VAMBERY: ENGLAND IN THE ORIENT - 1

Below is an article written by Arminus Vambery and published in 1893. Professor Vambery was one of the greatest explorers of Asia who travelled in Central Asia disguised as a dervish. After his travels, he taught at the university in Budapest and wrote numerous books and articles about his views on the East. In this article, he elaborates on the role of England in the East. Professor Arminus Vambery As a result of the great social and political transformation to which the Asiatic world was subjected more than a century ago, man in the Orient has already divested himself of many peculiarities, habits, and customs, known under the generic name of Asiatism, and is on the eve of abandoning those ideas and views which were formerly believed to be inseparable from his nature and from the climatic conditions of his home. An extraordinary movement has taken place among the Asiatics, from Japan to the shores of the Adriatic, and from the banks of the Lena to the Indian Archipelago. In searching for the reasons of this striking change in a vast portion of our fellowmen, we are apt to put forward "Western civilization, and the all-pervading spirit of the modern world" as the chief cause of the phenomenon, but as the nations constituting the West differ greatly in their political, social and ethnical conditions, we are well justified in asking: Which of the Western nations has contributed the most towards civilizing the East, and upon which of them can we look as the potent agent and zealous apostle of our culture in the future? This question has often been asked me since my return from the various countries of Mohammedan Asia, and, when I have answered that the English or the Anglo-Saxon race in general has proved to be the best fitted for the propagation of modern ideas, I have been set down as a critic with a special bias for the English-speaking race, and as one who finds nothing to blame in that fraction of the Western world. My criticisms, however, are based upon facts, and upon a long-standing intimate connection with Turks, Persians, Tartars, Afghans, and Hindus on the one hand, and with English and Americans on the other. As to the facts, I may cite, before all, the astounding success England's civilizing efforts have hitherto met in India-that very hotbed of Asiatic opinions and notions, and of all the vices, abuses and shortcomings for which we have to blame the Western portion of the Eastern World. There, where centuries ago mankind was languishing under the most cruel tyranny, where life and property were at the mercy of ruthless despots and autocrats, and where blind superstition and gross ignorance furthered oppression and injustice-we now find security, prosperity, justice and enlightenment continually spreading and causing a total change in the cultural and intellectual condition of that vast country. Since 1856 the cultivated area has increased by fifty per cent in thinly peopled districts like Burma and Assam; by thirty to sixty per cent in the Central Provinces, Berar and parts of Bombay; and by twenty per cent in the thickly peopled provinces of Oudh, so that the gross agricultural yield in India is calculated to have doubled since 1858.

As to public instruction, recent statistics show that there are 128 colleges and college departments with 13,614 undergraduates on the rolls, and 133,410 schools with 3,476,194 scholars. In the secondary schools there were 417,000 boys and 27,000 girls. There are also five universities, while the medical colleges are turning out numbers of well-trained native practitioners, and even women doctors are now beginning to practice. Normal schools are training teachers, and engineering and other technical schools are increasing in numbers. The expenditure on education in 1887 was £2,637,000, an outlay which has been since considerably increased. In reference to the material progress we may mention that in 1889 16,200 miles of railway were in operation, 103,000,000 passengers and 22,000,000 tons of goods having been carried during the year. There were 31,895 miles of telegraph, over which 2,750,000 messages were sent, while the area irrigated by canals was 10,630,000 acres. Similar progress is to be seen in trade, and should we be inclined to record the various improvements effected in the different branches of administration, as well as the mental advance noticeable in all classes of that huge motley population of Hindustan, volumes might be filled. We may, therefore, safely state that the English have been able to divert the thoroughly Asiatic mind of the Hindus into grooves of European thought-nay, into the British manner of thought and action, so much so that a great German statesman, struck by this phenomenon, quite unparalleled in the history of mankind, rightly remarked: "If the British lose Shakespeare and Milton and every other writer who has made their name illustrious throughout the world, the justice and ability with which they have administered India will be an imperishable memorial of their nation." Professor Arminus Vambery From India we might well turn to Egypt. Here, too, we see order, security and justice spreading amongst a formerly oppressed and down-trodden population. The fellah enjoys an epoch of welfare and happiness he never knew under the rule of his co-religionist princes; in fact, he will now learn to appreciate the fabulous treasures of his native soil, and, above all, he will perceive that difference of creed and color has nothing to do with the capacity and honesty of a government. It is useless to deny that British rule has done more in a few years for the Nile country than whole centuries of the rule of former princes. And if we look to Eastern Asia we cannot fail to perceive that all the changes wrought there in the social, political and economical conditions of Japan, China and Siam are mainly due to the influence of England and America. It is the Anglo-Saxon spirit which pervades all the reforms and innovations. Anglo-American enterprise has aroused the formerly sluggish Orientals to activity, and the language of Shakespeare and of Milton is the tie which binds the Eastern Asiatic to the West. The members of the Austro-Hungarian embassy to the imperial court of Tokio were obliged to use English in their conversation with the Emperor, whilst the officers sent from Japan to the Sultan of Turkey could only make themselves understood through the assistance of English-speaking interpreters, for in the East French has ceased to be the language of diplomacy. England in the Orient: Part 2. by Arminus Vambery