1878-83 Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response To Britain-Matthew Fitzpatrick

This article was downloaded by: [Flinders University of South Australia] On: 20 May 2013, At: 20:50 Publisher:
Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fich20
Ideal and Ornamental Endeavours: The Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response to Britain's Imperial Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Empire, 187883
Matthew P. Fitzpatrick Published online: 03 Aug 2012. To cite this article: Matthew P. Fitzpatrick (2012): Ideal and Ornamental Endeavours: The Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response to Britain's Imperial Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Empire, 187883, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40:2, 183-206 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2012.697610
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Vol. 40, No. 2, June 2012, pp. 183 206
Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013
Ideal and Ornamental Endeavours: The Armenian Reforms and Germanys Response to Britains Imperial Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Empire, 187883
Matthew P. Fitzpatrick
Diplomatic correspondence during the period 187883 offers a unique insight into the tension between humanitarian and geostrategic considerations in German and British foreign policy in the aftermath of the Congress of Berlin. During this period, Germany followed the lead of Britain in adhering to an Eastern policy that favoured the introduction of reforms in the Ottoman Empire that would alleviate the position of the Armenian minority. The more strident Gladstonian stance towards the Ottoman Empire initiated in the early 1880s, however, led to the perception that the intransigence of British liberals on the Armenian issue was in fact a means by which Britain sought to recalibrate its position in Anatolia, even at the expense of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the concomitant threat of a general European war.
At the height of the massacres of the Armenians in the mid-1890s, Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote of the preceding decades of British intervention that the underlying cause of this calamity lies entirely with Britain and the loathsome campaign of Westminster, Argyll and Gladstone to try to favour the Armenians. Their blood lies on the hands of the leaders of England.1 For the Kaiser, Britains ostensibly humanitarian stance towards the Ottoman Empire had done nothing but heighten the awareness of the Porte that the Armenians were a troublesome minority that might cost the Sultan his empire if they were not pacied. As with the Bulgarians before them, the Armenians were massacred, the Kaiser reasoned, because of the threat that British humanitarianism posed to the unity of the Ottoman Empire.
Correspondence to: Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Discipline of History, School of International Studies, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australia, 5001, Australia. Email: matthew.tzpatrick@inders.edu.au ISSN 0308-6534 print/1743-9329 online/12/02018324 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2012.697610 # 2012 Taylor & Francis
184
M. P. Fitzpatrick
The Kaiser was not alone in this sense that it was the failed pro-Armenian policies of the preceding decades that had brought about the Armenian massacres. Just as the Kaiser fulminated against the murderous effects of British humanitarianism during the period of the Armenian massacres in the 1890s, inuential German liberals such as Friedrich Naumann argued that a position friendly to Armenians. . .means in reality, supportinghowever little one might intend itEnglands expansionist policies, while a number of German ministers, including Chancellor Chlodwig zu Hohen rst, sought to dampen down press reports of the massacres for fear of lohe-Schillingsfu anti-Ottoman sentiment. Germanys own government, Margaret Anderson argues, had done their best behind the decent draperies of the Rechtsstaat to smother the movement for Armenian human rights.2 In an era of renewed humanitarian intervention, the Kaisers and other German condemnations of Britains nineteenth-century humanitarianism raise important questions about its effects upon those it seeks to assist. In particular, his rebuke of Gladstone and British interventionism more generally is at odds with the more generally positive picture of British humanitarianism offered by many standard works, including recent studies such as Gary J. Basss Freedoms Battle, which argued that under Gladstone Britain sought to prosecute a humanitarian foreign policy. Bass refutes the notion that humanitarian interventions were really just veiled imperialism arguing instead that a broader humanitarianism was actually at work.3 On the other hand, the Kaisers scepticism about the humanitarian nature of Gladstonian foreign policy was reected in an early review of Basss book written by Samuel Moyn, who contested Basss central contention that humanitarian intervention was based upon a concern for universal values rather than the pragmatic grounds of Realpolitik.4 Moyn offered a critique of Bass that in essence suggested that there is the disquieting possibility that humanitarianism, while universal in its rhetoric, has always turned out to be a specic political project in practice.5 Moyns review accords with Mark Mazowers reading of the Victorian era as not a time of European humanitarianism but a world of a concert of powers telling everybody else what to do in the name of humanity.6 Although primarily concerned with the issue of Jewish minorities in the Balkans, Carole Fink too has suggested that Europes 1878 commitment to protect Ottoman and ex-Ottoman minorities more generally was marked by a slippage between a publically posited humanitarianism and the more generally practised Realpolitik that saw humanitarian treaty obligations largely ignored.7 With the Kaisers later condemnation of the history of British intervention on behalf of the Armenians in mind, it is worth investigating precisely how Germany saw and responded to British foreign policy changes regarding the Armenians under Gladstone. More concretely, by scrutinising German policy towards the Armenian question in light of Britains selfappointed leadership on the issue, a preliminary answer might emerge to the question of whether Germany and Britain took their humanitarian duties seriously after the Congress of Berlin or whether they had sought domestic or geostrategic imperial advantage by appearing to do so. With attempts to uphold the rights of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire according to the terms of the Treaty of Berlin a potentially important early example of pan-European humanitarianism, precisely how the
185
balance between national self-interest and altruism was struck in British and German diplomacy after the Congress of Berlin illustrates the tension between humanitarian intervention and imperialism in the late nineteenth century. Locating the Armenians The Armenian question was in many respects a successor to earlier Ottoman minorities questions such as the Bulgarian, Balkan and Greek questions: episodes that had seen the status of non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire become a stated cause for Western intervention in the Ottoman Empire since the eighteenth century.8 All of these interventions were ostensibly grounded in the political and humanitarian complications that arose from the discrimination and periodic violence committed against Ottoman Christians in a decaying Muslim empire.9 As Katherine Fleming has made clear, these Ottoman Christians were far from oriental strangers, and were, for a variety of reasons, increasingly claimed for Christendom by the competing empires of Europe as self-evidently requiring liberation from Muslim rule.10 Yet, prior to the emergence of the Armenian cause, European interventions were more consistently contained to Ottoman Europe, particularly Bulgaria and the Balkans, notwithstanding the role of Jerusalem in the lead up to the Crimean War, Frances brief intervention on behalf of the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon and Russias declared (but not recognised) right to intervene in Constantinople under c k Kaynarca.11 Initially at least, Europes humanitarianism and the Treaty of Ku u imperial considerations pertaining to the Ottoman Empire seemed to be restricted to a geographical zone that was conceived of as de facto European. The prospect of similar intervention