Convinced that the difference between the West and the Rest derived from economic factors, many political movements outside Europe, just as in the Soviet Union, placed economic growth at the top of the agenda. In doing so, they consistently imposed modernization programmes that complemented economic and political considerations with distinctly social and cultural ones. The struggle to end illiteracy was inevitably a major issue. In most Arab and Islamic countries the proliferation of the printing press, together with the introduction of newspapers and magazines, began only in the late nineteenth century. The IISH collection nonetheless comprises older materials about the area, including incunabula (120).
The new media became very popular among reformist groups, such as the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire (121-122). Soon afterwards, the Kemalist Turkish Republic became one of the most telling examples of forced modernization of a largely agrarian society, visibly manifested in styles of dress, the introduction of the Latin alphabet, and compulsory schooling for boys and girls (123-126). During the military dictatorship in the 1980s the IISH started building a Turkish collection, securing important materials. The collection soon encompassed the great Turkish migration to Western Europe as well.
Many modernization movements derived inspiration from the Soviet Union but were nonetheless feared as competitors of communist movements in the countries concerned, in part because of their nationalist element. Relations during the Cold War further complicated this tension. In oil-producing Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi followed a Western course (127-130). Other countries in the region, such as Afghanistan (131), Egypt (132), and Sudan (133-135), eager to achieve comparable economic growth, experimented – in some cases only temporarily – with different versions of forced modernization.
In 1453 the fall of Constantinople ushered in an extended period in which ‘the Turk’ was perceived as the Antichrist in Europe. The expansionist Ottoman Empire became a threat to Vienna in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Chronica Hungariae by Janós Thuróczy (c1435-c1489), an incunable printed in Brno and Augsburg in 1488, features a woodcarving of the Ottoman army. The Janissaries appear in distinctive tall, sleeve-shaped caps. This may be the oldest known depiction of Turks.
At the end of the nineteenth century, efforts to reform the Ottoman Empire led a new generation of Western-educated Turks to oppose Sultan Abdülhamit II (1842-1918). In 1889 the Young Turks established their movement and published their programme in the journal Mechveret (Consultation), issued in Paris. They advocated reinstating the constitution, which had been abolished after the sultan came to power in 1876. In 1908 they teamed up with others and staged a revolution.
The first Balkan War, which broke out in October 1912, demonstrated the weakness of the Ottoman Empire. The Committee for Unity and Progress, which seized power following a coup in early 1913 and had a strong military component, identified reform of the armed forces as one of its priorities, based essentially on European examples. In May 1913 a German military mission was invited to Istanbul to reorganize the military, and in 1914 the Ottomans formed an alliance with Germany.
After the First World war, the Ottoman Empire disappeared, and in 1922 the Turkish Republic was proclaimed under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1931), who introduced a forceful modernization policy. To improve education in the countryside, village institutes (köy enstitüleri) were set up, based on the ideas of the philosopher and educator John Dewey, who had visited Turkey in 1924. He regarded school as a social community and believed that traditional education should be combined with practical skills that catered to local needs.
In 1940 these village institutes became subject to official regulations. In mid-September the school year began. Students received theoretical and practical instruction, enabling them to find work in the villages. The secular, co-educational schools elicited substantial opposition: people were afraid of educating ‘tomorrow’s communists.’ In 1953 the village institutes were closed. Many of the thousands of students who attended these institutions were later active in the teachers’ union Türkiye Ögretmenler Sendikasi.
In the early twentieth century the Constitutional Revolution occurred in Persia, resulting in 1906 in a constitution and allowing modernization to begin in that country. Sédighé Dolatabadi (1882-1962) was a pioneer of the women’s movement in this process. She founded the first school for girls, established organizations promoting women’s participation in politics and cultural affairs, and held various government offices. The IISH holds part of her personal papers, including this letter dated 5 May 1943 about educating children.
In 1919 in Isfahan Sédighé Dolatabadi launched Zaban-e Zanan (the Voice of Women), the first journal published by women in Persia. Despite resistance from militant mullahs, the journal featured articles on equality for women, women’s rights, and similar topics for two years; from 1921 Dolatabadi continued the journal from Teheran. This photograph on the rear of an issue from that second period shows a conference at one of the schools for girls founded by Dolatabadi in 1935.
The beginning of modernization coincided with an important economic fact. In 1908 in southwest Persia the first oil was discovered in the Middle East, after which the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Company, a predecessor of BP, was established. In 1912 the company opened a refinery in Abadan that remained the largest in the world for a long time. This photograph from around 1920 shows a worker from the Bakhtiari tribe at work in the oil industry in that area.
At the IISH research is conducted on the history of work in the Iranian oil industry. It covers various themes, such as the daily lives of workers, relations between the workers, the company, and the state, and the rise and development of industrial cities. This image depicts the laundry of an Anglo-Persian refinery around 1930. Putting women to work alongside men was highly innovative.
In Afghanistan modernization was propagated from 1911 in Seraj-al-Akhbar (the Torch of the News), published in Kabul by Mahmud Tarzi (1865-1933), who sympathized with the Young Turks and translated Jules Verne. The Persian daily became the focus of a group of nationalists, the Young Afghans, who supported modernization imposed from above. Tarzi, who held high offices until 1929, including minister of Foreign Affairs, pursued causes that included compulsory primary education, also for girls.
Decolonization and the Cold War made the relationship between modernization and communism ever more complicated. In Egypt the communists, who were internally divided, initially opposed the nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), who came to power soon after the 1952 revolution. Yet his nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 – wholeheartedly supported in Kifah al-Sha‘b (the People’s Struggle) of October – led them to unite behind Nasser and even to merge their forces with him in 1965.
Nasser became a role model, also in Sudan, independent since 1956, where Gaafar an-Nimeiri (1930-2009) seized power in a coup in 1969. Here too, building the new state was rife with tensions. In response to repressive measures, communist officers performed an abortive coup in July 1971.
The Moroccan communist Ali Yata protested in vain in Arabic and French against the execution of Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub (1927-1971) and other leaders of the Sudanese Communist Party.
The Communist Party of Sudan was founded in 1946; both the party and the trade union federation it dominated were among the largest communist organizations in the Middle East. Nimeiri’s coup brought different communists into the government but caused division between supporters and opponents. Following the abortive coup of 1971, Nimeiri tried to implement his modernist agenda, and the communists disappeared underground. Their weekly al-Mourriah (Freedom) glorified Mahjub and condemned his murderers.