 |
What Went Wrong? |
featured
in Macworld,
one of the 5
best history sites on the web
|
|
|
What
Went Wrong?
by Bernard Lewis
|
buy
This
is the paperback edition. The hardcover
is also available.
|
|
Book
Description
For
centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront
of human achievement -- the foremost military
and economic power in the world, the leader
in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian
Europe was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism
and unbelief from which there was nothing to
learn or to fear. And then everything changed.
The West won victory after victory, first on
the battlefield and then in the marketplace.
In
this elegantly written volume, Bernard Lewis,
a renowned authority an Islamic affairs, examines
the anguished reaction of the Islamic world
as it tried to make sense of how it had been
overtaken, overshadowed, and dominated by the
West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture
in turmoil, Lewis shows how the Middle East
turned its attention to understanding European
weaponry, industry, government, education, and
culture. He also describes how some Middle Easterners
fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while
others asked not "Who did this to us?"
but rather "Where did we go wrong?"
With
a new Afterword that addresses September 11
and its aftermath, What Went Wrong? is an urgent,
accessible book that no one who is concerned
with contemporary affairs will want to miss.
About
the Author
Bernard
Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of
Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University.
An eminent authority on Middle Eastern history,
he is the author of over two dozen books, most
notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence
of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of
Islam, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, and The
Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000
Years. What Went Wrong? has been translated
into more than a dozen languages, including
Arabic and Turkish. He lives in Princeton, New
Jersey.
From
the Back Cover
"Only a scholar of Bernard Lewis's quality
could produce the sweep and depth of this fascinating
analysis. He gives meaning to history, and illumination
and challenge to the question he poses. He brings
a clear and lively style to this beautifully
written book."--George P. Shultz
"A compelling book. One of our most distinguished
historians throws a flood-light on that cruel
divide between the West and the societies of
Islam. Learned and urgent at the same time."--Fouad
Ajami, The Johns Hopkins University
"Muslim
loss of civilizational leadership and retreat
from modernity is at the center of global history
over the last five hundred years and remains
at this very time a major factor in international
conflicts and diplomatic quarrels. What went
wrong? Indeed. Muslims often have the feeling
that history has somehow betrayed them, and
on no comparable issue is the historian's potential
contribution more important--the more so because
the subject is plagued by ideological commitments,
partisan blather, and the constraints of political
correctness. People have shunned the topic for
all the wrong reasons. All the more reason to
be grateful for Bernard Lewis's interventions.
No one knows better the languages and motivations
of the players, and no one is more reliable
in the objectivity of his judgments."--David
Landes, Harvard University
|
Editorial
Reviews
hardback
cover |
From
Publishers Weekly
In the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern
history, few people are as prominent and
prolific as Lewis, emeritus professor
at Princeton. This time around, however,
he has written a book with an inconsistent
argument and an erratic narrative consisting
of recycled themes from his earlier books,
a work that sheds no new light on Middle
Eastern history or on the events of September
11. His general argument is that Islamic
civilization, once flourishing and tolerant,
has in modern times become stagnant. This,
he contends, has led to considerable soul-searching
among Muslims, who ask themselves, "What
went wrong?" But while sometimes
the author states that there is a critical
inquiry into the source of economic weakness
in Muslim civilizations, other times he
says that, instead of looking into the
mirror, Muslims have blamed their problems
on Europeans or Jews and thus fed their
sense of victimhood. In medieval times,
Lewis notes, Muslim civilization transmitted
scientific ideas into Europe. But after
offering intriguing examples of Muslim
physicians and astronomers on the cutting
edge in the 13th to 15th centuries, this
chapter abruptly ends by stating that
in modern times the roles have reversed,
leaving the reader baffled over what between
the 15th and the 20th centuries may have
contributed to this reversal. Thus, the
book raises more questions than it answers.