outside this Christo-European imaginary, and inside the Ottoman Empires Eastern Anatolian heartland was a signicant new development. Although it had generally been assumed by the powers that changes to the political arrangements of Ottoman Europe would not fundamentally threaten the integrity of the Ottoman Empire in toto, no such assumption could be made about a broadening of the Eastern question to Anatolia. Nevertheless, there was a certain geostrategic logic to the expansion of this concern with humanitarian issues into Eastern Anatolia, given that the major territories within which the Armenian question was situated bordered on territories that (like the Balkans and Bulgaria) had been the subject of imperial disputes and proxy wars, particularly between Britain and Russia, for around 100 years.12 In fact, the geostrategic or imperial dimension of the Armenian question makes best sense if the Armenian provinces of Eastern Anatolia are seen in terms of their proximity to the lines of demarcation established between Russia, Britain and Persia in the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), the Treaty of Turkmanchay (1828) and the Anglo-Persian War (185657). Indeed, the Russian undertaking to formalise the Persian border with Ottoman Anatolia in conjunction with the British under Article 60 of the Treaty of Berlin makes clear the extent to which Britain and Russian frontier friction in Persia was linked to their respective positions on the easternmost vilayets of Eastern Anatolia inhabited by the Armenians.13 Alongside Britains and Russias geostrategic
186
M. P. Fitzpatrick
concern for the Persian frontier was that for the Afghan frontier, later made obvious by the Panjdeh scare of 1885, but admitted to by Granville as early as 1878, when he wrote to Gladstone that the justication of Russia [in Afghanistan] appears to me to be our threatening attitude in Turkey.14 Both Persia and Afghanistan were, of course, wrapped up in British anxieties regarding Russian access to the Mesopotamian/ Persian Gulf route to India, and the British press periodically employed the spectre of the loss of India as a central motif in their debates about Russias south-western expansionism (particularly under Disraeli and after Russia renounced the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1871)offering a domino theory of geopolitics which argued that, if the Russians were not stopped in Armenia, they would drive on to the subcontinent.15 Immediately prior to the Congress of Berlin and in the wake of Russian gains under the Treaty of San Stefano, Salisbury too was keen to make the same point:
The great problem which the Turk will have to solve, as soon as he has got rid of the Russian army off his soil ishow to keep his Asiatic Empire together. Sooner or later the greater part of his European Empire must go. Bosnia and Bulgaria are as good as gone . . . The question is how is he to maintain himself in Asia . . . The Turks only chance is to obtain the alliance of a great power: and the only power available is England. Is it possible for England to give that alliance? I cannot speak yet with condence but I think so. For England the question of Turkey in Asia is very different from that of Turkey in Europe . . . And while Russian inuence over the provinces of European Turkey would be a comparatively distant and indirect evil, her inuence over Syria and Mesopotamia would be a very serious embarrassment, and would certainly through the connection of Baghdad with Bombay make our hold over India more difcult. I do not, therefore, despair of England coming to the conclusion that she can undertake such a defensive alliance. But for that purpose it is, as I said before, absolutely and indispensably necessary that she should be nearer at hand than Malta. 16
Salisburys comments, as well as making manifest the Conservatives fervent wish to preserve the Ottoman Empire as an anti-Russian bulwark and the justication for the Cyprus Convention, foreshadow the incongruity of British and German geostrategic priorities, which would eventually hamper long-term joint action on the Armenian question. For Britain, a Russian Empire that stretched into the Balkans was preferable to a Russian Empire that stretched into Anatolia and thereafter potentially into Mesopotamia, whereas for Germany, a Russian Empire in Eastern Anatolia was a distant threat in comparison to Russian expansion into the Balkans which would not only threaten Austria, but also see pressure for diplomatic and potentially military action against Russia from the Reichstags pro-Austrian majority.17 As is well known, in the wake of San Stefano, Disraelis concerns regarding potential Russian penetration of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean led to the negotiation of the Cyprus Convention, a push to internationalise the Christian minorities question as well as the introduction of the consul system into Eastern Anatolia. Britain committed itself to defend Eastern Anatolia from the Russians via a military guarantee and a naval base in Cyprus, in exchange for reforms designed to benet the Armenians in the region. Furthermore, the British, on behalf of Europe, would oversee these

18
187
reforms, thereby cementing British primacy in Asia Minor. This 1878 marriage of humanitarian intervention and geopolitics was a neat solution to the twin British concerns that domestic humanitarian sentiment might pressure the British Conservatives into an undesirable anti-Ottoman position (as it had with the Bulgarian Massacres) and that Russia, using the minorities question as a pretext, would simply assimilate the frontier Armenian regions at the earliest possible convenience as a stage in the movement towards Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, unless these territories were guaranteed by a power strong enough to stay Russias hand.19 At the very least, the Cyprus Convention and the Anatolian consul system made it clear precisely where Britain felt the limits of Russian primacy and the borders of British hegemony lay. Where this left Ottoman sovereignty is also clear, with the Sultan moved to protest whenever possible against what he perceived as an attempt by the British to create an imperium in imperio.20 Culturally, Eastern Anatolia was also the site for signicant and catalysing missionary activity that heightened the expectations, educational standards, collective identity and Western orientation of the Armeniansenergising intellectual life in the region in such a way as to facilitate an Armenian national Renaissance.21 Although there was no straightforward relationship between the role played by the (often American) missions and the foreign policies of the European states in the region,22 the growing awareness among Europeans of the status of Armenians as fellow Christians was one result of this missionary activity, with the appeal to Christian solidarity with the Armenians becoming increasingly crucial to civil society efforts at justifying a British presence in the region.23 The soft power of the Western Christian missions, that is, offered a popular moral undergirding for British military power projection. Britains liberal humanitarian activists had long understood this and made much of it.24 Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, negotiated by Disraeli and Salisbury, which demanded the Ottoman Empire substantially reform its political arrangements with the Armenians under British supervision, bolstered Britains capacity to preserve the Eastern border of the Ottoman Empire with Russia but was explicitly presented as a policy of Christian solidarity and pan-European humanitarianism. Germanys Eastern Question Conventionally, the collocation of Bismarck and humanitarianism is a strange one and his advice to the Kaiser to refuse Alexander Gorchakov of Russias 1876 request that Germany join with them as defenders of the Christians in a war against the Ottoman Empire certainly points to a pragmatic reluctance to trade regional stability for ostensibly humanitarian military intervention.25 For Vakahn Dadrian, Bismarcks Ottoman policy simply represented new levels of amorality, ie a value-free stance.26 Albeit more subtly, Friedrich Scherer endorses this portrait in his careful examination of GermanOttoman relations in the late nineteenth century, arguing that, in comparison to the other powers, Germany had something of a tradition of disregard for the welfare of minorities, which informed their approach to the Armenian issue and which subsequently assisted the Porte in the systematic oppression of the Armenians.
