WWI PRESENTED CHALLENGES and opportunities for the alternative visions of world order embodied in pan-Islamic and pan-Asian thought. As the arguments and proposals of both pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist thought relied on the illegitimacy of Western hegemony and its civilizing mission ideology, WWI clearly confirmed the moral crisis of the Eurocentric world order. The protracted and destructive Great War thus strengthened the political and intellectual appeal of pan-Asian and pan-Islamic ideas. The civilizational discourses of both trends were confirmed by the perceived decline of the Western civilization and the breakdown of the diplomacy of imperialism.
The wartime political destinies of pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist projects were shaped, however, by the decisions of the Ottoman and the Japanese governments. While the Ottoman government decided to utilize pan-Islamic ideas during WWI, the Japanese government entered into a complex conflictual relationship with pan-Asianist trends. A wartime pan-Asianist campaign in Japan had a significant impact on the race consciousness of Japanese public opinion, even if it failed to reorient Japanese foreign policy. In both the Ottoman and Japanese cases, pan-Islamic and pan-Asian challenges to the legitimacy of the imperial world order contributed to global self-reflection on the new world order in the aftermath of WWI.
PAN-ISLAMISM AND THE OTTOMAN STATE
Since the 1880s, Ottoman political leaders had cautioned that any official indication of pan-Islamic solidarity would lead to further suspicion of the Ottomans in the minds of the European powers and took care not to identify the Ottoman State with pan-Islamic movements and projects. They insisted that the Ottoman state had to focus on solving its own problems and give priority to its relations with the European powers before it could think of other Muslims. After all, “while dreaming to save India from the British rule, the Ottoman State could lose Western Thrace just fifty miles away from its capital city.”1 This cautious policy of avoiding direct challenges to the Eurocentric imperial world order in the Muslim world and focusing on the security and territorial integrity of the Ottoman state reflects the legacy of Tanzimat diplomacy until the 1910s.
On the eve of WWI, however, and especially after the Ottomans joined the Great War, the liberation of colonized Muslim lands was cited as one of the aims of the war, and the Ottoman government utilized pan-Islamic networks and ideals extensively in its war effort. It was obvious that the Ottoman political elite, known for their realist assessments of world trends and the European balance of power, had abandoned the legacy of Tanzimat diplomacy and adopted a pan-Islamic discourse. This was not because the Ottoman elite came under the influence of utopian ideals of Islamic solidarity but rather because pan-Islamism itself become a realist policy option for them.
The Ottoman entry into WWI and the subsequent mobilization of pan-Islamic ideas and networks have retrospectively been interpreted as the result of the political will of a group of utopians and expansionists led by Enver Paşa.2 According to this theory, the ideological extremism of a small group of pro-German and pan-Turkist leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) Party, who controlled the decision-making mechanism of the Ottoman state, conspired to push Turkey to enter the Great War. They hoped to regain lost Ottoman territories in an alliance beneficial to both Germany and the Ottoman state. Similarly, pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism are seen as additional ideological motivations behind Enver Paşa and his clique’s “irrational” decision to enter WWI on the side of Germany. Enver Paşa’s death in 1922 in Central Asia during his participation in the Muslim resistance to the Soviet regime contributed to the association of his name with both pan-Turkish and pan-Islamic activism.3 Since the postwar leaders of both Ottoman Turkey and the Turkish Republic felt the need to detach themselves from the decision to engage in a long and costly war that ended with a disastrous defeat, they tended to put the blame not only on the pro-German conspiracy of a group of top CUP leaders but also on the influence that pan-Islamic and pan-Turkist ideals might have had on the decision-making process.
This official historical view in Turkey long discouraged careful study of the intellectual, emotional, and political bases of the decision to go to war. Several scholarly revisions of this perspective do exist, however.4 In a thorough examination of the decision-making process, Mustafa Aksakal has demonstrated the larger elite consensus and agency in the making of the Ottoman alliance with Germany. Aksakal not only analyzed what he described as general nationalist feelings of revenge against the West in Ottoman public opinion after the Balkan wars but also the consensus of the Ottoman elite beyond the CUP leadership or Enver Paşa.5 Yet there is a discrepancy in the new historiography between the accounts of rational calculation leading to the Ottoman decision to forge an alliance with Germany and the outburst of nationalist awakening and “irrational” feelings of revenge against the imperialist powers in the post-Balkan War period. Why did the intellectuals and political leaders who were later identified with secular nationalism endorse a pan-Islamic interpretation of Ottoman international relations?6 Similarly, what was the relationship between the intellectuals with Islamist inclinations, such as Mehmet Akif Ersoy and Şehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi, and the anti-Western nationalist mood of the Ottoman public opinion in the post-Balkan War period?7 It is clear that there was no contradiction between the nationalist awakening and the triumph of a pan-Islamic interpretation of world politics on the eve of WWI. The role of a realist reinterpretation of pan-Islamic geopolitics as a moral critique of the existing system could explain the connections between the Ottoman perceptions of a hostile imperialist alliance against the Muslim world and the reassessment of pan-Islamism as a viable tool of Ottoman international policy.
A series of policy books on the topic of pan-Islamism written by journalists and CUP-connected intellectuals before WWI indicates the increasing appeal of a pan-Islamic alternative to Ottoman foreign policy. During the reign of Abdulhamid II, both the caliph and his Young Turk opposition knew about and partly adopted ideas of pan-Islamic solidarity in their critique of the Eurocentric world order. Both sides, however, rejected any idea of an anti-Western union for two main reasons: First, their critique of European policies did not support an abandonment of the diplomacy of civilization. While Abdulhamid II promoted the image of the Ottoman state as a progressive and civilized Muslim empire that had the right to rule over non-Muslims because of the nature of its enlightened stature, the Young Turks criticized the sultan for avoiding the essence of modern civilization: constitutional rule and participatory government.8 Neither imagined a radical break with the legacy of the Tanzimat diplomacy, namely, the fulfillment of the standards of civilization, the avoidance of military conflicts, and cooperation with the European powers.
When the Young Turks came to power in 1908, they hoped that European hostility to Islam and the Ottomans would gradually subside as they proved that Islam and constitutional and parliamentary government—or, in essence, Islam and modern civilization—were compatible under their rule. They also hoped that the new constitution would eliminate the secessionist demands of the Christian minorities and European interventions in order to protect the Christian citizens of the empire. In fact, the popularity of the Young Turk movement in the Islamic world showed the Muslim embrace of modernism in addition to the predominant belief that the modernization of Muslim societies would help establish their equality in the world order. The anti-imperialist aura of the Young Turk leaders was not incompatible with the belief that the new constitution and rapid reforms similar to those implemented in Japan would bring about the equal and respectful treatment of the Muslim Ottoman state by the European powers.9 The Young Turk slogan about making the Ottoman state the “Japan of the Near East” partly reflected a wish for closer relations with England and other Western powers after a series of rapid reforms and economic developments.10
There were intellectuals, mostly Islamists during the first years of the Second Constitutional Period from 1908 to 1911, who advocated the strengthening of Islamic solidarity and increased attention to both Muslim and non-Muslim societies in the non-Western world. Prominent among them were Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873–1936), Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857–1944), Şehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi (1865–1914), who all opposed Abdulhamid II’s regime and supported the 1908 constitutional revolution. They advocated rapid and radical modernization, though at times the social content of their reform projects was rather socially conservative compared to other modernist groups in the Ottoman state.11 Abdürreşid İbrahim voiced the concerns and nationalistic feelings of Muslims living under Russian rule, urging the Ottoman state to develop policies in this regard, and Şehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi similarly expressed the pan-Islamic visions of Egyptian and North African Muslims. None of these intellectuals, however, advocated a radical anti-Western foreign policy, and neither did they ask for a pan-Islamic mobilization. They drew attention to the problems of the Muslim world and urged the Ottoman state to take leadership in solving them and help Muslims gain political liberation within a realistic framework that would be in harmony with the Ottoman states interests and relationship with the West. Mostly gathered around the journals Sirat-i Müstakim and other Islamist publications, they became influential in public opinion but did not represent the policies of the Ottoman government between 1908 and 1911.12 Even though they had influential friends and sympathizers in the CUP leadership, their pan-Islamic ideals (or the pan-Turkic version of pan-Islamism) did not alter Ottoman foreign policy until the crisis of the 1912 Balkan wars.
The general Ottoman perception of their relationship with the European powers changed after the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911. During this crisis, the Ottomans expected international censure of Italy for its illegitimate actions under international law. The alliance system among the European powers and feelings of Christian solidarity in European public opinion prevented any European power’s intervention, however, even for the sake of realpolitik, and Italy was allowed to seize a Muslim majority territory from the Ottoman state. Because of Italian naval superiority, the Ottomans could not act directly to aid the resistance in Libya. Instead, the Ottoman government dispatched a group of military officers, which included Enver Paşa and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), to organize the nationalist resistance against the Italians. The very fact that the Ottoman officers had to rely on the resistance of the Libyan Arabs demonstrated that—contrary to what occurred during the French invasion of Tunisia in 1882—collective action based on principles of nationalism and Islamic solidarity had already become an effective international force by the early 1910s.13
During the period when the Ottoman government was busy organizing resistance against Italy and working on the diplomatic front, the Balkan states that had previously gained independence from Ottoman Turkey—namely, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro—made an offensive alliance and attacked the Ottoman state in October 1912. At the end of the bitter fighting, which included the ethnic cleansing of a large Muslim population from the Balkans to the interior of the Ottoman lands and a series of massacres, the Ottoman State had to agree to cede almost all of its European territories to the coalition of the Balkan states.14 Despite the European powers’ proclamations that they would not accept any changes in the status quo as a result of this war, at the end, the expansion of the Christian Balkan states at the expense of Ottoman lands was internationally recognized at the London Peace Conference of 1913.15 European support for the massacres the Christians committed against the Muslim population in the Balkans and the inability of the European state system and international law to prevent them buttressed the general perception among the Ottomans that there was a new Christian crusade against Muslims and that Ottoman Turkey had to consider new policies.
