The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Marian Kent
Frank Cass
In the final decades of its existence the Ottoman Empire was a focus of international rivalry among European Great Powers. These powers were concerned to extend their political, economic and military dominance in parts of the region. The Empire fell, following the First World War, to the victorious Allied Powers and to the forces of militant nationalism led by Kemal Ataturk.
How far did that fall result from Great Power imperialism? Or was it rather the effect of important structural weaknesses within the Empire? What was the nature of each Power’s interest in the Ottoman Empire and how did those interests differ among the Powers? What was the mechanism by which each Great Power made and implemented its Turkish policy? How important was this extensive area of the Middle East for the foreign policy of individual Great Powers? How relevant was this area to the broader international considerations that occupied the Great Powers in these years?
Historians whose special interests include the foreign policy, and especially the Turkish foreign policy, of each of these Great Powers, plus a specialist historian of the Ottoman Empire, have come together to seek to answer those key questions. The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire is the fruit of their researches.
Marian Kent is Reader in History at Deakin University, Australia. Her previous books include Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil, 1900-1920 and Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign Policy, 1900-1940.
Contributors: Feroz Ahmad, F. R. Bridge, R. J. B. Bosworth, Alan Bodger, Ulrich Trumpener, L. Bruce Fulton and Marian Kent.
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition / vii
Preface / ix
Map I The Ottoman Empire in its Final Decade / xii
Map II Railways in the Ottoman Empire 1914 / xiii
Introduction / 1
1 The Late Ottoman Empire Feroz Ahmad / 5
2 The Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire,
1900-18 F. R. Bridge / 31
3 Italy and the End of the Ottoman Empire
R. J. B. Bosworth / 52
4 Russia and the End of the Ottoman Empire,
Alan Bodger / 76
5 Germany and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Ulrich Trumpener / 111
6 France and the End of the Ottoman Empire
L. Bruce Fulton / 141
7 Great Britain and the End of the Ottoman Empire,
1900-23 Marian Kent / 172
Bibliography / 206
Index / 217
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Since “The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire” went out of print some years ago there has been continued demand by scholars and students for a reissue. This second edition responds to that demand. As neither those who contributed to the first edition of this volume nor those who reviewed it have wished any substantive amendments to be made to it, it remains
essentially as when first published in 1984.
Of the many excellent works in related fields that have appeared since the volume first went to press, a few ought to be mentioned here. Among broad works on policy and diplomacy of the First World War, David Stevenson s The First World War and International Politics (Oxford, 1988) should be noted. On European economic penetration in the Ottoman Empire readers wou find the following helpful: Roderic H. Davison’s Essays m Ottoman and Turkish History, 1770-1920: The Impact of the West (Austin, Texas, 1990), Sevket Pamuk’s The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism 1820 1913. Trade, Investment and Production (Cambridge, 1987) and Donald Quataert^s Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire 1881-1908: Reactions to European Penetration (New York, 1983). On Italian imperial ambitions attention should be drawn to Marta Petricioli’s ^Italia in Asia Minore: equilibrio mediterraneo e ambizioni imperialiste alia vigilia della pnma guerra mondiale (Florence, 1983). Thomas Child’s Italo-Turkish Diplomacy and the War over Libya 1911-1912 (Leiden, 1990) might also be mentioned. Shedding light on German-Turkish relations during the war, Ulrich Trumpener’s article, ‘Suez, Baku, Gallipoli: The Military Dimensions of the German-Ottoman Coalition, 1914-1918’, appeared first in Keith Neilson and Roy A. Prete (eds), Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord (Waterloo, Ontario, 1983) and later in Bela Kiraly and Nandor Dreisziger (eds), East Central European Society in World War One (New York, 1985). One important work on French diplomacy that should be mentioned is M. B. Hayne, Ihe French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War 1898-1914 (Oxford, 1993). Finally, on Britain’s imperial activities in the Middle East at this tune there is my own Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign Policy, 1900-1940 (London, 1993).
Marian Kent
Geelons. 1994
Preface
This volume originated some years ago in informal discussions among the three Australian contributors on European activities in the Ottoman Empire. Each of these contributors was engaged in university teaching and research in his or her particular Power’s interests in the Ottoman Empire. It seemed a useful idea to consider an even wider cooperative venture in a formal publication bringing together specialists on the interests and activities of all the European Great Powers in the Ottoman Empire. This book is the end product of that idea.
Such activities by the European Great Powers have often been considered to be the cause of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse after the First World War. It seemed desirable, therefore, to examine this belief in the context of a comparative, factual study, the product of precise research based on the widest range of archival and other sources. In such a way an informed and balanced answer could be attempted. The book aims primarily at the specialist reader, whether researcher or undergraduate. It is, none the less, hoped that it might be interesting and valuable to a wider readership.