188
M. P. Fitzpatrick
Illustrating for Scherer the apparent hard-heartedness of Bismarck towards the Armenians was his 1883 comment that British endeavours to mobilise vigorous support for the Armenians were wrongheaded, given that the political reforms favouring the Armenians referred to in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin were meant to be ideal and theoretical endeavours which received a nice position in the ornamental section of the Congress negotiations in deference to parliamentary considerations.27 In contrast to many politicians of his time, Scherer concludes (perhaps with Gladstones Bulgarian Horrors and Midlothian speeches in mind), the notion of a politics of Christian solidarity in the Orient remained alien to Bismarck.28 Scherers study presents a view of the German response to Britains Armenian endeavours which takes for granted a sharp British humanitarian/German Realpolitik dichotomy, but which does not offer an understanding of precisely how and why the British and German attitudes to the Armenian question had come to differ so markedly, given their apparent congruence in 1878. The following pre-history of the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, however, shows just how and why the German response changed over time as a result of important changes in British foreign policy, so that by 1883 the German position was indeed critical of the destabilising effects of British imperial strategy in the Ottoman Empire. To trace the origins of the emergence of the Armenian issue, it is necessary to understand the initial political (and indeed geographical) parameters of Germanys Eastern Question. Although the Eastern Question is usually framed as the contest between Britain, France, Austria and Russia in the Ottoman and ex-Ottoman East,29 as a nascent continental hegemon and the host power and co-guarantor of the Berlin Treaty, Germany also played a considerable role, both as interlocutor and as a selfdeclared honest broker. This was not entirely seless, given that Germanys September 1872 Dreikaiserzusammenkunft alignment with Russia and Austria against a revanchist France was at its most fragile when it came to the Ottoman Balkans.30 Correspondingly, the German foreign policy position on the Eastern question was largely concerned with the zero sum game in the Balkans between Russia and Austria, with the Ottoman Armenian appearing to be a distant consideration unencumbered by a vital national interest. This limited, Eurocentric understanding of the Eastern question in a global age was not merely Bismarcks. While the Congress of Berlin was an example of summit diplomacy, with the German position articulated by Bismarck, he did not formulate the German negotiating position in a political vacuum. With the overwhelming majority of the Reichstag expressing rm views on which direction German diplomacy should take, Bismarcks capacity to support Russia was constrained by the overwhelmingly pro-Austrian position of the National Liberals, the Progressive Party and the Centre Party, which accounted for around 65 per cent of Reichstag deputies, and which lnische Zeitung, the Frankfurter was reected in the national press, notably the Ko Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt, which condemned Russias expansion into the Balkans at the expense of Austria.31 Nonetheless, Bismarck had some room for manoeuvre. Despite Helmuth von Moltke and prominent liberal imperialists such as Friedrich List and Wilhelm Roscher having provoked some interest in a German

32
189
empire in Anatolia, the precise nature of Ottoman rule in Asia Minor remained obscure to most German politicians and, prior to the Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin, the status of Armenians within the Ottoman Empire simply did not register in German political circles as being an integral part of the Eastern Question.33 This was neatly reected in the Kaisers speech opening the rst session of proceedings for the third Reichstag on 22 February 1877. Kaiser Wilhelm I dedicated roughly a third of his speech to the increasingly unstable situation in the Ottoman East without mentioning anything outside the Balkans. Quite effectively, his speech transmitted both the centrality of Christianity to political discourse regarding the Ottoman Empire and the Reichstags view of the primary strategic objectives for a settlement in the East just before the April 1877 Russo-Turkish war rendered all such discussions mootnamely that the European (or Christian) powers should act in accord, so as to avert any general European conict that would reprise the Crimean War and destroy the Concert of Europe.34 Despite a lack of direct interest in the material outcome of the peace negotiations, the Kaiser professed a dual concern with the fate of the Ottoman Christians (linked here to the Balkans question, rather than Armenia) and the maintenance of the general peace of Europe. In February of 1878 too, the Eastern question was revisited by the Reichstag days before the treaty of San Stefano was signed but when its general contours were known, including the extent of Russian gains in Ottoman Asia. It is here that Bismarcks domestic difculties with Ottoman policy were made evident. National Liberal leader Rudolf von Bennigsen reminded Bismarck that, as the strongest continental power, Germany had a responsibility to ensure that the outcome of the RussoTurkish War was one in the greater interests of European peace, as the Kaiser had promised in his address a year earlier. Bennigsens conditions for peace, however, were in fact quite bellicose, including a policy of open support for the position of Austria, the curbing of Russian power in the Balkans, the demonstration of German military preparedness in the case that war should spread to become a general European war, as well as protection for the Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire guaranteed by the European powers. This was a vigorous and openly anti-Russian stance but once again conned to Balkan affairs.35 Bismarcks response was cautious. The tenuous ceasere between Russia and the Ottoman Empire had already seen the emergence of a number of provisions that would shape San Stefano, namely the creation of Bulgaria, the limiting of Ottoman power in the region (to be decided by the signatories of Treaty of Paris from 1856), the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also of importance was the question of the Dardanelles and Bosporus and in particular the question of Russian inuence over shipping in the Turkish Straits which interested Germany at this stage only as the gateway to the Danube. There were limits, of course, to how concerned Germany should be about this, Bismarck argued. The question of whether warships may travel through the Straits in times of peace is not something I consider unimportant, he argued, but not important enough that one can throw all of Europe into the re on its account.36 The question of the quality of rule over the Ottoman Empires Balkan Christians was dealt with by
190
M. P. Fitzpatrick
Bismarck rather perfunctorily as something that would be covered by the peace agreement.37 Much of Bismarcks address thereafter was addressed more to Russia and Austria than to the Reichstag, with him mounting the case that some painful concessions of Ottoman territories occupied by Russia and Austria during the recent war might stave off the spectre of a larger European war later. It was also in this speech that Bismarck offered up his services as an honest broker between the powers on the Eastern question and Berlin as a neutral venue for a conference to decide the outstanding issues. Bismarck then ended by restating that, although Germany was indeed among the strongest military powers in continental Europe, it should ght wars only to defend its territorial integrity and not for Oriental territory.38 The Eastern question was, for Bismarck, one of collective security for the powers and the maintenance of a balance of power between Austria and Russia in the Balkans and on the shores of the Black Sea, with humanitarian assistance and Christian solidarity in the Balkans desiderata, but not of foremost importance given the overarching fragility of the European peace. As Bismarck saw it, the interest which we have in the better government of the Christian nation, its protection from acts of violence which have unfortunately occurred under Turkish rule . . . is a second and indirect but humanitarian interest that Germany has in the matter.39 nel offered general Responding to Bismarck, the progressive liberal Albert Ha support for Bismarcks position, but, like Bennigsen, insisted on the primacy of the rights of Austria in the coming negotiations.40 From the Catholic Centre Party, Ludwig Windthorst even more strongly identied German interests with Vienna and, less predictably, saw in the Orient question the chance to answer denitively the question whether the German or the Slavic element should be that which rules the world.41 Bismarck answered Windthorst by informing him that it was simply not in Germanys interests to join with Austria to wage war against Russia over Bulgaria.42 The Social Democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht also made it clear with whom the blame for the Eastern crisis lay in his eyes. Who is it, that has made the Balkan peninsular into a hotbed of revolutionary movements? he asked. Not the Turks. It is demonstrable and has been demonstrated that at present the Russian government, with whom we are advised to walk happily hand in hand, it is they who have called forth this discontent. Liebknecht continued, How can the state and the emperor, whose soldiers have downtrodden and savaged Poland, how can Russia, which has lkermord) in Poland, how can this man, this country act in committed genocide (Vo the name of the principle of nationality and say I want to free the Slavic peoples. There is an old English sayingCharity begins at home.43 Prior to San Stefano, the internal dividing lines within Germany were clearthe Conservatives were keen not to alienate Russia, but both major liberal parties and the Catholic Centre party were intent on ensuring that the interests of Austria were protected and that Russian expansion into the Balkans was halted, even if that should mean war. The Social Democrats too were having none of the Russians appeals to Christian solidarity, but instead saw an orchestrated attempt by the Tsar to ensure that the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire would enable Russia to swallow and then oppress the Balkans just as they had Poland. The National and
