THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS of modern anti-Western visions of world are rooted in the gradual emergence of the idea of the “universal West” in non-Western intellectual histories during the first half of the nineteenth century. The development of the image of a universal West was not a simple product of “previously ignorant” Ottoman, Chinese, or Japanese intellectuals “discovering” the superiority of European civilization.1 Ottoman Muslim elite’s, for example, knew a lot about the European societies and political structures long before the nineteenth century via travelers, ambassadors, migrants, converts, soldiers, books, and other intermediaries. Yet it was only during the 1830s that Ottoman Muslim elite’s began to conceptualize a holistic image of Europe as a model for reform and as the potential future of the Ottoman polity. Since this rupture, imagining a universal Europe as a model of reform was no longer an issue of naive imitation or a blind rejection. A global Europe became an omnipresent topic in Ottoman thinking about politics, economy, culture, and society. This change in the thinking of non-Westerners about Europe was also not a simple product of Ottoman, or later Chinese and Japanese, military weakness vis-à-vis the European powers. An understandable focus on gunboat diplomacy in explaining the birth of the image of a universal West overlooks the global consciousness of non-Western intellectuals and political leaders. Ottoman and Japanese educated elite’s’ enthusiastic and original ruminations about the universality and desirability of modern civilization show that the notion of universal Europe cannot be reduced to an imposition from Western powers. Revisiting the questions of how and why Ottoman and Japanese leaders imagined a universal West and recognizing their agency in constructing a more inclusive vision of civilization could help recover the global consciousness of non-Western actors beyond the paradigms of “discovery” and “diffusion.”
THE GREAT RUPTURE: OTTOMAN IMAGINATION OF A EUROPEAN MODEL
The civilizational geography of the West, as an imagined intellectual center of the international community, has been the primary focus of attention in modern Asian thought since the mid-nineteenth century, creating responses ranging from admiration and emulation to visions of selective synthesis and radical critiques. As the West has not only been the historical origin of modernity and values with universal claims but also the source of a system of international norms and power politics, images of the West in Asia have always been interconnected with political attitudes to domestic reforms and international affairs. Of all non-European societies, Ottoman Muslims had the longest and closest contacts with Europe before the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman state had approximately five hundred years of encounter, exchange, cooperation, and conflict with several European states. In the period from the Congress of Vienna to the 1830s, there occurred a gradual yet radical transformation in the perception of Europe, which became the only model invoked in reorganizing the Ottoman state and in imagining the future of both Ottoman society and the world. The Ottoman state was also not isolated from the post-French Revolution or post-Napoleonic transformation in European politics and diplomacy. (An Ottoman-Russian alliance, after all, became part of the reasons for the second Napoleonic wars.) Ottoman bureaucrats had frequent interactions with their European counterparts, and the fact that they viewed late-eighteenth-century Russia as part of Europe indicates an awareness of the newly emerging European international society.
The timing of the rupture in the Ottoman perceptions of Europe in the early nineteenth century has been a controversial historical question mainly because both modern Muslims and Western scholars agreed that Ottoman elite’s were too late in discovering or recognizing the great cultural, scientific, and political revolutions in Europe.2 Donald Keene, for example, briefly notes that Japanese scholars who lived in the relatively isolated world of Tokugawa Japan were more interested in European ideas during the eighteenth century than were their Muslim counterparts. He attributes this to Muslim apathy and contempt for the infidel Christians. From a global comparative perspective, however, Ottoman knowledge of the Western world was much larger than that of the Chinese, Indians, and Japanese. While Japan’s Dutch scholars were trying to read European scientific books in relative isolation and difficulty, the Ottomans had ambassadors in Europe, and many Europeans who settled in Ottoman lands were given high-level bureaucratic positions.3
In the history of Ottoman relations with Europe throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was an increasing flow of information and images across the fluid Ottoman borders with Europe. During this period, the Ottoman approach to the ideas, techniques, and methods seen in Europe was selective, as they adopted some of them and dismissed or ignored others. For example, the Ottomans followed developments in military technology in Europe very closely and were able to keep pace with the innovations in Europe until the second half of the eighteenth century.4 Similarly, Ottoman scholars accepted some of the new mathematical and astronomical theories they learned from European books without feeling any need to advocate wholesale importation of the new science.5 The same selective method characterized the Chinese attitude toward European knowledge during the eighteenth century, as well the European approach to the Muslim and the Chinese worlds. Europe in the age of the scientific revolution and reform movements did not seem an overwhelmingly better place to live and superior place to emulate in the eyes of its Ottoman observers. Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton, and Emmanuel Kant became important for Ottomans only after the Industrial Revolution, when the Ottoman elite was trying to explain what made the Europeans very powerful.
With the intellectual efforts to understand the power generated in Europe by the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a stable European international society after the Vienna Congress, Europe began to inspire more admiration and emulation in its Ottoman observers. A qualitative shift in the Ottoman perception of Europe occurred in the two decades after the Vienna Congress, and Europe became a constant reference for new ideas and reform agendas.6 One can see this change clearly in the influential Treatise on Europe, published in 1840, by Ottoman bureaucrat Mustafa Sami Efendi.7 Differing from the earlier selective approach to Europe, for example, Mustafa Sami Efendi does not make any negative observations about Europe. He offers a holistic assessment of the excellence of Europe and its superiority, connecting all the positive characteristics of European institutions and practices in a civilizational unity that merited emulation. Sami Efendi emphasizes that Europe’s excellence in civilization derived not from its religion and climate but purely from its universal and imitable achievements in science, technology, and learning.