In order to produce a work of original research that would provide authoritative and up-to-date interpretations of the subject fairly tight limits of timescale were needed to give the work a manageable size and integrated form. The book follows a clear overall theme. At the same time the individuality of the separate chapters has been preserved, through each contributor pursuing an individual theme based on the particular national concerns of his or her Great Power. Crossreferencing helps the reader make comparisons among the chapters as he proceeds, and each chapter attempts to draw a conclusion on the relative responsibility of that Power for the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
In putting together, the individual conclusions a consensus does emerge. The spreading of the exact proportions of responsibility will, however, inevitably involve some weighing up by the reader. It would appear clear, nevertheless, that responsibility must be shared, both among the Great Powers and between them and the Ottoman Empire itself. The vicious circle postulated in the first chapter seems a valid concept.
One matter that should be mentioned here is that of spelling. As anyone familiar with this field knows, there are wide variations in the spelling of places and personal names of this part of the world. The contributors have decided not to standardise these spellings. Each is writing from the standpoint of his or her particular Great Power and therefore it seemed appropriate to retain the forms of spelling (or of their anglicisation) normally occurring in the contemporary documentation of the individual Powers. The first chapter, on the Ottoman Empire itself, uses spelling acceptable to present-day Turkish scholarship.
It is not possible in a composite work for each contributor to make detailed thanks by name to the archive personnel, scholars and others who are always so helpful in any research undertaking. We are always indebted to such help. But as most of the editing of the draft chapters occurred while this editor was visiting the Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies of the University of Toronto special thanks are due to that department for its hospitality and to the University for use of its excellent resources at that time. This editor is also grateful to professor W. N. Medlicott, formerly of the London School of Economics, for his advice on the project. Finally, I should like to thank my colleague, Ray Duplain, who drew the maps.
Marian Kent
Geelong, 1982
Introduction
By the beginning of the twentieth century the Great Powers had considerable interests in the Ottoman Empire. Political, economic, strategic and cultural, these interests had been largely acquired in the course of the eighteenth and, especially, the nineteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century the periodic crises of the Eastern Question - that threatened fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire with its implied threat to European peace - had produced rivalry and tension in the political relations among the Powers. Each Power had its particular concerns in the Ottoman Empire as well as its particular areas of concern, but so long as the Powers did not encroach seriously on each other’s interests or special areas of interest significant disturbance was avoided from such a quarter. The crises of the Eastern Question arose when such infringe¬ments occurred, whether through direct Great Power action, or indirectly, resulting from the actions of client Balkan national groupings or of the Otto¬man government or its vassal rulers.
The Ottoman Empire was, after all, vulnerable to many pressures. Spread over a vast area stretching from the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the west to the Russian Empire, Persia and the Arabian Peninsula in the north and east and, to the south, Egypt and north Africa, it contained many subject peoples and many diverse regions. Fighting a rear-guard battle against nationalist independence movements within its borders and European imperial ambition from without them, the Empire had, by the turn of the century, one trump card. This was the general desire of the European Powers for it to survive as a political entity, for its total disintegration was a worse alternative.
Its survival, none the less, was not without considerable cost and required much flexibility from Turks and non-Turks alike. Europeans within the Ottoman Empire were protected by the Capitulations — treaties ensuring them privileges and extraterritorial rights and protection by their own government agencies. Their governments, too, had acquired political and economic strength through their rights under the Capitulations and the activities of their nationals. The Ottoman government, right up to the First World War (when it thankfully unilaterally abrogated the Capitulations) was, accordingly, in a difficult situation. This situation was made worse by the government’s own political and economic administration, outdated, mismanaged and venal. Worse, its authority and power were declining at the very time that burgeoning technological innovation could contribute materially to modernising and reforming the Empire, and was to put additional pressures on it. The Empire s progress was thus effectively in the hands of the European Great Powers, and the financial advantage largely returned to them.
…..
Marian Kent
The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Edited by Marian Kent
Marian Kent
Deakin University
Frank Cass
London
First published in Great Britain in 1984 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
This second edition published in 1996 in Great Britain by
Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
Newbury House, 900 Eastern Avenue, London IG2 7HH, England
and in the United States of America by
Frank Cass
c/o ISBS, 5804 N.E. Hassalo Street, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644
Second edition copyright © 1996 Marian Kent
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman
Empire. - New ed
I. Kent, Marian
327.5604
ISBN 0-7146-4154-5 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
The great powers and the end of the Ottoman Empire /
edited by Marian Kent. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7146-4154-5 (pbk.)
1. Eastern question (Balkan)
2. Europe-Foreign relations-Turkey.
3. Turkey- Foreign relations-Europe.
4. Europe-Foreign relations-1871-1918.
5. Europe-Foreign relations-1918-1945.
6. Great Powers. I. Kent, Marian
D465.G753 1995 / 327.5604-dc20 95-21912 CIP
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain by
Page Bros (Norwich) Norfolk
