Just Politics: Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of Great Powers

[2] Suffering Christians in British-Ottoman Relations

Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Russia stood as a leading strategic challenger to Great Britain’s foreign policy goals. For Britain, this competition revolved around India, the center of its global empire. In this context, the Balkans and the broader issue of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire took on special meaning for London. The vast territory controlled by the Ottoman Empire was perceived as a crucial strategic buffer against Russian efforts to expand southward and hinder London’s access to India. The Ottoman-controlled Balkans represented the geostrategic core in this respect for Britain. St. Petersburg had considerable leverage in the Balkans. Across the 1700s, it used common ethnic ties with the kindred Slavic nations to extend its influence toward the Black Sea and the Turkish Straits, directly challenging—indeed, in many ways usurping—Ottoman authority . For London, Russian encroachment brought St. Petersburg perilously close to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and ultimately, the British believed, to India’s border.1 In the Crimean War, Britain took its most decisive step in the nineteenth century to reverse the tide of Russian expansion into the Balkans. Joined by France and Austria, Britain led the way in repelling Russian attempts to gain even greater control over Ottoman territory. The ensuing Treaty of Paris (1856) terminated the Russian right to protect Slavic Christians in the Balkans and bound all signatories to respect and protect the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire. Britain joined France and Austria in signing three additional conventions in 1856 that made them guarantors of the Treaty of Paris. Article 2, herein, stated, “Any infraction of the stipulations of the said Treaty will be considered by the Powers signing the present treaty as casus belli.”2 Britain was obligated diplomatically and militarily to protect Ottoman integrity. [2] Suffering Christians in British-Ottoman Relations [42] In the years that followed, the importance of the Mediterranean in its own right to British commerce soared. The planning and construction of the Suez Canal in the 1860s created a new, and far shorter, route of access to India. At the same time, London’s ties to the Ottoman government grew closer, as British financiers extended substantial loans to the Porte (meaning the Ottomans) and invested in many development projects in Turkey. All the while, Britain stood by the Treaty of Paris. It reaffirmed its commitment to the treaty at the 1871 Black Sea Conference and refused as late as May 1876 to endorse international proposals for Balkan autonomy and independence. November and December 1876 brought a dramatic change of course in British policy, however. At the Constantinople Conference of the European powers, Britain was the lead sponsor of an aggressive plan to strip the Balkan region from Ottoman control. Furthermore, in the spring of 1877, London adopted a treaty-violating posture of neutrality after Russia launched a military attack on Turkey with the sole purpose of ending Turkish dominion over the Balkans. How do we explain British termination of a critical strategic commitment to Turkish integrity and independence? Furthermore, why did Britain sustain its commitment at several points, including the Berlin Memorandum in May 1876, only to radically change course in December of that same year? Humanitarian norms help answer these questions. In 1876–77, the British Parliament brought unequivocal (though indirect) pressure to bear on the government in favor of Balkan independence. Parliament took this course following a massacre of Christians in Bulgaria that generated nationwide protests in Britain. Low levels of activist pressure or liberalizing steps by the Porte explain why Britain stood by the 1856 pledge in earlier periods. Parliament, Humanitarianism, and the “Barbarous” Turks For the twenty years that followed the Crimean War, Parliament shared the concerns of Britain’s various cabinets over Russian ambitions. Paralleling these strategic interests, Parliament also displayed broader humanitarian concerns about the course of British foreign policy. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, these focused on the plight of Christian subjects of the Ottoman government. The roots of British humanitarianism during the nineteenth century emerged, in large measure, from religious movements in the mid-Victorian Suffering Christians in British-Ottoman Relations [43] period. R. T. Shannon, in particular, attributes two large Christian revivals and the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century with raising moral sentiments throughout Britain. The second of the revivals occurred in 1859, just three years after the Treaty of Paris. In the political realm...