England's Advent in the Eastern Question by P. T. Magan

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 23, 1911

England's Advent in the Eastern Question

By P. T. Magan

P. T. MAGAN

LAST week I showed how the Turkish empire has dwindled from its once magnificent proportions to a mere fragment of its former self. I also brought forward authority from the Scriptures to prove that when the Turk does ultimately “come to his end,” it will be because “none shall help him,” and that the only reason why the Ottoman has not suffered extinction long since is because some one has helped him.

The object of this paper is to institute an inquiry in order to learn whether history records that a nation or nations have helped the Turk.

In the year 1762, Empress Catherine II came to the Russian throne. In the rank of queens this woman has never had a peer. In genius and audacity, she stands the Semiramis of the North. By the time her reign was over, Russia ranked as one of the great powers of Europe, “entitled to enter into negotiations on a footing of equality with the proudest states of the Continent.”

The determination to make the Black Sea a Russian lake was born in the brain of this great woman. “She resolved that the possessions of the sultans should become the heritage of the tsars.” As a manifestation of her faith in this idea, she christened a grandson “Constantine,” and she erected arches in Moscow, inscribed with the famous Greek inscription,—“The Way to Constantinople.” Twice she was at war with Turkey. She conquered Moldavia and Wallachia. She invaded the Crimea and the Greek Archipelago. She prevailed on the Egyptian bey to rebel against the Sublime Porte. Later she entered into a conspiracy with the emperor of Austria for the immediate partition of large portions of European Turkey. They actually joined forces with that end in view. They crossed the Danube together, and invaded the Ottoman dominions. The sultan Mustafa, however, proved himself too much of a general for them; and the great empress was ignominiously defeated, and forced to beat a disgraceful retreat into Hungary.

Nothing daunted by this, Catherine determined to change defeat into victory, and to transfer the seat of her government from St. Petersburg to Constantinople. She died before she could carry out her project.

It was during the reign of Catherine that friendship between England and Russia virtually came to an end, and that the Eastern question in somewhat of its present form was born.

For some time before the days of the great empress, and during the early years of her reign, there existed a grouping of some of the powers of Europe, known to history as the System of the North. This was a close alliance of Russia with Prussia, England, and Denmark against the two great powers of the South, France and Austria.

But when the determination of Catherine

to plant her capital in Constantinople became so manifest, an estrangement sprang up between Russia and England; and the System of the North, as far as these two were concerned, came to an end.

Concerning the state of affairs engendered by the events of this period, a great statesman has written:—

“It seemed to be the natural business of other European powers to see that the defects of the Ottoman government, such as they were, should not be made an excuse for helping Russia to secure the objects of her special ambition. One great power, above all the rest, had an interest in watching over every movement that threatened in any way to interfere with the highway to India, still more with her peaceful and secure possession of India itself. That power, of course, was England. Russia, England, and Turkey were alike in one respect: they were all Asiatic as well as European powers. But Turkey could never come into any manner of collision with the interests of England in the East. The days of Turkey's interference with the affairs of any great state were long over. Neither Russia nor England nor any other power in Europe or Asia feared her any more. On the contrary, there seemed something like a natural antagonism between England and Russia in the East. The Russians were extending their frontier toward that of our Indian empire. They were showing in that quarter the same mixture of craft and audacity which had stood them in good stead in various parts of Europe. . . . It was in great measure out of these alarms that there grew up among certain statesmen and classes in this country [England] the conviction that the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish empire was part of the national duty of England.”

“It is not too much, therefore, to say that the states of Europe generally desired the maintenance of the Ottoman empire, simply because it was believed that while Turkey held her place, she was a barrier against grave dangers, which it was not worth while encountering as long as they could be possibly averted. Sharply defined, the condition of things was this: Russia, by reason of her sympathy of religion or race with Turkey's Christian populations, was brought into chronic antagonism with Turkey; England, by reason of her Asiatic possessions, was kept in just the same state of antagonism to Russia.” — McCarthy, “History of Our Own Times,” Vol. I, chap. 25, par. 5.

