders have lived and died. The Old Testament stories of Moses, the New Testament stories of Jesus, and the Koran and stories of Mohammed were all finalized hundreds of years after these great men had done their deeds and died.
Why? Why does it take so long to write these histories? Two thoughts come to mind to explain this.
o First, these people are not considered great in their time. Instead, they are considered one of many. Moses was one of many malcontented leaders in Egypt, Jesus was one of many religious men resonating with the Jewish people's discontent at the newly imposed Roman rule, Mohammed was one of many tribal leaders in barren lands of central Arabia. These men came to be considered distinctly great only with the passage of time and with the dramatic surge of many followers interested in their message.
o Second, the message the followers are interested in following needs to be fine-tuned to become one that lots of people can become devoted to. This fine-tuning takes time, it is the ancient equivalent of modern marketing. Before the definitive biography is decided upon, there are many alternate versions being told and circulated. Declaring the definitive version is a way of standardizing.
What I find fascinating about this process is how important opinion is in creating both the many preliminaries and the finalized versions, but this element is totally unrecognized. Instead of being called opinions, these final choices are declared to be inspired thoughts.
Such has been the pattern of Big Religion. It will be interesting to see if Joseph Smith (Mormonism) and L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology) are successful at breaking this pattern. In both cases the definitive biographies seem to have already been written.
In reading about Egypt, Ottoman Empire and Iran of the 1800's, it is interesting how consistent they were in how their reform efforts evolved:
o All three spent a lot of money on reform, with the first priority being on military reform. All three sent young men to learn European ways and those who learned them and returned prospered in the civil service of the country.
o All three borrowed heavily from Europeans to do the reforming. They spent on military and infrastructure, and extravagance and corruption.
o All three were clumsy and bumbling about handing out infrastructure development concessions. They seem to have no idea the value of what they were handing out, or how to monitor the results.
As I think about it more, these results are a surprise. These cultures have a long history of civilization, a long history of successful trading and business dealing, and a long history of successful governing, but in the late 1800's they are ruling and business dealing like they are backwoods country cousins, not experienced sophisticates. What happened?
In particular, what happened around the money? Why did the governments make these huge loans that were going to come back and bite them? Clearly the "come back and bite them" was not part of the plan, but why was this happening a surprise to those borrowing the money?
One answer is: This was the first time. In other words, this ability to borrow so much and so easily was a new one. It was a new tool in the governing toolkit, a powerful one, and they were about to get a painful lesson.
Likewise, the clumsy handling of concessions is likely a mix of a new tool -- the ability to offer concessions -- mixing with an old cultural habit: tribalism -- as in, Us versus Them thinking. In this time betrayal between tribes was a common activity. These people had not yet learned the habit, and benefits, of using Industrial Age-style cooperation when using these new infrastructure tools.
Finally, these people were still quite used to imperial ruling culture -- one where outsiders came in to rule over the local peasant-and-priest social infrastructure. In such an environment what the imperialists do is their business and what the locals do is their business. This works fine with the Agricultural Age tool mix, but when Industrial Age tools, such as railroads and factories, get involved, the effective cooperating styles change dramatically, and these new styles must be learned by imperialist, priest and peasant alike. All must learn.
The Sykes–Picot Agreement is legendary in Middle East history. In the current telling of Middle East history, this was an agreement that determined the fate of the Middle East following World War One. It was a secret agreement made between France and Britain while World War One was being fought to carve up the Ottoman Empire when the war ended.
Yeah! Sounds neatly sinister!
But... if you think about it, it reveals more about contemporary cultural thinking in the Middle East than it does about why things happened the way they did when World War One ended. Here is why:
o First, the agreement was made in 1916. The war started in 1914 and ended in 1918 on the west European side, and continued on for years longer in Central and East Europe. (example: the Russians and Poles were still fighting in 1921) This is important because it means there was nothing certain about the outcome of the war when this agreement was made. The war had already gone on much longer than expected, the carnage was much higher than expected, and there was still no end in sight. The deepest surprises of the war -- the collapse of the Austrian, Russian, German and Ottoman empires -- were yet to happen. In sum, at the time this agreement was signed, it was pipe-smoking between some French and British diplomats, and nothing more.
o Second, when the Ottoman empire collapsed and there was no more Turkish rule, there apparently was no local governing infrastructure to replace it. If there had been, the British and the French would have been happy to take a "light hand", as they had done so many other places, such as nearby India, and build on top of it.
o Third, the complaining about betraying and secrecy of the British and French is more an example of projecting (the psychological style) than anything else. These were very much tribal cultures. These players in the Middle East were quite accustomed to keeping secrets among themselves and betraying each other. The British and French were bringing nothing novel in this secrets and betraying area to the region.
The lesson to be learned from this Sykes–Picot Agreement story, plus comparable stories originating in Iran, is that an important part of the modern Middle East cultural identity is supporting conspiracy theories that have outsiders doing lots of manipulating of local governments for sinister ends. This is dramatically different from the "Manifest Destiny" and "Can do"ism that is at the heart of American cultural thinking of the same era.
In sum, Middle Easterners do not feel they are in charge of their own destiny.
--The End--