third event was the tendency of production to outrun the supply of raw materials available at home or by the use of English ships alone. Increased supplies were obtainable by relaxations in the navigation acts and by concessions to those who controlled the supplies, and this fact early led the manufacturers to favor a more liberal policy, as in the case of their attempts to secure cotton contrary to the navigation laws. The fourth event was a rapid expansion of industry, involving a disproportionate growth of population engaged in manufacturing as compared with agriculture, which led in turn to a demand for the breaking down of the barriers raised to protect English agrarians from oversea food producers. There is a marked parallelism between the events described above and the events of half a century later when the old commercial system was completely overthrown. The principles underlying the Manchester School, the forces actuating the Anti-Corn Law League, and even the group alignments of the later conflict, were essentially the principles and forces and alignments which had already emerged before the entrance of England into the French. and Napoleonic wars. The tendency toward commercial liberalism inherent in the events of the earlier period was repressed and distorted by the quarter-century of wars and by the accompanying deluge of conservatism, and in consequence the triumph of the new order was postponed until the reassertion of power by the new industrial group in the nineteenth century. But the forces which led to the final overthrow of the old commercial system were active and influential even before Europe was devastated by the cataclysm of war and reaction. WITT BOWDEN. THE DIPLOMATIC PRELIMINARIES OF THE CRIMEAN WAR THE outbreak of the War of 1914 precipitated a controversy of pens which is not yet closed, namely, a discussion, based on the rainbow "books" of the belligerent governments, of the responsibility for the failure of the negotiations consequent to the Austrian ultimatum. Clear as was the main course of events, German and Allied publicists each found it possible to convict the other side from its own documents. And the historian may doubt if time will produce a harmony of views. For more than half a century ago there was another diplomatic controversy which, if more prolonged than that of 1914, like it culminated in war-the Crimean War. The materials for the study of those negotiations are ample enough: voluminous official correspondence,1 the private papers of many of the chief personages, and a considered defense of its conduct by the Russian government. Yet the most diverse views are still held as 'to the responsibility for a war which is frequently considered to have been unnecessary. The Russian Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War2 finds the villain in the Emperor Napoleon III., with Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the British ambassador in Constantinople, as accessory to the plot. M. Serge Goriainov in his Le Bosphore et les Dardanelles is less explicit, but he definitely asserts the right of Russia to occupy the Danubian Principalities, the refusal to evacuate which was the immediate cause of the war; while the passage of the Dardanelles by the French and British fleets, which was the rejoinder to the Russian occupation, is denounced as illegal. The historian of the Second Empire, M. Pierre de la Gorce, regards "the distant days of 1853" as "the last when French diplomacy spoke a language 1 The most extensive collection is the series of papers presented to Parliament and grouped under the general title of Eastern Papers, 1853-1855 (Parliamentary Papers, vol. LXXI.); the more important documents are given in the Annual Register. For the French and Russian correspondence, reference must be made to the Annuaire Historique for 1853 and 1854, and to De Testa, Recueil de Traités de la Porte Ottomane avec les Puissances Étrangères (Paris, 18641898), vol. IV. Jasmund, Aktenstücke zur Orientalischen Frage (3 vols., Berlin, 1855-1859) has most of the documents, including some Austrian material not found in the other collections. 2 Written in 1862, but not published till 1878; English translation, 1882. worthy of itself" So also M. Edmond Bapst's Les Origines de la Guerre de Crimée (1912), objective as it is, is none the less a defense of Napoleon III. It is among English writers, however, that the greatest dissension prevails. Mr. J. A. R. Marriott has recently spoken of the Tsar Nicholas I. as "unquestionably the prime author of the war" Kinglake, whose Invasion of the Crimea (1863) cannot be ignored, in spite of its mistakes and its violence of expression, ascribed the outbreak to the political necessities of the Emperor of the French and the frank partizanship of Lord Palmerston for Turkey. A generation ago Sir Spencer Walpole declared that "the ship was steered into the whirlpool" by the hand of Lord Stratford, and Lord Eversley has given a similar verdict in The Turkish Empire (1917). The great ambassador is vigorously defended from the charge of provoking the war by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, who throws the blame on the tsar. A popular opinion at the time, fastening on a phrase of Lord Clarendon, was that Great Britain "drifted" into the war owing to the dissensions of the Aberdeen ministry, which could not formulate a policy definite and downright enough to make Russia modify her demands. Any lack of harmony was denied by Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll, both members of the cabinet; nor is it admitted by Lord Stanmore, the biographer of Lord Aberdeen and Sidney Herbert, who endeavors to show that the policy of the Aberdeen ministry was concurred in by all its members. Mr. Herbert Paul, on the other hand, believes that the differences of opinion were serious, and argues that, but for the determination of Palmerston to have war, Napoleon and Stratford would not have succeeded with their scheme for the humiliation of Russia. The original issue out of which the war arose was a three-cornered dispute between France, Russia, and Turkey over certain Holy Places at Jerusalem and Bethlehem associated with the life of Christ. Its details are of no concern here, for after dragging on for more than two years, it was finally settled, by Lord Stratford in April, 1853, to the satisfaction of all concerned. But a month earlier Russia had taken advantage of the difficulties of the Sublime Porte to present demands which were considered to involve a virtual protectorate by Russia over the Greek Christians of the Ottoman 3 P. de la Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire (Paris, 1895), I. 216. 