The figure who best represents the changes in the character and arguments of pan-Islamic thinking and its influence on Ottoman public opinion from 1908 to 1914 was Şehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi (1865–1914).16 A Sufi thinker with a keen interest in other mystical traditions and an opponent of Abdulhamid II’s regime,17 Ahmed Hilmi lived in Egypt and Fizan (Southern Libya) as an exile. On returning to Istanbul after the 1908 constitutional revolution, he published a journal titled İttihad-i Islam (Islamic unity). After eighteen issues, the journal was closed down because of Hilmi’s opposition to the CUP government, though he was allowed to continue publishing in other journals.
In his writings on Ottoman foreign policy and international relations, Ahmed Hilmi combined the perspectives of the Muslim populations in the periphery, who were mostly under the threat of Western colonial rule, and the interests of the Ottoman state. He argued that a vision of cultural, economic, social, and finally political solidarity among Muslims, at least the ideal of it, was not simply a moral duty but also an opportunity for the Ottomans to gain leverage in the international balance of power. Hilmi knew very well that the idea of a single, united Islamic state was a utopian fantasy. He did not advocate such a one-state global Islamic polity. What he aimed for was cooperation and solidarity to create a viable economic and military power for the Muslim world. A work he wrote just before the Italian invasion of Libya, titled Yirminci Asirda Alem-i İslam ve Avrupa (The Muslim World in the Twentieth Century and Europe),18 was revealing in its realism, as he suggested, parallel to Islamic unity, Ottoman participation in the European alliance system to avoid international isolation.
Even more surprising were Ahmed Hilmi’s cautious assessment of the European alliance system and his policy recommendation that an alliance with the camp of the British, French and Russian empires could be possible. Although he found an alliance with the Germany-led Axis coalition more natural and acceptable, he recommended rational and realist analysis to decide what was best for the Ottoman state.19 Regarding an alliance with the European imperial powers that had colonized Muslims, Ahmed Hilmi noted that, for Muslims under colonial rule, the best strategy would be to work quietly for these societies’ modernization and progress until the time was ripe for their liberation. This Muslim cooperation with their colonizers, under the condition of their freedom to pursue economic, social, and cultural development, was also something favorable and preferable to colonizers. The Ottoman caliph could thus offer it in his negotiations to enter the alliance system. In any case, the Ottomans would have to choose one of the two alliance systems in Europe, which would been more beneficial than isolation in view of the aggressive interests of the European powers.
Ahmed Hilmi’s work on pan-Islamism in 1911 is particularly interesting in its affirmation of the universality and desirability of European civilization in material, economic, and social progress. Yet he found contemporary European politics to be the worst in human history in terms of immorality and inhumanity. The contrast between Europe’s civilizational progress and savage political morality made Europe adopt a scientific theory to explain its immorality in terms of Darwinism and the survival of the fittest.20 Hilmi predicted that the relativism and moral apathy of materialism would spur a crisis in European civilization and connected the fear of the awakening of Asia and Africa in the speeches of European leaders, who increasingly talked about yellow and black perils, to their recognition of Europe’s moral decline.
Italy’s invasion of Libya and the subsequent Balkan wars helped in making the ideas of Ahmed Hilmi more a part of mainstream thought. On the one hand, Hilmi could appeal to the nationalist sentiments of Turkish Muslims. He wrote one of his most influential works, Türk Ruhu Nasil Yapihyor? (How is the Turkish spirit formed?), in 1913.21 In it, he urged the Muslim “Turks” left in Anatolia after the European territories of the Ottoman state were lost not to give up and to revive their national consciousness to recover the dignity and power of the Ottoman state. These statements did not mean that Ahmed Hilmi had become an ethnic nationalist. For his generation, the nationalism of the Turkish-speaking Muslims of the Ottoman state and a pan-Islamic foreign policy were not contradictory. While advocating a mobilization of the Anatolian Muslims, with further nationalist socialization, he envisioned that solidarity with Muslims living outside Ottoman Turkey would be a way for the Ottomans to escape their isolation and encirclement by the Christian great powers. Ottoman intellectuals who did not belong to the Islamist camp also began to consider pan-Islamism a rational and realistic option for Ottoman international policy. Ironically, it was Celal Nuri (İleri) (1882–1936), one of the Ottoman intellectuals whom Şehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi once severely criticized as being materialist,22 who offered the most sophisticated and influential formulation of pan-Islamism as a realist assessment of world politics in the post-Balkan War period.
THE REALIST PAN-ISLAMISM OF CELAL NURI AND İSMAIL NACI PELISTER
In his book titled İttihad-i İslam (Islamic unity), Celal Nuri formulated the most elaborate combination of a moral critique of the Eurocentric world order and realpolitik suggestions for pan-Islamism as a useful policy to overcome the international isolation of the Ottoman state.23 Celal Nuri was not an Islamist in terms of his vision of domestic policy; rather, he was sided with secular Westernists on many domestic reform policy issues. He had a vision of pan-Islamic solidarity under Ottoman leadership, however, and in fact saw non-Western solidarity extending from Japan and China to the Ottoman lands as the only possible means to overcome the colonial hegemony of the West and the isolation of the Ottoman state in international affairs. Nuri’s book illustrates how the anti-Western mood convinced many Ottoman intellectuals that the Ottoman state could increase its leverage in international affairs by assuming leadership in the Muslim world.
Celal Nuri, the son of a high-level Ottoman bureaucrat, was educated at the Mekteb-i Hukuk (School of Law). He worked first as a lawyer and then became a journalist, writing articles for journals such as Courrier d’Orient, Le Jeune Turc, Tanin, and Hak on topics ranging from international law and Muslim modernism to Ottoman diplomacy and Islamic solidarity.24 In an early book on international law, published in 1911, Nuri discussed the works of James Lorimer, Friedrich von de Martens, Henri Bonfils, and Paul Fauchille on the concept of international legality in relation to the actual “double standard” policies of Western powers toward the Ottoman state.25 After underlining that the European powers did not follow moral norms and the principles of international law consistently in their dealing with Muslim nations and the Ottoman state, Celal Nuri advocated the natural rights of state entities in international system. At the end of the book, Celal Nuri appended his article “Islam and the Necessity of Renewal,” thus demonstrating the intimate connections between the Ottoman demands for equality in international law and the long legacy of Muslim modernism, both trying to make the Islamic tradition conform to the standard of civilization and to defend (apologetically) Muslim cultures against the Orientalist judgment of inferiority. Celal Nuri’s prolific writings on questions of Islam and modernity and on the reasons for the decline of Islamic civilizations reflected the continuing relevance of the discourse of civilization in issues related to international law.26
In 1913 Celal Nuri published his major work on Islamic unity, İttihad-i İslam, presented as a discussion of the history, present, and future of the Muslim world. İllihad-i İslam starts with an extraordinary sense of anxiety about the increasingly insecure international order. Nuri mentions the division of Iran into spheres of influence by England and Russia, Morocco’s becoming a French protectorate, the Italian invasion of Libya, the expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe by the Balkan Christian alliance, and the support given to them by the great European powers. To these indications of the Western powers’ assault on Muslim societies, he adds the polarized division in Europe completed by the alliance among Britain, Russia, and France, which he feared could lead to a great confrontation between the forces of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism.27 Finally, Celal Nuri noted the awakening of the Far East, as evidenced not only by the rise of Japan but also by the establishment of a republican regime in China. All these contemporary events were put in an interpretative framework of the confrontation between an “Awakening East” and the “Imperialist West.” For him, the years of 1913–1914 heralded in a new era, a turning point in history, after which the international scene would definitely change and the world would never be the same. The whole world was preparing for a war, and the nature of imperialism was changing as the colonized nations were awakening to ask for their legal rights. Some nations were getting old, like France and England. Western public opinion was in fear of the awakening of some People’s, such as Muslims and Ethiopians (blacks). And, overall, financial and economic considerations were becoming crucially important in shaping the destiny of world history (3–4).
Celal Nuri reinterpreted the new scene in international affairs through the prism of a conflict between the East and the West, believing that the Western powers were provoking the Eastern nations. This interpretation led him to raise the major questions of his book (5): Was the gap between East and West eternal and unbridgeable? Could there be a rapprochement and détente between the two? Moreover, what would be the role of Muslims in this new relationship between the East and the West? What kinds of efforts should Muslims, who constituted one-sixth of humanity, as a nation defined by their religion, exert in order to liberate themselves from the chains of oppression and gain their rightful place in the civilized world? In all of Celal Nuri’s major questions, “Muslims” and the “Muslim world” were racial and civilizational categories comparable to the “black race” and the “yellow race,” not terms designating a community of believers. His questions show how the debates on the new world order in the global public sphere on the eve of WWI were framed and clarified through a language of Eastern and Western civilizations and how anticolonial and anti-Western critiques gained an advantage by using a discourse of pitting the moral East against the materialist Western civilization for their political causes.
