On The Formation Of The Arab Nationalism In The Early Modern Times(1798-1918)

The Arab nationalism was not only the important ideology which affected the historic course of the Arab World from the traditional to the modern, but also produced far-reaching influence on the situation of the Middle East and even the world. There are three research methods in this dissertation, which are combining the history with reality, the parts with the whole, and the comparison with dialectic analysis. It was necessary to choose the Arab World as the subject while analysing the influence of the Western political thoughts on the formation of the Arab nationalism in the viewpoint of the theory of civilization consciousness. There are three parts in this dissertation, which are the introduction, the text and the conclusion. The introduction includes four parts, and they are the background of the subject, the research ideas and methods, the content and the main characteristics of this research.The text is composed of five chapters. The first chapter states the traditional Arab-Islamic political thoughts, which includes the political participation of the Islam and the governmental body of the Arab-Islamic state. The main content of the traditional Arab-Islamic political doctrine was the evolution of the Caliphate institution. The power of the Islamic government was built on the principle that the power of the people and the country belonged to the Allah. There were three main religious institutions which were the mosque, the administration organizations of zakat and waqf in the government of the Islamic state.The second chapter mainly discusses the development of the Western political thoughts. There were two kinds of dominant political thought in the Western Europe in the early modern times. One was the French political nationalism which expressed as the political thoughts of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, for examples, separation of three powers, enlightened despotism and social contract, which were used as the basic principles of dealing with the relationship between the government and the people. The other was the Germany cultural nationalism which had the most dominant representative personages as Herder, Kant, Fichte and Hegel who emphasized the positive effect of the national language, national spirit and democratic concept on the unification of Germany.The third chapter illustrates the progress of the awakening of the Arab national awareness. In the late period of the Ottoman Empire, the language and literature of the Arab World were on the decline, and the economic development was suffocated, and the Islam faith decayed. The military expansion, economic colonization, and cultural infiltration of the Western world had not only produced extremely serious disaster, but also brought the advanced science and technology, the concept of freedom and equality. There were several reform and revived movements in the Arab World, all of which were the concrete embodiment of the awakening of the Arab national awareness.The fourth chapter mainly interprets three kinds of political identification in the building process of the Arab nationalism. Firstly, the Islamic Modernism which was lead by Afghani and Abdul resorted to the unification of all the Muslims by the Islam. Secondly, the Egyptian nationalism which was on the basis of the local and national identity was represented by Tahatawi and the Motherland Party. Tahatawi aroused the Egyptians’patriotism by means of the secular ideas of the motherland and nation, and the Urabi Movement which was lead by the Motherland Party nationalism was a large scale of resisting against the foreign aggressive in the early modern history of Egypt. Thirdly, the content of the Pan-Arabism included that the Arabs were unified as a whole, and that the Egypt was a part of the Arab nation.The fifth chapter analyzes some concrete questions in the building of the Arab nationalism. The forming of the conception of the Arab nation was the result of the evolutionary process which was from the Islamic Umma to the group of people who speaks Arabic. The essence of the revivalism in the Arab World was to narrow the gap between the ideal and reality, and the modernization was a kind of coping styles with the challenge of the European civilization. The elite class of the Arab World such as the Christians played a vanguard role in the construction of the Arab nationalism. The Arab nationalism got the political legitimacy relying on the cultural, linguistic, and Islam identification.By the study, this text draws the following four conclusions. Firstly, the traditional Arab-Islamic political thoughts were the foundation of the early modern Arab nationalism. Secondly, the external source of the early modern Arab nationalism was the political nationalism of the French and the cultural nationalism of the Germany. Thirdly, the early modern Arab nationalism transformed from the cultural nationalism to the political nationalism in the struggle against the mandatory administration and colonial aggression. At last, the objective of the early modern nationalism in the initial stage was the unification and prosperity of the Arab region.