It is clear that the image of Europe created by Mustafa Sami Efendi represents a departure from earlier images of Europe, such as those presented in the seventeenth-century writings of Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) on Vienna or the early eighteenth-century writings of Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi (late 1660s–1732) on Paris. For instance, Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi’s highly positive report on French courts, libraries, hospitals, factories, fortresses, and social customs from his diplomatic mission to Paris in 1720 provided a comparison with the Ottoman world and an appreciation of French merits. But his report also included hints of social and cultural critique and refrained from presenting Europe as the ultimate model for all Ottoman reforms.8 In contrast, Mustafa Sami Efendi had nothing negative to write about Europe. Moreover, Ottoman intellectuals began to formulate their vision of the superiority of Europe in a new grand narrative about the linear progressive development of world civilization, which necessarily implied a hierarchy between Europeans and Ottomans in their level of civilized progress. In A Treatise on the Circumstances of Europe, written around the same time as Mustafa Sami Efendi’s work on Europe, leading Ottoman reformist bureaucrat Sadik Rifat Paşa even used the French word “civilization,” without translation, to explain the political, economic, and social secret behind European power and superiority.9
Ottoman military weakness compared to the superior armies of major European powers and the need to emulate the methods of their European rivals to gain equality with them had clearly been an important reason behind the Ottoman interest in European science and technology. External threats and anxiety about the integrity of the Ottoman state, however, cannot explain Ottoman Westernism. The desire for a military balance of power did not mean that the ideal of catching up with the higher levels of civilization in Europe was merely tactical and soulless. After all, even the modernizing reforms in France, England, Russia, and Prussia were in one way or another related to security threats, and there was nothing exceptional about similar attempts by the Ottomans. By the 1840s, however, Ottoman interest in European civilization went far beyond military motivations. The Ottoman-educated elite became fond of the European lifestyle and the material comforts they had seen or heard about. Writings about Europe, including its histories, geography, People’s, and lifestyles, became popular reading for the Ottoman elite. More important, it was the appeal of joining a stable and prosperous family of states, a new international society, that shaped the early formulation of Ottoman Westernism.
OTTOMAN WESTERNISM AND THE EUROPEAN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
The Ottoman image of a universal West partly resulted from observing the stable and peaceful international order established by the Congress of Vienna and legitimized by new notions of civilization. In the aftermath of the Ottoman suppression of the Greek rebellion, the Ottoman elite developed a keen interest in how the new European diplomacy of civilization had worked against their state’s interest. Although European leaders were not supposed to support a nationalist secession. European public opinion about the uncivilized nature of the Ottoman state became politically very significant, leading to European military intervention and pressures that resulted in Ottoman recognition of Greek independence in 1829 .10 With this diplomatic crisis, a group within the Ottoman bureaucracy convinced the state elite that their image as an uncivilized or semicivilized Muslim state ruling over the grandchildren of Greek civilization played a crucial role in the negative public opinion that was influencing the political leaders of European powers. A new Ottoman political initiative proving the “civilized” nature of the empire could avoid further European hostility and intervention while securing European support for the process of domestic reform. Initially based on collaboration and a delicate balance of power among the five European powers (Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Prussia), the Concert of Europe system technically allowed the incorporation of new members such as the Ottoman state upon the fulfillment of “civilized” reforms by prospective members.11
The Gülhane Imperial Edict (Gülhane Hatti Hümayunu) of 1839, later known as the Tanzimat Proclamation, became the clear acknowledgment of the existence of a Eurocentric international society and its legitimizing discourse of universal civilization. It declared a set of legal, administrative, and fiscal reforms in order to strengthen the Ottoman state and make it a member of the new European diplomatic order. The edict was proclaimed on the accession of the new sultan, Abdülmecit I (1839–1861), on November 3, 1839. It was read by Grand Vizir Mustafa Reşit Paşa to an audience that included the sultan, ministers, top civilian and military administrators, religious leaders of the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities, and the ambassadors of foreign countries. After its proclamation, the edict was published in the official state newspaper, and its French translation was sent to various European states and the embassies in Istanbul.
By issuing the Tanzimat Proclamation, the Ottoman state challenged the Eurocentric international order to clarify its principles of inclusion. Could a multiethnic and multireligious empire, which occupied most of Eastern Europe, be a part of the European state system despite the fact that it was ruled by a Muslim dynasty? As early as the second half of the eighteenth century, Ottoman diplomats visiting Europe were already envisioning peace between the Christian states of Europe and the Muslim Ottoman state as a value in itself, beyond the benefit of providing the Ottoman Empire with protection from the threat of the alliance among Christian European states.12 Once the Ottoman elite recognized the emergence of a European international society evolving around the diplomacy of the Concert of Europe, they hoped this society would function according to normative principles and customs without creating any discrimination against the Ottomans. In other words, they were in favor of a diplomacy based on civilizational principles, not on Christian solidarity.13 After all, Ottoman Muslims shared both the Hellenistic legacy and a monotheistic faith with contemporary civilized Europe and believed that civilization was the common heritage of humanity, not an exclusively European ideal.14
Several of the leaders of the European powers were supportive of Ottoman elite’s’ desire to be part of European international society. Two of the leading Ottoman bureaucrats who played important roles in drafting the Gülhane Imperial Edict, Sadik Rifat Paşa and Mustafa Reşit Paşa, had experience as ambassadors in European capitals. They had had the chance to consult and discuss issues of civilization, religious identity, and international relations with leading European diplomats such as the Austrian foreign minister, Prince Metternich, and the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston. The latter supported the Tanzimat reforms, confidently asserting that “there is no reason whatsoever why [Turkey] should not become a respectable power” with ten years of peaceful reorganization and reform.15 Despite the fact that Metternich championed a conservative European system while Palmerston was a liberal, they both agreed on the question of dealing with the Ottoman state as part of the European state system.
The ideas in the Tanzimat Proclamation originated in the tradition of reforms implemented by Mahmud II, who, during the 1820s and 1830s, had centralized the government, restructured the military and administration, established new educational institutions, and introduced European-style dress and head coverings. Mahmud II’s reforms were also partly intended to shape the image of the Ottoman state as a civilized society, worthy of respectful treatment in Europe. For example, the reform of Ottoman bureaucratic attire, and especially headgear, started before the Tanzimat period.16 Since the implementation of this reform, Ottoman bureaucrats had dressed almost exactly like their European counterparts. The fez, which, a century later, became the symbol of Ottoman Muslim identity, was initially intended to symbolize the Ottoman adoption of civilized European dress. Although there had been a strong line of continuity of reform since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Gülhane Imperial Edict domestically empowered the Europhile bureaucracy and reduced the power of the sultan-caliph to assure full rights and equality to non-Muslims under the reinterpreted rule of Shari’a (Islamic law).
The frequent and underlined references to Shari’a and Islamic universalism in the Tanzimat Proclamation, the foundational text of Ottoman Westernization, are not paradoxical. This was no double language intended to prevent negative reactions from conservative elements. Rather, references to Islamic ideals in Tanzimat texts are an indication that, in the mind of the Ottoman reformist group, certain aspects of the European civilized polity, such as the rule of law, equality of religious minorities, and protection of property, did not contradict the traditions of Islamic legal thinking. The convergence between reinterpreted Islamic universalism and Westernism was characteristic of the era. In Egypt during the same time period, Rifaah Rafi al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) formulated a universal vision of liberal civilizationism in Islamic terminology, based on his observations during a long period of stay in Europe.17 Similarly, Khayr al-Din Tunisi (1810–1889) implemented liberal reform ideas with the strong conviction that parliamentary government and modern European ways were compatible with the Islamic tradition.18 Precisely because of the Ottoman agency in the construction of the image of universal West and the global consciousness underlying this image, Ottoman reforms based on European models were never an unfiltered mimicry of European culture at the expense of betraying tradition, especially Islamic tradition. Most of the Muslim reformers ruling the Ottoman state saw values, institutions, and international norms in Europe as universal, not peculiarly Christian.