His questions brought Celal Nuri to the issue of pan-Islamism in the sphere of international relations. He felt qualified to write a book on the Muslim world and pan-Islam because he had been involved in ideas of Islamic solidarity since the constitutional revolution in 1908—for about five years—and had communicated with Muslims from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Ottoman lands, India, Russia, and China about this topic (9). Nuri criticized those who immediately associated pan-Islamism with ideas of religious obscurantism and unrealistic utopian political visions (10–11). He wrote that those who thought in such overcautious ways would never understand what İttihad-i İslam meant. First of all, the Ottomans already shared the same destiny with the rest of the Muslim world, and thus they had to understand the reality of other Muslim societies, even if they could not help them. Whatever the final decision about policies would be, the Ottomans should know everything about the conditions in the Muslim world in order to decide whether pan-Islamic policies would lead to great dangers or to great benefits for them. Second, Nuri rejected the identification of pan-Islamism with either Abdulhamid II’s regime or with the conservative reaction against constitutionalism and modernity. After noting that he himself had joined the struggle for freedom and a constitution, he emphasized that the international problems of the three hundred million Muslims in the world were questions of their progress and liberty and thus should be approached as a political issue, not a religious one.
Third, Celal Nuri insisted that the question of the destiny of the Islamic world could not be separated from the Ottoman efforts to gain full equality in international relations. He observed a change in the trends of the time and developments in Europe that could render the vision of Islamic unity highly relevant for “how the Ottoman government could achieve full equality, both in theory and practice, with the other governments” (479). In this Ottoman search for equality, the Ottoman state should continue and even radicalize the domestic policies of Westernization and modernization, which were essential not only for the well-being of the Ottomans but also for the elimination of the problems that had led to outside interference. For example, the court system should be improved to such high levels that even the enemies of the Ottoman state would not be able to find any defects in it. The idea of Islamic unity becomes necessary to achieve this European modeled progress (480–482). Moreover, Muslim solidarity could help the Ottomans gain the necessary strength to avoid any pretensions of outside protection, as the Ottomans could not trust the promises and actions of the Western great powers.
The secular side of Celal Nuri’s pan-Islamic ideas can best be seen in his vision of solidarity with non-Muslim Asian nationalists in China, India, and Japan. He saw a potential alliance between the Japanese and the Chinese deriving from their shared problems with the penetration and hegemony of the West.28 He noted that, were it not for the rise of Japanese power in East Asia, China would also be divided and colonized to be the second India in Asia.29 Japanese success in modernizing and self-strengthening had not only stopped the further decline of Asia but had also heralded the age of Asia’s, and especially China’s, awakening. Nuri thought it unfortunate that Japan and China had conflicts with each other. If only Japan would improve its policy toward China to gain the hearts of the Chinese nationalists, the future of Asian awakening would be much brighter. Instead of fighting with each other, China and Japan should cooperate, in accordance with the “second principle of Darwin,” so that they could both survive against the outside threats.30 Beyond Chinese-Japanese cooperation, Celal Nuri also envisioned a larger solidarity of all Asians (143).31
Celal Nuri’s ideas on Islamic civilization were similar to salafi modernism in the sense that he condemned the Muslim decline after the medieval ages with reference to an idealized image of a normative original Islam. Thus he did not accept that Islamic civilization was essentially inferior to European civilization. For him, Islamic civilization was capable of attaining a stature equal to Europe’s if Muslims would only recover its original merits. Thus Celal Nuri wrote extensively about the decline of Islamic civilization, the deviation of Muslims from the true standards of civilization, their decay, and the urgent need for them to change. For him, Muslims had to renew the process of independent thinking, ijtihad, in their own traditions. An Islamic renaissance and revival were still the essential components in Celal Nuri’s vision of Muslims taking their rightful role in the international community, and in that sense he was ironically internalizing some of the Orientalist arguments that sustained the European discourse of civilization (see, especially, 166–175). Nevertheless, Nuri also made a distinction between the industrial-technical civilization and the spiritual civilization of Europe to emphasize that, while Muslims were behind in the first arena, they were superior to Europe when it came to spiritual and moral issues.
Celal Nuri presented a highly detailed account of the state of various Muslim nationalities such as the Arabs, Turks, Iranians, and the Indian and South East Asian Muslims. He emphasized the already existing ties that bound and united all Muslims. These were the institution of caliphate, the pilgrimage, transnational Muslim educational institutions and curricula, and also transnational Islamic literature (292–320). These shared ideas and institutions constituted the minimal requirement for Muslim unity. For him, however, the essential unity of the Muslims still derived from their common need to respond to European Orientalism and imperialism at the same time. Thus he wrote extensive chapters on European colonial policies and negative Christian and European images of Muslims in order to outline the potential strategies to oppose them. His discussion of European colonial policies underlined differences in assimilation and discrimination policies. In arguments similar to those of Halil Halid, he suggested that if the British Empire had given the same rights and autonomy it had accorded Australia, Canada, and South Africa to all its colonies, the empire would have been respected by all people under its rule as the champion of real civilization, and it would have itself benefited economically and politically (150). In his critique of the predominant practices of international relations, Nuri made frequent references to “hukuk-u düvvel,” the rights of nations, and to normative international laws.
Celal Nuri’s book discussed issues that were most salient for Ottoman public opinion in the years between the Balkan wars and WWI. This was a work addressed to the Ottoman public to define the intellectual and interpretive basis of grand policy in the situation of a world war. In fact, Nuri stated his expectation of a clash among imperial powers, which, he thought, could allow colonized people to change their destinies if they could seize the opportunity (242). In that sense, his anti-imperialist call for Islamic and Asian unity could only mean an alliance with Germany against the three major imperial powers in the Muslim world when the Ottoman government had to decide to choose a side after the outbreak of such a war.
Celal Nuri’s book is telling evidence that Ottoman intellectuals did not accord identical meanings to “pan-Islamism” and “Islamism,” as he took the side of Westernists against conservative Islamists on several issues, such as the question of women’s rights.32 Even when Celal Nuri wrote a book on the Prophet Muhammad to show his greatness, in response to the unfair and biased depiction of him in European writings (such as those by Reinhart Dozy, Aloys Sprenger, and Ernest Renan),33 he tried to underline that he also disagreed with some Muslim writers who perceived the Prophet as superhuman.34 His defense of Islam against Orientalism did not qualify him as an Islamist in the domain of domestic reform politics.
Finally, it is important to underline his disagreements with Westernists like Abdullah Cevdet, who did not agree with Nuri’s anti-Western stance during the Balkan wars, which reached the level of hatred and revenge. In a polemic between Abdullah Cevdet and Celal Nuri, it became clear that Cevdet did not support a radical condemnation and hatred of the imperialist West, as this might lead to a rejection of the Enlightenment West as well. In response, Celal Nuri noted that he made a distinction between the good Enlightenment West and the bad imperialist West, and that his anti-Westernism did not extend to everything about Western culture, much less to modernity.35
In short, Celal Nuri’s ideas represent the shift in the modernist segment of Ottoman intellectuals toward pan-Islamism as a realpolitik option that would be beneficial to Ottoman international relations. His anti-Westernism was limited to the perceived lack of morality in European policies in world affairs and was accompanied by a radical belief in the modernization of Muslim societies according to the Western model. Similar to the Islamist critiques of the world order as seen in the writings of Ahmed Hilmi, there was still a strong affirmation of the universality of modernity and European-modeled modernization projects.
Another good example of the Ottoman elite’s interest in pan-Islamic policies as a way to overcome international isolation in the face of the perceived Christian and Western threat can be seen in the policy papers of İsmail Naci Pelister, a very prolific Young Turk leader who used the pen name Habil Adem. A philosophy doctor, journalist, and well connected CUP member working for the intelligence apparatus of the Ottoman state, İsmail Naci Pelister became the most articulate advocate of a new realist pan-Islamist policy for the Ottoman state after the Balkan wars. He published most of his policy papers under a dual cover, always citing a fake European scholar as the real author and attributing the translation to “Habil Adem.” İsmail Naci wrote three important books between the era of the Balkan wars and WWI, all related to the foreign policy of the Ottoman state. The first, Mağlub Milletler Nasil İntikam Alirlar (How defeated nations take revenge), called the Ottomans to remember the achievements of the German nation after its conquest by the armies of Napoleon. The Germans recovered fast and took their revenge by defeating the French armies and taking their lost territories back.36 İsmail Naci (Habil Adem) suggested that the Ottomans should take instruction from the German experience of defeat and empower themselves to regain their lost territories and dignity. His second book, Londra Konferansindaki Mes’elelerden Anadoluda Türkiya Yaşayacak mi? Yaşamayacak mi? (One of the matters of the London Conference: Will Turkey survive in Anatolia?), discussed the European policy debates, after the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan wars, about the final status of a small Turkish state in Anatolia.37 His third, and for my purposes the most important book, was Muharebeden Sonra: Hilafet Siyaseti ve Türklük Siyaseti (After the [Balkan] wars: The policy on the caliphate and Turkism).38 It merits closer scrutiny, to grasp the triumph of pan-Islamic policy notions among the Ottoman government elite. The Arabic translation of the book was published in Istanbul in 1913, probably with the sponsorship of the government, to be used for propaganda purposes among Arabic-speaking Muslims.39
Like Celal Nuri, İsmail Naci tried to offer a realistic policy option for the Ottoman Empire by combining the discourse of pan-Islamism with the Ottoman grand policy against the European colonial powers. What he proposed was a complete restructuring of Ottoman foreign policy to adapt to the new reality that the Ottoman state did not have any territory left in Europe, arguing that the previously neglected Muslim populations in Asia would be the basis of Ottoman survival and revival. In many ways, İsmail Naci criticized the Ottoman elite for being too Eurocentric in their focus on the Christian majority provinces of their state and asked them to forget about the European losses and concentrate instead on the heartland of Ottoman Turkey. With this perspective, he condemned the traditional Tanzimat policies of cooperation with the Western powers, blaming them as the roots of the contemporary weakness of the Ottoman Empire.40 İsmail Naci’s condemnation of the legacy of the Tanzimat exemplifies the post-Balkan wars pessimism about the prospects of the Ottoman state’s surviving through appeals to international law and the diplomacy of cooperation with Western powers.
