Until the seventeenth century of our era, the Islamicate society that was associated with the Islamic religion was the most expansive society in the Afro-Eurasian hemisphere and had the most influence on other societies. This was in part because of its central location, but also because in it were expressed effectively certain cultural pressures–cosmopolitan and egalitarian (and anti-traditional)– generated in the older and more central lands of this society.

For many historians, liberalization and modernization are parallel and complementary concepts. Any trend to liberalization is accepted by them as a pledge to modernization whereas any restrictive measure is seen as an expression of traditionalism. Scholars in Turkey and the West who have studied the history of Turkish modernization with such a pre-conceived approach have praised the Tanzimat (1839–76), the Young Ottoman (1876–78) and the Young Turk (1908–18) periods-as modernist while they have condemned Abdulhamid II's reign traditionalist, even backwardist.

France's acquisition of Syria and Lebanon as mandated territory after the First World War has often been described as the result of war-time arrangements such as the Sykes–Picot Agreement and the MacMahon–Hussein Correspondence. In fact, however, the French claim to these parts of the old Ottoman Empire was recognized internationally even before the war erupted. The nineteenth century had witnessed the tremendous penetration of French religious influence into Syria and Lebanon through the establishment of clerical schools, hospitals, asylums and orphanages.

During the last decade or so, educational institutions of developing countries have attracted the attention of social scientists as the prime movers of structural changes in such societies. Furthermore, among some of those who are concerned with economic development and growth, there has emerged a common belief that a major barrier to economic development, probably, is not so much the scarcity of physical resources and capital, but rather the lack of trained manpower owing to insufficient or mismanaged investment in education.