191
Progressive Liberal press, as well as that of the Centre Party and the Social Democrats followed the Reichstags lead in supporting Austria and indeed the Ottoman Empire against Russia, convinced that the Portes resistance to the Tsarist Empire was a defence not only of its own interests, but also of those of all Europe.44 This antiRussian tone of the German press only grew over the course of the Berlin Congress. lnische Zeitung hoped obliquely that the Berlin Congress would end all While the Ko predatory and annexationist desires, the Frankfurter Zeitung bluntly demanded that the Berlin Congress expresses that which ought to be expressed: the will of the Great European Powers, the condemnation of Russian arrogance and the Russian lust for conquest.45 With the overwhelming majority of domestic public and political opinion urging a pro-Austrian, anti-Russian stance, and the Conservatives in a weak position in the Reichstag, Bismarck put aside his own pro-Russian inclinations so as low, to shield the Austrian position in negotiations.46 As he later wrote to Bu 47 Austria is the safer choice, because the people are for it. Pro-Austrian domestic sentiment also enabled Bismarck to avail himself of an opportunity that had presented itself courtesy of Austria-Hungarys foreign minister, Andrassy, who had approached Berlin for support against Russia in the Balkans. With domestic support assured, Bismarck was amenable to Andrassys suggestion, but German support against Russia was made conditional upon Austrias agreement to delete Article V of the 1866 Peace of Prague that compelled Germany and Austria to allow a plebiscite in North Schleswig to decide whether it would remain Prussian or be returned to Denmark. This clause had been a cause of domestic conict in Germany, not only because it had hardened Danish revanchist tendencies in Germanys north, but because it had been inserted into the Peace of Prague by Frances Napoleon III as an outstanding grievance that might at some future time offer a casus belli for the French, British, Russian or Austrians on the behalf of Schleswigs Danes in a manner not too dissimilar to Bulgaria or the Balkans in the Ottoman Empire. With the Congress of Berlin weeks away, a deal was struck on 13 April 1878 to the effect that Austria would throw away the weapon that Article V gave them.48 As a result, Andrassy attended the Berlin Conference knowing that Bismarck would support Austria in the Balkans, while Bismarck attended knowing that he had secured domestic peace regarding support for Austria and territorial security in the Danish north. Without a deducible trace of irony, Bismarck suppressed the nationalist ambitions of one of Germanys own minorities, before hosting a Congress which would accuse the Ottoman Empire of precisely the same conduct.49 The Intersection of English and German Foreign Policy Although the 1878 discussions in Berlin regarding the Ottoman Empires minorities dealt mainly with the Balkans, Article 61 dealt with the Armenian question, formalising but internationalising (that is, taking out of direct Russian supervision) the commitments made in Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano,50 which demanded that the Porte carry out improvements and reforms designed to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians.51 The negotiations over this article were revealing in their
192
M. P. Fitzpatrick
brevityonly Russia and Britain felt the need to co-ordinate their position on the question, as the two powers whose interests most obviously met in the lands of the Armenians. At the 14th sitting of the Congress on 6 July 1878, Salisbury insisted that the Porte report back to the powers on the progress of future reforms that would better the position of the Armenians. Alexander Caratheodory Pasha, on behalf of the Porte, replied that:
the rebellious nationalities in the recent war had caused serious unrest. As all have been informed, the Porte has introduced measures to bring this to an end. The request of Lord Salisbury appears to refer to future measures. I wish to bring the provisions of the Porte into consideration and to include the following sentence in the paragraph: The Porte will notify the six powers of the results of the measures that have already been undertaken to this end. The addition meets the sense of the British suggestion and would satisfy the Ottoman government.52
Clearly, the Porte wished to draw a line under the Armenian issue, as something already dealt with, to be reported on in an historical sense, rather than as an ongoing process. Thereafter, Schuvalov of Russia protested that the British version was preferable, as the process of reforms in the Armenian regions were surely still ongoing. At this point, a bemused Bismarck entered the debate to dampen down enthusiasm for the article altogether by questioning the efcacy of treaty-mandated humanitarian reforms. According to the minutes, the president remarked that it is perhaps difcult to apply repressive measures against independent peoples and that he has doubts about the practical use of Lord Salisburys suggested article.53 Thereafter further informal discussions to narrow the distance between the Porte on one side and Russia and Britain on the other took place, after which the issue was raised again, much to the chagrin of Bismarck who (according to Caratheodory Pasha) loudly exclaimed Again?! in frustration that this obscure and seemingly distant issue was being dealt with by the Congress.54 Dubious of the politics and the practical humanitarian effects of Article 61 before it had been agreed upon, Bismarck nonetheless acquiesced, seeing no real harm if the two interested parties, namely Britain and Russia, had resolved upon a common course of action in far off Eastern Anatolia. After some behind-the-scenes negotiations, the text for Article 61, as it became, was agreed upon at the 15th Congress sitting on 8 July, in a format that accorded with this joint Anglo-Russian position on geostrategic matters in a region that abutted the hotly disputed Persia. Despite Bismarcks initial misgivings regarding the enforceability of Article 61, German foreign policy remained broadly supportive of Britains lead on the Armenian guarantees for a number of years. Initially this was not difcult, given that until 1880 no attempt was made by the powers to follow up on Article 61, outside sporadic British diplomatic pressure on the Porte.55 Even thereafter, however, when Germany was called upon by the new Gladstone government (which had campaigned vigorously on its humanitarian credentials) to take concrete diplomatic measures to make clear to the Porte its commitment to the Armenians, Germany continued to support a
193
pan-European Armenian policy between 1880 and 1883 through support for Britains military consul system and by taking part in public joint diplomatic remonstrances against the Porte for its inaction in the Armenian East. Some of this can be explained through the burgeoning popular agitation on behalf of the Armenians that was beginning to appear in the German press in the wake of Germanys 1878 commitment. Reports of atrocities from Eastern Anatolia began to emerge, such as that in the Free Conservative newspaper, Die Post, on 1 April 1879 which stated that:
according to reports coming to us from Constantinople, the Armenians in Zetiun, Marash and Aleppo have been exposed to outrageous oppression by Turkish ofcials. Innumerable Christians have been arrested without grounds and languish in prison, because the governors of Aleppo and Marash want to claim to have overthrown a rebellion. . .the molestations of the Kurds and Circassians have reached such an extent that the Christians dare not leave their houses. It is to be feared that the Christian element in every region of Asia Minor will be completely annihilated, if the activity of the ofcials in the region is not forbidden by Constantinople.56
lnische Zeitung struck a similar tone in February The inuential National-Liberal Ko ` -vis 1880, appealing to the Christian powers to discharge their responsibilities vis-a the Armenians irrespective of the wishes of the Porteeffectively calling for the overruling of the suzerainty of the Sultan in the region and an embrace of a foreign policy of humanitarian imperialism in the Ottoman Empire based on the principle of Christian solidarity.57 Not all periodicals were blind to the important geostrategic aspects of Article 61, cher offering perhaps the most blunt and positive however, with the Preuische Jahrbu appraisal of Disraelis motives for inserting it, warning against any deviation from its principles:
The English government carried out the correct plan, given that there is nothing in Europe for the Ottoman Empire to salvage, only a little more to lose, by stabilising and reorganising Turkish rule in Asia as a capable bulwark against the advance of Russia via Armenia. The Armenian Alps are to offer a limit to the expansionist impulses of Russia while defending the English Mediterranean.58
That important segments of the German press were supportive of a more vigorous attempt to assist the Armenians made it easier for Bismarck to support pan-European calls to support the Armenians. With the exception of the Social Democratic press, German newspapers of various political hues had praised the Berlin Congress as having secured the peace of Europe by re-establishing the correct balance of power in the East at the expense of Russia.59 To immediately renege on one of Germanys humanitarian commitments stemming from the Treaty of Berlin would have been difcult without sound cause. Apart from this growing domestic awareness of the Armenian cause, however, the primary factor driving the hardening European stance towards the Portes treatment of the Armenians was the election of Gladstones Liberals in April of 1880. Having
194
M. P. Fitzpatrick
heavily criticised Disraeli for his foreign policy pragmatism, Gladstone immediately moved towards a harder-line approach in dealings with the Porte. As a German foreign ofce ofcial noted in his diary, there again seemed to be a desire for intervention abroad in the world, only, unlike in 1877, it was being urged by the British rather than the Russians.60 This observation was not exactly meant as praise, given that Russian intervention had in fact meant a war that had proved difcult to localise and a subsequent estrangement from the rest of Europe. Nonetheless, when Gladstone approached the powers in May 1880 arguing for a concerted diplomatic push pressuring the Porte on the Armenian question, Bismarck and the leaders of the other powers reacted favourably. Identical diplomatic notes reprimanding the Sultan for his recalcitrance and outlining in severe terms Europes humanitarian expectations were sent to the Porte on 11 June 1880, with follow-up statements issued in August of 1880.61 Under the weight of this combined pressure, the Porte informally promised to resolve the Armenian reforms issue within three months.62 For the rest of 1880 and 1881, Germany co-operated with Britains desire to pressure the Porte to act in the Armenian regions, with further simultaneous dipmarches sent by the powers in September of 1881.63 This pressure on the lomatic de Porte regarding the Armenians was combined with renewed pressure on the Porte to come to terms with the Greek government on the demarcation of their shared border and to offer no further resistance on the question of the Albanian/Montenegrin border. The alternatives set before the Porte were that they must either full all their obligations under the Treaty of Berlin or face a united European naval force, to which Germany dutifully contributed a naval vessel,64 even though Bismarck suspected that Gladstones new robust Eastern policy was strengthening Russian power in the Balkans to the detriment of Austria-Hungary.65 After the Greek and Montenegrin issues eventually subsided in early 1881, Bismarck continued to support pan-European humanitarian moves on behalf of the Armenians, on the understanding that these were suitably remote from Germanys immediate interests in the Ottoman Empire, namely the line of demarcation between Austria and Russia in Ottoman Europe, and that as such they would not jeopardise the uneasy diplomatic truce on the question of the Balkans between Germanys Dreikaiserbund allies, as he made known in a letter to the Kaiser on 21 September 1881, where he advised:
Now that the clauses of the congress in all substantial points have been implemented, the English ambassador in Constantinople has reminded his colleagues and the Porte of the Armenian question. For Your Majestys government, which apart from its position as signatory to the Berlin Treaty has no direct political interests at stake, it appears harmless enough to agree with them, given the other cabinets, particularly the Austrian and Russian have agreed.66
The apparent harmlessness of following Britains pro-Armenian foreign policy was, however, reasonably short-lived. In 1882, Bismarck began to worry that Gladstones insistence on Armenian reforms would weaken the Sultans hold over his empire and Britains hold over Asia Minor, and therefore over the Mediterranean. This
195
weakening of British inuence engendered both foreign and domestic policy problems for Germany. In terms of foreign policy, British weakness in the Mediterranean might, rst, embolden the French particularly in Egypt and, second, embolden the Russians in the Balkans, thereby menacing Austria-Hungary.67 Domestically, any renewed conict between Russia and Austria-Hungary would be greeted with demands to support Austria-Hungary militarily, potentially leading to both Franco-Russian rapprochement and German isolation in the face of a general European conagration. The best way to ensure that no difculties emerged in the Balkans between Germanys two allies was to ensure that British primacy in the Mediterranean and in the Ottoman Empire was maintained, which meant regaining the trust of the Sultan by respecting his domestic sovereignty with regard to the Armenian question. During 1883, however, the break with British foreign policy in the Ottoman Empire came, as Bismarck reviewed Britains increasingly public, almost theatrical protestations to the Porte regarding the Armenians, contrary to Gladstones undertaking in March of 1882 that Britain would be more circumspect in its representations to the Porte.68 Bismarck now returned to his earlier scepticism regarding Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. This time, his impatience with Gladstones new policy direction stemmed not from an incomprehension of the utility of the symbolic politics of humanitarian Christian solidarity or a misreading of Anglo-Russian geostrategic interests, but from a realisation that the humanitarian invocation of a clash of civilisations in the Ottoman Empire, centred on the plight of the Armenians, was coming to gure within growing political tensions between the Russians, the Porte and the British. Against the background of earlier press reports of ostensible Russian agitation in the Armenian regions,69 The Times printed an article on 26 April 1883 that brought the Armenian question and the roles of Britain and Russia to a frightening head. In a report on the return of ambassador Dufferin to Constantinople, The Times reported that:
Lord Dufferin has been instructed to lay before the Sultan a very strong remonstrance on the subject of the misgovernment of Armenia . . . The Consular reports . . . furnish ample, though indirect, conrmation of the fact . . . that Turkish government misgovernment is forcing the inhabitants of the Armenian provincesincluding many Mahomedans as well as Christiansto turn their eyes to Russia as the only quarter from which practical help is likely to come. The object with which [Article 61] was inserted in the Treaty of Berlin is plain. It was intended to offer an alternative to the pretensions and the intrigues of Russia on the Asiatic frontier of Turkey. But the promises of the Powers have born no fruit for the people of Armenia . . . In these circumstances it is not surprising that Russia should be suspected of a design to turn the shortcomings of the Porte to her own account. Her garrisons occupy commanding positions . . . No other power is in contact with Turkey in the Eastern Regions of Asia Minor, and both Turks and Christians are aware that it would be most difcult for any other power to put forth its strength in that quarter. At the same time, Russia is checkmated in Europe. The alliance of Germany and Austria, strengthened by the accession of Italy, and still more by the continuing paralysis of France, has practically put an end to the projects of the Panslavists for the Russication of the Balkan Peninsular. It is believed by many diplomatists, foreign as well as English, that Russia will
196
M. P. Fitzpatrick
be tempted to indemnify herself in some new eld of ambition for this enforced inaction . . . It will be Lord Dufferins duty to lay bare the painful realities of the situation in his interview with the Sultan.70
nster, wrote to Bismarck, attemptOn 28 April, Germanys ambassador in London, Mu ing to reassure him about the nature of the newspaper report and Dufferins comments by stating that it was a mere gesture towards humanitarianism for public opinions sake, enabling Gladstone and Granville to answer pointed questions regarding the nster ventured, Granville considered the Armenians in parliament. For his part, Mu article to be an unfortunate leak because the Russians might seek to use it, to which Bismarck acerbically commented in the reports margin, Naturally!71 Dufferin did indeed strike the intransigent pose regarding the Armenian territories that The Times had foreshadowed when he came before the Sultan, as Germanys ambassador to Constantinople, Joseph Radowitz, reported in early May.72 Dufferin confronted the Sultan with reports that the situation in the East had deteriorated rather than improved and that the reforms required under Article 61 were overdue. This, Radowitz argued in his memoirs, heightened Abdul Hamids already acute distrust of British designs and fed his paranoid delusions regarding Armenia and the Armenians. The Porte pleaded for German support against the British push which they duly gave, with Bismarck commenting that Dufferins confrontational raising of the issue was both unwise and unnecessary.73 With the British press all but declaring that a division of the Ottoman Empire potentially involving Britain, Russia and the Ottoman Empire was brewing and that the British government tacitly accepted Russian claims to Armenia, a pointed corre nster relayed Bisspondence with London was initiated by Berlin. On 4 May 1883, Mu marcks message that Gladstones high stakes show of humanitarianism was endangering the viability of the Ottoman Empire:
Prince Bismarck assumes that it is not in the interests of British policy to work towards a loosening of the bonds that bind the Armenians to the Porte. It appears also to be of no use to the general interest of peace if it caused the Sultan to be weakened in the area of domestic governance, or lessens his ability to withstand external threats or weakens the stability of the Turkish Empire. Another consequence is that the introduction of reforms in Armenia under pressure from external complaints would be difcult to achieve.74
Advising the Kaiser of the issue in a letter of 18 May, Bismarck repeated remarks he had made on 17 May to his ambassador in London, stressing his view that the British show of strident humanitarianism for the sake of domestic politics was a dangerously destabilising new development:
Although it is obvious that the current meddling in the authority of the Sultan endangers the viability of all of Turkey and thereby threatens the peace of Europe, this is the direction that the cabinet of Gladstone has moved throughout the year with lodging several petitions with the Sultan . . . No success can come from this. Whilst the life and property of the Armenians are particularly vulnerable against the attacks of the Kurds, these cannot be alleviated by governmental reforms. The so-called Armenian reforms are ideal and theoretical endeavours, which are an

ornament to the Congress protocols offered in deference to the parliamentary requirements of England . . . In the interests of the European peace as well as stability in the Orient it appears necessary to keep the Sultans authority intact, insofar as it is.75
197
Clearly, a British invitation to Russia to begin dismantling the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia spelt broader trouble for the Dreikaiserbund, yet this was not all Realpolitik. Germanys own intelligence in the Armenian areas contradicted the somewhat dire picture of the condition of the Armenians alluded to by Dufferin, with the yearly report of the German vice-consul to Asia Minor arguing that:
the general security in our region is presently quite good, and as far as my knowledge and information goes, nowhere can complain about the security position at present. The Circassians who had aroused so much horror earlier are today quiet and good farmers. All of these reports that one reads in newspapers about relations in Anatolia are always very tendentious and in every case exaggerated.76
As far as Bismarck was informed, the Armenian question had moved out of the realms of humanitarian Christian solidarity and become a question of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Such a development, seemingly precipitated by Gladstones humanitarianism, meant the destabilisation of south-eastern Europe and potentially a Continental war. The British were made acutely aware of Germanys alarm, but Gladstone did not act nster reporting to Bismarck: on their concerns, with Mu
Lord Granville said to me youre preaching to a convert as I am equally of the view of Prince Bismarck that it looks like we drive Turkey into the arms of the Russians when we do something that alienates the Sultan or weakens the Sultans authority. On the other side, he added, it is very dangerous for the Sultan if the conditions in Armenia became a pretext for Russian intervention.77
Gladstones position was also made clear to Chancellor Bismarck by his son Herbert Bismarck, who relayed internal British correspondence from Gladstone to Ampthill at the British Foreign Ofce a fortnight later, in which the scope and humanitarian rationale of the change to British foreign policy was made explicit:
The proximity of the Russian frontier to the provinces inhabited by the Armenian population, coupled with the existence of maladministration and discontent in those provinces, constitutes a permanent menace to the integrity and security of the Ottoman Empire. There is always a danger that the condition of affairs may offer an inducement and excuse for foreign aggression, or that it may give rise to internal disorders and insurrection with the hope of foreign support . . . The Sultan is bound towards all the Powers by Article LXI of the Treaty of Berlin to introduce the necessary reforms and improvements in his Armenian provinces and to communicate to the Powers the steps taken for the purpose. In the Convention of the 4th of June 1878 between Her Majesty and the Sultan the engagement of England to join in the defence of the Asiatic territories of Turkey is made conditional on the introduction in to those territories of reforms to be agreed upon between the two Powers and it is not to be expected that this country should hold herself bound to perform her part of the compact while the Porte neglects the other part.78
198
M. P. Fitzpatrick
To the dismay of Bismarck, the British appeared to be informing the Porte that they no longer felt compelled to guarantee the present borders of the Ottoman Empire, under the cover of Article 61. German diplomacy now saw that the implications of Gladstones new Ottoman policy agenda were that the new British stance might be seen in St Petersburg as a potential green light for Russia to move into Ottoman Eastern Anatolia and begin the division of the Ottoman Empire. In all probability, this would lead to a major war in continental Europe in which Britain under Gladstone might remain neutral until such time as it was felt that critical imperial interests were directly threatened. This interpretation was lent credibility by Gladstone and the Tsars chance meeting in Copenhagen in September 1883.79 To German eyes, Gladstone was seeking to have his cake and eat it too, by bolstering his domestic humanitarian credentials and extricating Britain from the precarious geostrategic position on the Russian frontier of the Ottoman East bequeathed to him by Disraeli.80 Gladstones clear signals to both the Ottoman Empire and Russia that Britain had reversed its defence of a sacrosanct Russo-Ottoman frontier were for Germany a dangerous new development that threatened to undermine the European balance of power. The Germans were essentially correct in these assumptions, with Granville and Gladstone having in fact sought for a way to extricate Britain from its iron-clad promise to defend Asia Minor against Russia as early as 1880, when a proposal was presented to Cabinet (and a horried Queen Victoria)81 which sought to weaken Britains humanitarian presence in Eastern Anatolia. The need to disengage from the Armenian problem was becoming increasingly urgent, according to Gladstones government, as Russias pre-eminence in the region became self-evident and the Armenians claims to independence were becoming increasingly inated and destabilising.82 In May of 1880, Gladstone had coolly informed the Ottoman envoy Musurus Pasha that he did not feel aware of the existence of a separate and vital British interest in the maintenance of Turkey and that he thought Turkey had been, unhappily for herself, led to rely upon the notion that the British nation recognised such an interest and might be depended upon to support her in the last resort.83 As the British occupied Egypt in 1882, the military consuls in Anatolia (who had been monitoring both the reforms and Russian power in the region)84 were quietly withdrawn, their reform tasks left unfullled.85 By 1883, Gladstone seems to have found the means by which disengagement might be possible while preserving the letter if not the spirit of Article 61. In making brusque demands of the Sultan, which required refusal from the Porte simply on the grounds of sovereignty and diplomatic propriety, Britain could claim that the Ottoman refusal to honour Article 61 was grounds for any British refusal to defend Anatolia from the Russians, leaving Britain free to decline to intervene, or alternatively, as Gladstone had wished since 1880, to intervene only if interests were imperilled which she thought it right or necessary to defend.86 Upon reading Dufferins report of what had occurred in Constantinople in October 1883, Gladstone expressed his relief that Britain would be able to wash its hands of the Ottoman Empire should Russia intervene in Eastern Anatolia while keeping its humanitarian credentials intact. When the crisis comes. . ., he wrote, we, or the British government of the day, may be able, unequivocably able, to show the world
199
