War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

48 Stephanie Cronincapacity and resist growing European hegemony and direct or indirect control,by imitating European methods of military organization and warfare.Almost every indigenous ruler who succeeded in evading or warding off directEuropean control, from the sultans of pre-Protectorate Morocco in the westto the shahs of the Qajar dynasty in Iran in the east, invited European officers,sometimes as individuals, sometimes as formal missions, to assist withbuilding a modern army. 1 With the help of these officers, Middle Easternrulers thus sought to appropriate the secrets of European power. 2Early attempts by Middle Eastern rulers to modernize their militaryforces were partly driven by shock at successive defeats by European powers,especially by the relentless Russian conquests of Ottoman and Iranianterritory and the consequent extension of infidel control over Muslim populations.Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt in 1798, although temporary, providedboth a reminder of local military weakness and an impressive displayof the power of a modern army. There were, however, other equally importantmotives for military reform. In the early nineteenth century, MiddleEastern rulers still harboured ambitions of reconquering territories lost toEuropean expansion and hoped to develop modern armies with offensive capacities,such capacities also proving useful in enhancing their regional standingvis-à-vis other local states. Perhaps most importantly, by creating a modernarmy loyal exclusively to themselves, the Ottoman and Moroccan sultans,the beys of Tunis, the shahs of Iran and Muhammad Ali of Egypt also hopedto equip their dynasties with a coercive weapon capable of quelling domesticopposition and buttressing their own personal power as expressed in theform of a modern autocratic state.The protracted struggles of these rulers to build up military forces capableof defending their realms from external attack largely failed. Yet theOttoman example, and the more temporary achievements of Mohammad Aliin Egypt in the 1820s and 1830s, were of immense importance in spreadingideas of military reform throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Theadoption of European methods by rulers as strong and assertive as MohammadAli or with the prestige of the Ottoman sultan-caliph, made these innovationspalatable and even desirable to wider Muslim opinion. The routes bywhich modern concepts of military organization and innovations in militarytechnology were transmitted throughout the Middle East and North Africawere complex. Nineteenth-century Europe itself offered no single model ofmilitary development, and Middle Eastern countries in general appear to havebeen influenced much more by each local effort at reform than directly bythe unmediated European example. 3Iran in particular seems to have been fascinated by the Ottoman experience.In its military reforms, Iran shared many of the Ottoman Empire’s goals.Iran, like the Ottoman Empire, conceptualized its military needs in terms ofa large multi-functional army, based on mass conscription. Although the latertriumphs of European imperialism, in which Iran has been cast as passivevictim, have tended to obscure this motive, the Qajar shahs wanted a large