The Romance Of Regression

The romance of regression in the time of the Islamic State.

- MJ Akbar

History is synonymous with turbulence; but even by its troubled standards, the churn in a single century between 1857 and the 1960s was unprecedented. Every single empire—ancient, middling or modern—collapsed: Mughal, Chinese, Japanese, Ottoman, Iranian, Tsarist, Spanish, Habsburg, German, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, Italian, French and British. Strategic stability, always a tenuous reality, went into a spin as post-empire and post-colonial states had to find new equations, not only with old masters but also between themselves and within themselves.

Great empires linger on their deathbed, and it is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment of decline. There are few disputes however about a death rattle.

The Mughals spent over 125 years in hospital, unwilling to die and unable to live after Nadir Shah smashed what was left of their pretensions in 1739. Ottoman fragility was evident when Russia advanced to the Black Sea, France took Algeria in 1830, and Greece became independent in 1832. In 1853, Tsar Nicholas made his famous remark about Ottomans to British ambassador Sir George Hamilton Seymour: “We have on our hands a sick man—a very sick man. It will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if, one of these days, he should slip away from us, especially before necessary arrangements were made.” Sir George’s answer should have been equally famous: “For myself, I will venture to remark that experience shows me that countries do not die in such a hurry.”

This crawl, however, turned into hurry when World War 1 ended the Tsars, Ottomans and Habsburgs. The British Empire enjoyed a false resurrection when it gained nearly 2.1 million sq km of territory in 1919, but by 1947 it had lost India, instigating the downward spiral that finished Europeans as world powers. The age of empire gave way to an era of uncertainty.