The Ottoman political elite’s diagnosis of the European model as a universal example might seem odd in light of many educated European elite’s own sense of the superiority of Christianity over Islam and of the white race over the colored People’s. It is even more surprising given that the Ottomans continuously witnessed diplomatic maneuvers by European powers with the goal or excuse of protecting Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Yet the Ottoman observers of Europe consistently decoupled European civilization from its Christian roots.
From Europeans with whom they conversed, the Ottomans heard that Christianity was one of the reasons for Europe’s superiority. Yet in diagnosing and explaining the secrets of Europe’s achievements they avoided making any reference to Christianity, appropriating instead the more neutral terms “civilization” and “universal civilizing process.” The new paradigm emphasized the inclusive aspects of the progress of humanity through a historical, developmentalist vision of world “civilization.” The Ottoman rejection of any attempt to couple universal civilization with Christianity coincided with a dominant Enlightenment worldview in Europe during that particular period.19 Ottoman bureaucrats soon became aware of the universalist thinking both in eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought and in the conservative thought of post-French Revolution Europe.
In the early nineteenth century, European self-perception of superiority exhibited an openness and universalism that it did not have after the rise of Social Darwinism and racism at the end of the century. The best example of this change can be seen in the early Orientalist literature in Europe, the discipline that is now identified with the discourse of European superiority over the Orient. As Vasant Kaiwar and Sucheta Mazumdar remind us, early conservative but universalist Orientalism, as seen in the writings of William Jones, exhibited a belief in the unity of all humanity with regard to some great and fundamental principles. Especially after the French Revolution, conservative universalism was revived in search of stability, which was found in the Orient.20 Similarly, racism, though not in the late-nineteenth-century scientific form, was already part of the European discourse explaining its superiority over the rest of the world, but this racism initially did not disturb the Ottoman elite for two reasons. First, the Ottomans viewed themselves as belonging to the Caucasian race and thus were not offended by racist perceptions of the natives of Australia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Second, they could rely on the universalism of the Islamic tradition to embrace and modify Enlightenment universalism. The tensions between the universal humanism of Enlightenment thought and racism could be resolved by Ottoman observers of Europe partly because they, like their European counterparts, did not see humanism and racism as contradictory during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Muslim leaders of the Ottoman state thus believed they should encounter no religious, cultural, or racial obstacles to being as civilized as the Europeans, as long as they completed a set of reforms that would allow them to reach a higher level on the universal ladder of progress.
The Islamic intellectual tradition, especially through the writings of medieval Muslim traveler, historian, and social observer Ibn Khaldun, had its own way of explaining differences in wealth and power. Ottoman intellectuals, though aware of the cyclical Khaldunian view of history in their approach to the decline and rise of states, did not agree with his determinism and thus adopted reforms to get the Ottoman state out of its decline.21 The earlier Khaldunian perspective definitely influenced Ottomans’ observations of Europe, but their thinking on the history of civilization was shaped by European writings and a self-perception of Europe as being at the top of a linearly developing world history. Starting from Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois to Guizot’s Historie de la civilization en Europe and Buckle’s History of Civilization in England,22 European intellectuals outlined a theory of Europe’s superiority over other geographies. Utilizing the same vision and framework of civilizational progress, several European writers, such as Alexandre Blacque and David Urquhart, asserted that Ottomans were capable of development similar to Europeans.23 And although Montesquieu’s ideas implied that climate was a determinant in Europe’s superior progress, François, baron de Tott (1733–1793), noted that the negative influence of a climate could be overcome by moral force.24
Ottoman observers used a similar language of civilization to describe Europe’s material progress in constructing new roads, hospitals, libraries, and hotels and their achievements in bureaucracy, dress codes, socialization, and public hygiene.25 The term Ottoman intellectuals picked to translate the concept of “civilization” was derived from the Arabic word for city and civility: “medeniyet.” Though the meaning of the term evolved from the 1830s to the 1860s, around the 1860s “medeniyet” was not only a simple equivalent of the word “civilization” but also referred to every good thing contemporary European civilization represented: the highest stage in the progress of humankind and a sure path that was to be followed by the Ottomans.26 The term connoted refinement and good taste and saw no contradiction with the classical Islamic notions of civility, chivalry, and social ethics.
The legacy of Islamic thought already contained a notion of a world history and civilizational vision, which made it easier to adopt the vision of a singular universal civilization.27 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, one of the most talented and long-serving Tanzimat bureaucrats, reformulated an Islamic vision of universal history after appropriating some elements of Enlightenment world history. According to Cevdet Paşa, civilization was the shared product of all religions and cultures.28 He thought that universal civilization chose the best culture and society in a certain period as its residence. Thus civilization moved from India, Babylon, Egypt, and Greece, to Muslim Mesopotamia, and finally to Europe. Each stage preserved the characteristics and contributions of those that went before. The final state of civilizations could be shared by all, although its best habitation was now in Europe. Only God could know what would the best residence for civilization after its European period.29
Just as the antonyms for “civilization” in European languages were “barbarity” and “savagery,” the term that the Ottomans usually preferred was “bedeviyel,” which if translated could be taken as offensive as it signified the lifestyle of Bedouin Arabs and nomadic Turks. The idea of a permanent superiority of civilized people over “savage” nomadic people contradicted Khaldunian sociology and general medieval Muslim thought, which often attributed positive qualities such as dynamism, hospitality, and solidarity to Bedouin Arabs.30 The Ottoman elite’s vision of the progress of “universal civilization” and their identification of the nomads with barbarism allowed them to blame the opposition to modernizing reforms on concepts of savagery and nomadism. It also reflected an Istanbul-based perspective on the cultures and customs of Ottoman populations that saw Ottoman populations as needing civilizing reforms by the central government.31
There were several strategic uses of this idea of a universal European civilization. The state elite could demand sacrifices and radical transformations from its population by justifying them in the name of Ottoman self-strengthening through Western style reforms, presented as a universal path of progress. Civilizing reforms could also be implemented autocratically, without popular participation, because the state elite’s, by virtue of their familiarity with European languages and lifestyles, could claim that they knew what was best for the future of Ottoman state and society. Thus it was in the interest of the Ottoman bureaucracy to be Europhiles and to insist on the universality and applicability of the European model.
