essentially
protests against the political decadence of Moslem states and the moral
decadence of Moslem rulers. These outbreaks were not inspired by any
special fear or hatred of the West, since Europe was not yet seriously
assailing Islam except in outlying regions like European Turkey or the
Indies, and the impending peril was consequently not appreciated.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the situation had
radically altered. The French conquest of Algeria, the Russian
acquisition of Transcaucasia, and the English mastery of virtually all
India, convinced thoughtful Moslems everywhere that Islam was in deadly
peril of falling under Western domination. It was at this time that
Pan-Islamism assumed that essentially anti-Western character which it
has ever since retained. At first resistance to Western encroachment was
sporadic and unco-ordinated. Here and there heroic figures like
Abd-el-Kader in Algeria and Shamyl in the Caucasus fought brilliantly
against the European invaders. But though these paladins of the faith
were accorded widespread sympathy from Moslems, they received no
tangible assistance and, unaided, fell.

Fear and hatred of the West, however, steadily grew in intensity, and
the seventies saw the Moslem world swept from end to end by a wave of
militant fanaticism. In Algeria there was the Kabyle insurrection of
1871, while all over North Africa arose fanatical "Holy Men" preaching
holy wars, the greatest of these being the Mahdist insurrection in the
Egyptian Sudan, which maintained itself against England's best efforts
down to Kitchener's capture of Khartum at the very end of the century.
In Afghanistan there was an intense exacerbation of fanaticism awakening
sympathetic echoes among the Indian Moslems, both of which gave the
British much trouble. In Central Asia there was a similar access of
fanaticism, centring in the powerful Nakechabendiya fraternity,
spreading eastward into Chinese territory and culminating in the great
revolts of the Chinese Mohammedans both in Chinese Turkestan and Yunnan.
In the Dutch East Indies there was a whole series of revolts, the most
serious of these being the Atchin War, which dragged on interminably,
not being quite stamped out even to-day.

The salient characteristic of this period of militant unrest is its lack
of co-ordination. These risings were all spontaneous outbursts of local
populations; animated, to be sure, by the same spirit of fear and