Former monarchies

"I was taught in my history classes that the Shah was a tin-pot dictator installed by the CIA to subdue Iran’s leftists and secure American access to the country’s oil. That he was extravagant and capricious. That his secret police, the Savak, tortured and spied with impunity. Much of this is probably true. Mohammad Reza was definitely the intended beneficiary of an at-least-attempted CIA coup in 1953. And he was definitely a dictator (though whether he was benevolent or tyrannical is debatable). But I must admit to ambivalent feelings towards the Shah and his government. Under the Shah my grandmother gained the right to vote and to divorce her emotionally abusive, opium-addicted husband. My relatives benefitted from his land redistribution and industrial profit-sharing programmes. My father learned to read from the Shah’s literacy corps and received government-subsidised meals and textbooks. So who am I to tell them that he was a lousy guy, that he was a despot, that his policies were too pro-western? They don’t care about that. They were starving and he gave them food, that’s all they need to know. In my household I was always taught that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his father were the greatest leaders Iran ever had. My family loves the man like a grandfather, or even a god. Growing up, we always had a Shir o Khorshid in our house. “Every aspect of life was better then,” my father loves to say, “everyone was happier.” When he comes to visit Iran he blames every imperfection personally on Khomeini. The teller at the bank is rude? Khomeini. The metro is late? Khomeini. The internet is slow? Khomeini. When he was growing up, people were nicer, food tasted better, the Azadi Tower looked bigger."

"In the Shah’s time, when I went to Italy, they stood up for me, they talked to me with respect. When I went to France they respected me as an Iranian. Now when I go anywhere in the world they think we are terrorists, they think we are barbarians."

"To witness the collective dispossession of the nurtured tradition and way of life in an entire nation, travel to Iran. The people of the country are being alienated from their cultural and ethnic roots and thus from their identity. They have been denied all that is of merit in the West while their own values are corroded. The cultural denuding thus involves a double alienation which gnaws at our vitals like a cancer."

"Iran is the country of the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. The lot of the majority of people in Iran has not moved forward even an inch during the last fifty years of the Pahlavi dynasty's reign, though the seven-year-old middle-class boy of fifty years ago, namely, the present Shah of Iran, has grown to be one of the richest men on earth."

"The reason most of my countrymen would tell you that they carry a grudge against the United States is that the U.S. government has given its unconditional support to a monarch who has terrorized a whole nation, plundered its wealth and bought billions of dollars' worth of military equipment which neither he nor our nation knows how to use. Iran is a dangerous quagmire in which the United States is sinking deeper and deeper. The future will speak for itself. But if Iran becomes the new Vietnam, we can be sure that it was the inhumane and irresponsible policies of the U.S. government, the excessive greed of American arms corporations and the extreme stupidity and adventurism on the part of present Iranian authorities that led to the creation of that crisis in the history of humanity."

"In Iran one cannot stage Hamlet, Richard III or Macbeth because no Iranian should see the death of a prince or a king on the stage. He might jump to conclusions, as if contemporary Iranian history itself is devoid of attempts at regicide."

"It is a zoo in a glass tower. There are no kings, queens, princes, princesses, generals, ministers or secret agents here. There are beasts instead. Nobody speaks the language of human beings here. The gory shadows of these animals are reflected on the walls and mirrors. The beasts hop up and down on the tiles and silk rugs, howling, bleating, roaring, mewing, grinding their teeth and breathing savagely through their palpitating nostrils. It is like being in a public bath with lepers. The tails, the muzzles, the claws and paws rise in the air, scratching at each other, touching and twisting each other, cornering, buggering each other, and sinking in an infernal, abysmal pleasure. Are these mules, jackasses, apes, leopards, dragons, sharks and gorillas the chosen members of our society? Is this zoo the ruling class of Iran?"

"The large Iranian-American Jewish community in the United States, whose population is estimated to be close to 120,000, still speak, read, and write Farsi, celebrate Persian holidays, and reminisce about the “good old days before the revolution”."

"I envisaged future generations of Iranians proudly taking their rightful place among the vast family of nations, and fulfilling their responsibilities with dignity. I hoped to see dispelled for ever the medieval shadows from which Iran had emerged only half a century ago, and that the light which is the very essence of Iranian civilization and culture would prevail. Throughout my reign, I lived only for the realization of this dream which was beginning to become reality. It will be seen that I worked tirelessly and keenly to this end. I had ceaselessly to struggle against all sorts of obstacles and difficulties. I had to confront innumerable plots and intrigues both inside the country and abroad. I combated the all-powerful, multi-national trusts and cartels when all my advisers warned me against such challenges. I may have made mistakes, of course, but this long battle was not one of them."

"They say that [martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on."

"I wanted to build up Iran while we still had oil and thus to guarantee the life of the country after our oil reserves were exhausted. Therein lay the solution. We had to move fast, we had no time to spare. Finally, it is unquestionable that the oil lobby contributed actively to my downfall."

"It is evident that a lot of mistakes and excesses have been committed before the revolution. I don't deny it, on the contrary - there was evidently a lack of political liberty. I don't deny either that the revolt was popular, but those that spearheaded the revolution didn't want this result, Iran has regressed for twenty-two years. I prefer to speak of the future, history will judge what happened in the past."

"As you educate society, and as you modernize the country, and as people’s economic status becomes better and better, so would be the expectation of more participation. The level of liberalization in a political sense was a challenge that was not negotiated the best way possible. Keep in mind, this was in a period of the Cold War. There was a constant menace of the Soviet bloc trying to have a hold and satellize many countries through their various networks. We had at the time in Iran the Communist party, which was the second-oldest after the Russian communist party in the world."

"Our country was very rich and Iranians were considered rich, educated people. You had a real intellectual elite in Iran then."

"A situation in Asia that was not without considerable promise for the USA was to become far more threatening in 1979. The overthrow, in the face of mass-demonstrations, of the Shah of Iran, who left Tehran on 16 January 1979, and his replacement by a theocratic state hostile to the USA, combined with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 to create a highly volatile situation that posed problems for analysts. There was the prospect, first, that the USA might lose the struggle for regional hegemony and, secondly, that this might have wider consequences across Asia. Although authoritarian and prone to initiatives that were not always welcome, Iran was America’s leading ally in South Asia, an opponent to Arab radicalism, and a block to Soviet expansionism and that of Iraq, a key Soviet ally. The USA had used Iran to support the Kurds against Iraq, and, in 1973, to send troops to help the Sultan of Oman overcome left-wing rebels based in the region of Dhofar, rebels backed by Communist powers. Iran was also a major purchaser of American arms, and a key oil exporter. Under the Shah, it had long played a central role in the forward containment of the Soviet Union, not least by providing important radar bases to screen the southern Soviet Union. After the collapse of Iran, the Americans fell back upon Israel."

"Persia is a country in transition between past and present, a boiling mass of half East, half West. It is sharing these labels, but still has something that is more Eastern, in a very deep way, than anything we know, and yet it's more Western than even we'd like it to be."

"Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world."

"We deeply value our friendship and our ties with Iran, and we will remain strong in that friendship now and for the future. In an interdependent world, we remain deeply grateful for the constructive friendship of Iran, which is playing a very important role in pursuit of a more peaceful, stable, and very prosperous world. And we, for our part, remain constant in our friendship with this great country. We pledge ourselves to insuring that our ties are creatively adjusted to meet the pressing problems and changing realities of the present world."