Parallel to their recognition of a superior universal civilization in Europe, members of the Ottomans elite agreed that they themselves were less modern and less civilized than the Europeans and hence needed rapid reforms in order to develop in the same direction in a short period of time. They were ready to accept the conditions proclaimed by the European center for equal membership in the emerging global order. This internationalization of the historicist vision of civilizational hierarchies, combined with Islamic universalism, convinced the Ottomans that they could adopt European institutions and methods without abandoning their Islamic tradition.
Ottoman reformist elite’s from 1839 to the 1860s found their civilized image and their close cooperation with the leading power of European international society, Great Britain, working to their advantage in international affairs. The alliance with the European powers against Russia during the Crimean War (1853–1856) became the biggest achievement of Ottoman diplomacy. Just two decades after the Greek rebellion, when the European powers had sided with the Greeks, the Ottoman government was in alliance with Britain and France against Russia. Ottoman generals were fighting beside British and French generals in amazingly similar military uniforms. Ottoman membership in the club of European states provided a sense that the Tanzimat policies actually worked, and the Ottoman state gained a legitimate right to international existence as a recognized member of the Concert of Europe at the Treaty of Paris, signed at the end of the Crimean War in 1856.32
THE WEST IN EARLY JAPANESE REFORMIST THOUGHT
Late Tokugawa Japanese thought contained a strong trend of anti-Christian and anti-Western thought. Yet, in about half a century, the Japanese elite also began to look at Western civilization as a model for reform. Despite three decades between the Tanzimat Proclamation and the Meiji Restoration, the transformation of the Japanese perception of the Eurocentric international order and Western civilization followed a trajectory similar to the Ottoman path. Japanese intellectuals, too, invented and imagined a universal West until the mid-1880s. Islamic and Confucian universalism as well as the specificities of their relations with Western powers shaped the differences between the Ottoman and Japanese experiences. The shared global context and European influences would soon, however, make Ottoman and Japanese reformists think in similar ways.
Although Confucianism was the main philosophical inspiration behind negative images of Europeans as lacking in morals and virtues, protonationalist currents in Japan motivated antiforeignism among late Tokugawa intellectuals. Interestingly, this antiforeign trend went hand in hand with the increase in Western learning. The main fear of a group of Tokugawa-period Japanese political leaders was the Christianization of the Japanese islands, which, in their view, could result in the colonization of Japan, similar to the experience of the Philippines. Antiforeignism of the early nineteenth century relied on increased information about Europe and thus was not a simple retrograde cultural xenophobia. It was based on an informed analysis of changing world conditions. For example, Aizawa Seishisai identified Western national power with the unifying role of a civil religion, Christianity, and argued that Japan should mobilize its cultural resources to combat Western influence through an emperor-centered national religion.33
Despite the spread of antiforeign sentiments in Japan in the early nineteenth century, many Confucian thinkers began to appreciate aspects of Western civilization, judging them to be positive implementations of Confucian ethics. Division of the world into a civilized Confucian zone and the uncivilized barbarians outside of it did not mean that Confucian scholars could not perceive any values and merits in foreign societies. As the knowledge of Europe and America increased in Japan through the medium of Dutch studies,34 some Confucian scholars began to note that European respect for knowledge, scholars, and books, as well as the principles of fair and just government that held sway in that continent, were all more characteristic of ideal Confucianism than were the existing practices of Tokugawa Japan. For example, Shiba Kokan (1738–1818) wrote appreciatively of the European custom of providing facilities for widows and orphans, hospitals, and poorhouses, practices harmonious with the Confucian notions of civilization. When the United States demanded Japan’s much wider opening to the world, Sakuma Shôzan (1811–1864) suggested that the response to the American consul should reflect awareness of the convergence between proclaimed Western values and Confucian values. Even when Shôzan criticized the actual trade and military policies of European countries, symbolized in the act of the Opium War, in order to criticize the U.S. imposition on Japan, he contrasted these policies to the European ideals of cherishing humanity, justice, and courtesy. In 1860 Yokoi Shonan even recognized that the West was far superior to Japan in Confucian morals.35
Hence, when the Japanese state declared its commitment to Western-inspired reforms and recognized the legitimacy of the Eurocentric world order in the famous Five Articles of the Charter Oath of the Meiji Revolution, it could speak about the radical changes necessary in the country as a revival of Confucianism: “Abolish coarse customs from olden times and stand by the ‘Fair Way of Heaven and Earth.’”36 Highly similar to the persistent references to the Islamic universalism of the Shari’a in the Ottoman Tanzimat Proclamation, the references to Confucianism in the Meiji Charter Oath should not be taken as a tactical deception of the population. They were rather an affirmation of the universalism seen in Western civilization expressed through a Confucian language, a convergence that was long recognized by many late Tokugawa intellectuals. When the Meiji emperor declared that his subjects would “seek knowledge in the world and promote the conditions of the emperor’s reign,” all knew that this meant a recognition of the superiority of the civilization in Europe and America and the necessity to learn from it. Yet this moment of radical turn to the West was initially endorsed by Confucian worldviews as well.
To translate the European concept of “civilization,” Japanese intellectuals picked a word from the Confucian classics, “bunmei,” Though initially the Confucian approach to the concept of civilization referred more to the traditional sense of refinement of human character and social life through learning and morality, soon “bunmei” gained the meaning of linear and limitless progress embodied in Enlightenment thought. Hence the support Confucian universalism gave to the idea of emulating and learning from the superior example of Western civilization led to a self-destructive intellectual transformation as a new generation of Western-educated Japanese thinkers turned against the Confucian tradition.37
Once Japan was forced to open its ports to international trade by the new international system, it had to send missions to America and Europe, both for diplomatic exchanges and to learn the secrets of Western military power. After the opening of the first embassy to the United States in 1860, the frequency and importance of diplomatic missions and other travels to Western countries increased. What is crucial here is the transition in the language used to communicate visitors’ observations. Though the initial discussions were selective and critical, soon a literature of praise and admiration for Western civilization emerged. The first example of this pro-Western literature is Fukuzawa Yukichi’s famous best-seller Seiyô jijyô (Conditions in the West).38 There, Japanese readers read the first depictions of Western civilization as a total system, worthy of reflection and emulation. Fukuzawa even offered his own universal theory of world civilizations in his 1875 book An Outline of a Theory of Civilization.39
The importance of the Western model in the reform and renovation of Japan can best be seen in the official study tour of a delegation of top-level ministers and bureaucrats to America and Europe that spanned nearly two years, between 1871 and 1873. Even the idea behind the so-called Iwakura Mission was an indication of the inevitable path of Westernization. The question was only which countries to choose as models and which pace and degree of Westernization to aim for. Similar to Tanzimat leaders and Muslim liberals, early Meiji reformers in Japan hoped to join the international community with equal rights through rapid Westernizing reforms. Interestingly, symbolic aspects of Western civilization also mattered in the Japanese drive to join the Euro-American civilized world. Reminiscent of Sultan Mahmud II’s dress reforms, the Meiji emperor changed his dress from elaborate Shinto clothing to Western-style tight pants and uniforms in 1871.40 It was only appropriate that the Japanese emperor look “civilized” and “masculine” to symbolize Japan’s aspiration to gain acceptance by the Eurocentric international community.
