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The spread of Buddhism into Bactria, during the second half of the first century AD, coincided with a period of major changes in Buddhist art. Hence this Bodhisattva deriving from Gandhara with the distinctively Central Asian, acanthus leaves originating in the west. Enter:

World Journal: Moghul India Befor 'Columbus'

As we have seen in P.3 of our introductory overview at the start of this website, the long decline of the Ottoman Empire opened the door for the rising force of Europe to push its way into the Middle East. To begin with the pressure was almost surreptitious; it was hard to recognize and it was not part of a strategy for weakening the Empire but for gaining a tiny share of its fabulous wealth. In the 16th century, special trading rights and tariff concessions granted to foreign governments - known as 'capitulations' - were initially an indication of Ottoman power. The poorer West came to the Sultan to seek special permission to trade. But the system meant that profitable trade increasingly fell into Western hands and by the 19th century, the capitulations were both a cause and a symptom of the Empire's economic weakness and its inability to modernize in the face of the European challenge. Increasingly during the 19th century, European trading and financial strength was not simply overwhelming the Ottoman grip on its peripheral regions, but weakening its economic core. After trade came raw power. Suleiman the Magnificent had been baulked outside Vienna in the 1530s. A later Caliph was defeated 150 years later in the same place and the Empire's European dominions began to contract. A further century later, a French force landed in Egypt as an outgrowth of a western European war and batted aside a much larger Egyptian force, bringing to an end six centuries of power held by the Mamluks, who controlled Egypt but were subject to the Ottomans. Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian victory was tarnished by the arrival of a British fleet that destroyed his supply system and cut short his Middle East venture. Were it not for that, the consequences of Bonaparte's victory might have been more lasting. As it was, Bonaparte not only brushed aside the Mamluks but smashed the image of Ottoman superiority. This was a decisive blow to Ottoman self-confidence and capacity to exercise far-flung power - and by the same token, a fillip to western European self-confidence and ability to win local allies.

On the back of trade and military superiority came - selectively at first, more or less comprehensively in the end - the urge to influence, control and rule. Through a combination of treaty agreements with local elites and military presence, the web of European influence and control spread. Algeria was the first major territory to come under direct European occupation, but further to the east the British were already nibbling at the fringes of Ottoman territory in the Arabian pensinsula. That reflected a basic geostrategic pattern of European colonial expansion. The British einphasis was in the eastern half of the region, the French in the west. Not until after World War I - when France's rights as an ally were hard even for the British government to deny -

World Journal: What Next With US Hegemony?

 

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