58 Ë A Lull
But it also resulted in colossal casualties on both sides.¹⁹Armenians and Kurds in
Eastern Anatolia, became equally emboldened and de ant of the Turks. The eorts
of the Young Turks to modernize and centralize the country met with sti resistance
in Eastern Anatolia where Istanbul’s control had always been rather limited. In that
land, the Ottomans had long sought to use the Muslim Kurds, Christian Armenians,
and others (such as Christian Assyrians) to subvert its imperial rival to the north.
Likewise, Russia sought to do the same against its rival to the south. Because these
minority groups were often pitted against one another, mutual pogroms were not un-
common, as was also the case in the Russian Caucasus between Christian Armenians
and Muslim Azeris. Major population centers such as Ti is and Baku were in fact
aicted by ethnic and religious violence at the time of the 1905 Revolution.²⁰
What changed after 1905 was that Muslims as a whole came to be deliberately
targeted by Western imperial powers for political operations. All imperial powers had
been scheming for a piece of the enormous pie of the Ottoman Empire. This was the
core of the century-old “Eastern Question.” Famously, Germany’s ambitions to be-
come a global power led to Anglo-German naval competition, drawing Germany to
Asia Minor and the Middle East, where it saw a good chance of competing success-
fully against its rivals – Britain, France, and Russia. Thus, Germany courted Turkey.
German ambitions went much further, however, eyeing the Muslims in the Caucasus,
Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The promotion of pan-Islamism (which itself
had emerged to contest Western colonial domination of Muslim lands) under German
aegis was intended to subvert the imperial extensions of Germany’s competitors. In
the case of Russia with its large Muslim population, German support of pan-Islamism
had the additional eect of subverting Russia from within. The German plan to extend
its railways from Berlin to Baghdad became the symbol of German imperial ambitions
in the east of Europe.²¹
Japan, too, found among the Muslims a tool with which to satisfy its imperial am-
bitions. Even after the war against Russia ended successfully in 1905, Japan contin-
ued to collect, openly and secretly, detailed information on political, economic, re-
ligious, and national conditions in the Caucasus and Persia.²²No evidence seems to
exist to suggest that Japan maintained any sustained contact with Muslims (or Chris-
19 Richard C. Hall, “The Next War: The In uence of the Russo-Japanese War on Southeastern Europe
and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913.”Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 17, no. 3 (2004), 563–577 (quotes
on p. 574.)
20 See the rst-hand account by an Italian correspondent: Luigi Villari,Fire and Sword in the Caucasus
(London: T.F. Unwin, 1906).
21 See Sean McMeekin,The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World
Power(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
22 See scanned documents (pertaining to the period from 1908 to 1911) available at JACAR, the Japan
Center for Asian Historical Records (National Archives of Japan): http://www.jacar.go.jp, reference
codes: B03050608300, B03050608400, B03050608500, B0213056620.