The initial overriding desire for Westernizing reforms to strengthen the Japanese state against foreign threats soon gave way to a fascination with the Westernized lifestyles Japanese visitors observed during the boom of travel to Europe and America. A large collection of books representing the European Enlightenment and nineteenth-century liberal thought was introduced to Japan through translations and foreign instructors.41 While this Westernization wave led to antitraditionalism, it also sustained an optimistic view of Japan’s future as an equal member of the civilized community of nations once the self-civilizing cultural revolution was completed. In fact, anxieties about an over-Westernization of domestic cultural and social life could only be countered and defused by the logic of necessity in international politics and the promise of a future prosperity in an interconnected global community. This internalized liberal civilizationism also justified unequal treaties, which were explained as natural results of the temporary inferiority in Japan’s level of civilization. Liberal Westernists believed that the interventions of the Western powers would disappear as Japan progressed and fulfilled all the required principles of civilization.
The frequency of travels to Europe and America, as well as the government’s commitment to Western style reforms after the Meiji Restoration further entrenched the image of superior Western civilization. Voyages inspired by diplomatic necessity and curiosity were followed by an immense student movement from Japan to America and Europe, especially Germany. Japan had issued approximately ten thousand student passports by the end of the nineteenth century. A large number of well-paid European and American scholars and professors were also invited to Japan. Even though these professors were replaced by their Japanese students in a decade, the Eurocentric content of knowledge in Japanese higher education remained firmly in place throughout the first three decades after the Meiji Restoration.
At this pro-Western reformist moment, Japanese leaders had to think about the Christian character of the core members of the international society in Europe. Participants in the Iwakura Mission were confronted with questions regarding the freedom to practice Christianity in Japan. These questions and conversations alerted Japanese leaders to the issue of Christianity in their attempt to create a civilized image of Japan in Western countries. In fact, on the return of the Iwakura Mission, the previous prohibition on Christian missionary activities was lifted, and both practicing and proselytizing for the Christian faith became unrestricted.42 Conversion to Christianity became very common among Western-educated youth during the first three decades of the Meiji reforms. Some intellectuals and political leaders even debated whether it would be necessary for Japan to convert to Christianity as a nation in order to gain equality in the international system. Fukuzawa Yukichi went so far as to suggest that Japan should formally declare itself a Christian state in order to gain international advantages: “We do not propose that a majority of our people should become Christians, a small proportion would be enough. All that is necessary is to accept that name of a Christian country.”43
Aside from the personal decisions involved in any process of conversion to Christianity, however, Japanese leaders had to consider the politics of the representation of the emperor’s religious character. The officially sanctioned belief in the Japanese emperor as a Shinto deity made him appear to be an uncivilized or less civilized leader in the eyes of Westerners. In the end, Japan’s political leaders refrained from presenting the Shinto tradition of the emperor ideology as a religion. Rather, they depicted it as a national folk tradition and custom. Instead, Buddhism was eventually presented as a “civilized” religion that could be an alternative to Western Christianity in a secular modern Japan.44 Japanese political leaders carefully observed the ties and tensions between the Eurocentric international order and the Christian culture of the core states and successfully managed to create a positive image of Japan in the predominantly Christian European public opinion.
For Japanese modernizers, the racial identity of advanced Western civilization soon became a more important question than Christianity in determining their acceptance into Eurocentric international society. Moreover, as Japanese knowledge about Western thought increased, the Japanese realized that Christianity, though a Western religion, was very much under attack from scientific and modern thinking. In this battle, more and more Japanese became attracted to the appeal of nonreligious and scientific thought, both on the merits of its arguments and because these non-Christian theories seemed more inclusive.45 For example, in the Philosophical Ceremony, first conducted at Tokyo University in 1885, Japanese students, graduates, and teachers venerated the images of “Four Sages” of universal philosophy: Socrates, Kant, Buddha, and Confucius. The very fact that Jesus was deliberately omitted, with Socrates and Kant chosen instead to embody the West, while Buddha and Confucius embodied the East, shows the reluctance of Japanese intellectuals to make any association between the West and Christianity.46
Beyond their adoption of European ideas and self-perceptions relating to progress, enlightenment, and civilization, Japanese intellectuals soon developed their own universal theories regarding the diversity of global cultures and their relationship with the imagined universal civilization of the West. The best example of post-Meiji Restoration liberal civilizationism was Fukuzawa Yukichi’s book An Encouragement of Learning (Gakumon no Susume)47, which sold approximately a million copies. Fukuzawa wrote about the hierarchy of civilizations, whereby Europe represented strong, wealthy, and mature civilization while Asia and Africa were characterized by lower levels of civilization producing poor and weak nations. It was clear for Fukuzawa’s readers that Japan had to climb on the ladder of civilization in order to reach the highest level, identified with the universal West.48
Reading these early liberal universalist Japanese writings, one may get the impression that they were mostly receiving their ideas from the great minds of the European Enlightenment. Though this is largely true, during the process of translation, Japanese reformists usually modified European theories to make them more universal and inclusive. They especially revised the deterministic conditions such as geography, culture, and race that European thinkers noted in explaining the superiority of the West and the backwardness of the rest of humanity. For example, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s An Outline of the Theory of Civilization, written in 1875, presented a more universal vision of progress for all nations and geographies. Declaring his intellectual maturity and independence with regard to the Western origin of his ideas, Fukuzawa noted that Japanese intellectuals familiar with Western civilization were in a superior position to theorize about the conditions and progress of civilization, because they knew both the Western and non-Western world very well. Moreover, he criticized and modified Buckle’s History of Civilization in England,49 the inspiration for Fukuzawa’s own book, because Buckle’s theories argued that civilizations in Asia were doomed to stagnation because of their geography and climate. In his own alternative theory of civilization, Fukuzawa distinguished external elements of civilization from the “spirit of civilization” and attributed the real progress of civilization to the latter. Such a distinction allowed Fukuzawa to suggest that with globalization and the spread of the “spirit of civilization,” all non-Western societies could progress in the path of civilization.50 Fukuzawa’s critique of Buckle shows that Japanese intellectuals were aware that European thinking about the history and theory of civilization usually noted that climate, geography, race, and culture could be an impediment to progress in non-Western societies. But they revised these theories to argue that, with globalization and the spread of modern ideas, every society could attain the level of civilization in the West. As a result, Japanese reformists also preferred to depict a West more universal than most Western thinkers would have accepted.
