Chinese Trade

Most traders who knew about the unsatisfactory results obtained in the past in Chinese trade were prejudiced against Chinese business without realizing that they had dealt through Japanese or half-bred Far Eastern firms. When the Chinese entered personally into international business the foreigners gradually lost their prejudice but it took some time.

The fact that the Turks have not entered into business until comparatively recently is not at all due to laziness or indolence. It is rather due to two distinct causes which must be mentioned here to render full justice to the Turkish race. The first is a moral cause. The religion, the education and the Asiatic origin of the Turks have led them to look upon life more like a road that should be used to reach spiritual attainments than like an opportunity to obtain material gains. Spiritual attainments are eternal those who accumulate them in this life continue their progress in the other with a useful capital and with assets that really count.

Material gains are perishable and those who accumulate them in this life cannot take them into the other. Why should I therefore use my time and energy to accumulate things that will be useful to me only during this life which, after all, is only an infinitesimal part of my eternal existence? Accustomed to think and to reason thus the Turks have become a race indifferent to material gains and ambitious only for spiritual gains, and they have naturally enough disdained business. In fact, they have for centuries looked down upon commerce and finance and have purposely avoided competing in these activities with the less spiritual but far more materialistic non Turkish elements of the Near East.

Sultan Mehemet IV

The second cause is political or historical. At the time of the conquest of Constantinople nearly six centuries ago, and when for the first time Turkey acquired to her misfortune a large non Turkish population, Sultan Mehemet IV. desired to give a proof of his magnanimity and, in a spirit of justice, not only recognized the entire freedom of religion of the newly subjected non Turkish races, but even exempted them from all duties towards the state.

The non-Turkish elements were only called upon to pay a yearly tribute to the Empire and outside of this were left entirely free to look after themselves. When it is realized that these religious and political privileges were graciously granted by the Turks to conquered races generations before the Spanish Inquisition when the Christian conquerors of Spain tried to impose Christianity on the conquered Arabs and Hebrews through hair-raising tortures and centuries before the religious wars of Europe when Catholic and Protestant majorities tried to impose their individual dogma upon each other through massacres and torture without considering racial or even family ties the broadmindedness and justice of the Turkish conquerors becomes apparent.