that it is freed from all obligations to assist the Sultan in maintaining his vile and shameful rule over Armenia.87 Like Disraeli before him, Gladstone had found that humanitarianism could be made congruent with other less idealistic endeavours. Conclusion After 1883, the Armenian question was understood by the German Foreign Ofce as an attempt to build an Asian Bulgaria88an adjacent Christian satellite province that might furnish Russia with a casus belli and scope for broader territorial expansion, which might trigger a war with Austria and subsequently, given German public opinion, Germany. Instead of defending the stability of Europe by guaranteeing the borders of the Ottoman Empire, as Disraeli had envisaged, Gladstonian Britain could remain aloof should war come, declaring that the Sultan had brought it on himself. Having come to the conclusion that Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty was not merely a harmless and ornamental clause championed largely for domestic political purposes, but rather was a destabilising fulcrum used by Britain to lever the powers into a scramble for Ottoman territory that might degenerate into a general European war, Bismarck parted ways with Britains lead on the Armenian question. Instead, German foreign policy advocated that the Sultan undertake a course of friendly passive resistance in the face of any British pressure for reforms in the Armenian provinces, perhaps by insisting that Russia and Persia also needed to be included in any Armenian reform programme.89 This was not so much an anti-humanitarian or pro-Turkish stance as a return to the German policy of non-interference in Ottoman domestic affairs, which had marked Bismarcks approach to AustroRussian tensions in the Balkans in 1878. The grounds for this were neither antiBritish sentiment nor a cynical disregard for the Armenians, nor even a desire to insinuate German interests into the Ottoman Empire through a policy of apparent appeasement, as Dufferin had suspected.90 Rather, German diplomacy continued to focus on halting the progress towards the general European war for Ottoman territories that would conceivably accompany its disintegration. Whereas in 1878 this policy had dictated favouring Austria-Hungary over Russia at the Congress of Berlin, in 1883 it meant rejecting the calculated, high-stakes championing of the Armenians that had enabled Britain to disengage itself from the frontier friction between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. If Bismarck had not followed a strictly humanitarian foreign policy then neither had Gladstone once his party came to power. Having forged his humanitarian credentials as a fearless advocate of the rights of Ottoman Christians in 1876, Gladstone operated within the letter of Article 61, as negotiated by Disraeli, but with precisely the opposite intention, namely the abandonment of the Conservative policy of supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian predations. With Cabinet deeply reluctant to align itself militarily with the Ottoman Empire in any coming war against Russia,91 but with the British military rmly tied to Eastern Anatolia courtesy of Article 61, Gladstone tussled not merely with the plight of the Armenians but also with the desire to relieve Britain of its onerous treaty obligations in the East. When the break
200
M. P. Fitzpatrick
with the Concert of Europe approach came in 1883, it was on the basis not merely of a zealous humanitarian push, but rather a desire to force the issue so as to be rid of Ottoman entanglements, in particular responsibility for the Armenians. The gambit worked and, having effected a break with the Porte, the question of the Armenian reforms was no longer raised by the British and thereafter remained dormant, as the German envoy Radowitz reported.92 The cost of this recalibration of British foreign policy was, however, the heightening of the Sultans already deep hostility towards the Armenians. In 1981, Keith Sandiford wrote of Gladstone that there survives a vivid picture of the Grand Old Man ghting to the end to save the hapless Armenians from the butchery of the Turks. This image of an unusually devout Christian striving against overwhelming odds to promote the cause of liberty, justice, and humanity is still an integral part of the Victorian mythology. This portrait of Gladstone as champion of the oppressed nationalities, Sandiford noted, was rst established by that statesman himself .93 Some seventy years ago, Medlicott too had argued that the plain truth is that after 1881 the Gladstone government had allowed the fear of Russia to determine its Turkish policy very much as the Conservatives had done, and had shown less readiness to recognize that England had any moral obligation to persist in politically unprotable efforts to ameliorate the condition of the sultans subjects.94 Gary Basss recent study notwithstanding, Gladstones humanitarian credentials may indeed require revision in line with these judgements. As the German response to Gladstones attempt to disengage from the Armenian cause seems to indicate, another portrait of Gladstone is possible, that of a risk taker, willing to gamble with the peace of continental Europe in order that he might rid British foreign policy of its humanitarian strictures in Eastern Anatolia. If this German portrait is plausible, then the notion that Gladstones foreign policy was guided by an overarching commitment to human rights might well be part of this myth of Gladstone.95 In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War, Europes Armenian question was publicly marked by a humanitarian concern with the fate of fellow Christians within a decaying Muslim empire. It was also, however, characterised by its underlying geostrategic dimension. It was this dimension which underpinned the calculations of not merely Bismarck and Disraeli but also Gladstone. For ve years, Wilhelmstrasse followed Britains lead on the Armenian issue; however, upon coming to understand in 1883 that the decades-long frontier friction between Russia, Britain and the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Anatolia and Persia was just as dangerous for the peace of Europe as the frontier friction between Austria and Russia in the Balkans had been in 1878, German diplomacy quickly abandoned its accommodation with Britains Ottoman policy. The German concern over Britains manipulation of the Armenians and the German fear of a European war stemming from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire still prevailed in the 1890s when the Armenian massacres of the mid-1890s prompted Kaiser Wilhelm II to declare that the blood of the Armenians was on the hands of Britains humanitarian politicians.96 By then, German foreign policy had moved towards a refusal to use the suffering of the Armenians as a pawn in a larger
201
imperial game, and focused instead on the preservation of the Ottoman Empire as a means of staving off a general European war. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Richard Scully, Andrekos Varnava and this journals two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Notes
[1] Margin note on report from Marschall, 9 Oct. 1895 in Lepsius et al., Die Grosse Politik X, 71. It should be noted that Lepsius was far from an impartial editor of this collection of documents, but the Kaisers margin note is nonetheless authentic. [2] Anderson, Down in Turkey Far Away, Journal of Modern History. For Naumann, see 87; on government responses to the massacres, see 103. [3] Bass, Freedoms Battle, 8 9. [4] Moyn, Spectacular Wrongs. [5] Ibid. [6] Mazower, Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 396. [7] Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 3 38. Fink is incorrect in suggesting that the Treaty of San Stefano had been silent over minority rights (5), with Article 16 of San Stefano offering an arguably stronger vehicle for further Russian intervention on behalf of the Armenians than Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. For a corrective see Suny, Looking toward Ararat, 43; Weitz, From the Vienna to the Paris System, 1317. [8] On the status of religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire from a Russian perspective, see Komsalova, Bulgarians and Greeks. [9] For a more nuanced picture of domestic developments inside the Ottoman Empire, see Anscombe, Islam and the Age of Ottoman Reform. [10] Fleming, Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography. [11] For the role of Jerusalem prior to the Crimean War, see Gooch, A Century of Historiography on the Origins of the Crimean War. On Frances humanitarian role in Syria, see Pogany, Humanitarian Intervention in International Law. For Russians inated imperial claims stemming from its intervention on behalf of Christian minorities, see Davison. Russian Skill and c k Kaynarca. Turkish Imbecility, The Dosografa Church in the Treaty of Ku u [12] Anderson, Great Britain and the Russo-Turkish War of 176874. [13] See Geiss, Der Berliner Kongre 1878, 404. [14] Granville to Gladstone, 18 Sept. 1878 in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, 78. [15] Mosse, End of the Crimean System, 171 75. [16] Salisbury to Layard in Constantinople, 9 May 1878 in Anderson, ed., The Great Powers and the Near East, 100. [17] Over 65 per cent of the Reichstag deputies were pro-Austrian (or at the least anti-Russian). See below. [18] Marsh, Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres, 71; Zeidner, Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question. [19] Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of 1878, 44 87. See also Gillard, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 389 90; Mosse, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, 38 58. [20] Medlicott, The Gladstone Government and the Cyprus Convention, 188085, 207. [21] Kieser, Der Verpasste Friede, 24 25, 79 85. [22] Ibid., 25.
