Modernity and Its Agencies: Young Movements in the History of the South

The first attempt to study the "young movement" beyond national frontiers, this volume details the  transition from ignorance to science and progress that engulfed at least half of the globe. Contributors not only shed light on the history of the movement in a number of countries and regions, but also compare and contrast the development of it in different parts of Asia and Africa, from Calcutta to Rabat, from Isfahan to Bukhara, and from Istanbul to Kazan. The book explains that in the past 200 years, for many enlightened individuals the main intellectual and political enquiry was to find a path negotiating the rapidly changing world. Labeling the past with obscurity and calling its guardians old and reactionary, the enlightened young became the self-assigned beacons of light leading the masses to a time of progress. The word "young" in both the South and the North soon evolved into the classical epithet of emerging intelligentsias in their struggle against the despotic rule of the ancient regimes and its supporters—often the clerical establishment. Furthermore, with the practice of colonialism and imperial expansionism, the Asian, African, and even some European "young" often crafted their identity by rejecting and defying the other. In world history, very few movements have had such widespread social and political repercussions.