The widespread belief among Japanese Westernizers that progressive change was possible, desirable, and manageable everywhere facilitated the popularity of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help,51 which was first translated into Japanese in 1870. This book, similar to the equally popular translation of Robinson Crusoe, provided the inspiration to believe that Japan, like a “poor boy in the family of nations,” could be a land of power and wealth.52
When a group of young Japanese intellectuals started advocating a radical vision of cultural Westernization, they were framing their antitraditionalism through the appeal to liberal civilizationism, while assuming that no cultural and racial barrier would prevent the Japanese nation from gaining equality with the Western powers after the completion of reforms. This Westernist ideology of reform was best formulated by Tokutomi Sohô (1863–1957). The son of a wealthy peasant, Tokutomi was among the first group of Japanese students who received Western style education in the newly established schools run by Americans or Europeans. He came into conflict with his parents by embracing Christianity, believing that the propagation of Christianity would serve the Japanese nation by superseding outmoded traditional Japanese ways of thinking. He was convinced that Western civilization was the only universal civilization and that Japan should even adopt Christian ethics to embark on the universal path of progress and development. He read the works of great Western thinkers such as Macaulay, Tocqueville, Guizot, Spencer, Mill, and Rousseau as sources of universal guidance as to what the Japanese people should do. In his best-seller Nihon no Seinen (The youth of the new Japan), Tokutomi Sohô asked Japanese youth to emulate the qualities found in the liberal democratic societies of the West and to discard the old ways of Japan in this process of Westernization.53 In The Future of Japan,54 he confirmed his belief in liberal civilizationism, predicting that with free trade and Westernization, Japan would adapt to the “trends of the times” (jisei) and be part of a global order of advanced nations. His ideas were based on a belief in universal standards of development along the Western patterns. He did not assume that Japan’s cultural difference and unique qualities would prevent its inevitable adaptation to the Eurocentric trends and the international order.55
Similarly, another influential thinker of Meiji Japan, Taguchi Ukichi, argued that Japan must adopt Western practices because of their universal value and applicability. This was simply the only way to establish equality between Japan and the advanced Western countries. For him, the path of unilinear progress to universal civilization was unaffected by national, religious, cultural, and environmental differences.56 Even Fukuzawa Yukichi’s controversial 1885 article “Datsu-A-Ron,” which argued that it would be better for Japan to “leave Asia” and join the ranks of civilized Europe, demonstrates the Japanese appreciation of the universality of European civilization beyond its Christian and racial character, as it assumes that Japan would face no obstacle in joining the universal Europe.57 Although Fukuzawa Yukichi’s “leave Asia, enter Europe” thesis reflected his disillusionment with the failure of reform efforts in Korea and suggested that Japan should treat its Asian neighbors as European powers would do, it also signaled a tension between the metacontinental imagination and Eurocentric projects of civilizing reforms. While Japan was firmly situated in the continent of Asia according to nineteenth-century mapping and thus carried all the cultural affiliations of this map location, the aspirations of Japanese intellectuals were to transform Japan into a European-style civilized nation. It should be remembered that similar dilemmas existed for the pro-reform Westernizing elite’s of other non-Western nations. Khedive Ismail, who ruled Egypt between 1863 and 1879, is reported to have pronounced “my country is no longer in Africa, it is in Europe” to note the success of his reform projects.58
THE MODERN GENESIS OF PAN-ISLAMIC AND PAN-ASIAN IDEAS
The fact that pro-Western liberal civilizationism was the dominant reformist and intellectual agenda in both Ottoman Turkey and Japan during the first decades of their state-centered reform programs did not mean there were no critiques of the West during that time. On the contrary, both the 1839–1882 period in Ottoman Turkey and the 1853–1882 period in Japan witnessed strong protestations against the international policies of the Western powers, and there were many critical observations on European culture and politics. Respect for the Enlightenment West and the ideology of liberal civilizationism, however, became the dominant paradigm despite these critical observations. Civilizationism diffused the optimistic vision that unequal and unjust conditions between the West and the Islamic world or the West and Asia would disappear once Westerners and non-Westerners alike fulfilled the principles of civilization.
Moreover, in their critiques of the West from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, non-Western intellectuals began to make reference to abstract universal ideals and normative principles with which they thought the intellectuals of Western world would agree. Both Japanese and Ottoman critiques of Western policies began to point out the contradictions between the civilization claims of the European powers and their actual policies.
In the Ottoman case, discontent with European interventions on behalf of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire became one of the major sources of critique of the reform process among Muslim populations. As Christian citizens of the empire gained equal rights with Muslims through Ottoman reforms, they were also allowed to keep the privileges accorded by earlier Ottoman-Islamic customs, such as exemption from military conscription. Non-Muslims involved in foreign trade also gained the right to have their complaints adjudicated by the embassies of Western powers rather than by Ottoman authorities. This condition practically put Ottoman Christians outside the discipline and the control of the centralized state apparatus and thus violated the essence of Ottoman legal and political modernization, which aimed at creating a central state capable of educating, taxing, and conscripting all Ottoman citizens, irrespective of religion, creed, or race. This issue became very sensitive when Ottoman authorities tried to control nationalist and secessionist movements among Christian subjects and later constituted a major cause for the upcoming diplomatic and military conflicts with the Russian Empire. Ottoman Muslim reformists were very open to European pressures for human rights and the equal treatment of Christian subjects. Yet they perceived these pressures as a denial of their claim that the Muslim rulers of the Ottoman state could be civilized enough to gain the loyalty of their Christian subjects. As long as the Ottoman Muslim dynasty was abiding by the standards of civilized rule, Muslim intellectuals reasoned, there was no need for Europeans to intervene to help Christians Ottomans secede from the empire. Muslim critics rightly asked why Muslim subjects of the British, Russian, and French empires had no political, social, and economic equality, while those powers asked the Ottoman Empire to give more rights and privileges to non-Muslim minorities. Gradually, Muslim public opinion raised concerns that European interventions in the name of implementing civilizing reforms were in fact biased attempts to strengthen Christians. It was a visible contradiction that the same European powers asking for liberty, autonomy, and equality for the Christian subjects of the Ottoman state were denying moral, civilized treatment to Muslim subjects in the imperial domains of India, Algeria, and Central Asia.
