An Empire of Many Cultures

With the outbreak of WWI and British expansion into the Middle East, certain Bahá'í, Muslim, and Jewish leaders found it necessary to form new relationships with that government and its representatives, relationships which would prove to be of pivotal importance for each and have a lasting impact on future generations. This book, based upon extensive archival research, explores how Bahá'ís in England and Palestine, Muslim missionaries from India based in Woking, and Jews in England on both sides of the Zionist debate understood interactions with the British state and larger imperial culture prior to and during the war. One of the most significant findings of this study is that while an appreciation of diversity tends to be regarded as a modern, postcolonial phenomenon, a way to remedy the unjust remnants of an imperial past, the men and women of the early twentieth century whose words and actions come to life on the pages of this book understood diversity as defining characteristic of the empire itself. They found real meaning and value in the variety of religions, races, languages, nations, cultures and ethnicities that comprised that vast, global entity. This recognition of its diversity, along with certain British liberal ideals, allowed extraordinary individuals to find common ground between that state and their own beliefs, goals and aspirations, thus helping to lay the foundation for the eventual development of the Bahá'í faith as a world religion, a new era of Muslim missionary activity in the West and a Jewish state in Palestine.