İsmail Naci emphasized the sadness that the Ottoman defeats in the Balkan wars had caused in the hearts of Muslims in India, Egypt, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Tripoli (Libya). As a solution to the Ottoman crisis of international isolation, he suggested an Islamization and nationalization of Ottoman foreign relations with a focus on Asia. Very observant of the inter-power rivalries in Europe, he predicted that Germany would support a new pan-Islamic policy in the Ottoman state because of its competition with Russia. İsmail Naci expected Britain to respond negatively to the new policy because of its dislike of the connections between the Ottoman caliphate institutions and Indian nationalism. He refused, however, to separate the institution of the caliphate from Turkey’s foreign policy, despite the risk of attracting the British Empire’s ire. He perceived pan-Islamic internationalism under the leadership of the Ottoman caliphate as not being contradictory to the nationalist awakening of specific Muslim countries such as Egypt and Iran, as such transnational solidarity would strengthen their nationalist struggles against the colonial regimes. İsmail Naci noted that the British had responded to Ottoman-centered Islamic solidarity by positing the idea of an Egyptian-based caliphate and provoking anti-Ottoman sentiments in Syria under the pretext of uniting all Arabs within the British Empire. But he was confident that Arab Muslims would come to see the fallacy of a plan of unity within the British Empire. Even if the Arab People’s gained independence without the protection of the caliphate in Istanbul, as long as this happened outside the protection of the British Empire, it would still be beneficial to Ottoman Turkey. He thus proposed stronger international cooperation between Iran and the Ottoman state, as both could benefit from such solidarity. With regards to India, he noted that the revival of the caliphate would give Muslims in India dignity, glory, and fame and would strengthen their determination and resistance to British colonialism. Finally, İsmail Naci wrote about Afghanistan’s importance in the new Ottoman policy, evoking the dream of making that country something like the industrial and neutral Belgium of Asia. He praised Russian Muslims for their achievements in combining faith and modernity and counted their economic and political power as one of the potential benefits to the Ottomans of a pan-Islamic policy.41
The appeal of İsmail Naci’s modernist and secular interpretation of the caliphate as a means to increase Ottoman international power derived from the problems in the relationship between the Ottoman state and the European powers. The Ottoman relationship with the rest of the Islamic world became secondary and derivative of the primacy of its relationship with the Western powers, not a religious obligation or an internationalist value in itself. After all, it was not Ottoman pan-Islamism that initially caused problems in the Ottoman relationship with Europe but the crisis of Ottoman relations with the European powers that led to an interest in pan-Islamism as a realpolitik alternative. İsmail Naci’s depiction of the caliphate as an instrument of the grand policy of the Ottoman state led to its secularization and was perhaps indicative of the path that ended with its abolition during the 1920s.
PAN-ISLAMIC MOBILIZATION DURING WWI
One major issue for the Ottomans in imagining a military confrontation with Britain and France, which were usually seen as the cradle and most developed examples of Western civilization, was the sour feeling of fighting with a society from whom they had learned modernity. In fact, a patriotic and pan-Islamic play depicting discussions among Ottoman military academy students around the time of the Ottoman decision to join the Great War in Europe, titled Halife Ordusu Misir ve Kafkas’da (The caliph’s army in Egypt and Caucasia), contains a scene expressing this Ottoman dilemma. In response to the excitement over the hope that the Great War would bring doom to Europe and could mean the salvation of the Ottoman state, a student named Subhi, who had previously studied in Europe, asserts that he is not happy to see the “bankruptcy of a great civilization of Europe” from which the Ottomans learned so much.42 The dilemma facing Westernized Ottoman intellectuals advocating a war against the cradle of the modernity they emulated could only be overcome by the fact that by 1914 the Ottomans had already made a sharp distinction between the ideal of universal modernity and its European homeland. One intellectual who wrote extensively about overcoming European-centered modernization projects and creating an authentic Islamic modernity was Said Halim Paşa.
Between 1913 and 1917, at the time when a realist vision of pan-Islamic solidarity was becoming dominant in Ottoman public opinion, Said Halim Paşa (1864–1921) was the prime minister of the Ottoman cabinet. A respected Islamist intellectual, Said Halim Paşa expressed criticism about the legacy of the Ottoman emulation of Europe and the notion of Muslim modernity and cultural Westernization among the Ottoman elite’s.43 By 1914, however, his ideas about Western civilization and Islamic solidarity were no longer exceptional in Ottoman public opinion.
Said Halim Paşa was born in Cairo in 1863. He was the grandson of Mehmed Ali Paşa (the founder of the modern Egyptian state) and the son of Vezir Halim Paşa, who had been exiled to Istanbul by the Khedive \İsmail. He completed his higher education in Switzerland in the field of political science during the mid-1880s and, on his return to Istanbul, held government positions at various offices. Because of his ties with the Young Turks, he had to leave Istanbul under the pressure of Sultan Abdulhamid II and lived in Cairo and Europe. He supported Young Turk activities financially and intellectually during his exile and returned to Istanbul in 1908 after the constitutional revolution. As a member of the inner circle of the Committee of Union and Progress, Said Halim Paşa was appointed to the senate and worked for the Young Turk cabinets in high-level positions, culminating in his appointment as prime minister in 1913. Having also named himself foreign minister in the cabinet he formed after 1913, he was in positions of power when the Ottoman cabinet decided to enter the Great War on the side of Germany. During the war, his influence declined, and he resigned from his post in 1917. He was interrogated after WWI to investigate his responsibility for the war and the Armenian genocide. Exiled to Malta in 1919, Said Halim Paşa was assassinated by an Armenian in Rome on December 6, 1921.
Said Halim Paşa’s main ideas on an Islamic alternative to Western modernity were formulated in seven essays originally written in French and later translated into the Ottoman language.44 He presented his vision of creating authentic Islamic political institutions, which would merge the spirit of modernity with the cultural values of Islam and avoid any superficial imitation of the West. For him, creating an authentic Islamic modernity was a precondition for the decolonization and awakening of the Muslim world. In other words, political independence from Western hegemony in the international sphere had to be accompanied by independence from copying Western civilization in domestic reforms. Yet his rejection of cultural Westernization was not antimodern, as he believed in the necessity of reviving Muslim civilization by modernizing it. He proposed a deeper and better understanding of universal modernity beyond its implementations in Christian European societies. This would liberate the Ottomans from the necessity of imitation and allow them to create their own synthesis between Islam and modernity.
It is important to note that making a distinction between universal modernity and the Christianity of Europe had always been a main characteristic of the Ottoman observation of Europe. Said Halim Paşa, however, felt that the previous generation of the Ottoman elite had failed in this effort, mostly because of their ignorance about the essence of modernity and their own personal interest. He recommended a new effort at cultural de-Westernization, accompanied by a revival of the universal norms of Islam in harmony with the spirit of modernity. Halim’s critique of the West and Westernizing reforms was based on a universalist and humanist mission. He believed that a rediscovery of Islamic norms and values and their implementation would help the Muslim world gain a noble and equal role in the community of world civilizations and begin to make a positive contributions to the world.45
In terms of the more immediate historical context, Said Halim Paşa wrote against the background of the Great War. He saw the ethnic-racial conflicts as evidence of an inappropriate and in fact dangerous Western notion of nation and considered nationalism to be a dangerous idea not only for Muslims but for the whole world. A perception of the decline of Western civilization was implicit in his arguments. He was for internationalism in general, and he saw Islam as one of the positive internationalizing forces, both in history and in the future.
Despite his ideas about authentic Muslim modernity, there is no indication that Said Halim Paşa implemented any specific policy decisions as prime minister that differentiate him from the other modernists he severely criticized in his books. On the eve of WWI and during the war, his pan-Islamism did not stand out as radically anti-Western compared to the dominant trends among Ottoman intellectuals. There is no indication that Said Halim Paşa took any personal initiative in policies regarding the Islamic world against the opinions of the other members of his government. His ideas about the international order and Muslim internationalism, however, were more in harmony with the post-Balkan War trends in the Ottoman public opinion. Thus, at the top of the Ottoman decision-making process, Said Halim Paşa gave consent to the anti-imperialist and pan-Islamic decisions of Young Turk leaders such as Enver Paşa.
