Westernization Quotes
At the time, Muslim clerics had a great deal of influence and in many cases legal control over all facets of Turkish society much as exists in other Islamic societies today. They even controlled what was taught in the schools. Remarkably, without bloodshed, Ataturk broke both the power and the influence of the clerics on all official and public activities. Many Turkish Muslims even developed a type of reformed Islam with the relationship between the individual and the clerics one of parity much like Protestant churches in the West. At the same time there was a more orthodox part of the population and while they sent their children to religious schools, they also attended public schools so even the orthodox Muslims in Turkey learned science and modern subjects which are still not taught in most Islamic schools and madrassas.
In 1898 the President was faced with a great dilemma in the Philippines. Giving the islands back to Spain after the war was unthinkable. Germany and France were waiting to step in. Self government was viewed as impractical, given the state of affairs at the time. The President decided to take the islands.
He insisted that Turks wear hats rather than the class-specific traditional headwear. Some Turks preferred the word “modernized” to “civilized.”
The neo-conservative expectation of the American invasion of Iraq almost a century later was essentially the same, and the false expectation led to the same kind of failure as the George W. Bush debacle of the early 21st century.
He had concluded that Spain, who then ruled the Philippines, was incompetent, cruel and immoral in its rule, but that the Filipinos were not educated or sophisticated enough to rule themselves. However, he felt that he had to protect our commercial interests in the islands and the region, and was worried that commercial interests of other countries would take over and control the area. Another reason that this is a very important quotation is that it indicates the anti-Catholic bias in America at the time. Note that the President stated that one objective was to “Christianize” them. However, Spain had been in the islands for over 300 years and most Filipinos were already Roman Catholic. However, Roman Catholics were then a much smaller proportion of the American population and many Protestants didn’t think Catholicism was a legitimate Christian Religion. When the majority of Americans thought of Christianizing other people, they thought of Protestant missionaries much like England. At the time there was very little criticism of the President for the “error” of stating that Filipinos should be Christianized when they were so already Spanish Colonial Policy and Practice was generally terrible and particularly so in the Philippines, See {629450}.
Johnson strongly urged white contact with the Indians in the Indian communities, He himself married an Indian Woman.
Turkey had become a modern, secular nation under the leadership of Ataturk. At the time of this interview, a religious party had won a plurality of seats in the Parliament and while not rolling back the secular nature of the Turkish state which is enshrined in the Turkish Constitution, has tried to stem the tide of secularism.
“Young Chinese” referred to members of a Chinese political party—Young China—consisting mainly of Western-Educated young Chinese who were a strong force for change, but did not have the experience, money, or power connections to unify the country or operate the government. The Japanese watched Chinese politics very carefully as China was seen as a potential rival or a teritory of conquest.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Twain was one of the few whites who realized that success in assimilating American Indians would destroy their culture and identity. Even today, whites and Indians alike constantly debate the desirability of assimilation policies and supporting independent reservations.
While this type of modernization had been a theme of her reign, it was particularly fascinating at this time when China had been invaded by Japan and 7 Western Countries, she still argued that the only way for China to thrive and attain true independence was to reform and adopt many Western Ways. Chinese leader after her gave lip service to doing this but never wanted to implement the reforms lest the lose power. Ironically, it was under Communist leader Deng Xiaoping, 1904-1993, that Cixi’s notion of adopting modern Western economic and technological models and approaches was finally implemented and then China made the greatest improvement of any large society ever in a relatively short term. However, Deng stopped short of adopting Western notions of political freedom.