"Inspired by the success of the Cuban, Algerian, and Vietnamese revolutions and insurgencies, Iranian opposition groups of all political stripes, from Marxists to nationalists, religious fundamentalists to Islamist modernists, were exploring the option of an armed insurgency against the king of Iran. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had been on the throne since 1941, when his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, had abdicated. The Persian empire was 2,500 years old, but the Pahlavi dynasty was young. In 1925, with help from the British, Reza Shah, a brigadier general in the Persian Cossack army, had put an end to two centuries of Qajar dynasty. Both father and son had faced challenges as they tried to force the rapid modernization of the country. In 1963, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had launched a wide program of reforms he described as a White Revolution. Khomeini and other clerics denounced what they saw as the Westernization of Iran by a despotic ruler. They were particularly incensed about the greater rights granted to women, including the right to run for elected office and serve as judges. Spurred by the clergy, leftists, antiroyalists, and student activists also took to the streets, each for their own reasons. The shah crushed the protests, killing dozens. Opposition leaders who were not arrested went underground or scattered abroad. Khomeini went to Turkey, then Iraq, but Lebanon provided convenient proximity for Iranian dissidents, along with religious and social affinities and even entertainment: the more secular revolutionaries could train during the day and go to the beach in the afternoon or spend their evenings in the bars of Beirut."

"The Shah was at the apex of a hierarchy of parasites fattening themselves off the Iranian economy. He was followed by lesser Pahlavis and their relatives, a total of some sixty-five families. Of the $2,000 million exported annually during the period 1973-8 half of it belonged to the Pahlavis. The Pahlavi Foundation, set up by the Shah in 1958 as a charity organisation out of the sale of crown lands to the tenants, came in handy to the Pahlavis as a means of funneling their funds out of Iran."

"It has never been easy to be a Persian, from the oldest times in history till today."

"When we visited Tehran in 1962 we saw for ourselves the energy and the determination and the skill with which His Majesty and his ministers are carrying out great programs aimed at the welfare of his people. His leadership has been a vital factor in keeping Iran free and in modernizing this ancient land. So it gives me great pleasure and it is a high privilege today to ask those of you, our friends in this country, together with our guests to join in a toast to a reformist 20th century monarch, His Imperial Majesty and the Empress Farah."

"The friendship between Iran and the United States, strong and enduring, has been enriched by the shared experiences of our two nations."

"You, men of England, who have no right to this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and notifies you through me, Joan the Maiden, to leave your fortresses and go back to your own country; or I will produce a clash of arms to be eternally remembered. And this is the third and last time I have written to you; I shall not write anything further."

"On 1 August 1779, Pierre Reynes and his son Mathieu met the royal notary of the small south-western town of Villefranche-de-Lauragais to enter into a contract with the ‘high and powerful seigneur’ the Marquis d’Hautpoul, through his agent, Jacques Maurel. The farm the illiterate peasants were rent ing was a considerable one – about 30 hectares – and produced about a hun dred setiers of wheat (20 setiers would feed a family of five) and a wide array of livestock, vegetables and other produce. This was, however, a sharecropping contract: the seigneur took 20 setiers in advance – whatever the volume of the crop – and half of the rest; after setting aside seed for the next year, the Reynes would be left with 15 setiers, less than their family needed. They were rigidly tied to a three-field system (maize and vegetables, wheat, fallow) and, while the proceeds from livestock were also divided, any extra forage had to be provided by them. Similarly, all the farm implements were the lessees’ responsibility. They were to buy young pigs, though the seigneur’s agent was to have half; in addition, they were to provide 108 chickens and capons and 600 eggs yearly. The lease was for one year only; should the Reynes not ‘do everything neces sary’ to be good husbandmen (‘bons ménagers et bons pères de famille’), it would not be renewed."

"The Englishman, in eleven years, gets three bushels more of wheat than the Frenchman. He gets three crops of barley, tares, or beans, which produce nearly twice as many bushels per acre, as what the three French crops of spring corn produce. And he farther gets, at the same time, three crops of turnips and two of clover, the turnips worth 40s. the acre, and the clover 60s. that is 121 for both. What an enormous superiority! More wheat; almost double of the spring corn; and above z 20s. per acre per annum in turnips and clover. But farther; the Englishman's land, by means of the manure arising from the consumption of the turnips and clover is in a constant state of improvement, while the Frenchman's farm is stationary."

"“Kalapahar, by successive and numerous fightings, vanquished the Rajah's forces, and brought to his subjection the entire dominion of Odîsah (Orissa), so much so that he carried off the Rani together with all household goods and chattels. Notwithstanding all this, from fear of being killed, no one was bold to wake up this drunkard of the sleep of negligence, so that Kalapahar had his hands free. After completing the subjugation of the entire country, and investing the Fort of Barahbati, which was his (the Rajah’s) place of sleep, Kalapahar engaged in fighting… The firm Muhammadan religion and the enlightened laws of Islam were introduced into that country. Before this, the Musalman Sovereigns exercised no authority over this country. Of the miracles of Kalapahar, one was this, that wherever in that country, the sound of his drum reached, the hands and the feet, the ears and the noses of the idols, worshipped by the Hindus, fell off their stone-figures, so that even now stone-idols, with hands and feet broken, and noses and ears cut off, are lying at several places in that country. And the Hindus pursuing the false, from blindness of their hearts, with full sense and knowledge, devote themselves to their worship! It is known what grows out of stone: From its worship what is gained, except shame? “It is said at the time of return, Kalapahar left a drum in the jungle of Kaonjhar, which is lying in an upset state. No one there from fear of life dares to set it up; so it is related.”"

"Vijaya Gupta wrote a poem in praise of Husain Shah of Bengal (1493-1519 AD). The two qazi brothers, Hasan and Husain, are typical Islamic characters in this poem. They had issued orders that any one who had a tulsi leaf on his head was to be brought to them bound hand and foot. He was then beaten up. The peons employed by the qazis tore away the sacred threads of the Brahmans and spat saliva in their mouths. One day a mullah drew the attention of these qazis to some Hindu boys who were worshipping Goddess Manasa and singing hymns to her. The qazis went wild, and shouted: “What! The haramzadah Hindus make so bold as to perform Hindu rituals in our village! The culprit boys should be seized and made outcastes by being forced to eat Muslim food.” The mother of these qazis was a Hindu lady who had been forcibly married to their father. She tried to stop them. But they demolished the house of those Hindu boys, smashed the sacred pots, and threw away the puja materials. The boys had to run away to save their lives."

"Haig writes that “it is evident, from the numerical superiority in Eastern Bengal of the Muslims… that at some period an immense wave of proselytization must have swept over the country and it is most probable that the period was the period of Jalaluddin Muhammad (converted son of Hindu Raja Ganesh) during whose reign of seventeen years (1414-1431)… hosts of Hindus are said to have been forcibly converted to Islam”.81 With regard to these conversions, Dr. Wise writes that “the only condition he offered were the Koran or death… many Hindus fled to Kamrup and the jungles of Assam, but it is nevertheless probable that more Muhammadans were added to Islam during these seventeen years (1414-31) than in the next three hundred years”."

"The details of the conversion of Raja Ganesh bring out the importance of the role of force, of persuasion and of the Ulama and Sufis in proselytization. In 1409 Ra a Ganesh occupied the throne of Bengal and sought to establish his authority “by getting rid of the prominent ulama and Sufis”. Qutb-ul-Alam Shaikh Nurul Haqq wrote to Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi to come and save the Muslims of Bengal. Ibrahim Sharqi responded to the call, and Raja Ganesh, finding himself too weak to face the challenge, appealed to Shaikh Nurul Haqq for help. The latter promised to intercede on his behalf if he became a Musalman. The helpless Raja was willing, but his wife refused to agree. Ultimately a compromise was made by the Raja offering to retire from the world and permitting his son, Jadu, to be converted and ascend his throne. On Jadu being converted and enthroned as Jalaluddin Shah, Shaikh Nurul Haqq induced Sultan Ibrahim to withdraw his armies.87 If a Raja of the stature of Ganesh could not face up to the Ulama and the Sufis, other Rajas and Zamindars were still worse placed. Petty Rajas and Zamindars were converted to Islam, with their wives and children, if they could not pay land revenue or tribute in time. Such practice appears to be common throughout the whole country as instances of it are found from Gujarat88 to Bengal."

