Modernization in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire and Its Afro-Asian Successors

The origins of Modernization in the Middle East go back to Black's 1966 publication, The Dynamics of Modernization. Black then followed that classic of modernization theory with four volumes of specifics, dealing with Russia and China, Japan, Inner Asia, and now the Middle East. Of course, much has changed since 1966 in terms of understanding the process of modernization; Black, to his credit, has moved with the times.

That said, the current volume is less of interest for its interpretation of modernization than its view of the modern Middle East. Inspired in large part by the other editor, Brown, the contributors correctly stress the Ottoman legacy of the Middle East and its continued importance for the region's politics. In some places, they exaggerate its role (seeing pan-Arab developments, for example, as illustrating "the nostalgic hope for the larger political unity that the Ottoman Empire once represented"), but the emphasis is well placed. They are right to see Ottoman Afro-Asia as "a single cultural area" and isolate its characteristics. These include political power giving access to economic wealth, and not the reverse; the absence of civil society (institutions between the state and the individual); a confusion between political opposition and treason; a sharp division between the culture of the center and the periphery; and winner-take-all politics.

The authors sum up the Middle East's record of modernization with the phrase "disjunctive development." The people are more skilled than average but the political structures more tyrannical; the wealth greater but also more dependent on outsiders; in all, the potential is great but the path to success very far from assured.

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