Modernity and Culture From the Me diterranean to the Indian Ocean by Leila Tarazi Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 410 pages.)

Abstract

This book contains the output from a series of discussions leading to an American Social Science Research Council (SSRC) conference in Aix-enProvence, France in September 1998. The 18 essays address some aspects of the history of the Mediterranean-Middle East and Indian Ocean-South Asian areas between the 1890s and 1920s, when modernity and colonialism struck these areas. Despite the lack of a precise definition of moder nity, the contributors unravel how the advent of "European" modernity in transportation, military power, media, and imperialistic or colonial tendency shaped these areas' culture and social structures. Many of the essays focus upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century urban areas in port cities and important cities like Izmir, Haifa, Alexandria, Cairo, Basra, and Istanbul. This alludes to the fact that the cosmopolitan areas, especially coastal or port cities, are the locus of change, instead of rural areas. Throughout the book, modernization in Asia is treated less as an overpowering energy enacting inevitable social change than as a con­tested arena where subjugated people actively adapted, resisted, or altered the course of modernization inflicted by European colonialism.
The introduction by C. A. Bayly and L. T. Fawaz provides background sketches of the challenge of area studies in history and long-term histori­cal trends affecting the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean rim circa I 600-1920. Three broad strokes are identified: the relative decline of such Muslim empires as the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals or Deccan, due to their growing irrelevance or colonial encroachment; European mercantilist­imperialistic efforts in the maritime affairs of the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean; and sweeping social change in Muslim societies due to embracing or reacting against the European onslaught or a pure recon­struction of culture and thought (e.g., Wahhabism, the Young Turks, and the pan-Islamic movement in Egypt and India). Against this backdrop, all chapters weave diverse, indepth, and interesting analyses at the macro, micro, or societal and individual levels ...