"“In this year also Sulaiman Kirrani, ruler of Bengal, who gave himself the tide of Hazrati A’la, and had conquered die city of Katak-u-Banaras, that mine of heathenism, and having made the stronghold of Jagannath into the home of Islam, held sway from Kamru to Orissa, attained the mercy of God…”"

"“…During the Husain Shahi period the stone cutter’s art was thoroughly practised and perfected, as walls of gates and mosques were adorned with stone, either quarried from Rajmahal hills or obtained from some existing buildings… “…The British Museum, London, has in its collection two sculptured pieces from Bengal, namely, the seated Buddha figure (Pl. XLIIa) and the image of Brahmani. Both these images have on their obverse exquisitely carved diaper work of unmistakable Muslim workmanship. The Indian Museum, Calcutta, has a stone slab carved on the one side with the image of Durga, destroying Mahisha or Buffalow-demon, and on the reverse arabesque. The panel consisting of a scalloped arch with a lotus rosette on each of its sides, surrounded by richly foliated devices, is undoubtedly a Muslim work...“The Muslim calligraphers did not feel any scruple to utilize fragments of Hindu or Jaina sculpture in carving out beautiful inscriptions in elegant Naskh, Thulth and Tughra, keeping the images inside the wall…”“The famous Mosque of Baba Adam, the patron saint of the locality in the ancient Hindu site of Rampal where Raja Ballal Sena built his palace in the district of Dacca is an impressive architectural monument of pre-Mughal Bengal. “…Measuring 43 feet by 36 feet externally and 34 feet by 22 feet internally, the Mosque incorporated a number of beautifully carved stone pillars of unmistakable Hindu workmanship… “In the construction of this 6-domed mosque, measuring 36 feet by 24 feet, considerable amount of locally available materials from dilapidated Hindu monuments were employed as evident in the black carved basalts of the pillars, mihrabs, epigraphic slabs, etc… Sadipur (Bengal).“…A.K. Bhattacharya points out that an inscription in Arabic, carved in Tughra is found on the reverse of an image of Adinath, which is recovered from a ruined Dargah in the village Sadipur, P.S. Kaliachak, Malda.”"

"[In the 7th century BC] the past was supreme; the priest who cherished it lived in a realm of shadows, and for the contemporary world he had no vital meaning."

"The limits of the dominion of the Egyptian gods had been fixed as the outer fringes of the Nile valley long before the outside world was familiar to the Nile-dwellers; and merely commercial intercourse with a larger world had not been able to shake the tradition. Many a merchant had seen a stone fall in distant Babylon and in Thebes alike, but it had not occurred to him, or to any man in that far-off age, that the same natural force reigned in these widely separated countries."

"It was universalism expressed in terms of imperial power which first caught the imagination of the thinking men of the Empire, and disclosed to them the universal sweep of the Sun-god’s dominion as a physical fact. Monotheism is but imperialism in religion."

"Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose, And shook within their pyramids to hear A new Cambyses thundering in their ear; While the dark shades of forty ages stood Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood."

"When brutes were deified, And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried, And love-winds smote Bubastis, and the bare Black breasts of carven Pasht received the prayer Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide!"

"Whether the associations of the Imperial name are bad, as Mr. Gladstone thinks, I will not discuss. Splendid and imposing they certainly were, not only in the age of the Antonines, but in the best days of the mediaeval Empire, from Otto the Great to Frederick II. But that splendour they have lost. ... In fact, the title of King is now the less common of the two, and, with such associations as our kingship has, it is far more dignified."

"I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the œconomy of his farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and, after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism."

"This great empire Charlemagne formed into a systematically organized State, and gave the Frank dominion settled institutions adapted to impart to it strength and consistency. This must however not be understood, as if he first introduced the Constitution of his empire in its whole extent, but as implying that institutions partly already in existence, were developed under his guidance, and attained a more decided and unobstructed efficiency. The King stood at the head of the officers of the empire, and the principle of hereditary monarchy was already recognized."

"The reality is that, since the fall of Rome, no power has come near to ruling this continent. Charlemagne did not do so, nor did the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors, nor France's Napoleon, nor Germany's Hitler, nor yet the commissioners of the European Union. If history teaches anything, it is that all attempts to straighten Kant's 'crooked timber of humanity' will fail. Europe's peoples will not be put in bondage to a superior state, however liberal its intentions."

"The sheer heterogeneity and diffusion of these lands, which will be examined further below, might suggest that the Habsburg imperium could never be a real equivalent to the uniform, centralized empires of Asia. Even in the 1520s, Charles was handing over to his younger brother Ferdinand the administration and princely sovereignty of the Austrian hereditary lands, and also of the new acquisitions of Hungary and Bohemia—a recognition, well before Charles’s own abdication, that the Spanish and Austrian inheritances could not be effectively ruled by the same person. Nonetheless, that was not how the other princes and states viewed this mighty agglomeration of Habsburg power. To the Valois kings of France, fresh from consolidating their own authority internally and eager to expand into the rich Italian peninsula, Charles V’s possessions seemed to encircle the French state—and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the chief aim of the French in Europe over the next two centuries would be to break the influence of the Habsburgs. Similarly, the German princes and electors, who had long struggled against the emperor’s having any real authority within Germany itself, could not but be alarmed when they saw Charles V’s position was buttressed by so many additional territories, which might now give him the resources to impose his will. Many of the popes, too, disliked this accumulation of Habsburg power, even if it was often needed to combat the Turks, the Lutherans, and other foes."

"But despite the occasional rhetoric of some Habsburg ministers about a “world monarchy,” there was no conscious plan to dominate Europe in the manner of Napoleon or Hitler. Some of the Habsburg dynastic marriages and successions were fortuitous, at the most inspired, rather than evidence of a long-term scheme of territorial aggrandizement. In certain cases—for example, the frequent French invasions of northern Italy—Habsburg rulers were more provoked than provoking. In the Mediterranean after the 1540s, Spanish and imperial forces were repeatedly placed on the defensive by the operations of a revived Islam. Nevertheless, the fact remains that had the Habsburg rulers achieved all of their limited, regional aims—even their defensive aims—the mastery of Europe would virtually have been theirs. The Ottoman Empire would have been pushed back, along the North African coast and out of eastern Mediterranean waters. Heresy would have been suppressed within Germany. The revolt of the Netherlands would have been crushed. Friendly regimes would have been maintained in France and England. Only Scandinavia, Poland, Muscovy, and the lands still under Ottoman rule would not have been subject to Habsburg power and influence—and the concomitant triumph of the Counter-Reformation. Although Europe even then would not have approached the unity enjoyed by Ming China, the political and religious principles favored by the twin Habsburg centers of Madrid and Vienna would have greatly eroded the pluralism that had so long been the continent’s most important feature."

"There was nothing farcical about the institution of the Empire, as Voltaire would have it when he remarked that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. Even when its existence became fictional it still served the purpose of giving to its inhabitants an appeal to a spiritual mission and bestowing on them a certain supranational character which restrained them from making efforts to germanize the French of Lorraine or the Slavs of Bohemia and Lusatia. The name Germany (Germania) had almost disappeared from common usage and the word Deutschland, propagated by Luther, hardly became popular before the end of the First Reich (1806). There was a great diversity within the boundaries of the Empire, diversity of language, dialect, customs, dresses, and traditions. It was a world in itself; it was the heart of Europe and its most respected realm. The only fixed part of the Empire was Rome and the Urbs was also the metropolis of Christendom."

"The importance of status is vividly illustrated by perhaps the most celebrated summit in German history: the meeting at Canossa in 1077 between Pope Gregory VII and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. In German this is known as der Canossagang, the journey to Canossa; more aptly in Italian as l’umiliazione di Canossa, for it was truly a humiliation. In the Investiture Controversy—the power struggle between pope and emperor over the right to appoint bishops—Henry had renounced Gregory as pope, only to find himself excommunicated. This papal edict not only imperilled Henry’s immortal soul, it also laid him open to revolt by the German nobility. He sought a meeting with Gregory who, fearing violence, retreated to the castle of Canossa, in safe territory south of Parma. This forced the emperor to come to him. What exactly happened is shrouded in legend, but supposedly Henry arrived in the depths of winter, barefoot and in a pilgrim’s hair shirt, only to be kept waiting by Gregory for three days. When he was finally admitted to the castle on January 28, 1077, the emperor knelt before the pope and begged forgiveness. He was absolved and the two most powerful figures in Christendom then shared the Mass."

