with soldiers and bureaucrats in European
clothes, but they did not get European results. Most of these
"Western-type" officials knew almost nothing about the West, and were
therefore incapable of doing things in Western fashion. In fact, they
had small heart for the business. Devoid of any sort of enthusiasm for
ideas and institutions which they did not comprehend, they applied
themselves to the work of reform with secret ill-will and repugnance,
moved only by blind obedience to their sovereign's command. As time
passed, the military branches did gain some modern efficiency, but the
civil services made little progress, adopting many Western bureaucratic
vices but few or none of the virtues.

Meanwhile reformers of quite a different sort began to appear: men
demanding Western innovations like constitutions, parliaments, and other
phenomena of modern political life. Their numbers were constantly
recruited from the widening circles of men acquainted with Western ideas
through the books, pamphlets, and newspapers which were being
increasingly published, and through the education given by schools on
the Western model which were springing up. The third quarter of the
nineteenth century saw the formation of genuine political parties in
Turkey, and in 1876 the liberal groups actually wrung from a weak sultan
the grant of a parliament.

These early successes of Moslem political liberalism were, however,
followed by a period of reaction. The Moslem princes had become
increasingly alarmed at the growth of liberal agitation among their
subjects and were determined to maintain their despotic authority. The
new Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, promptly suppressed his parliament,
savagely persecuted the liberals, and restored the most uncompromising
despotism. In Persia the Shah repressed a nascent liberal movement with
equal severity, while in Egypt the spendthrift rule of Khedive Ismail
ended all native political life by provoking European intervention and
the imposition of British rule. Down to the Young-Turk revolution of
1908 there were few overt signs of liberal agitation in those Moslem
countries which still retained their independence. Nevertheless, the
agitation was there, working underground. Hundreds of youthful patriots
fled abroad, both to obtain an education and to conduct their liberal
propaganda, and from havens of refuge like Switzerland these
"Young-Turks," "Young-Persians," and others issued manifestoes and
publis