After the Ottoman government entered WWI in early November 1914 and started the mobilization, it initiated propaganda efforts directed at the Muslim populations under colonial rule and utilized the pan-Islamic ideas and networks for its war efforts. With the establishment of Cemiyet-i Hayriye-yi İslamiye (Benevolent Society of Islam) in January 1913, some organizational preparations were already under way to make Istanbul the center of a pan-Islamic network in the aftermath of the Balkan War. The organization was meant to be an organ of cultural interaction and humanitarian cooperation in the Muslim world. The Cemiyet’s cadre included Said Halim Paşa, its first secretary general; Abd al-Aziz Shawish (d. 1929); Salih al-Sharif Tunisi (1866–1921); Shakib Arslan (1869–1946); and Sharif Ali Haydar Pasha (the senator representing Mecca; d. 1935).46 During WWI, all the major personalities of pan-Islamic thought of the preceding two decades ended up cooperating with the efforts of the Ottoman government. Those who were from the Islamist camp and leading figures from the Arab world were especially active in giving Ottoman Turkey’s pan-Islamic campaign a high intellectual profile and prestige: Abd al-Aziz Shawish, Muhammad Farid, Halil Halid, Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Shakib Arslan, Salih al-Sharif al-Tunisi, Al-Hadj Abdullah, and Abdurreşid İbrahim47 were some of the key participants in this campaign.
The wartime Ottoman government mobilized pan-Islamic activists and ideas to foment Muslim disobedience against its Christian-colonizer enemies, while ironically calling for cooperation with its Christian-colonizing allies such as Austria-Hungary. Previous research has already documented various examples of Ottoman and German propaganda.48 What is important for the purposes of this study are the implications of the propaganda battle between Ottoman Turkey and Germany, on one side, and the British, French, and Russian empires, on the other, for the legitimacy of Western colonial rule and the normative principles of the new world order that would emerge at the end of the conflict.
First of all, Ottoman efforts to gain the support of nominally independent Muslim nations such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Morocco failed as none of these countries was in a position to challenge the hegemony of Britain, France, and Russia. Thus Ottoman propaganda had to appeal to public opinion, to the anonymous Muslim individual and his religious beliefs. In a play titled Halife Ordusu Misir ve Kafkas’da (The caliph’s army in Egypt and Caucasia), for example, it was the ordinary sincere Muslims of Egypt or Caucasia who resisted the British and Russian armies and welcomed the armies of the Ottoman caliphate.49 The play also depicts Muslim soldiers in the British army deserting and joining the Ottoman side. This type of patriotic play was instrumental in convincing the Ottoman public that pan-Islamic notions of solidarity could be beneficial to the Ottomans to compensate their disadvantages in terms of military power and capability.
Second, Ottoman propaganda primarily appealed to the doctrines of the Islamic faith with regard to fraternity with believers, the rejection of non-Muslim oppressive rulers, and obligations to the caliphate. All these propaganda items implied a deviation from the Ottoman tradition of international relations since the Tanzimat period and contradicted the fact that Turkey was the ally of two Christian powers that were also infamous for their treatment of their Muslim subjects. For example, the Ottoman government first commissioned a proclamation of jihad from the chief religious authority of the empire, declaring it on November 11, 1914.50 This proclamation was not a logical result of earlier pan-Islamic thought. Up to WWI, pan-Islamism was not an ideology of hatred toward the West or a philosophy of wholesale Muslim revolt. It was rather a moral and later practical-political critique of the injustices and double standards of the Eurocentric world order. Its goal was to create a world system in which the Muslim world could gain a respected position of equality with other regions and civilizations and join humanity’s progress in economy, social life, and political maturity. In that sense, the Ottoman propaganda pamphlets diverged from the main internationalist outlook of pan-Islamism in emphasizing the religious duties of all Muslims to wage jihad and obey the caliph. In fact, some of the anticolonial Hindu nationalists of India who aimed to collaborate with the Ottoman campaigns against the British Empire during WWI were very disturbed by the faith-based language of Islamic solidarity that characterized the Ottoman propaganda in India.51 Although the jihad proclamation was distributed in the Muslim world in the Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Tatar languages, it was soon understood that such a call alone could not lead to any organized rebellion of Muslims under colonial rule unless it was backed up by a victorious Ottoman army.
Nevertheless, Ottoman propaganda was instrumental in further eroding the legitimacy of the colonial powers in the Muslim world by emphasizing religious and national self-determination against foreign rule. In general, Ottoman pan-Islamic ideas succeeded in popularizing a notion of self-determination for the whole Islamic world. The main idea ran parallel with the anti-imperialist demands of nationalists. “Egypt for Egyptians,” “Africa for Africans,”52 and “Asia for Asians” could all be contained within the pan-Islamic emphasis on solidarity and liberation, which meant that the Muslim world should belong to Muslims. This propaganda also helped to radicalize the already existing anti-Western critiques.
The British, French, and Russian empires had to respond to Ottoman pan-Islamic propaganda, not simply by preventing communication and contact between their subjects and Ottoman leaders but also by reacting to the accusations of the oppression of Muslims and maintaining military reserves against a potential Muslim revolt. Thus the empires ruling Muslim populations had to claim that their rule was good for Muslim rights and demands. Moreover, the British government played with the idea of Arab national independence from Ottoman rule and the possibility of an Arab caliphate as an alternative to the Ottoman caliphate. The idea of an Arab caliphate had intellectual origins that are traceable to the early 1880s, and this project could be revived by encouraging its Arab supporters.53 British agents succeeded in facilitating an Arab rebellion against the Ottoman state under the leadership of Sherif Hussein.
Although the Ottoman center turned to pan-Islamism when its relationship with the Western powers deteriorated and it needed an alternative alliance to strengthen its international position, it did not invent pan-Islamism but rather utilized already existing ideas and emotions. The Ottoman turn to pan-Islamism was partly a result of the failure of Eurocentric international society, which had pushed an important member of the system since the 1840s to formulate a radical alternative. The exclusion of the Ottoman state was also an indication of deep crisis within the existing international system. The Ottoman state’s turn to pan-Islamic mobilization proved that the appeal of Eurocentric international society had expired and could never return to its old shape after WWI. In that sense, despite their defeat of Germany and the Ottoman state in WWI both the British and French empires had to accept a renegotiation and redefinition of the world order. The pan-Islamic challenge thus played an important role in the emergence of new normative values and power structures after WWI.
Although the Japanese government entered WWI as an ally of the British Empire, toward the end of the war, British intelligence reports noted a surge in anti-British and pan-Asianist ideas and activities in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia.54 There emerged a stronger and more articulate formulation of pan-Asianism, insisting on moral critiques of the colonial world order and combining them with realist arguments for Japan’s leadership in a desirable state of Asian solidarity.
Japanese pan-Asianism, together with the larger trends in Asia, went through a period of transformation during WWI. Two aspects of this transformation are crucial: the first was the formulation of Japan’s international mission to support nationalist movements in Asia and the definition of this support as the most beneficial path for Japanese national interests. Based on this argument, Japanese pan-Asianists, in collaboration with nationalist leaders in Asia, hoped that Japan would end its alliance with Britain to form a race-based alliance in an awakening Asia. The second was the influence of anti-Western ideas coming from romantic critics of Western civilization in Europe and America. This influence strengthened the idealist conception of Asian civilization as an alternative to the “decadent West.”
Both these developments are evident in the formative period of the thought of Ôkawa Shûmei, (1886–1957), who was the most prominent and influential Asianist ideologue of imperial Japan in the three decades from WWI to the end of WWII. As the leading theoretician of Japan’s mission in the leadership of Asian unity, Ôkawa Shûmei dedicated his life to the cause of Asian revival and Japan’s national reconstruction.55 Among the Asianist intellectuals, Ôkawa formulated the fiercest anti-Western arguments, and he became famous for his “clash of civilizations” thesis, forecasting a military confrontation between the United States and Japan as early as the mid-1920s. It was Ôkawa Shûmei whom occupation authorities singled out at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as the chief civilian ideologue of Japanese expansionism.56 Furthermore, Ôkawa’s prolific writings on Asian nationalism incorporated India and the Muslim world into the Japanese conception of Asia, and he was one of the pioneers of the field of Islamic studies in imperial Japan.57 In addition to his influential position as the most prolific intellectual of Japanese pan-Asianism, Ôkawa also played an important role as a radical nationalist thinker. As a scholar of Asian studies, he held high-ranking research positions at the Manchurian Railway Company. Given his ability to combine scholarship with activism, Ôkawa’s career during WWI provides us with a unique chance to investigate the ideas of pan-Asianism in their political context.58
Ôkawa Shûmei was born in 1886 in northern Japan and received a good education typical of the children of the local elite in the late Meiji period. After mastering the Chinese classics and improving his knowledge of European languages, Ôkawa immersed himself in reading Western classics ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel during his high school education.59 As was common for well-educated youth in his time, Ôkawa became familiar with the religion of Christianity as early as his middle-school student years and was influenced by Christian universalism, though he did not become a full Christian by accepting baptism. During his youth, Ôkawa also became interested in socialism and anarchism.60 Soon, however, he began to feel a tension between his nationalism and socialist ideas, criticizing and rejecting the pacifist stance toward the Russo-Japanese War adopted by many leading socialists.
Ôkawa chose to enroll in the Oriental philosophy section of the Faculty of Letters when he entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1907. During his university years, he focused particularly on Indian philosophy and religion, guided by the famous scholar of Buddhism and religious studies Anesaki Masaharu. Ôkawa’s involvement in Dôkai, an indigenized Christian church, from 1910 to 1913 is exemplary of the cosmopolitan intellectual inclinations that marked his university years. Dôkai was established by Matsumura Kaiseki (1859–1939) in 1907 in order to offer a Japanese and Confucian interpretation of Christianity.61 To this end, Ôkawa edited the journal Michi (The way), which espoused the integration of Eastern and Western cultures as one of the main missions of Confucianized Christianity. Dôkai’s flexible and tolerant approach to different religions and its criticism of the imposition of Western values through Christianity influenced Ôkawa’s search for alternative universal values.