"The reconciliation was short-lived. After being excommunicated a second time Henry crossed the Alps with his army and replaced Gregory with an “antipope” of his own. But the events themselves matter less than the myth that grew up around them. During the German Reformation Henry was lionized as the defender of national rights and the scourge of the Catholic pope, often being dubbed “the first Protestant.” And during Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s struggle to rein in the Catholic church, he famously declared in the Reichstag on May 14, 1872: “We will not go to Canossa, neither in body nor in spirit.” He was voicing the new German Reich’s resolve to accept no outside interference in its affairs—political or religious. As a result Henry IV shivering outside the gates of Canossa became a familiar figure in late-nineteenth-century German art; the phrase “to go to Canossa” (nach Canossa gehen) entered the language as a synonym for craven surrender— almost the equivalent of “Munich” to the British and Americans."

"Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire."

""The Basileus"—for so he began— "Is a royal sagacious Mars of a man, Than the very lion bolder; He has married the stately widow of Thrace"— "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. ... “The Porphyrogenita Zoe the fair Is about to wed with a prince much older, Of an unpropitious mien and look"— "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. ... "The child of the Basileus," wrote the monk, “Is golden-haired, tender the Queen's arms fold her, Her step-mother Zoe doth love her so"— "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. ... "The queen," wrote the monk, "rules firm this realm, For the king gets older and older; The Norseman Thorkill is brave and fair"— "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder."

"Constantinople was full of inventors and craftsmen. The "philosopher" Leo of Thessalonika made for the Emperor Theophilos (829–42) a golden tree, the branches of which carried artificial birds which flapped their wings and sang, a model lion which moved and roared, and a bejewelled clockwork lady who walked. These mechanical toys continued the tradition represented in the treatise of Heron of Alexandria (c. AD 125), which was well-known to the Byzantines."

"The Byzantine Empire became a theocracy in the sense that Christian values and ideals were the foundation of the empire's political ideals and heavily entwined with its political goals."

"The constitution of the Byzantine Empire was based on the conviction that it was the earthly copy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Just as God ruled in Heaven, so the Emperor, made in his image, should rule on earth and carry out his commandments ... It saw itself as a universal empire. Ideally, it should embrace all the peoples of the Earth who, ideally, should all be members of the one true Christian Church, its own Orthodox Church. Just as man was made in God's image, so man's kingdom on Earth was made in the image of the Kingdom of Heaven."

"The interaction of economic and political institutions five hundred years ago is still relevant for understanding why the modern state of Congo is still miserably poor today. The advent of European rule in this area, and deeper into the basin of the River Congo at the time of the “scramble for Africa” in the late nineteenth century, led to an insecurity of human and property rights even more egregious than that which characterized the precolonial Kongo. In addition, it reproduced the pattern of extractive institutions and political absolutism that empowered and enriched a few at the expense of the masses, though the few now were Belgian colonialists, most notably King Leopold II."

"We do not have the figures of the Congolese population nor before naked after the rubber regime. So, we can say that two thirds of people have disappeared… or 10%. This is all out of control."

"When the State of Congo was called to economic life by the King of the Belgians, trade was only possible on the ribs. Now, thanks to the activity of His Majesty, he is done safely above the cataracts. This is the result of the peace and order which were introduced by the King of the Belgians incountries where no white merchant could have shown himself before."

"I found the ardor with which honorable Members sought toto establish that the only motives are the purest and the noblest, the interest of humanity; here is their wordorder. But the heart of all this talk has been trade. It is a thing worth noting, that the progress of this conspiracy to discredit the Congo, parallels the increase in the budget of the Congo. I also believe that it is my duty to state categorically that the question religion plays a role in the current debate. Belgium is a Catholic country and the testimonies in subject of the alleged atrocities are mainly those of Baptist missionaries, men andwomen."

"When we travel to the Congo and involuntarily make the comparison between the old state thatwe know from the accounts or descriptions of the explorers, and the current state, the impressionholds admiration, wonder. In these regions where the tribes decimated by the raids of Arab traffickers were engaged in fighting without truce and without mercy […] in this sinister and mysterious continent, a State was constituted andorganized with marvelous rapidity, bringing to the heart of Africa the benefits ofcivilization. Today, security reigns in this immense territory."

"In some cases, the worker has to walk one or two days every fort night, and sometimes more, to get to the place of the forest, where it can be found in rather great abundance, the rubbery lianas. There, the collector leads, for a certain number of days, an existence wretched. He must build himself an improvised shelter, which obviously cannot replace his hut, he does not havenot the food to which he is accustomed, he is deprived of his wife, exposed to the elements of the airand the attacks of wild beasts. His harvest, he must bring it to the post of the State or the Company, and it is only after that, that he returns to his village, where he can hardly stay for more than two or three days, because the new deadline presses him. As a result, whatever his activity in the forest rubber, the native, due to the many displacements which are imposed on him, sees the major part of his time absorbed by the rubber harvest."

"Following the report of the commission of inquiry, the King had promised reforms. What would he could have done other? A train of no less than twenty-four decrees was announced in June 1906. On two points, they even went beyond the recommendations of the commission-investigation. Thus, the concessionaire companies could no longer levy taxes, which were hence forth the exclusive competence of the State; on the other hand, instead of being counted in hours of labor, taxes were now fixed currency."

"The white man has never inflicted or caused to be inflicted, as a punishment, for breach ofbenefits or for any other cause, such mutilations to living natives. Facts of this kind have not been brought to our attention by any witnesses and, despite all our investigations, we have not discovered any."

"Having seen all that I have seen, it would not be fairon my part to keep quiet, because my silence could be misinterpreted. We had occasions exceptional to study the influence of the Belgian administration on the natives. We spent a yearin the rubber region, most often in remote districts, living side by side with the native. Conversing with the heads of villages through which we passed, we never heard of a single case of atrocity."

"When the Belgium captured the Congo in 1908, 250 tribes had been united into a nation which was beginning to takea wareness of its unity. A territory as large as eighty times Belgium had been gathered, the borders were drawn and guarded, the administrations, the transport and the Post office functioned in these vast expanses, the country was endowed with a solid economic infrastructure, and countless religious missions provided education and medical care everywhere."

"To my beginnings in colonial life, almost forty years ago, I found my first major lesson in studying the work of King Leopold II in the Congo: model of creation, practical organization and director, broad and liberal initiative, understanding the material, moral and social needs of natives, from whom all colonial works should be inspired and which, for so many years and over so many points, served as a guide."

"I do not believe in the accusations made in England against King Leopold II, the Congo and I do not share the feelings of those who inspire them. No state would be willing to spend the money spent by the King of the Belgians and Belgium in the most dark places of darkest Africa. When I consider the few years that have passed since the Congo became a state, I believe that the work accomplished is a great honor to Belgium. You can be sure that the King of the Belgians is interested in every detail of his administration. I do not claim that he can monitor all the actions of each individual, what Government could? The stories of the atrocities that have been spread are almost all gossip. The English note of month of August is based on biased reports. I am convinced that Leopold II has been doing his best to prevent any crime in the Congo, he is not responsible for the crimes anymore that could be committed there than those that are sometimes committed in Belgium. The reason of all these slanders? Jealousy! The Congo is doing better than any other African state. Those stories of atrocities will not stop, they will persist with the little basis they had, this was never anything but pure invention."

