rench conquest, beginning with
Algiers in 1830 and ending with Morocco to-day.[155] France brought
peace, order, and material prosperity, but here, as in other Eastern
lands, these very benefits of European tutelage created a new sort of
unity among the natives in their common dislike of the European
conqueror and their common aspiration toward independence. Accordingly,
the past generation has witnessed the appearance of "Young Algerian" and
"Young Tunisian" political groups, led by French-educated men who have
imbibed Western ideas of "self-government" and "liberty."[156] However,
as we have already remarked, their goal is not so much the erection of
distinct Algerian and Tunisian "Nations" as it is creation of a larger
North African, perhaps Pan-Islamic, unity. It must not be forgotten that
they are in close touch with the Sennussi and kindred influences which
we have already examined in the chapter on Pan-Islamism.

So much for "first-stage" nationalist developments in the Arab or
Arabized lands. There is, however, one more important centre of
nationalist sentiment in the Moslem world to be considered--Persia.
Persia is, in fact, the land where a genuine nationalist movement would
have been most logically expected, because the Persians have for ages
possessed a stronger feeling of "country" than any other Near Eastern
people.

In the nineteenth century Persia had sunk into such deep decrepitude
that its patent weakness excited the imperialistic appetites of Czarist
Russia and, in somewhat lesser degree, of England. Persia's decadence
and external perils were, however, appreciated by thinking Persians, and
a series of reformist agitations took place, beginning with the
religious movement of the Bab early in the nineteenth century and
culminating with the revolution of 1908.[157] That revolution was
largely precipitated by the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 by which
England and Russia virtually partitioned Persia; the country being
divided into a Russian "sphere of influence" in the north and a British
"sphere of influence" in the south, with a "neutral zone" between. The
revolution was thus in great part a desperate attempt of the Persian
patriots to set their house in order and avert, at the eleventh hour,
the shadow of European domination which was creeping over the land. But
the revolution was not merely a protest against European aggression. It
was also aimed at the alien Khadjar dynasty which had so long misru