Partitioning the empire

The process just outlined, however, traces its origins to a much earlier time than World War I. For the Ottoman Empire had long before entered a slow decline that had already prompted the European powers to draw up plans by which to carve it up among themselves. In a 10 September 1782 letter sent to the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Catherine the Great of Russia proposed rebuilding the Byzantine Empire by dissolving Turkey.

Under the plan, Austria and Russia would not have had to share a border, and Catherine the Great accordingly envisaged the birth of a new independent state, namely, Dacia, which would have comprised the provinces of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia under the rule of a sovereign of Greek religious faith. The Ottoman Empire would then have been partitioned between the two allies under an equal distribution of territorial gains. In this way, the empress hoped to “deliver Europe from the enemy of Christians by throwing him out of Constantinople” (quoted in Kamarowsky 1896, 405; my translation). But the death of Joseph II put an end to this attempt to break up the Ottoman Empire.

The project was revived by Nicholas I of Russia, who in 1833 drew up a plan to rebuild the Byzantine Empire on the ruins of the Turkish Empire. But this plan met with the firm rejection of Austria’s foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich, who unequivocally stated that Vienna would have done everything in its power to preserve the status quo, since an end to the Ottoman Empire would have been contrary to the interests of both Austria and Russia (ibid., 407).

Clearly displayed in this exchange is the contradiction of the great powers. For, on the one hand, as we have seen, in taking note of the Turkish decline, they instrumentally declare it to be morally debased, while also taking it as axiomatic that Islam is incompatible with Christianity, but on the other hand they revealed themselves to be incapable of joint action, since they were divided by “the deeply conflicting political interests [...] of Russia and western Europe” (Kamarowsky 1896 403; my translation). “The great powers fear and firmly reject the notion that Russia should establish itself in the Balkan Peninsula. They are so blinded by passion that they refuse to recognize the rights of the Balkan peoples, elevating the fact of the existence of the Sublime Porte to the status of an immutable ‘international dogma’ (ibid.).

¹

“The experience of the centuries,” Friedrich Martens commented, “demonstrates that Islam and Christianity, Turks and Christians, the Turkish regime and the Christian communities cannot in any way live in peace” (Martens 1877a, 42-43; my translation).

In summarizing his thinking on the “Eastern question,” Kamarowsky, an internationalist at the University of Moscow, noted that if “the preservation of Turkey as an independent power among Christian nations has become an anachronism, this is due only to the rivalries by which the great powers arc most regrettably divided” (ibid, 427-28). For an adequate solution to this situation, he argued, it was necessary to rely on international law, which represented “the path of moral duty and justice—the only path that befits powers that call themselves ‘great’ and ‘Christian’” (ibid., 428). And “what must the great powers do to proceed along this path?” Kamarowsky asks. He answers that “having in point of fact been the family of civilized nations, they have to form a legal organization. While preserving these powers’ internal independence, this organization will enable them, by their joint effort, to solve in short order all the great problems [...] that currently beset humanity” (ibid.; italics in the original), and that applied to the Eastern question as well, thereby putting an end to the “anachronistic” reality of the Ottoman Empire.

As it turned out, the great powers never managed to work out their conflicting interests. Still, that did not prevent them from proceeding to dismember the Ottoman Empire, nor could the process be stopped once set in motion. Thus new political entities were formed within the empire, as happened with Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin,^[1] while other territories were placed under occupation, as in the case of Cyprus, which Great Britain took administrative control of in negotiating the same treaty, and Egypt, which it occupied in 1882.

Also in sight was the occupation of the Turkish territories of the Middle East and North Africa. Likewise in southern Africa, for it was regarded as a place “where an inferior civilization reigns,” and the intention was to make it into “an extension of the countries that lie north of the Mediterranean” (ibid., 426).

We can see, then, that the ideology of humanitarian intervention revealed itself to be entirely instrumental, for it was functional to the Western powers’ aims of colonial expansion.

In the next chapter, we will look at the political struggle for supremacy that engaged the great powers in the frame of the Eastern question, showing how humanitarian intervention, along with other ostensibly good policies, was in fact a technique designed to achieve hegemony by concealing partial interests under principles of purportedly universal application.

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• [1] Under Article XXVI of the Treaty, “the independence of Montenegro is recognized by the Sublime Porte and by all those of the High Contracting Parties who had not hitherto admitted it.” Under Article XXXVI, “Serbia receives the territories included in the following delimitation: [...].” Under Article XLIII, “the High Contracting Parties recognize the independence of Romania [...].” And under Article I, “Bulgaria is constituted an autonomous and tributary Principality under the suzerainty of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan. It will have a Christian government and a national militia.” Source: US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, with the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1878” (Document 523). 2 In this regard see the reconstruction offered in Augusti 2013, 306.