"The Congo was a sovereign State before the Berlin Conference was thought of. The first official acknowledgment of the new State came from the United States in the spring of 1884. It was afterwards formally recognised by other nations, and it entered the Berlin Conference on equality with the other Powers. It has never placed itself under the guardianship of any Power or collection of Powers. It has no connection with Belgium except that King Leopold II happens to be king of each of them."

"There have been cases in which the natives have been maltreated by minor officials, but these are isolated cases, and are severely punished by the authorities. Such cases have occurred in all public services where an attempt has been made to govern inferior races. Such things have happened in the Philippines, in British Africa, and in India. No colonising nation can cast a stone at King Leopold on that score. Among a large number of officials scattered over a vast territory there will often be one or two wicked stewards who despitefully use the natives. All that any State can do is to keep vigilant watch and to punish the wrongdoers, and this the Congo State has done. It has even established a Commission for the protection of the natives. By the decree of 1896, this Commission consisted of seven members, three being Catholic priests and four Protestant missionaries."

"The committee is to travel throughout the country into all the districts covered by Mr Casement in his recent tour of inspection, besides visiting many places Mr Casement never saw. In brief, the committee is to hold inquiry wherever evidence can be obtained. Where native witnesses give evidence of a nature prejudicial to white men, the committee will see that such witnesses are protected from the possibility of suffering at the hands of officials against whom they may bear witness. The Government of the Congo holds itself responsible for the safety and well-being of such witnesses. On the latter point King Leopold has expressed himself in the strongest possible terms."

"There were severed hands in the Congo, at the time of the Independent State... by the Officers of the Force Publique, to prevent the waste of ammunition to which their soldiers willingly let go, demanded that they provide proof that they had used their cartridges correctly. The proof was the severed hand of the killed enemy ... Severed hands, it will be noted, never constituted a form of punishment. ... By emphasizing, as they did, on the theme of severed hands - a theme which, we realize, easily provoked emotion -, Morel and his friends gave birth to the ambiguity which finally spread and lasted until our days: the idea that Leopold II had his hands cut off in the Congo, that it was a question of torture inflicted on the population, and even of torture most characteristic of the regime."

"I did not fail to refer to the "abuses and other undeniable deficiencies that this report rightly stigmatizes. Leopold II, of course, also carefully read this report. He reacted to it very quickly, with an honesty, insight and efficiency worthy of this visionary King. Despite the damning conclusions, he did not hesitate to have it published - in extenso - in the Official Journal of the EIC (Independent State of Congo). He had the perpetrators of the abuses prosecuted and, above all, taken a series of radical measures to put an end to them, by issuing no less than 24 Decrees to this effect."

"I accuse Leopold's officials of tyranny, i accuse Leopold's government of excessive cruelty, ox chains eaten to the necks of prisoners and produce sores about which flies circle, the courts are aborted unjust and delinquent, not one state official knows the language of the natives, your majesties' government is engaged in slave trade, wholesale and retail."

"Leopold's Congo state is guilty of crimes against humanity."

"Several of the little girls were so sickly on their arrival that our good sisters wouldn't save them, but all had the happiness of receiving holy baptism, they are now little angels in heaven who are praying for our great king."

"Using the word genocide in Congo is absolutely unacceptable, nor appropriate! Colonization was not a silly undertaking. And yes, it was perhaps rather dominate, discovery and even acquire pure power. But at a certain point civilization did come."

"When up in those lonely Congo forests where I found Leopold I also found myself – the incorrigible Irishman."

"Botofé bo le iwa! Rubber is death!"

"Every proposition having for its object the establishment of trade in Africa and the improvement of the black race, said Sir Samuel Baker, will remain Utopian as long as the slave-trade exists"

"In the west much has been done of late years to bring about a more rational and humane state of things; but in the east the Arab advances continually followed by a procession of misery and desolation and growing stronger from day to-day to the detriment of the natives. How long will Europe permit this shame, how long will she be fooled by these scoundrels?"

"The first step towards the regeneration of the black man is the destruction of the destroyer of the African race, of the adventurer whose power daily increases, in a word, of the Arab."

"As long as Europe is not strong enough to follow up the results already obtained by her voyages of discovery, the explorer can never be satisfied with his work; it will have injured rather than benefited the native races. People hesitate before resorting to extreme measures, but they lose sight of the fact that, if their efforts were concentrated on a single object, more would be done in a day for the real welfare of Africa than has been accomplished in past decades, nay even in past-centuries."

"The change which has occurred in the political condition of the African Coast, today calls for common action on the part of the Powers responsible for the control of that Coast. That action should tend to close all foreign slave markets and should also result in putting down slave hunting in the interior. The great work undertaken by the King of the Belgians, in the constitution of the Congo State, and the lively interest taken by His Majesty in all questions affecting the welfare of the African races, lead Her Majesty's Government to hope that Belgium will be disposed to take the initiative in inviting the Powers to meet in Conference at Brussels, in order to consider the best means of attaining the gradual suppression of the slave-trade on the Continent of Africa and the immediate closing of all the outside markets which the slave-trade daily continues to supply."

"As to the question whether this modification is opportune, the fact must not be lost sight of that the Berlin Conference never intended to fix unalterably the economic system of the Free State, which, as was already then foreseen, would undergo radical modifications under the influence of progress, nor of establishing for an indefinite period regulations which may hinder, check, and even arrest its development. Provision was wisely made for the probability of future changes, which would require a certain latitude in economic matters in order to secure their easy realization... The moment has now come when the marvellous progress made by the infant State is creating fresh needs, when it would be only in accordance with wisdom and foresight to revise an economic system primarily adapted to a creative and transitional period. Can we blame the infant State for a progress which, in its rapidity, has surpassed the most optimistic forecasts? Can we hinder and arrest this progress in refusing her the means necessary for her development? Can we condemn the Sovereign who has already made such great sacrifices to support for an indefinite period a burden which daily becomes heavier, and at the same time impose upon him new and heavy expenses necessitated by the suppression of the slave-trade? We are convinced that there will be but one answer to these questions."

"The state of Congo is no colonized state, barely a state at all but a financial enterprise."

"This much i can speak of with certainty and emphasis : that from the British frontier hear Fort George to the limit of my journeys into the Mbuba country of the Congo Free State, up and down the Semliki, the natives appear to be prosperous and happy... The extent to which they were building their villages and cultivating their plantations within the precincts of Fort Mbeni showed that they had no fear of the Belgians."

"The prevailing opinion at court was that the founding of a colony was beyond the strength of the Sovereign of a small state and that he would swallow up his private fortune, unable to create anything lasting. The King sought for the execution of his designs collaborators possessed of the faith which he himself had and which lifts mountains."

"But it would not be reckless to say that from the start the King dreamed of founding a Belgian colony. Many times I have heard him say, when the Independent State emerged from its swaddling clothes like a newborn baby trying to walk: "I work there for Belgium"."

"By the end of 1892, all the King's collaborators during the first and second phases of Belgian work in the Congo had therefore ceased to participate. M. van Eetvelde, who had increasingly isolated himself from them, remained alone in possession of the sovereign's confidence, with the sole program of being the passive instrument of his designs. This third phase of the administration of the state of Congo affected all signs of impending dissolution."

"In ten years or so, when rubber starts to decline, it will be agriculture that will have to ensure our public income and our trade."

"By blowing up the isolated facts, the British sought to cover up their territorial greed under the guise of philanthropy."

"It would be difficult to imagine a more centralized organization than that which has been achieved in the central government of the Independent State of Congo. The Secretary of State is its absolute head, although he himself remains in the most absolute dependence of the Sovereign."

"The mission which the agents of the State in Congo must fulfill is noble and of high purpose. Their task is to develop the work of civilization. They must gradually contain the primitive wildness, the bloodthirsty habits of thousands of years. They must subject the population to new laws. among which the most urgent and the most beneficial is undoubtedly that of labour."

"Ever since Stanley and the first pioneers entered the Congo Basin, the Flemish and Walloons have used their best efforts to give the country a modern economic structure and a higher civilization for the people. Mistakes have been made in this respect, but the closing balance is very positive. Despite the taunts in the UN guardianship council and sometimes even in Belgium, it is an achievement that all of black Africa looks up to with awe."