The Ottoman government itself, however, never took steps that would challenge the legitimacy of European empires and their expansion over Muslim lands. Even though Ottoman public opinion was generally sympathetic toward Muslim resistance against the civilized Western powers of the British, Russian, and French empires, the government could not do much to support them. During the 1857 Great Indian Rebellion led by Muslims, Ottoman rulers sided with the civilized British administration rather than the Muslim populations of India. The British government even got a letter from the sultan (or claimed to have received such a letter) urging Indian Muslims to cooperate with the civilized rule of the British government and not to rebel against it.59 Similarly, the Ottoman government did not support the Muslim resistance to the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, except during the Crimean War.60 Yet, despite the lack of any support from the Ottoman rulers to various Muslim resistance movements against Western colonialism, the Ottoman caliphate was becoming more popular in the Islamic world precisely because the caliph was perceived as the head of a civilized Muslim state with full and equal diplomatic relations with the European powers. It was this perception that prompted Acehnese leaders to ask for the support of the Ottoman government against Dutch attacks.
The first notions of Islamic solidarity emerged not as a traditional reaction to the modernization of the Ottoman state but rather because of the increasing prestige of the Ottoman caliph as the leader of a civilized state recognized as a member of the civilized international society. When the Ottoman caliph received a request for aid from the sultan of Aceh in 1873 to ward off Dutch attacks, the Aceh rulers were mobilizing the diplomacy of civilization, not any medieval Islamic notion of caliphate. Citing a document issued a century earlier by the Ottoman caliph recognizing Aceh as an Ottoman dependency, the Aceh rulers hoped that Ottoman protection would make the Dutch attacks illegitimate as the Dutch would have to honor their civilized diplomatic relations with the Ottoman state.61 All the ambassadors of the European powers in Istanbul came together to protest the potential Ottoman support for Aceh, fearing this would set a precedent for other Muslim territories already colonized or on the verge of being colonized by the European powers. At the end of this diplomatic crisis, the Ottoman state had to withdraw even its earlier recognition of Aceh as a dependency.
From the perspective of the advocates of support for Aceh in Ottoman Istanbul, the issue was not a matter of reactionary Muslim alliance but of moral obligation to protect backward Muslim areas from colonial control so that the Ottoman center in turn could lead them to a higher level of civilization and progress. In other words, Ottoman advocates of support for Aceh were utilizing the notion of the civilizing mission by noting that it should be the duty of a Muslim state, not the Dutch empire, to help raise the level of civilization in Aceh. Meanwhile, the Aceh debates increased Ottoman curiosity about Muslims in different parts of the world and helped create a trans-state Muslim identity. The Young Ottoman intellectual Namik Kemal noted with a hint of irony that, during the 1870s, the Ottoman public began to ask for solidarity with the Muslims of Western China, in whom they had little interest twenty years earlier.
When the number of references to the idea of Islamic unity increased in the Ottoman press, the Dutch and British governments protested against these writings to the Ottoman government, which led to a governmental warning to the press that it should avoid references to anti-Western unity in the Muslim world that could arouse suspicion among the Western powers. It is in this context that, in August 1873, the British Foreign Office asked all its representatives in the Muslim world to do research and send assessment reports about the religious and political revival, especially with respect to its connection to the Ottoman caliphate. The twenty-nine reports produced by British Foreign Office representatives in the Muslim world indicated that there was no organized pan-Islamic movement for the caliphate. They noted, however, that Muslims were becoming more aware of the conditions in other Muslim lands and that they had more contacts as a result of improving communication and transportation opportunities. Although the British Foreign Office reports concluded that pan-Islamic solidarity was not an immediate threat, as Dutch colonial authorities of the time had exaggeratedly asserted, they noted that the rising international awareness of Muslims had to be followed with special attention.62
Ideals of pan-Asian solidarity emerged around the same time as pan-Islamism. Early Meiji pan-Asianism also developed as a critique of the reforms based on the ideology of civilizationism and date back to the era of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement of the 1870s.63 During the 1840s and 1850s, Japanese intellectuals were very critical of the British policies toward China during the Opium Wars. In fact, Japanese antiforeignism, symbolized by the slogan “expel the barbarians,” became a motto of the Meiji Restoration partly because of the mistrust of Western intentions. Ironically, those leaders who came to power with the slogan “expel the barbarians” implemented a comprehensive reform program in order to achieve all the European standards of civilization. Yet, in the first two decades of Meiji era self-civilizing reforms, there was an authoritarian Westernization in the sense that all reforms were implemented from the top down without any recourse to participatory rule. In terms of Japan’s foreign policy, the emphasis was on cooperation with the Western powers to gain their trust as a newly civilized nation and finally to eliminate unequal treaties. Early ideas of pan-Asianism arose out of a liberal opposition to Meiji Westernization and combined its criticism of Japan’s foreign policy toward East Asia with opposition to the elitist nondemocratic process of modernization then under way at home. Ôi Kentarô (1843–1922), one of the leaders of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement of the 1870s and 1880s, called on Japan to support the reform and strengthening of Korea, pointing out that such an action would serve to promote the security and prosperity of the entire region, while instigating democratization in both Japan and Korea. Ôi Kentarô’s vision of Asian solidarity contrasted with Fukuzawa’s “Leaving Asia” argument, although both had the same belief in the universal process of civilization and progress.
The predominant Ottoman Muslim response to the rift between the power politics of Europe and perceived normative principles of civilization was to radicalize and universalize civilizationism as a protection from European interventions. Also significant was the awareness that the moral principles of the international society were under the protection of a balance-of-power dynamics that compelled Britain to support the Ottoman reforms.64 Even when several British policies led to disillusionment among Ottoman rulers, the Ottoman state continued to rely on the good will and leadership of the British Empire. When the balance of European power politics and the British policies toward the Ottoman state changed after the unifications of Germany and Italy in 1871, Ottoman leaders lost the British protection of their state sovereignty and territorial integrity against the Russian threats. The crisis of the 1870s resulted in the disastrous and traumatic wars of 1877–1878 with Russia and Austria-Hungary, at the end of which the Ottomans had to agree that the majority of its European territories would be annexed or become independent. What should be remembered, however, is the Ottoman response to the perceived alliance of European powers against its territorial integrity: an appeal to the moral principles of European international society with the declaration of a constitution in 1876, at a time when European powers were convening in Istanbul to decide the fate of its Christian-majority territories in the Balkans. It was the Ottomans who preferred the principles of European international law that required respect for the borders and sovereignty of each civilized state. The ideal of a constitution as the ultimate symbol of the Ottoman self-civilization process had a long history of intellectual and political support within the empire. The international crisis only gave reformist groups in the bureaucracy added advantages over their opponents. Irrespective of European pressures, the liberal civilizationist camp in the Ottoman bureaucracy, as well as among the rising Ottoman intelligentsia, believed in the equality under law of all subjects of the empire and tried to create a modern notion of citizenship.65 Similarly, an Ottoman constitution was a dream of the rising intellectual elite of the time, evidenced by the popularity of Young Ottoman thought during the 1870s.
