European military instructors reframed Westerners as knowledge sources in Muslim eyes

Evidence

European instructors in Muslim military academies made it necessary, for the first time, for young Mus­ lim cadets to view Europeans as dispensers of useful knowledge and not merely as infidels and barbarians. And the steady advance of European power—penetration, encroachment, domination, in some areas even annexation—was finally bringing increasing numbers of Muslim statesmen and soldiers to the view that a better understanding of this Western world was essential to their survival. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1075

Categorization

• XREF: The same ‘defensive modernization’ dynamic appears with the Tanzimat reforms, Russian Peter the Great’s westernization, and Meiji Japan — losing militaries import their rivals’ knowledge.