The most important turning point in Ôkawa’s life came in the year 1913, when he exhibited a dramatic change of purpose in life after reading Sir Henry Cottons New India or Indian in Transition, which he had bought by chance at a secondhand bookstore in Kanda.62 According to Ôkawa’s autobiographical account, reading about the injustices of British colonial rule in India in Sir Henry Cotton’s New India changed his apolitical interest in Indian religions into a political commitment to the liberation of Asia. The book made him realize “the tragedy of India under British rule,” transforming him “from a complete cosmopolitan into an Asianist.”63 Ôkawa often recalled how he was angered and grieved by the contrast between the greatness of the ancient Indian civilization that he had studied and the tragic condition of contemporary India; this anger made him “a warrior who dedicated his life to the revival of Asia.”64 Thus, at the age of twenty-seven, Ôkawa started his long career as an activist and prolific Asianist scholar.
Okakura Tenshin is usually referred to as the pioneer of Japanese pan-Asianism and Japan’s intellectual “revolt against the West.”65 In reality, Okakura’s books were not widely known in Japan until the 1930s. Published in English, they were addressed to educated Westerners interested in Asian art and to the Indian nationalists with whom Okakura had become familiar during his trip to India in 1902.66 Until the 1930s, Okakura Tenshin’s ideas penetrated Japanese Asianist discourse mainly through Ôkawa Shûmei’s appropriation and interpretation of them. Okakura Tenshin greatly influenced Ôkawa, who became familiar with his view of Asia while attending Okakura’s lectures at Tokyo University during the 1910 academic year.67
Just a few months after he became interested in Asianism, Ôkawa published articles by two Indian nationalists who were in Tokyo, Anagarika Dharmapala and Muhammad Barakatullah, in the journal that he was editing.68 Both of these articles were about Indian nationalism and patriotism and contained a critique of colonialism and racism. Anagarika Dharmapala was a leading intellectual of the Buddhist revival and the independence movement in Sri Lanka.69 He went to Japan several times en route to the United States. Dharmapala’s article was devoted to a critique of the “white supremacist” ideology, affirming the equality of colored races with the white race. Muhammad Barakatullah was a Muslim Indian nationalist who arrived to Japan in 1909 in order to assume the professorship of Hindi-Urdu languages at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. Remaining in Tokyo until 1913, Barakatullah published an anti-British journal called Islamic Fraternity. His article in Michi was a short history of the Indian national awakening and included strong condemnations of British colonial policies. It was translated from English into Japanese by Hatano Uhô, a graduate of Tôa Dôbun Shoin,70 who cooperated with Barakatullah in the publication of Islamic Fraternity.71 That fact that Ôkawa could solicit and publish articles by Indian nationalists indicates that he had already become connected with both the Japanese network of Asianists and the circle of Indian nationalists in exile.
In July 1914, about a year after Ôkawa became interested in Asian nationalism, the Great War broke out in Europe, and Japan entered on the side of Great Britain in fulfillment of its commitments to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. During WWI, Ôkawa Shûmei synthesized the critique of Western civilization he inherited from Okakura Tenshin with the policy vision of an Asian Monroe Doctrine to formulate an anti-Western conception of the Japanese national mission to aid the anticolonial nationalist movements. Two experiences shaped Ôkawa’s ideas dramatically during this period. The first was his cooperation with the Indian revolutionaries, and the second was the influence of romantic criticism of Western civilization, especially through his association with the French poet Paul Richard.
ASIA AS A SITE OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
The particular features of Ôkawa’s Asianism can best be seen in his political campaign seeking Japanese support for the Indian nationalist movement. In actuality, the idea of supporting Indian nationalism against Great Britain was unrealistic and unthinkable for the Japanese government, given Japan’s commitment to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. To influence government policy and public opinion, Ôkawa Shûmei and the Indian revolutionaries visiting Japan redefined the Asian Monroe Doctrine to insist that a decline in the strength of the Western powers in Asia should make Japan more confident in demanding regional leadership. They also proposed that, given its yellow race identity, Japan would gain more by becoming the “elder brother” and leader of a free Asia than by remaining an isolated member in the club of great powers. Meanwhile, Ôkawa promoted a historical interpretation of WWI as the harbinger of Asian awakening and the decline of Western civilization, suggesting that the revival of Asia would shape the future of humanity and the new international order.
When the Great War started in Europe, the revolutionary Ghadar Party of Indian nationalists, with German financial backing, hoped to create a base in Japan for the shipment of arms to India and dissemination of anti-British propaganda.72 They assumed that, because of their shared Asian and colored race identity, the Japanese public would support Indian nationalists. Two Indian nationalists who came to Japan during the war, Rash Behari Bose and Herambalal Gupta, contacted Ôkawa Shûmei through their connection with Muhammad Barakatullah. When Ôkawa, Bose, and Gupta met in Tokyo in 1915, they planned activities aimed at influencing Japanese public opinion. Before Bose and Gupta could do much in Tokyo, however, the British intelligence service became aware of their activities, and soon the British embassy asked the Japanese authorities to arrest or deport the Indian revolutionaries from Japan. This demand forced the Japanese government to act against Japan’s Asianist groups supporting Indian nationalists.
When a very prominent leader of the Indian nationalist movement, Lala Lajpat Rai, visited Japan in November 1915, his presence gave Ôkawa and the Indian nationalists a chance to organize larger meetings to attract the participation of prominent Japanese intellectuals and politicians.73 On November 27, 1915, the Indian Association in Japan held a large function under the pretext of celebrating the coronation of the Taishô Emperor. This event was attended by many Indian and Japanese participants, the latter mostly chosen by Ôkawa Shûmei.74 In his speech during the reception, Lala Lajpat Rai mentioned his respect for Japan’s imperial family and then proceeded to call on Japan to take the leadership role in Asia and work for Asian liberation. Anesaki Masaharu, a scholar of Buddhism and Ôkawa’s supervisor at Tokyo University, and Oshikawa Masayoshi, a member of the Japanese parliament, spoke in a tone sympathetic to the cause of Indian nationalists, emphasizing the close historical ties between Japan and India, their common culture, and the need to improve their relationship.75
The day after this event, which Indian revolutionaries considered a big success for their cause, Japan’s Home Ministry issued orders to deport both Rash Behari Bose and Herambalal Gupta, giving them such short notice that they could only leave on ships going to a British-controlled territory. Knowing that their deportation could mean a possible death sentence for them, the Indian nationalists and their Japanese supporters tried to convince the authorities to extend the deadline so that Gupta and Bose could depart on an America-bound ship. They also attempted to influence public opinion by visiting Japanese newspapers. Finally, after their efforts to change the deportation order had failed, Gupta and Bose asked for the protection of Tôyama Mitsuru, the charismatic leader of Japan’s ultranationalist Asianist groups. Tôyama arranged a hiding place where they could evade police arrest. This case illustrates the ambivalent relationship and tensions between Asianist groups and the Japanese government, as the Japanese police could not challenge Tôyama Mitsuru and the whole network of the Kokuryûkai to capture Bose and Gupta. Public interest in this escape story led members of the Japanese parliament from all political parties to criticize the government for treating the Indian nationalists as common criminals and for complying submissively with the requests of the British embassy.76
Wartime Japanese interest in India did not end with this escape story. When Rabindranath Tagore, a celebrated Indian poet and the first Asian to be honored with a Nobel Prize in literature, visited Japan in 1915, he sparked a lively debate about Japan’s Asian identity with his provocative speeches.77 Tagore’s highly publicized speeches introduced to the Japanese audience the vision of Asian unity that he and Okakura Tenshin shared during their conversations and correspondence until 1912. Ôkawa and Indian nationalists were very pleased with the political implications of Tagore’s message. Benefiting from the Japanese public’s rising interest in India after Tagore’s visit, Ôkawa published his first book on Indian nationalism, Indo ni Okeru Kokuminleki Undô no Genjyô oyobi sono Yurai (The current state of the nationalist movement in India and its origins).78 To prepare the book, Ôkawa primarily relied on Lala Lajpat Rai’s writings and on the accounts he heard from Indian revolutionaries in Tokyo.79 Ôkawa’s main argument was the same as that of the Indian nationalists, namely, that the cause of unrest in India was general dissatisfaction with British rule, as opposed to the terror and propaganda efforts of a small group of revolutionaries to which the British side attributed responsibility. Ôkawa also emphasized the double standard and deception in Britain’s propaganda claims that it was fighting for democracy and freedom in WWI, given the oppressiveness of British rule in India.80 Ôkawa concluded his book by reiterating the necessity of Asian unity and of Japanese assistance in the struggle for Indian independence, quoting Tagore’s famous pro-Japanese comments in an interview with the Manchester Guardian as evidence of the Asian expectation for Japanese leadership:
It does not surprise one to learn that the Japanese think it their country’s mission to unite and lead Asia. The European nations, for all their differences, are one in their fundamental ideas and outlook. They are like a single country rather than a continent in their attitude towards the non-European. If, for instance, the Mongolians threatened to take a piece of European territory, all European countries would make common cause to resist them. Japan cannot stand alone. She would be bankrupt in competition with a United Europe, and she cannot expect support in Europe. It is natural that she should seek it in Asia, in association with a free China, Siam and perhaps in the ultimate course of things with a free India. An associated Asia, even though it did not include the Semitic West, would be a powerful combination. Of course that is too long a way ahead, and there are many obstacles, languages and difficulty of communication. But from Siam to Japan, there are, I believe, kindred stocks and from India to Japan there is much of religion and art and philosophy which is a common possession.81
Tagore’s Asianist ideas would not get strong endorsement from official circles in Japan, however, in spite of the great interest he commanded as the first Asian poet to receive a Nobel Prize. Many believed that Japan’s national interest lay in its alliance with the British Empire, and both the ideal of Asian unity and the hope of raising support for Indian nationalism seemed utopian. Against this predominant perception, Ôkawa Shûmei cooperated with Taraknath Das, another Indian revolutionary who came to Japan during WWI, to disseminate the idea that Japan’s national interest actually contradicted British interests in the Far East. As a result, they argued, it was in Japan’s best interest to initiate a policy of leadership in Asia rather than continuing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.82