"Leopold II was able to push through his imperial wish and obtained that the fate of what would then be called the Congo Free State was linked to his own. He gave Congo its shape and dimensions, as well as a financial-capitalist structure. However, the debt burden that had become too heavy meant that the king handed over his colony to Belgium, a gift that the parliament was hesitant about but did not dare to refuse."

"In many ways a model colony was realized after 1908. A handful of whites turned the wheels in Congo and laid the foundations of the modern state structure. Remarkable achievements were made in the field of education, the traffic network, health care and development in general. This was made possible by the cooperation between the three pillars on which the entire colonial system rested, in particular the interaction between the firm civil administration, the extensive mission network and the powerful colonial private sector. However, there were also dark sides, but no looting was committed. Unfortunately, the former colonials do not receive the appreciation and prestige to which they are entitled. Belgium need not be ashamed of its colonial period, certainly not in view of the failed decolonization."

"In 1885, the whole of Africa was colonized or placed under trusteeship, but Congo climbed to the podium of the three existing sovereign countries. The borders that have been, since 1894, the crucible of Congolese identity were acquired, by treaty, by Leopold II. Thus, Congo has absolutely no debt to Belgium for its international existence. Later, it was through a bilateral treaty, between two sovereign states, regularly ratified, that the Kingdom of Belgium became the metropolis of the Belgian Congo (1908-1960). The little-known truth is that in 1960, Belgium did not grant Congolese independence, but it returned it."

"Congo is the oldest independent country in Africa, after Ethiopia (800 BC) and Liberia (1847). The only country that was not colonized in Berlin!"

"This heroism was also that of the first missionaries. They had a life expectancy of about 5 years in Congo, and some were given extremely anointing at the time of their journey to Africa. There were many young idealists. Their graves are still lined up in the Mpala locality, which overlooks Lake Tanganyika. The Catholic mission was a fort where people who fled slavers and brutality took refuge."

"Congo reformers like Morel, much to the annoyance of Hochschild, advocated either German or British colonization of the area (Congo). Morel’s view, according to Hochschild, speaking ex cathedra from the hallowed seat of modern California, “seems surprising to us today” and was among his “faults” and “political limitations.” Quite the opposite. The moment the Belgians colonized the Congo in 1908, a miraculous improvement was noted on all fronts. Seeking to debunk colonialism, Hochschild’s book demonstrates the opposite. This is the first and biggest lie at the heart of King Leopold’s Ghost."

"By 1891, six years into the attempt to build the EIC, the whole project was on the verge of bankruptcy. It would have been easy for Léopold to raise revenues by sanctioning imports of liquor that could be taxed or by levying fees on the number of huts in each village, both of which would have caused harm to the native population. A truly “greedy” king, as Hochschild repeatedly calls him, had many fiscal options that Léopold did not exercise."

"The rubber quotas imposed on natives in this 15 percent of the territory were enforced by native soldiers working for the companies or for the EIC itself. In many areas, the rubber came with ease and the natives prospered. The rubber station at Irengi, for instance, was known for its bulging stores and hospitable locals, whose women spent a lot of time making bracelets and where “no one ever misses a meal,” noted the EIC soldier George Bricusse in his memoirs. Elsewhere, however, absent direct supervision, and with the difficulties of meeting quotas greater, some native soldiers engaged in abusive behavior to force the collection. Bricusse noted these areas as well, especially where locals had sabotaged rubber stations and then fled to the French Congo to the north. In rare cases, native soldiers kidnapped women or killed men to exact revenge. When they fell into skirmishes, they sometimes followed long-standing Arab and African traditions by cutting off the hands or feet of the fallen as trophies, or to show that the bullets they fired had been used in battle. How many locals died in these frays is unclear, but the confirmed cases might put the figure at about 10,000, a terrible number."

"The abuses were first reported by an American missionary in The Times of London in 1895 and quickly brought Léopold’s censure: “If there are these abuses in the Congo, we must stop them,” he warned EIC officials in 1896. “If they continue, it will be the end of the state.” For the next ten years, reforming the Congo’s rubber industry absorbed an inordinate amount of attention in the British and American press and legislatures, not to mention within Belgium and the EIC itself, leading to formal Belgian colonization in 1908. Hochschild thus takes a very limited, unintentional, unforeseen, and perhaps unavoidable problem of native-on-native conflict over rubber harvesting and blows it up into a “forgotten Holocaust” to quote the subtitle given to the French edition of his book. Inside this great invention are many more perfidious Russian dolls."

"Even taking Sanderson’s pessimistic estimate as correct, does this mean that Léopold’s rule “killed” 500,000 people? Of course not, because, in addition to the misplaced personalization of long-term population changes, the rubber regions, as mentioned, experienced both population increases and declines. Even in the latter, such as the rubber-producing Bolobo area in the lower reaches of the Congo river, population decline was a result of the brutalities of freelance native chiefs and ended with the arrival of an EIC officer. More generally, the stability and enforced peace of the EIC caused birth rates to rise near EIC centers, such as at the Catholic mission under EIC protection at Baudouinville (today’s Kirungu). Population declines were in areas outside of effective EIC control. The modest population gains caused by EIC interventions were overwhelmed by a range of wholly separate factors, which in order of importance were: the slave trade, sleeping sickness, inter-tribal warfare, other endemic diseases (smallpox, beriberi, influenza, yellow fever, pneumonia, dysentery, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and venereal disease), cannibalism, and human sacrifice."

"Let’s turn to a favorite area for the enthusiasts of the culture hypothesis: the Middle East. Middle Eastern countries are primarily Islamic, and the non–oil producers among them are very poor, as we have already noted. Oil producers are richer, but this windfall of wealth has done little to create diversified modern economies in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Don’t these facts show convincingly that religion matters? Though plausible, this argument is not right, either. Yes, countries such as Syria and Egypt are poor, and their populations are primarily Muslim. But these countries also systemically differ in other ways that are far more important for prosperity. For one, they were all provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which heavily, and adversely, shaped the way they developed. After Ottoman rule collapsed, the Middle East was absorbed into the English and French colonial empires, which, again, stunted their possibilities. After independence, they followed much of the former colonial world by developing hierarchical, authoritarian political regimes with few of the political and economic institutions that, we will argue, are crucial for generating economic success. This development path was forged largely by the history of Ottoman and European rule. The relationship between the Islamic religion and poverty in the Middle East is largely spurious."

"Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force. The Ottoman dynasty appropriated by force the government of the Turks, and reigned over them for six centuries. Now the Turkish nation has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty… This is an accomplished fact… If those assembled here … see the matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts will still prevail, but some heads may roll."

"While the death toll in the trenches of Western Europe were close to 2 million by the summer of 1915, the extermination of innocent civilians in Turkey (the Armenians, but also Syrian and Assyrian Christians and large portions of the Greek population, especially the Greeks of Pontos, or Black Sea region) was reaching 1 million."

"The Ottoman Empire was an ugly affair, but they had the right idea. The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much–were mostly interested in robbing them–and they left them alone to run their own affairs, and their own regions and their own communities with a lot of local self determination."

"The Ottoman Empire was, of course, much more than a military machine. A conquering elite (like the Manchus in China), the Ottomans had established a unity of official faith, culture, and language over an area greater than the Roman Empire, and over vast numbers of subject peoples. For centuries before 1500 the world of Islam had been culturally and technologically ahead of Europe. Its cities were large, well-lit, and drained, and some of them possessed universities and libraries and stunningly beautiful mosques. In mathematics, cartography, medicine, and many other aspects of science and industry—in mills, gun-casting, lighthouses, horsebreeding—the Muslims had enjoyed a lead. The Ottoman system of recruiting future janissaries from Christian youth in the Balkans had produced a dedicated, uniform corps of troops. Tolerance of other races had brought many a talented Greek, Jew, and Gentile into the sultan’s service—a Hungarian was Mehmet’s chief gun-caster in the Siege of Constantinople. Under a successful leader like Suleiman I, a strong bureaucracy supervised fourteen million subjects—this at a time when Spain had five million and England a mere two and a half million inhabitants. Constantinople in its heyday was bigger than any European city, possessing over 500,000 inhabitants in 1600."

