The Ottoman Empire Becomes an International Question
By P. T. Magan
My last article in the REVIEW was entitled “England’s Advent in the Eastern Question.” It was shown that this began in the days of Empress Catherine II, of Russia, and of William Pitt, Britain’s great commoner. Proof was given to substantiate the claim that England has for years made the existence of the Turkish empire a matter of her own vital policy. In fact, the policy to keep Turkey in Europe has been one common to every political party which has held the reins of power at Westminster for more than a century. As already stated, this policy was first broached in the days of Catherine and Pitt. In 1807 there was war again between Russia and Turkey, and in 1809 the Russians were defeated at Silistria. The war was closed by the treaty of Bucharest in 1812, which fixed the river Pruth as the boundary between the two countries. Next in the near Eastern question came the war for the independence of the Greeks. This time the British lion and the Russian bear fought side by side and hand in hand. It was Britain who led the van in establishing the independence of Greece, and she seemingly abandoned her position of protector of the Turk. But this was at a time when all England, and, in fact, the world stood aghast at the horrible atrocities which had been perpetrated by the Turks between 1821 and 1827. The moment Canning died, however, the real temper of the British ministry was betrayed in that famous sentence of a king’s speech which declared that the destruction of a Turkish fleet at Navarino was an “untoward event.” (See Allison, “History of Europe,” Vol. IV, page 128.) Again, it must be remembered that the only reason why Russia joined Great Britain and France in the movement for the liberation of the Greeks was because the movement “partially dismembered” the Turkish empire, and was a precedent that Russia could use to good advantage later on. Only a few years elapsed, however, and Russia was at war with Turkey again. In 1828-29 she had the Ottomans beaten, and dictated her own terms of peace under the walls of Constantinople. This time, England, under Wellington, the Iron Duke, was on the very “point of interfering.” “Although she did not actually do so, yet the sight of a Russian army and of a Russian fleet triumphant on the Bosporus, deepened and confirmed the most natural suggestions of anxiety for the future.” In 1832 the now almost perennial Turkish question was up again. This time it was brought to the flashing-point by Mohammed Ali, the khedive of Egypt. He was one of the most powerful of the feudatories of the sultan. He quarreled with Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Saint Jean d’ Acre. His adopted son, Ibrahim, at the head of a powerful army, marched into Syria, “without consulting the Turkish sultan.” “Mahmoud, the sultan, commanded peace between the belligerents, and ordered Ibrahim to return to Egypt. Ibrahim disobeyed, and captured the Syrian forts, Gaza, Jaffa, and Caiffa. In May, he reduced Acre to a heap of ruins, and finally starved it into submission. He now determined to conquer all Syria; and the capture of Damascus, together with a great victory on the banks of the Orontes, enabled him to advance as far as Antioch. There again he routed the Turkish army, and opened the road to Constantinople. The sultan made one more effort, and sent out a force of sixty thousand men under Reshid Pasha, who was entirely defeated at Konieh on the twenty-first of December.” — Rambaud, “History of Russia,” Vol. III, chap. 3, par. 4. In her distress Turkey then appealed to the powers. For the time being her old friend, England, seems to have been napping. Czar Nicholas I, of Russia, seized the opportunity, and offered to help the sultan, who, being in desperate straits, accepted the proffered aid. The Russian general Muravieff was sent to Alexandria to co-operate with the Austrian consul in persuading the khedive to put an end to hostilities. Not much came of this, however, and Mahmoud “summoned the Russians.” “A fleet from Sebastopol anchored at the mouth of the Bosporus; fifteen thousand men disembarked on the coast of Asia, and another force of twenty-four thousand strong advanced to the Pruth.” But this was entirely too much for the British government, which awakened out of its slumber with a start. “Frightened at this intervention,” Lord Ponsonby and Admiral Ronsin, the English and French ambassadors, “pointed out to the sultan the danger of letting Russia gain a footing in the heart of the empire. It would be better, they said, to capitulate to his rebellious subjects.” To these advisers the sultan harkened, and the result was “the withdrawal of the Russian forces.” See Rambaud, Id.; also “Historians’ History of the World,” Vol. XXIV, subject “The Revolt of Mohammed Ali.” Even then things did not quiet down as was expected. Very soon a rumor began to go around that the Russian count, Orloff, had concluded with the Ottoman government the now famous treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi. This treaty was signed in June, 1833, and, “under the appearance of an offensive and defensive alliance, established the dependence of Turkey on Russia. Each of the two contracting parties agreed to furnish the other the aid necessary ‘to secure the tranquillity of its states.’ The later stipulation might, in such a distracted country as Turkey, involve a permanent occupation by the Russian forces. “The true significance of the treaty was contained in an additional secret article by which the sultan undertook, in case Russia were attacked, to close the Dardanelles, and to admit no foreign ships of war, on any pretext whatsoever, to pass through them; while on the other hand the czar agreed to spare his ally the trouble and expense of giving him military aid. England and France protested loudly, but subsequent events prevented the execution of the treaty.” — Rambaud, Id., pars. 5, 6. In 1839 the Turkish government again declared war against Mohammed Ali and his adopted son, Ibrahim Pasha, with the purpose in view of winning back Syria to the Star and Crescent flag. But Ibrahim Pasha was again victorious. Just at this time Sultan Mahmoud died. A sixteen-year-old boy was his successor, and for Turkey things were in a bad way. It would seem that the natural conclusion of the whole affair ought to have been that Syria should remain a province of Egypt, and that the Turks would simply have lost this much of their territory. But this was not to be. It was very clear to some of the powers that they must act. If they did not, Turkey must certainly come to an end, and no one profit by the event except the Russians. This, however, could only result in “a general European war.” This, to the powers, meant Armageddon. In order that this might not be, there was once more put into practise the old policy of helping Turkey, only with this great difference; to wit, that that which heretofore was a policy merely, now became a part of the international law of Europe. What happened is finely told by one who is not only an erudite historian, but also a statesman,—a man who for many years was one of the most brilliant sons of Ireland in the British Parliament at Westminster. Says McCarthy:— *“It was evident that Turkey was not able to hold her own against the formidable Mohammed and his successful son; and the policy of the western powers of Europe and of England especially, had long been to maintain the Ottoman empire a necessary part of the common state system. The policy of Russia was to keep up that empire as long as it suited her own purpose; to take care that no other power got anything out of Turkey; and to prepare the way for such a partition of the spoils of Turkey as would satisfy Russian interests. Russia, therefore, was to be found now defending7Turkey, now assailing her. The course taken by Russia was seemingly inconsistent; but it was only inconsistent as the course of a sailing ship may be which now tacks to this side and now to that, but has a clear object in view and a port to reach all the time. England was then, and for a long time after, steadily bent on preserving the Turkish empire, and in a great measure as a rampart against the schemes and ambitions imputed to Russia herself. France was less firmly set on the maintenance of Turkey; and France, moreover, had got it into her mind that England had designs of her own in Egypt. Austria was disposed to go generally with England; Prussia was little more than a nominal sharer in the alliance which was now tinkered up. It is evident that such an alliance could not be very harmonious or direct in its action. It was, however, effective enough to prove too strong for the pasha of Egypt. A fleet made up of English, Austrian, and Turkish vessels bombarded Acre; an allied army drove the Egyptians from their strongholds. Ibrahim Pasha, with all his courage and genius, was not equal to the odds against which he now saw himself forced to contend. He had to succumb. No one could doubt that he and his father were incomparably better able to give good government and the opportunity for development to Syria than the Porte had ever been. But in this instance, as in others, the odious principle was upheld by England and her actual allies that the Turkish empire must be maintained, at no matter what cost of suffering and degradation to its subject populations. Mohammed Ali was deprived of all his Asiatic possessions, but was secured in his government of Egypt.—Justin McCarthy, “History of Our Own Times,” Vol. I, chap. 9, par. 9. Now the actual method of helping the Turks, the precise manner in which this policy became a part of the international law of Europe, was, first, that “the four great powers, in a collective note of July 27, 1839, declared that they would take the settlement of the Eastern question into their own hands.” “Russia, not to be left entirely out, had to support the convention, and give her consent as a fifth power.” And this state of affairs was officially expressed in a quadruple treaty, that of London, July 15, 1840. Thus did the Turkish question become a part of the international law of Europe. Thus did the policy of helping the Turk to maintain himself in his European dominions become one which the great powers considered necessary for the preservation of the peace of the world.