The Indian Revolutionary Committee of America organized by the Ghadar Party sent Taraknath Das to East Asia in September 1916 to engage in propaganda work against Britain and to solicit possible armament shipments from China to India. Das was a talented scholar who later in life taught Indian history at Columbia University and enjoyed a prolific writing career. During his stay in Japan, Das consulted with Rash Behari Bose and Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen and conducted interviews with Inukai Tsuyoshi and Ôkuma Shigenobu, two influential figures in Japanese politics. He also established a pan-Asiatic association with Ôkawa Shûmei.83 Das first published a book in Shanghai called Is Japan a Menace to Asia? in which he argued that the interests of Britain and France conflicted with Japanese interests in the region. He claimed that both of these white great powers were provoking anti-Japanese sentiments in the Far East in an effort to limit Japanese influence. Das urged Japan to act against British interests in the region by allying itself with Asian nationalist movements. According to his argument, the Western powers had imposed an international isolation on Japan, and Asian solidarity was the only way to overcome this. Das also proposed that the Chinese should cooperate with Japan for the benefit of both nations. The book was discussed extensively at the time and received much attention in Japanese Asianist circles. A Japanese-language summary was published by the leading nationalist journal, Nippon Oyobi Nip-ponjin.84 A pro-British daily, the Far Eastern Review, denounced Taraknath Das, together with Sun Yat-sen, as promoters of Japanese colonial rule in Asia in the name of pan-Asianism and the Asian Monroe Doctrine. British authorities banned the book and tried to prohibit its distribution in friendly countries.85
During 1917 Das gave several lectures in Japan and, with the help of Ôkawa Shûmei, published another book to affirm the main arguments of pan-Asianists against the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The book, entitled The Isolation of Japan in World Politics, focused on an inevitable conflict of interest between the yellow race and the white race in Asia, thus arguing that a long-term alliance between Japan and England was impossible.86 It added that since Japan would never be treated equally by the Western powers, it should try to initiate a different regional order in Asia to break its international isolation. The opposition leader in the Japanese parliament, Oshikawa Masayoshi, wrote an introduction to Das’s book, criticizing the pro-British policies of the Terauchi Masatake cabinet. Influential political figures in Japan such as Gotô Shinpei and Ôkuma Shigenobu praised the book. Restrictions on the distribution of the Japanese version, enforced by the police at the request of the British embassy, had the reverse effect of serving as an advertisement.87
Meanwhile, among Indian nationalists, there was anxiety that if there were a revolt in India against British rule, Japan would aid England to suppress Indian demands for national liberation. As a matter of fact, in the mutiny of Indian soldiers in Singapore in 1915, Japanese residents helped the British authorities, evoking the Anglo-Japanese friendship to justify their actions.88 To prevent Japanese support for Britain in the event of a future Indian nationalist revolt, Ôkawa Shûmei focused on the dissemination of information on Indian nationalism. He published a book written by William Pearson, For India, as part of the publication series of the Asiatic Association of Japan.89 Pearson was an enthusiastic British supporter of Tagore’s education projects and traveled to Japan as Tagore’s secretary in 1916. Advocating that the “home rule of Asia” and the Asian Monroe Doctrine should be the supreme aims of Japan, Pearson offered several arguments explaining why Japan should support Indian nationalism rather than British colonialism:
India is bound to Japan by ties closer than those of political alliance, and for Japan to help in crushing a revolution in India would be for her to fight against a part of that great Unity of which she is a member, and not only so but also against the possibility of ever becoming the recognized head of Asia. . . . The whole of Asia would regard her as a renegade instead of as their natural leader. . . . For Japan will be fully respected by the Great Powers of the world only when Asia becomes free and is also respected by those same powers. Materially also the safety of Japan will be assured only when all the forces of Asia are organized behind her and thus constitute a unity capable of resisting all the aggressive covetousness of the world.90
As he cooperated with Indian nationalists during WWI and campaigned against the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Ôkawa began to formulate his peculiar form of pan-Asianism. The first article Ôkawa wrote after the start of the Great War was about an alliance of the yellow race, with Japan as its leader, against the white race, which included both Germany and Britain on the same side.91 In his second article, Ôkawa clarified how his Asianism was based on a new vision of civilization and history.92 He first affirmed that the contemporary European hegemony in Asia was not a statement about innate European racial superiority, for its historical reality was limited to the past three hundred years. Ôkawa contended that, throughout history, the colored People’s of Asia had made greater contributions to world civilization than the white People’s of Europe and that they had been politically more powerful as well. He then went on to describe how the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and WWI had acted to change the balance of power between the West and the non-West, shattering the myth of the racial superiority of whites. Proudly emphasized was the fact that in the wake of Japan’s victory in 1905, the colored races all over the world—whether black or yellow—were showing signs of awakening and rebelling against white domination, signaling the end of European hegemony in Asia. Moreover, the ongoing “barbaric” war in Europe was cited as exposing the fallacy of the European claim to represent a superior civilization. Rejecting the self-representation of the allied powers as defenders of civilization and freedom against German savagery, Ôkawa castigated Britain, France, and Germany alike as “scientific barbarians,” as evidenced by their policies in Asia. He called for a positive Japanese mission in the revival and liberation of Asia. But he also felt the need to give assurances that Japan was not going to be another great power with imperial interests:
According to our conviction, heaven has assigned to the empire the mandate of becoming the leader of the new world. We are not arguing for Japanese conquest of the world as some imagine it. Nor are we arguing for Asian unification. To act in these ways would be just a repetition of the mistakes of the Western nations. Our duty is to rescue those People’s that are being oppressed by Western nations. It is definitely not to replace the Western nations in oppressing them. Rather, our desire is to help all people gain freedom, which is one of the most valuable rights given to mankind, thus to free them from external, unjust oppression, and to cultivate their original cultures.
(111–112)
Ôkawa was not alone in expressing such anti-Western ideas combined with the notion of the Japanese mission. Tokutomi Soho, who converted to a form of nationalist Asianism from Westernism around the 1900s,93 also advocated an Asian Monroe Doctrine as a long-term policy of leadership in Asia that would make Japan the tutor of its Asian “brother” states, with hopes of restoring the equilibrium between the white and yellow races. While defining an idealistic mission for Japan as the only non-Western great power, Tokutomi refrained from denying the realistic policy of the government elite. His Asian Monroe Doctrine promised the aggrandizement of Japanese influence and interest without alluding to any risk of discord with the Western powers. He wrote:
The mighty object of the Restoration was to place Japan on a par with the great powers. In other words, it consisted of safeguarding the independence of this country. The question of today is not the independence of the Japanese Empire but her expansion. This leads to the birth of the Eastern autonomy theory. Now that the national rights of this country are recovered, it is incumbent on the Yamato race to try to recover for the weaker nations of the East their rights, which have been trampled underfoot by other powers. If once Japan attains these objectives, we must refrain from abusing our influence to bring pressure to bear on the whites, but we must exert ourselves to break down the racial and religious prejudices to which the whites are wedded and show the world that the civilizations of the East and the West are reconcilable, that the white and the yellow races are by no means natural enemies to each other, and that if they join hands on an equal plane, the ideal of universal brotherhood is not necessarily impossible to realize.94
The Asian Monroe Doctrine of Tokutomi Sohô, though supported by some Chinese and Indian nationalists, thus effectively became a political vision to make Japan a great power on an international scale, defining its own exclusive sphere of influence in East Asia. Different from Ôkawa Shûmei, however, Tokutomi Sohô had a realistic view of Japanese diplomacy and refrained from advocating full independence for Asian nations. Sohô also never opposed the Westernization of Asia.
Kodera Kenkichi (1878–1949) was another Japanese intellectual advocating a realist pan-Asianism. He presented the most scholarly formulation of the arguments for racial solidarity in his Dai Ajia Shugi Ron (On great Asianism), a book he wrote after his study in America, utilizing all the major works on international politics in European languages. Kodera wrote:
Is it not strange that in the Europe that has come to control or overwhelm Asia, the talk of the yellow peril is loudly heard, whereas from among the colored People’s who have been conquered or intimidated by the white nations, little has been spoken out loud about the white peril? This, when the yellow peril is no more than an illusion while the white peril is real. . . . Some people denounce Greater Asianism as being based on a narrow, racist frame of mind. But racial prejudices are what the white nations have taught us. This trait is more especially pronounced among them. The fact of discrimination in the New World is substantial evidence. To speak out against the white peril and to advocate Greater Asianism cannot touch the malicious propagation by Europeans and Americans of the white peril and their calls for a white alliance. While the former is defensive, passive, and pacifist, the latter is offensive, aggressive, and imperialistic.95
In summary, Ôkawa Shûmei’s campaign for Japanese support for Indian nationalism emphasized the long-term benefits of breaking the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to prepare the basis of Japanese leadership in Asia. This argument relied on the perception of Japan’s international isolation stemming from its status as the only nonwhite great power. Ôkawa’s redefinition of the Asian Monroe Doctrine, extending its scope from East Asia to India, cannot, however, explain the origins of his call for the de-Westernization of Asia and the revival of national cultures as an alternative to the Western civilization. Ôkawa’s anti-Western ideas were shaped by the influence of romantic and pessimist criticism of Western civilization coming from Europeans themselves.