"Yet the Ottoman Turks, too, were to falter, to turn inward, and to lose the chance of world domination, although this became clear only a century after the strikingly similar Ming decline. To a certain extent it could be argued that this process was the natural consequence of earlier Turkish successes: the Ottoman army, however well administered, might be able to maintain the lengthy frontiers but could hardly expand farther without enormous cost in men and money; and Ottoman imperialism, unlike that of the Spanish, Dutch, and English later, did not bring much in the way of economic benefit. By the second half of the sixteenth century the empire was showing signs of strategical overextension, with a large army stationed in central Europe, an expensive navy operating in the Mediterranean, troops engaged in North Africa, the Aegean, Cyprus, and the Red Sea, and reinforcements needed to hold the Crimea against a rising Russian power. Even in the Near East there was no quiet flank, thanks to a disastrous religious split in the Muslim world which occurred when the Shi’ite branch, based in Iraq and then in Persia, challenged the prevailing Sunni practices and teachings. At times, the situation was not unlike that of the contemporary religious struggles in Germany, and the sultan could maintain his dominance only by crushing Shi’ite dissidents with force. However, across the border the Shi’ite kingdom of Persia under Abbas the Great was quite prepared to ally with European states against the Ottomans, just as France had worked with the “infidel” Turk against the Holy Roman Empire."

"With this array of adversaries, the Ottoman Empire would have needed remarkable leadership to have maintained its growth; but after 1566 there reigned thirteen incompetent sultans in succession. External enemies and personal failings do not, however, provide the full explanation. The system as a whole, like that of Ming China, increasingly suffered from some of the defects of being centralized, despotic, and severely orthodox in its attitude toward initiative, dissent, and commerce. An idiot sultan could paralyze the Ottoman Empire in the way that a pope or Holy Roman emperor could never do for all Europe. Without clear directives from above, the arteries of the bureaucracy hardened, preferring conservatism to change, and stifling innovation. The lack of territorial expansion and accompanying booty after 1550, together with the vast rise in prices, caused discontented janissaries to turn to internal plunder. Merchants and entrepreneurs (nearly all of whom were foreigners), who earlier had been encouraged, now found themselves subject to unpredictable taxes and outright seizures of property. Ever higher dues ruined trade and depopulated towns. Perhaps worst affected of all were the peasants, whose lands and stock were preyed upon by the soldiers. As the situation deteriorated, civilian officials also turned to plunder, demanding bribes and confiscating stocks of goods. The costs of war and the loss of Asiatic trade during the struggle with Persia intensified the government’s desperate search for new revenues, which in turn gave greater powers to unscrupulous tax farmers"

"So there is no single European people. There is no single all-embracing community of culture and tradition among, say, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Berlin and Belgrade. In fact, there are at least four communities: the Northern Protestant, the Latin Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the Muslim Ottoman. There is no single language - there are more than twenty. (...) There are no real European political parties (...). And most significantly of all: unlike the United States, Europe still does not have a common story."

"The Ottoman padishahs (emperors), also known as sultans, were initially a dynasty of and golden extraordinarily dynamic conquerors. The succession demanded a large number of heirs, cages who were produced by a numerous harem of potential mothers of future sultans. However, once a padishah had succeeded, this multitude of princes was a constant threat to his throne, a problem new sultans increasingly solved by murdering all their brothers. Troublesome harem girls or princesses who interfered too much in politics were killed also. In the East, it was forbidden to shed royal blood and thus from Mongolia to the Bosphorus, princes were killed by being suffocated, crushed in carpets by horses or elephants, or strangled with a bowstring. The girls were sown up in sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. When Suleiman the Magnificent was informed by his favourite wife, the blonde Slavic Roxelana, that his own son Mustafa had been plotting against him, he summoned the prince and watched as he was asphyxiated before him. A similar fate befell one of Roxelana’s sons, Bayezid, after he betrayed the sultan and briefly took up with the Persian shah; Bayezid’s four sons were despatched in the same way."

"The Turkish empire was divided in spite of Britain’s promise. The Sultan was made a prisoner in Constantinople. Syria was absorbed by France. Smyrna and Thrace were swallowed by Greece, while Mesopotamia and Palestine were taken possession of by the British. In Arabia, too, a ruler was created who would support the British. Even the Viceroy admitted that some of the conditions of peace could not but offend the Muslim community. It has been a heart-breaking episode for the Indian Muslims, and how can Hindus stand unaffected when they see their fellow countrymen thus in distress?"

"From the 14th through the early 20th century, the Middle East consisted of a hybrid civilization composed of various tribes and peoples stretching from the Balkans down through the Arabian Peninsula under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire. To its promoters, Constantinople administered a multicultural society that balanced ethnic and religious differences into a harmonious whole. To its detractors, the Ottoman regime was a decadent, degenerate ruling class that lived above the poverty of its servants and relied upon an endless supply of slaves to feed its military and royal harems. In the end, economic and political weakness led to the empire’s unraveling, as nationalism in the wake of the first world war broke the back of the empire and led it to the carve up into the modern Turkish state and the surrounding nations."

"These different blocs in the Turkish Empire...always conspired against Turkey; because of the hostility of these native peoples, Turkey has lost province after province - Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Tripoli. In this way, the Turkish Empire has dwindled almost to nothing."

"The Turkes have a custome, when they are maisters of any Province, to extermine all the native Nobility, chiefely these of the blood-royall of the Countrey: And neverthelesse they permit to all and every one of theirs to live and follow his owne Religion as he pleaseth without violence or constraint."

"The fifth century BCE historian Herodotus claimed not only that the Persians were very fond of wine, but that they routinely made important decisions while drunk on it. According to Herodotus, the day after such a drunken deliberation, the Persians would reconsider their decision and if they still approved, adopt it. This is, to put it mildly, a highly unlikely image of a group of people who were able to carve out one of the largest empires in antiquity and sustain it for two centuries. Are we to think that they just got lucky over and over again when they were drunk out of their minds? This is certainly the view that the Greeks promoted and Iranian irrationality remains a topos in Western culture... But if one looks at the internal Iranian evidence, for example Zoroastrian texts, a new image of the importance of wine in classical Iran emerges. The most interesting of these texts is one called The Spirit of Wisdom from the sixth century CE. One chapter discusses how wine can bring one's good and bad dispositions, and argues that those who drink it in moderation benefit in enhanced awareness and intellectual facility: "this that is forgotten will be remembered and goodness will take place in thought and it will increase the sight of the eye and hearing of the ear and the speech of the tongue, and doing work and managing will proceed faster." Relative temperance, however, is emphasized. "But anyone who drinks wine must be conscious to drink in moderation, since through moderate drinking of wine this much goodness will come to him, because food will be digested and kindle fire [of the body], and increase intelligence and the mind and seed and blood, and reject torment.""

"Imperial State of Iran"

"Islamic conquest of Persia"

"Persian language"

"Zoroastrianism"

"The town of Zanzibar, a port of call for several steamship lines, was chosen, even in antiquity, notably by Phoenicians and Arabians, as the most suitable entrepôt for trade on the eastern coast of Africa."

"Ivory has long been the chief article in Zanzibar trade, and "ivory and slaves" formed the shibboleth of the Arabian settlers and traders of past centuries."

"ZANZIBARI, n. An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the eastern coast of Africa. The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best known in this country through a threatening diplomatic incident that occurred a few years ago. The American consul at the capital occupied a dwelling that faced the sea, with a sandy beach between. Greatly to the scandal of this official's family, and against repeated remonstrances of the official himself, the people of the city persisted in using the beach for bathing. One day a woman came down to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her attire (a pair of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint, fired a charge of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person. Unfortunately for the existing entente cordiale between two great nations, she was the Sultana."

