this post was submitted on 30 May 2023
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It was done by the same broad movment that destroyed the empire. Its a liberal movment aping european ideas. So its very disingenuos to conflate the kemalists and the young turks with the otommans.
That being said colonialism would have the same material forces behind it. Wich are likley to produce similar outcomes. Those conditions both demografic and geografical did not exsist in turkey thats why turkey did not industrialize until much later.
That being said. Northern europeans lack a tradition of empire. And the institutions that such a tradition implies. The most bloththirsty aspects of western imperialism result from an atempt to do empire without yhese institutions. Trying to fit the world into an institutional procrustean bed. We can even say the young turks and the kemalists are an example of these.
If industrialization had started in an area of the world with an old tradition of empire like china or persia or the otoman empire, things may have been diferent. Maybe these institutions would have enabled more eficient and ruthles explotation, while preserving more of the ethnic makup of the world.
The way I've seen this articulated is that the old school empires like the Chinese dynasties and the Abbasid caliphate were feudal land empires, meaning there's an understanding that you can't just completely strip the land of resources since it would mean your populace would starve as well as the fact that you can't just continuously expand because there's a limit to how much territory you could directly control. For China at least, the frontier of the empire had little interference from the capital outside of garrisoned troops and appointed bureaucrats. Beyond the frontier are tributary states that at least de jure recognize the emperor as the Son of Heaven. Obviously, the further away the tributary state is from the capital, the more nominal the recognition is. As an example, Vietnamese emperors, who also style themselves as Sons of Heaven, simply address themselves as kings as a matter of diplomatic protocol concerning relations with China but otherwise continue to use the title of emperor for everything else.
Many pre modern empires were of course agrarian empires. Because prior to 1860 england. Most of the economy was agrarian. That being said the abasids are a poor example of a feudal empire since the abassid revolution was in many ways alinged with the interests of urban elites and mercantile acumulation. But thats another topic.
What i was comenting on was the institutional forms of empire wich depend on the disparity of power. Most imperialusm in history was constrained by the fact that there was not a significant technological gap between eurasian regions. Chinise and middleastetn colonies in indonesia could only go so far.
So large land empires were constrained by their goverment systems. Wich are more nuanced than a feudal heirachy. These empires often had to rule people in situations were there was a significant varaety of ethnic ecological anf productive conditions. These conditions imply diferent material interests that have to be balanced because again there is not a significant gap in power betwen the core and perifery.
These institutions evolved in competition with each other. So that there is a growth trend in the size and complexity of the largest emires at any given time up until the middle ages. In contrast the northern europeans had a tradition of small homogenous kingdoms so institutions of empire did not develop. And when they made their empires thre was a technological gap so their institutions are stunted. This is why liberalism is parrochial and insestous. And why unless it remains ideological untempered by materialism, it will decay into facism.
compare the constitution of medina wich is legaly pluralistic in order to acomodate all these varied interests with modern legal systems.
A good example haplened in parts of mughal india there were complicated arrangments in order to mantain agricultural infrastructure. Once the british arrived and changed these institutions in favor of more british ones, things like irrigation systems decayed.