[70] For the Salafî movement, see "Wahhabisme--Son Avenir sociale et le Mouvement salafî," _Revue du Monde musulman_, 1919.
[71] On the general subject of economic Pan-Islamism, see A. Le Chatelier, "Le Reveil de l'Islam--Sa Situation économique," _Revue Économique internationale_, July, 1910; also his article "Politique musulmane," _Revue du Monde musulman_, September, 1910; M. Pickthall, "La Morale islamique," _Revue Politique internationale_, July, 1916; S. Khuda Bukhsh, _Essays: Indian and Islamic_ (London, 1912).
The influence of the West is the great dynamic in the modern transformation of the East. The ubiquitous impact of Westernism is modifying not merely the Islamic world but all non-Moslem Asia and Africa,[72] and in subsequent pages we shall examine the effects of Western influence upon the non-Moslem elements of India. Of course Western influence does not entirely account for Islam's recent evolution. We have already seen that, for the last hundred years, Islam itself has been engendering forces which, however quickened by external Western stimuli, are essentially internal in their nature, arising spontaneously and working toward distinctive, original goals. It is not a mere copying of the West that is to-day going on in the Moslem world, but an attempt at a new synthesis--an assimilation of Western methods to Eastern ends. We must always remember that the Asiatic stocks which constitute the bulk of Islam's followers are not primitive savages like the African negroes or the Australoids, but are mainly peoples with genuine civilizations built up by their own efforts from the remote past. In view of their historic achievements, therefore, it seems safe to conclude that in the great ferment now stirring the Moslem world we behold a real _Renaissance_, whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been similar movements in former times.
The modern influence of the West on the East is quite unprecedented in both intensity and scope. The far more local, partial influence of Greece and Rome cannot be compared to it. Another point to be noted is that this modern influence of the West upon the East is a very recent thing. The full impact of Westernism upon the Orient as a whole dates only from about the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the process has been going on by leaps and bounds. Roads and railways, posts and telegraphs, books and papers, methods and ideas, have penetrated, or are in process of penetrating, every nook and cranny of the East. Steamships sail the remotest seas. Commerce drives forth and scatters the multitudinous products of Western industry among the remotest peoples. Nations which only half a century ago lived the life of thirty centuries ago, to-day read newspapers and go to business in electric tram-cars. Both the habits and thoughts of Orientals are being revolutionized. To a discussion of the influence of the West upon the Moslem world the remainder of this book will be devoted. The chief elements will be separately analysed in subsequent chapters, the present chapter being a general survey of an introductory character.