Your reply has given me much occasion, Sir, for fruitful thought, and so placed me greatly in your debt. It occurs me to wonder whether we might merely be presenting our differing apprehension of human beings here, under guise of disputing political structures. That cannot be resolved by even the most amicable debate; if that is the case, we may quickly reach a point where agreement to disagree is required between us.We do not seem to disagree so much as to facts, Sir, as we do in our view of the most propitious view to take towards an understanding of them. Concerning the Balkan developments you are particularly knowledgeable about, we are certainly in agreement that in the nineteenth century, violently exclusionist polities, however we might denominate them, or view their antecedents, arose in the Balkans, and carved it up, along with an unfortunate portion of its populace. The region’s Turks, and Moslems, came off worst by far in these developments. There was not enough justice in it to shine a gendarme’s shoes.
Ottoman rule at its best stands compare with that of any imperium. So do the methods by which the Ottoman ruled. It does not seem to me any disparagement of the Ottoman to note their familiarity, in directing their various chattel, with the coercive tools of massacre and deportation. This is simply what is done in rebellious districts, in frontier districts of dubious loyalty, and the like, by any imperium. The Ottoman faced frequent rebellion, even independent powers, on the Persian marches across the Tigris, in Mamluk Egypt, Syria, even in Anatolia itself.
It does not seem to be any particular compliment to the Ottoman, either, to point out that they held sway over widely varied peoples, and did not put much effort into changing their local customs. By definition, an imperium is a central authority: one that submerges several formerly or potentially independent tribal or local or national polities under its dominion. If its extent is to be worth the name, an imperium must come to include greatly divergent ethnic, linguistic, and religious elements among its total populace.
At pre-modern technological levels, uniformity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious practice, throughout the whole extent of any sizeable imperium, is impossible of achievement. China, Persia, Rome, all allowed great regional variation in administrative and legal practice, as these affected the great preponderance of their subject peoples. All that can be made uniform in any degree is a universal awe toward the central authority, whether compounded of fear, respect, or adoration.
Without any ethnic attachment themselves to any of their subjugated peoples, and relying on their own tribal military might for right initially, the Ottoman turned to Islam for this unifying principle. Possessing substantial Christian populations provided a subject class the most lowly of Moslems could hold himself above. Tolerance towards Christians and Jews paid the Ottoman further, because these could be taxed in ways Moslems could not. Islamic heretics were persecuted, sometimes even while a Sultan shared much of their belief.
On your view of the national state, Sir, and its advent and characteristics, we may have some more substantial disagreement. There may well be some misapprehension on my part in this, but reading your missives has left me the impression you view the modern national state as arising in nineteenth century Europe, and doing so by exclusion of minority populations within its bounds.
On my understanding, Sir, modern national states predominated in western Europe by the mid-eighteenth century, with the form clear by the day of Louis XIV. Further, the basic polities there, which grew into national states, are readily visible in the medieval period, and can be discerned even in Roman provincial bounds and populations, before that. Spain is a peculiarly poor example to use for a developing European national state: it began in Crusade, was buoyed up by out-land bullion in its prime, and fell well behind all the rest of the west by the eighteenth century.
Not even the emergence of two great national confederacies, Italy and Germany, in the nineteenth century, seem sufficient warrant to lodge the national state in Europe's origin then. Although their establishments featured rebellion and war, these were not struggles of massacre and deportation: the problem was that various Italians, and varieties of German, were ruled by separate smaller states instead of one big one each.
After the "Revolutionary Year" of 1848 particularly, the idea of the national state, as a radical, modernizing idea, and as a unifying ideological force, did begin to spread seriously eastward through Hapsburg and Romanov dominions. There arose on its heels certain respectably racialist ideas, Pan-Slavism, and Pan-Germanism, which colored much of the emerging nationalist thought in those regions.
It seems to me what happened in the Balkans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an outbreak of rebellion against imperial authority by several tribal polities, all of long standing. They were not engaging in the construction of modern national states, but only enforcing the oldest rules of human governance: kin before neighbor; neighbor before stranger.
It seems self-evident that a tribal polity, or any other localist polity, must always enforce a considerable homogeneity within its bounds. In a tribal polity, all are in some degree related, by definition, and in most local polities of long standing, as a matter of practical fact. Human faces and forms and tongues display kinship indicators human eyes and ears and minds are equipped to discern in fine detail.
It is a trifle only, but an amusing illustration. One of the oldest judicial proceedings recorded, in old Sumer, tells of a man haled to the dock, on a charge that nobody knows who he is. A man arrives, whom several men present recognize: he says, "I know that man in the dock," and the fellow is released on that recognizance. It is difficult, all taken together, for me to impute to aping nineteenth century European practice such an ancient feature of human sociability, as a violent insistence that people who do not look or act much like you either go away, do what they’re told, or die.
As to the matter that involved me initially in this discussion; namely, my assertion that Kurds had been the principal executioners of Armenians for the Ottoman. That was a Sultan’s policy, resolved on a quarter century before that final execution amid the Great War. Kurdish Hamidiye were recruited from bandits already blackmailing the Armenian communities, and turned to pogroms on a regular basis in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Hunchak revolutionists among the Armenians made a poor excuse for the massacres and forced conversions. The Tanzimat charters, the Constitution, made no difference at all.
A minister was asked by his Sultan, "How is it that you always approve of my actions, good or bad?"The minister answered: "Every idea which your spirit entertains is a revelation from heaven. Your orders, even when they appear unreasonable, have an innate reasonableness which your slave always reveres though he may not always understand it."
When a student asked why calling things by their right names was so important to good governing, the Master exclaimed, "What a boor you are!
"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is attempted cannot succeed. When what is attempted does not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments will not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
)
