Asia we get a different impression. For all their nibbling at its maritime fringes and their halting inland advance at the end of the century, with the grand exception of India the Europeansâ domination of Asia was very partial at best. The case could be made that the real story in Asia in the long nineteenth century was one of Asian persistence and not of Asian defeat. The great example was China. Despite the ravages of dynastic conflict, civil war and revolution, China preserved an astonishing unity up to 1914. The idea of China survived both the end of the imperial monarchy in 1911 and the forty years of turmoil, occupation and war that followed soon after. More surprising, perhaps, was Chinaâs retention of its huge Inner Asian empire: Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet. Despite the desperate crisis of the 1930s and â 40s, all were held on to (except Outer Mongolia). China today has much the same frontiers as the vast Châing Empire into which Europe had crashed in the 1830s. Japanâs perseverance in the face of the European challenge was even more striking. Its monarchy was reinvented to supply the ideological glue for a newpolitical order.
The result was a state that was strong enough to withstand the opening up to the West and soon to embark on an imperial career of its own.
A similar pattern can be seen in parts of Middle Eurasia. Exposed as they were to Europeâs commercial and physical power, the main Muslim states in West Asia did not succumb to colonialism. Shorn though it was of its European provinces by 1913, and then forced to surrender its Arab dominions after 1918, the Anatolian core of the Ottoman Empire escaped the partition that the peacemakers intended, to become a newâTurkishâ state. The territorial extent of the Iranian Empire had waxed and waned under Safavids and Qajars. But the area nowruled by the Islamic Republic comprises most of âhistoricâ Iran, including the four great cities of Tabriz, Isfahan, Tehran and Mashad. And even those parts of Middle Eurasia (like Egypt or India) whose political shape was drastically altered by Europeâs intervention retained or constructed a distinctive identity that transcended the limits of a colonized culture.
What made this possible? Part of the answer, as we saw in an earlier chapter, was that Europeans lacked the resources and sometimes the motive to make global empire complete. Their imperial diplomacy baulked at the task of partitioning China, Iran or the Ottoman Empire before 1914. After 1918, their divisions were greater and the task even harder. But this is only one side of a complex equation. Just as important were the tenacious traditions of political and cultural autonomy in the great Asian states, which hemmed in outsiders like an invisible wall. These were strengthened and deepened by the state-building drive in early modern Eurasia, whose effects were felt right across the Old World and not just in Europe. The Ming renovation, the Tokugawa peace, the Safavid compromise and the Ottoman transition from a warrior state into an Asian, African and European empire were all achievements as striking as the new model monarchies being fashioned in Europe. They created forms of government that proved remarkably durable even under stressful conditions. Dynastic change in China (from Ming to Châing) and Iranâs time of troubles in the eighteenth century might have uprooted less entrenched political systems â not least in Iran, with its linguistic divisions and great tribal confederacies.
These early-modern reconstructions had a lasting importance. Theyhelped to preserve a continuous practice of statecraft through into the time when the pressure from Europe became much more intense. The states that the Europeans faced were
anciens reégimes
in need of renewal, not broken-backed states that had fallen to pieces. Those who had served them were often aware of their weakness and the need for
The result was a state that was strong enough to withstand the opening up to the West and soon to embark on an imperial career of its own.
A similar pattern can be seen in parts of Middle Eurasia. Exposed as they were to Europeâs commercial and physical power, the main Muslim states in West Asia did not succumb to colonialism. Shorn though it was of its European provinces by 1913, and then forced to surrender its Arab dominions after 1918, the Anatolian core of the Ottoman Empire escaped the partition that the peacemakers intended, to become a newâTurkishâ state. The territorial extent of the Iranian Empire had waxed and waned under Safavids and Qajars. But the area nowruled by the Islamic Republic comprises most of âhistoricâ Iran, including the four great cities of Tabriz, Isfahan, Tehran and Mashad. And even those parts of Middle Eurasia (like Egypt or India) whose political shape was drastically altered by Europeâs intervention retained or constructed a distinctive identity that transcended the limits of a colonized culture.
What made this possible? Part of the answer, as we saw in an earlier chapter, was that Europeans lacked the resources and sometimes the motive to make global empire complete. Their imperial diplomacy baulked at the task of partitioning China, Iran or the Ottoman Empire before 1914. After 1918, their divisions were greater and the task even harder. But this is only one side of a complex equation. Just as important were the tenacious traditions of political and cultural autonomy in the great Asian states, which hemmed in outsiders like an invisible wall. These were strengthened and deepened by the state-building drive in early modern Eurasia, whose effects were felt right across the Old World and not just in Europe. The Ming renovation, the Tokugawa peace, the Safavid compromise and the Ottoman transition from a warrior state into an Asian, African and European empire were all achievements as striking as the new model monarchies being fashioned in Europe. They created forms of government that proved remarkably durable even under stressful conditions. Dynastic change in China (from Ming to Châing) and Iranâs time of troubles in the eighteenth century might have uprooted less entrenched political systems â not least in Iran, with its linguistic divisions and great tribal confederacies.
These early-modern reconstructions had a lasting importance. Theyhelped to preserve a continuous practice of statecraft through into the time when the pressure from Europe became much more intense. The states that the Europeans faced were
anciens reégimes
in need of renewal, not broken-backed states that had fallen to pieces. Those who had served them were often aware of their weakness and the need for
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