During his first visit to Japan in 1916, Rabindranath Tagore was disappointed to find that most Japanese intellectuals did not share the Asian identity he observed and admired in Okakura Tenshin’s writings. Rather, Tagore found Japanese intellectuals too nationalistic to share the humanist vision of Asian unity he and Okakura envisaged. It was Ôkawa Shûmei who appropriated Tagore and Okakura’s cosmopolitan civilizational critiques of the West and incorporated their ideas into his pan-Asianist purview and his nationalist vision of Japan’s international mission. Ôkawa’s intellectual ties with Paul Richard, a European poet, offer an exemplary glimpse of the contribution that antimodernist thinking in Europe made to both Asianism and cultural nationalism in Japan.
Born in 1874 into the family of a pastor in southern France, Paul Richard studied philosophy and theology.96 As a young thinker, he criticized the stagnation and decline of Western civilization from a spiritual point of view, condemning the extreme materialism he saw and advocating a new spiritual culture that relied on the intellectual legacies of Asia. He and his wife, Mirra, went to India and became the most important followers of Aurobindo Ghose, founding the philosophical journal Arya with the goal of harmonizing a variety of religious traditions to reach a more universal wisdom. Paul and Mirra Richard went to Japan in May 1916, staying for about four years. Paul Richard urged his Japanese friends to revive their Asian heritage for the benefit of all humanity, including Europe. He gained great respect as a thinker among Japanese Asianists such as Tôyama Mitsuru, Uchida Ryôhei, and Miyazaki Tôten. Ôkawa, who translated all Richard’s major books into Japanese, was his closest Japanese associate.97
Paul Richard became the European figure most beloved by Japanese nationalists because of his book Nipponkoku ni Tsugu (To the Japanese nation), translated into Japanese by Ôkawa Shûmei and published in January 1917.98 In this work, Richard praised Japan as the best candidate to become the “just nation and the nation of the future,” which would fight not for conquest, like European nations, but for the liberation of oppressed People’s. He stressed that, as the sole developed Asian nation, Japan could combine modern science with ancient wisdom and European thought with Asian philosophy, thus uniting a divided humanity. Paul Richard’s vision of a new Japan as the leader of Asia was well received by Japanese Asianists. For example, Ôkawa Shûmei’s belief in Japan’s national mission was strengthened by his conversations with Europeans like Paul Richard, who were also expecting Japanese leadership to foster the establishment of a better Asia and a better world.
Richard’s praise was for a hypothetical Japan of the future, however, and it did not relate to the Japan that actually existed. For example, on the issues of the return of the Tsingtao to China and Japan’s rule in Korea, he was highly critical of Japan, even asking for Japan’s withdrawal from Korea. Richard was aware of his differences with Japanese Asianists on the issues of Korea and China, but instead of condemning their nationalism, he hoped to convince them to see his point of view. When Richard accepted the position of general adviser to the English magazine Asian Review, published by Kokuryûkai, he justified his collaboration with Japanese Asianists by voicing his search for a new humanism to rescue Western civilization from its crisis:
The Hero, the Leader of the East, Japan wishes to be. I agree with her in this grand aim. But, in return, she must also agree with me that the only way to fulfilling this aim is to be the first to find and follow the heroic path leading the nations of the East to a new civilization, a new wisdom. . . . We will work for this magazine because it will work for Japan. We are working for Japan in order to make her work for Humanity. We are working for Asia—for a free and united Asia—to prepare in her and through her the world for the great Dawn, the Dawn of Man.”99
Paul Richard’s main ideas were based on his condemnation of contemporary European nationalism and colonialism. He emphasized Europe’s betrayal of the universal ideals of equality and justice during the race for colonialism. In order to “save Europe,” and in fact all of humanity, from the “corruption of contemporary European civilization,” Richard advocated a restoration of Asian wisdom and philosophy:
The days will come when all the People’s shall be free. . . . For this war [WWI], while judging the People’s, settling old accounts, and preparing new destinies, offers the captives, if they are worthy of it, an occasion for breaking their chains. . . . Russia has started, India will follow. . . . Colonization is indeed the mortal sin of Europe, who say “Equity” and commit iniquity; who say “Liberation,” and keep in subjection entire races; —“Democracy” and submit multitudes to the autocracy of force, —“Rights of nationalities” and deny to the three hundred million people who inhabit India the right to be a nation. . . . Peace will come from Asia, when Asia will be free. It is not then solely for the uplift of Asia and in the interests of the world to come, but in the interests of Europe herself. . . . The hour has come for her [Europe] to die to the old life that she may be born again anew. But for [sic] this rebirth of Europe has for its condition the restoration, the restitution of Asia.100
In spite of Paul Richard’s critique of Japanese policies in Korea and China, his search for an alternative humanity in Asia had the general effect of feeding the fires of nationalism and traditionalism in Japan. His insistent criticism of contemporary Western civilization invariably ended up reaffirming the very traditional and nationalist convictions of Ôkawa Shûmei and other Asianists. Richard referred to the Japanese emperor metaphorically as descending from an immortal lineage and invited the Japanese people to work for the unity of the world under the rule of heaven. Similarly, he criticized modern democracy by making references to the problems associated with democracy in Europe; he then concluded that the emperor system, if it worked ideally, could in fact be better than democracy, given its capacity to complement individual rights and freedoms with group solidarity and goals.101 In this way, not only Ôkawa Shûmei but even leaders of the ultranationalist Kokuryûkai found encouragement in Richard’s writings. For example, Kuzuu Yoshihisa wrote the following comment on Paul Richard’s message to Japan after Richard left for India in March 1920:
It is Dr. Richard’s conviction that too much hypocrisy and too little justice are the figuring factors in the present civilization. He unhesitatingly asserts that because of certain unique and special make-for-civilization qualities in our nationals that we Japanese are the chosen people, whose work for the world is to effect the spiritual union of Asia, and he exhorts us to glorify our time honored nationality. We Japanese are going to do our best to live up to his expectations and join with him in his mission of purging civilization of its hypocrisies and injustices.102
His interactions with both Indian nationalists and Asiaphile European romantics contributed to Ôkawa’s formulation of a highly confident strand of anti-Westernism in pan-Asianist thought. In addition, his collaboration with the Indian nationalists strengthened his radical vision of a new order in Asia based on complete decolonization, at least from Western colonial rule.
More important, the widespread interpretation of WWI as the beginning of the decline of European hegemony in the world helped Ôkawa Shûmei successfully to combine an Asian Monroe Doctrine with a discourse calling for an alternative Asian civilization. The anti-Westernism Ôkawa espoused went beyond a rejection of colonialism, extending to a cultural program of de-Westernizing Japan and the rest of Asia in the name of civilizational revival. Ôkawa’s call for a civilizational synthesis between East and West was not unique to Japan, for a similar civilizational identity was also becoming dominant in China and other parts of Asia at the end of the Great War.103 It was his ability to merge a perceived global consensus on the “Rise of Asia” and the “Decline of the West,” with the idea of the Japanese national mission and Japan’s national interest that would have lasting influence on Japanese pan-Asianism.
Ôkawa Shûmei’s employment of a new civilizational discourse about the “awakening East” versus the “decadent West” demonstrates how, during WWI, the idea of an East-West encounter had already become a tool of anticolonial nationalism and pan-Asianism, although the idea of East and West was originally a product of the “civilizing mission” discourse of Western colonialism.
Both pan-Islamic and pan-Asian visions of international order were tremendously affected by the upheavals of the Great War, to the point of gaining greater policy influence. Pan-Islamic arguments were partly responsible for convincing the Ottoman elite to enter the Great War on the side of Germany. Italy’s invasion of Libya and the loss of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire to a coalition of Christian Balkan states convinced many in the Ottoman state that the old policy of “diplomacy of civilization” and cooperation with the European powers was disadvantageous and that the Ottoman state had to reconsider its international relations. In that context, ideas of pan-Islamism merged with a rising sense of assertive nationalism and turned into a grand vision of an Ottoman state and Turkish nationalism. Pan-Islamic movements and figures cooperated with the Ottoman government in an intense campaign to mobilize the Muslim world against the British, French, and Russian Empires, an experience that accelerated the intellectual appeal of this ideology all over the Muslim world but tied its political destiny to the Ottoman defeat. Meanwhile, the Japanese government’s decision to enter the war on the side of the British, French, and Russian empires did not alter the predominantly anti-British and anti-Western activism of pan-Asianist groups. In fact, Japanese pan-Asianists, in cooperation with various Asian nationalists, campaigned for the breakup of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance during WWI.
The Great War ended with the victory of the British Empire and thus frustrated all the political expectations of the pan-Islamic and pan-Asian trends. In terms of the legitimizing ideology of the British Empire, however, the results were contradictory, and in fact the reverse of what they first appeared. The imperial world order of the 1882–1914 period had lost its legitimacy even at the centers of the Western powers, and a new world order had to be negotiated. In the process of delegitimizing the old order, both pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism played roles as important as those of anticolonial nationalism, Wilsonianism, and the Bolshevik Revolution. In the post-WWI moment of global reflection about the ideals and reality of a new world order, pan-Islamic and pan-Asian ideas continued to be relevant.