Modernist Reform and Independence Movements

Abstract

This article makes initial observations on various historical relations and analogical comparisons between the Central Asian Muslim and Korean modernist reform and independence movements from 1850 to 1940. It presents a more nuanced and integrated understanding of Asian and world history as it took shape across “the long 19th century” while also laying ground work for further research. It introduces newly translated Kazakh and Turkish source material, particularly that of Ibrai Altinsarin, the Kazakh modernist educator, and Abdurreshid Ibrahim, the Turkic-Tatar advocate of Japanese-led Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian cooperation. The essay follows a historical, rather than analogical approach, placing each movement respectively in its broader shared Asian and world historical context, leaving the reader to discern points of comparison and contrast. It argues first that certain Central Asian and Korean reform and independence leaders not only were aware of and sympathetic toward one another’s predicaments, but encountered one another, particularly in Russian Asia, Manchuria, Japan, and even Korea. Second, both came under the direct influence of a significant number of the same sources, particularly Meiji Japan.