4 J. A. R. Marriott, The Eastern Question (Oxford, 1917), p. 242. 5 Spencer Walpole, History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, VI. 15. 6 Herbert Paul, History of Modern England, I. 311, 314. Empire. The concessions offered by Turkey were considered inadequate; the Russian ambassador left Constantinople, and Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities (July, 1853). This action alarmed Austria, and in a lesser degree Prussia. They accordingly joined with France and Great Britain in drafting a document, known as the Vienna Note, which purported to recognize the legitimate claims of Russia without prejudice to the sovereignty of the sultan. Since this formula differed but little from that originally presented to the Porte by Russia, it was accepted by the tsar. But the Turks refused to adopt it without certain amendments, which in fact changed the character of the document, and these were in turn declined by the tsar. The Four Powers would probably have stood by their original decision, adding, however, a guarantee for Turkey, or left her to her fate, had not a confidential despatch of the Russian government been published which showed that the Russian interpretation of the Vienna Note was precisely in the sense that the Turkish modifications were designed to prevent, and contrary to the views and intentions of the Four Powers. The latter, in the nature of things, declined to force the note on the Porte. Before further action could be taken, Turkey, confident that France and Great Britain would not leave her to the mercy of Russia-for their fleets had been near the Dardanelles since early summer-declared war on Russia (October 4, 1853). The diplomacy of the powers was now exerted to find a formula which would restore peace between Russia and Turkey before any overt hostilities, and on December 5 a second Vienna protocol established an identity of views among the Four Powers, on the basis of which the Porte was asked to state its terms. Once again diplomacy was handicapped by the march of events. On November 30 a Turkish squadron in the harbor of Sinope, a port on the Black Sea, had been destroyed by the Russians, and the answer of the Porte was substantially a repetition of its original offer to Russia. Nevertheless the Turkish note was adopted by the Vienna Conference and communicated to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, on the same day the tsar learned that the French and British fleets had entered the Black Sea, with instructions to prevent any Russian men-of-war from leaving port. He therefore made counter-proposals. These were indeed rejected by the Vienna Conference, but Napoleon III. wrote a personal letter to Nicholas proposing that the Russian troops should evacuate the Principalities, the French and British fleets should withdraw from the Black Sea, and Russia should negotiate directly with Turkey. Before an answer could be received, the Western Powers, at the suggestion. of Austria and on the understanding that she would support them, demanded the evacuation of the Principalities by April 30, 1854. But it turned out that the Austrian support was diplomatic only. The tsar therefore made no reply to the ultimatum, and on March 27 France and Great Britain declared war. The fundamental point at issue, which is sometimes overlooked by those who would ascribe the Crimean War to Lord Stratford, Napoleon III., or some other person, was the future of the Ottoman Empire. For half a century the military power of Turkey had been steadily declining, as her wars with Russia and Egypt attested only too well; her subject races, Serbs, Greeks, Rumanians, were demanding and securing autonomy or independence. The reason was that in spite of innumerable efforts to reform the public administration, the last of which, the hatt-i-shérif of 1839, had promised to all Ottoman subjects, without distinction of race or creed, security of life, honor, and property, the equitable distribution of taxes, the public trial of prisoners, and the right of all to devise property, yet justice was not done to Christians, and their lives, honor, and property were not safe. But by article VII. of the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji (1774) between Russia and Turkey, "the Sublime Porte promises to protect constantly the Christian religion and its churches". For this "vague claim to exercise the guardianship of civilisation on behalf of the Christian races and the Orthodox church", Russia now proposed to substitute a definite right of intervention; and it was generally recognized that she had a case for redress. But the acceptance of her demands would, it was believed in France and Great Britain, have confided to her the practical control of the Turkish government, would have converted the inhabitants of the Balkan provinces of the sultan into virtual subjects of the tsar; all of which was opposed to the interests of the Western Powers, and, in spirit at least, contrary to the Convention of 1841, which pledged the Five Powers to recognize the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Right or wrong, this view was sincerely held; nor was the conduct of the tsar calculated to inspire confidence in his intentions. He despatched to Constantinople a special ambassador, Prince Menshikov, who was not a diplomat but a rough soldier, at a moment when both the French and British ambassadors were absent from their posts, with the obvious intent of dragooning the Sublime Porte into an acceptance of his demands. Neither the quarrel about the 7 John Morley, Life of Gladstone, I. 354 |