Among many the notion is quite prevalent that the British policy of maintaining the Turk in Constantinople was never heard of until the Crimean war. This view is altogether erroneous. It began during the period of which I am writing, and it began with no less a statesman than the great commoner, William Pitt, at least as far as politicians were concerned.

And then it was that William Pitt brought down to the House of Commons a message from the crown, and asked that body to vote the sinews of war to compel Catherine to submit to his demands. The great minister was at the very zenith of his career. But it was over this measure that he received his first rebuke from the people of England. He carried his motion in the House, but in the debate his policy was attacked with great vigor by Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke.

Fox succeeded in establishing the fact that Pitt's proposal was “AN ABSOLUTELY NEW DEPARTURE.” “It was new,” he said, “to hear the greatness of Russia represented as an object of dread.”

Burke with his great oratory “denounced the squandering of British blood and treasure in bringing or keeping Christian nations under the yoke of a savage and inhuman government.” The debate did its work: though triumphant in the House, Pitt was beaten in the country. See Stanhope, “Life of Pitt,” Vol. II, chap. 15; Fox's Speeches, IV, 179; Argyll, “Our Responsibilities for Turkey,” par. 3.

This action upon the part of Pitt marks the advent of England as a live factor in the Eastern question. Henceforth for many years the Court of St. James will be found helping the Turk to maintain his place on the Bosporus. From now on England will be found spending blood and treasure in untold amounts for the salvation of a non-Christian power, which she always hated and despised in her innermost heart. But the reason for it all, as stated above, lay in the fact that she feared the growing power of Russia, which power, in her judgment, would have been so greatly enhanced by the possession of Constantinople and free access to the sea. On this point the duke of Argyll says:—

“As a popular feeling, the dread and dislike of Russia seem to date from the overweening power which she acquired by her great share in the overthrow of Napoleon, and from one of the earliest results of that predominance in the politics of Europe. For then came the new spirit breathed into our foreign policy by George Canning, and especially our national and popular antipathy to the Holy Alliance. Russia was the head and front of that offending. That she should be allowed to seat herself on the throne of Constantinople,—to make the whole Black Sea a Russian lake, to command the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and to issue from them into the Mediterranean with fleets powerful in action and inaccessible in retreat,—this would indeed be a menace and a danger to the Western world. To avert this danger, or at least to postpone it, the easiest plan was to keep up the Turkish empire as long as possible.” — Argyll, Id., page 6, par. 4.

British feeling was further stirred during this period by a step which Napoleon Bonaparte took in the Eastern question. He caused to be published in the newspapers a series of articles wherein it was shown that “Europe was sure to become the prey of Russia,” and declared that “the invasion must be checked, the universal domination must be extinguished.” It was during this period also that Lesur published his famous book, entitled “Of the Progress of the Russian Power.” In this for the first time, but by no means for the last, appeared that extraordinary apocryphal document,—the will of Peter the Great.

This alleged document was not genuine. It was spurious from end to end; but it made, nevertheless, a very deep impression upon the British people. It enjoined upon all succeeding Russian sovereigns never to relax in the extension of their territory northward on the Baltic and southward on the Black Sea shores, and to encroach as far as possible in the direction of Constantinople and the Indies, or that part of the world which we now term the far East. “To work out this,” said the supposed testament, “raise wars continually—at one time against Turkey, at another against Persia; make dock-yards on the Black Sea; by degrees make yourselves masters of that sea as well as of the Baltic; hasten the decay of Persia, and penetrate to the Persian Gulf; establish, if possible, the ancient commerce of the East via Syria, and push on to the Indies, which are the entrepôt of the world. Once there, you need not fear the gold of England.” Cited by McCarthy, “History of Our Own Times,” Vol. I, chap. 25, par. 5.

The will was a humbug, but there can be no doubt that, though spurious, it did voice the sentiments of both Peter and Catherine. Moreover, it did its part in settling England into the policy of keeping Turkey in Europe.

Madison, Tenn.