Furthermore, Lewis discounts the effects
of various decisions made by European
and American colonial powers that negatively
impacted the development of a democratic
political community and a viable economy
in the Middle East. Lewis's earlier books,
such as The Muslim Discovery of Europe
and The Middle East and the West, are
much more useful for anyone seeking to
understand the historical dynamic between
these two parts of the world. First serial
to Atlantic Monthly. Copyright
2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Amazon.com
Bernard Lewis is the West's greatest historian
and interpreter of the Near East. Books
such as The Middle East and The Arabs
in History are required reading for anybody
who hopes to understand the region and
its people. Now Lewis offers What Went
Wrong?, a concise and timely survey of
how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide
leadership in almost every frontier of
human knowledge five or six centuries
ago to a "poor, weak, and ignorant"
backwater that is today dominated by "shabby
tyrannies ... modern only in their apparatus
of repression and terror." He offers
no easy answers, but does provide an engaging
chronicle of the Arab encounter with Europe
in all its military, economic, and cultural
dimensions. The most dramatic reversal,
he says, may have occurred in the sciences:
"Those who had been disciples now
became teachers; those who had been masters
became pupils, often reluctant and resentful
pupils." Today's Arab governments
have blamed their plight on any number
of external culprits, from Western imperialism
to the Jews. Lewis believes they must
instead commit to putting their own houses
in order: "If the peoples of Middle
East continue on their present path, the
suicide bomber may become a metaphor for
the whole region, and there will be no
escape from a downward spiral of hate
and spite, rage and self-pity, [and] poverty
and oppression." Anybody who wants
to understand the historical backdrop
to September 11 would do well to look
for it on these pages. --John Miller
From
Library Journal
Since its inception in the seventh century,
Islamic civilization has remained a significant
force in the world. In fact, the Muslim
world was a leader in the humanities,
arts, and sciences while Europe was still
in relative darkness and mired in internecine
wars and religious zealotry. The Muslim
world was also largely responsible for
preserving and transmitting Greek and
other Western scholarship to Christian
Europe. However, Islamic civilization
was eventually overshadowed by the achievements
of European Christendom, and much of the
Muslim world came under the direct or
indirect domination of the West. In this
highly readable book, eminent historian
Lewis (Near Eastern studies, emeritus,
Princeton Univ.) explains Islam's encounter
with the West and the Middle East's varied
responses to the West's sociocultural
and political hegemony in the Muslim world.
Like many of Lewis's previous writings
on this subject (e.g., The Arabs in History),
this book will undoubtedly generate significant
debate and disagreement among scholars
regarding the author's analysis of Islamic
responses to modernity and Westernization.
Recommended for academic and large public
libraries. Nader Entessar, Spring Hill
Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information,
Inc.
Newsweek
"Arguably the West's most distinguished
scholar on the Middle East."
The
New York Times Book Review, January 27,
2002
"Lewis has done us all--Muslim and
non-Muslim alike--a remarkable service"
Business
Week, January 28, 2002
"A timely and provocative contribution
to the current raging debate about the
tensions between the West and the Islamic
world."
The
Baltimore Sun, January 13, 2002
"An excitingly knowledgeable antidote
to today's natural sense of befuddlement."
Wall
Street Journal, January 11, 2002
"Replete with the exceptional historical
insight that one has come to expect from
the world's foremost Islamic scholar."
|
|
Excerpt
from 1st Chapter
The
Treaty of Carlowitz has a special importance
in the history of the Ottoman Empire, and even,
more broadly, in the history of the Islamic
world, as the first peace signed by a defeated
Ottoman Empire with victorious Christian adversaries.
In a global perspective, this was not entirely
new. There had been previous defeats of Islam
by Christendom; the loss of Spain and Portugal,
the rise of Russia, the growing European presence
in South and Southeast Asia. But few observers
at that time, Muslim or Western, could command
a global perspective. In the perspective of
the Muslim heartlands in the Middle East, these
events were remote and peripheral, barely affecting
the balance of power between the Islamic and
Christian worlds in the long struggle that had
been going on between them since the advent
of Islam in the seventh century and the irruption
of the Muslim armies from Arabia into the then
Christian lands of Syria, Palestine, Egypt,
North Africa, and, for a while, Southern Europe.
The Crusaders had briefly halted the triumphal
march of Islam, but they had been held, defeated,
and ejected. The Muslim advance had continued
with the extinction of Byzantium and the Ottoman
entry into Europe. The Empire of Constantinople
had fallen; the Holy Roman Empire was next.
Ottoman and more broadly Muslim consciousness
of the world in which they lived is reflected
in the very copious historical literature that
they produced and, in greater detail, in the
millions of documents preserved in the Ottoman
archives, illustrating the functioning of the
Ottoman state year by year, almost day by day,
in its manifold activities. There are occasional
references to the loss of Spain, but it appears
as a relatively minor issue—far away,
not threatening. There is some mention of the
arrival of Muslim refugees and of Jewish refugees
who came from Spain to the Ottoman lands, but
little more.
The peace signed at Carlowitz drove home two
lessons. The first was military, defeat by superior
force. The second lesson, more complex, was
diplomatic, and was learnt in the process of
negotiation. In the early centuries of Ottoman
experience, a treaty was a simple matter. The
Ottoman government dictated its terms, and the
defeated enemy accepted them. After the first
siege of Vienna there was, for a while, some
sort of negotiation, and even—a startling
innovation—a concession to the kaiser
of equal status with the sultan, but no conclusive
result one way or the other. In negotiating
the Treaty of Carlowitz, the Ottomans had, for
the first time, to resort to that strange art
we call diplomacy, by which they tried, through
political means, to modify, or even to reduce
the results of the military outcome. For the
Ottoman officials this was a new task, one in
which they had no experience: how to negotiate
the best terms they could after a military defeat. |
|
|
|
|