In both the Ottoman state and Japan, the first generation of Westernized intellectuals asked for a more participatory constitutional reform process and larger solidarity with other Asian-Muslim nations. The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement in Japan and the Young Ottoman movement in Turkey championed a rethinking of what the criteria of civilization should be both domestically and internationally. Domestically, they criticized the top-down reforms for lacking the spirit of civilization, which they depicted as popular participation and constitutional rule. Internationally, they noted that some sort of Asian or Islamic solidarity was vital to achieving the self-civilizing reforms, because European interventions were preventing the success of such reforms all over Asia. Intellectuals of the Young Ottoman movement in Turkey and the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement in Japan were more knowledgeable about Western thought than the first-generation modernizing elite. They also perceived tensions between their cultural identity and some aspects of the adopted Western thought and aimed to resolve these by radicalizing the universalist thinking on modernity, international order, and globalization. Their ideals of radicalization and nationalization in the process of self-civilizing reforms espoused an Islamization and Asianization of the ideal of universal modernity but never an abandonment of the commitment to vision of global civilization.
First ideas of Islamic and Asian solidarity during the late 1870s embraced both the notion of universal modernity perfected in Europe and the notion of an interdependent community of states sharing a world order. Advocates of Muslim or East Asian solidarity were staunch modernizers, despite their reference to “East Asian-ness” or “Muslim-ness,” and it was this generation that helped to distinguish ideal universal civilization from European practices.66 The ideas of Mehmet Namik Kemal (1840–1888) epitomize the modern global context of early pan-Islamic notions. He had great familiarity with Western culture through the medium of French writings, in addition to a strong grounding in Islamic education and Ottoman bureaucratic culture. After serving as a member of the translation bureau of the Ottoman government and as editor of a sociopolitical commentary, Tasvir-i Efkâr, Namik Kemal left Turkey in 1867 to live in Paris and London in order to escape imprisonment for his involvement in the Young Ottoman Society. After his return to Istanbul in 1870, he spent the rest of his bureaucratic career mostly in exile in remote cities.
As a member of the Ottoman bureaucracy, Namik Kemal’s main critique of the new Westernizing political elite of the early Tanzimat was the loss of legitimacy of the pro-Western reformist government according to both Islamic and Western norms. He argued that most of the reforms implemented by the Ottoman state were for the sake of seeming civilized through superficial Westernization at the expense of “real” civilization and modernity, which had to include democracy, participation, a parliament, and political freedom He urged the Ottoman government and the public to grasp the real meaning of civilization and progress beyond the Ottoman elite’s’ interest in European attire, dance parties, and other aspects of contemporary Western culture.67 Namik Kemal was one of the first Ottomans to use the term “Muslim Unity” (İttihad-i Islam), in an article in the journal Ibret on June 27, 1872.68
The other leading Young Ottoman figure, Ali Suavi, had also observed European socieites firsthand and was familiar with the writings of Enlightenment figures and contemporary European thinkers. He wrote about the benefits of North African Muslim unity as the necessary condition to prevent Europe’s overwhelming power from reconquering Africa. Suavi expressed bitter resentment against European foreign policies carried out in the name of a civilizing mission by reference to the ideals of liberty, equality, and freedom that the West was supposed to cherish. “Strangely enough, while the republicans in England and France speak about democracy, equality and freedom, they have no wish to relinquish their hold over Canada, India and Algeria. Just look how those Frenchmen talk pretentiously about freedom and equality, all the while seeking world domination like Caesar.”69
The first generation of Ottoman and Japanese reformists did not see their reformist Westernism as contradictory to their national, religious, and cultural identity. They saw global unevenness and disparity as a result of the natural and moral consequences of the civilizational hierarchies in science and civilization. They accepted that there were new norms of international relations in which a state’s image as a civilized polity was crucially important. As a result of their civilizational worldview, for them, colonial tutelage, unequal treaties, and some limited form of racial discrimination were partly legitimate aspects of the globalizing world order. Japanese Westernists such as Tokutomi Soho could even see the unequal treaties imposed on Japan as positive outside pressure to apply rapid domestic reforms beneficial to Japan’s progress. Initially, this discourse allowed Ottoman and Japanese reformers to be optimistic that they would one day gain equality by completing all the necessary reforms.
The period from the 1830s to the 1880s witnessed the emergence of an image of the West in Ottoman and Japanese thought. This image not only inspired reform movements in both countries; it was also identified with humanist liberalism, Enlightenment thought, and the new global structures of world order. Throughout the nineteenth century, there was never a monolithic idea of the characteristics, achievements, virtues, and vices of the West. Yet there were dominant paradigms and explanations in each period. In their first three decades of reform, the most influential description of the West in the Ottoman and Japanese societies revolved around the liberal and universal notions of civilization and Enlightenment. When non-Western reformists became familiar with the main ideas of Enlightenment thought, they also became aware of the various forms of European ideas about the uniqueness and essential superiority of European societies stemming from religion, race, climate, or other peculiar characteristics. Ottoman and Japanese intellectuals preferred, however, to modify and reformulate these ideas to insist on the “universal” secrets of Europe’s progress and to make “civilization” more inclusive of non-Western cultures and traditions.
Ottoman and Japanese leaders were equally aware of the global structures of uneven economic relations and balance-of-power politics in international relations. Yet, they imagined and hoped that the universal moral principles of international law and civilized behavior would be the future direction of globalization. Even those who criticized the West did so only in the context of the international policies of particular Western powers. In those critiques, there was no rejection of the universal ideals identified with the West, nor could any important political leader or intellectual ignore the appeal of Western civilization. The image of the West has since become a contested and controversial topic, but it was always present in the discussion about the conditions, future direction, and even the assessment of the past of both Ottoman and Japanese societies.