"His eye survay’d the dark Idolatries Of alienated Judah."

"The wild gazelle on Judah’s hills Exulting yet may bound, And drink from all the living rills That gush on holy ground; Its airy step and glorious eye May glance in tameless transport by:—A step as fleet, an eye more bright, Hath Judah witnessed there; And o’er her scenes of lost delight Inhabitants more fair. The cedars wave on Lebanon, But Judah’s statelier maids are gone!More blest each palm that shades those plains Than Israel’s scattered race; For, taking root, it there remains In solitary grace: It cannot quit its place of birth, It will not live in other earth.But we must wander witheringly In other lands to die; And where our fathers’ ashes be, Our own may never lie: Our temple hath not left a stone, And Mockery sits on Salem’s throne."

"Not coldly mute the harp of Judah hung!"

"Did none perchance of Judah’s faithful line Read the high teaching of each heav’n-sent sign?"

"Could wrath divine Be dealt on Judah by no hand but thine?"

"In 1871 Bismarck consummated both the Prussian victory over the French and the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership by inaugurating the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. It was a fateful achievement. From its moment of birth the new German Empire was of an order of magnitude greater than that of the other states of Europe; and which became greater still during the next forty years. To the modern Europe of the industrial age, Germany was what Spain and France had been in turn to pre-industrial Europe, a giant overtopping its neighbours. From 1871 onwards the salient fact of European politics was German power. By 1914 Germany's population, at 67,000,000, was more than half as much again as either that of France or Great Britain, and was exceeded only by that of Russia among European powers. Moreover, German industry and technology were immensely stronger and more vigorous than those of either her friends or rivals. Her steel production, to give a basic index, amounted to 17,320,000 tons in 1914, as against a French total of only 5,000,000 tons and a British total of 7,000,000 tons (average for 1910–14). Nor could any other European country match the thoroughness of Germany's application of scientific research to industrial development or her system of national or technical education."

"Unfortunately Germany was not a democratic and unmilitary state like the other industrial giant of the world, the United States. She was a military monarchy, just as France had been in her own days of greatness. Like France, Germany had been united by the sword. She inherited the martial traditions and myths of Prussia, and she also possessed the most efficient, best equipped and incomparably the most powerful army in the world. Moreover, Germany was geographically so placed as to command Europe from its heartland; able to expand diplomatically, economically and, if necessary, militarily to the east or the west. The advantage of this central position was enhanced by a superb strategic railway system planned by the Prussian general staff. And, lastly, all Germany's powers and resources were rendered the more effective by the German talent for organisation."

"The union of the States of Germany into a form of government similar in many respects to that of the American Union is an event that can not fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people of the United States. This union has been brought about by the long-continued, persistent efforts of the people, with the deliberate approval of the governments and people of twenty-four of the German States, through their regularly constituted representatives."

"I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded as its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained State in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed."

"Let us...take the most concrete example of state capitalism...It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism."

"The sharp down-turn in the European economy in the 1870s had produced in most advanced economies save Britain a 'return to protection', marked especially by Bismarck's split with the Liberals, his imposition of protective tariffs in 1879, and the development in the Second Reich of a political economy of cartelization married to harrying the trade unions and suppressing the S.P.D. For those who wished an alternative to the British liberal state, here was one, with all its implications and consequences. Few, of course, advocated out-and-out Germanization, but increasingly Germany was coming to be regarded as the alternative model, the seed-bed for the future."

"Manifestly, in August 1914 the status quo of western Europe was about to vanish. Either the liberal democracies would engage in a terrible episode of bloodletting in order to preserve their independence, territorial integrity and great power status, or they would avoid bloodshed by permitting the autocracy and militarism of the kaiser’s Germany to overwhelm them. That is, the alternative to the horrors of this war was not the continuation of the existing order. It was western Europe's abandonment of some of its finest achievements. These achievements derive from its struggles against absolute church and absolute monarchy, and from its endorsement of the principles of the enlightenment: elected governments, freedom of speech and of conscience, respect for the rights of minorities, and at least partial acknowledgment of the notion that all people are created equal and possess the same entitlements to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"From Antwerp to Baghdad there lies before us a large economic field in which German enterprise can develop. If we succeed in translating into reality the idea of a Central European customs agreement, which is in the air, and to which at one time Friedrich List in Germany and a man like Schäffle in Vienna devoted their energies, then the way to an understanding may be left open—and a large economic area opposed to Chamberlain's Greater Britain and the power of the United States, which would afford sufficient space for the co-existence and co-operation of the German and Austro-Hungarian national economies through the exchange of goods and through an advance towards Asia Minor, which the policy of Emperor William II has indicated and upon which German enterprise has already started through the grandiose project of the Baghdad Railway."

"We see the strongest guarantee of peace for Europe in a policy of expansion. When have we exploited the embarrassments of other peoples? When Russia was at war with Japan, the Tsar was able to take his last regiment away from our frontier. We did not regard Morocco as an object of war, we looked on while East Africa was divided, while France was creating a great colonial empire of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, while Italy occupied Tripolis, while Persia was divided between Britain and Russia into two spheres of interest—the world could always rely on the German Kaisers and the German people's love of peace. And what thanks have we had? A world of enemies.... When one awakens in this way from a beautiful dream one must not follow that dream again, must not in future believe that renunciation of a world policy will be a guarantee of permanent freedom. They grudged us the right to economic development. We thank the Chancellor for what he said yesterday concerning our security in the East and West."

"Imperial Germany does not depart sensibly from the pattern of Prussia under Frederick the Great, in respect of its national policies or the aims and methods of government control, nor do the preconceptions of its statesmen differ at all widely from those prevalent among the dynastic jobbers of that predaceous era of state-making."

"This modern state of the industrial arts that so has led to the rehabilitation of a dynastic state in Germany on a scale exceeding what had been practicable in earlier times,—this technological advance was not made in Germany but was borrowed, directly or at the second remove, from the English-speaking peoples, primarily, and in the last resort almost wholly, from England. What has been insisted on above is that British use and wont in other than the technological respect was not taken over by the German community at the same time. The result being that Germany offers what is by contrast with England an anomaly, in that it shows the working of the modern state of the industrial arts as worked out by the English, but without the characteristic range of institutions and convictions that have grown up among English-speaking peoples concomitantly with the growth of this modern state of the industrial arts. Germany combines the results of English experience in the development of modern technology with a state of the other arts of life more nearly equivalent to what prevailed in England before the modern industrial regime came on; so that the German people have been enabled to take up the technological heritage of the English without having paid for it in the habits of thought, the use and wont, induced in the English community by the experience involved in achieving it."

"The case of Germany is unexampled among Western nations both as regards the abruptness, thoroughness and amplitude of its appropriation of this technology, and as regards the archaism of its cultural furniture at the date of this appropriation."

"The German ideal of statesmanship is, accordingly, to make all the resources of the nation converge on military strength; just as the English ideal is, per contra, to keep the military power down to the indispensable minimum required to keep the peace."

"Both German and English-speaking peoples make much of personal liberty, as is the fashion in modern Christendom, but it would seem that in the German conception this liberty is freedom to give orders and freely to follow orders, while in the English conception it is rather an exemption from orders—a somewhat anarchistic habit of thought. It was this dynastic power of the Prussian State, resting on an authentic tradition of personal fealty, unlimited in the last resort, that was the largest single factor of a cultural kind entering into the Imperial era from the German side."

"The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded the German Empire together."

"I am not a man who believes that we Germans bled and conquered thirty years ago...in order to be pushed to one side when great international decisions call to be made. If that were to happen, the place of Germany as a world power would be gone for ever, and I am not prepared to let that happen. It is my duty and privilege to employ to this end without hesitation the most appropriate and, if need be, the sharper methods."

"In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water."