Islam • 143polity had to be seen to work effectively. An increasing num-
ber of people were needed to take part in the various scien-
tific and industrial projects at quite humble levels- as
printers, clerks, factory workers- and in order to acquire a
modicum of the new standards, they had to receive some kind
of education. More people were needed to buy the mass-
produced goods, so that to keep the economy going an in-
creasing number of people had to live above subsistence level.
As more of the workers became literate, they demanded a
greater share in the decisions of government. If a nation
wanted to use all its human resources to enhance its produc-
tivity, it had to bring groups who had hitherto been segre-
gated and marginalized, such as the Jews, into mainstream
culture. Religious differences and spiritual ideals must not be
allowed to impede the progress of society, and scientists,
monarchs and government officials insisted that they be free
of ecclesiastical control. Thus the ideals of democracy, plu-
ralism, toleration, human rights and secularism were not sim-
ply beautiful ideals dreamed up by political scientists, but
were, at least in part, dictated by the needs of the modern
state. It was found that in order to be efficient and productive,
a modern nation had to be organized on a secular, democratic
basis. But it was also found that if societies did organize all
their institutions according to the new rational and scientific
norms, they became indomitable and the conventional agrar-
ian states were no match for them.
This had fateful consequences for the Islamic world. The
progressive nature of modern society and an industrialized
economy meant that it had continuously to expand. New
markets were needed, and, once the home countries had been
saturated, they had to be sought abroad. The Western states
therefore began, in various ways, to colonize the agrarian
countries outside modern Europe in order to draw them into
their commercial network. This too was a complex process.