202
M. P. Fitzpatrick
[23] Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 22ff.; Zeidner, Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question, 471 72. [24] Zeidner, ibid., 473 74. [25] Panze, Bismarck, 152 53. [26] Vakahn N Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, 65. See too 85 97. [27] Scherer, Adler und Halbmond, 178. Bismarcks t of pique was no one off. The next day, Bismarck did not merely repeat the remark almost word for word in a report to the Kaiser, but gave a full elaboration on it. For the article in question, see Geiss, Der Berliner Kongre 1878, 405. [28] Ibid., 526. [29] As per Anderson, The Eastern Question. der, Die Stellung der Nationalliberalen und Sozialdemokraten, 12. [30] Schro [31] Wolfframm, Die deutsche Auenpolitik, 39 53. i, Foreign Investment in the [32] Friedman, Germany, Turkey and Zionism, 3 4; Geyikdag Ottoman, 65. [33] Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism and Development Theories, 2. [34] Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstags, III, Legislaturperiode, Erste Session, 1877, 1 3. [35] Bennigsen to Bismarck, Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstags, III, Legislaturperiode, 6.Sitzung, 19 Feb. 1878, 92 95. For another National Liberal voice around this time, see Heinrich Treitschkes comments that, although Russia represents the cause of Christendom, culture and humanity in the Orient. . .neither Germany nor Austria can admit Russias conquests in Europe. Instead, Treitschke recommended the Eastern territories around Kars and Batum ische Lage am Jahresschlusse. with which Russia might satisfy itself. Treitschke, Die europa [36] Bismarck to the Reichstag, Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstags, III, Legislaturperiode, 6.Sitzung, 19 Feb.1878, 96. [37] Ibid., 96. [38] Ibid., 99. [39] Ibid., 96. nel to Reichstag, ibid., 99 101. [40] Ha [41] Windthorst to Reichstag, ibid., 102: ob das germanische Element oder das slavische Element das die Welt beherrschende sein soll. [42] He also ridiculed Windthorsts claim that whoever controlled the Dardanelles held the key to global power, stating that Windthorst would teach us that the Sultan has hitherto ruled the world. Bismarck to the Reichstag, ibid., 105. [43] Liebknecht to Reichstag, ibid., 111 12. hrke, 328. [44] Mo [45] Wolfframm. Die deutsche Auenpolitik, 45 46. [46] Contra Wolfframms view that public opinion had no inuence on German foreign policy. Wolfframm, Die deutsche Auenpolitik, 53. Bismarcks weakness in the Reichstag was famously illustrated just months later in May 1878 when he was unable to push through an anti-Socialist dels assassination attempt on the Kaiser and was forced to elections law in the wake of Max Ho in order to try to create a working majority. On the importance of domestic politics, see too Canis, Bismarcks Aussenpolitik 1870 bis 1890, 12833. While not conceding precisely how limited his domestic political choices were, Lothar Gall too argues that, in the face of Conservative disagreement, Bismarck came to agree with his domestic political rivals, even including Liebknecht that the power of Russia needed to be curtailed. See Gall. Bismarck, 52324. [47] Hildebrand. Das vergangene Reich, 60. On the effects of public opinion, see too Mommsen, Grossmachtstellung und Weltpolitik, 43 44; Panze, Bismarck, 230. [48] Friis. Die Aufhebung des Artikels V des Prager Friedens, 56. [49] Ibid., 45 62 (esp. 54 55), MB Winckler. Die Aufhebung des Artikels V des Prager Friedens, 471 509. [50] Suny. Looking toward Ararat, 43.

[51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64]
203
[65] [66]
[67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80]
[81]
[82]
Gillard, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 387. Geiss, ed., Der Berliner Kongre 1878, 315 16. Ibid., 316. DeVore, British Military Consuls in Asia Minor, 12. Scherer. Adler und Halbmond, 99. rtigen Amtes, Berlin (PAAA). Die Post (90), 1 April 1879, R13064 Politisches Archiv des Auswa lnische Zeitung, 17 Feb 1880, R 13064 PAAA. Der Orient, Ko rkisch-Asien. Aus Tu ffentliches Meinen, 27981. hrke. Deutsche Presse und O Mo Scherer. Adler und Halbmond, 105. Hatzfeldt, 11 June, R13065 PAAA (unnumbered). Granville to Gladstone, 3 Oct. 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence, 192. R13066, R13067, PAAA. This naval force, which included one German naval vessel, was disbanded on 4 December after the Porte agreed to honour its Greek and Balkan commitments despite Gladstones hope of keeping it in place until all reforms agreed to in Berlin were carried out. See Gladstone to Granville, 15 Oct. 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence, 201. Scherer, Adler und Halbmond, 102 06. Bismarck to Wilhelm I. 21 Sept. 1881, R 13067 PAAA. The main concern for the Porte was that Britain and Russia were now acting in unison in a fashion that they considered to be highly destabilising. See Hirschfeld to Bismarck, 25 Nov, 1881, R 13067 PAAA. rkei, 35 38. Holborn, Deutschland und die Tu Ibid., 35. See, for example, the articles in the St Jamess Gazette, 3 Jan. 1883 and The Times, 4 Jan. 1883, both in R13068 PAAA (unnumbered). The Times, 26 April 1883, in R13068 PAAA. nster to Bismarck, 28 April 1883, R13068 PAAA. Mu Radowitz to Bismarck, 10 May and 12 May 1883, R13068 PAAA. Holborn, ed., Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria von Radowitz, 231 32. nster, 4 May 1883, R13068 PAAA. Hatzfeld to Mu Bismarck to Wilhelm I, 18 May 1883, R13068 PAAA. Jahresbericht Anasia31 March 1883 (received 15 May 1883), R13068 PAAA. nster to Bismarck, 30 May 1883, R 13069. PAAA. Mu Gladstone to Ampthill, 14 June 1883, R13068 PAAA. rkei, Bismarck to Radowitz, 12 Oct. 1883, as reproduced in Holborn. Deutschland und die Tu 111; see also 41 42. For their part, the Russians were rapidly moving towards a Russication policy that sought to contain the Armenian question in light of their own difculties with this minority. Russia was fast becoming a defender of Ottoman integrity in Asia, despite the persistence of their Balkan ambitions, just as Britain was moving away from this commitment. Suny, Looking towards Ararat, 44ff.; Zeidner, Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question, 475. This reversal of Conservative foreign policy so alarmed Queen Victoria that she sent a letter rebuking Gladstone for it. Granville to Gladstone, 19 Sept. 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence, 178 79. On the Gladstone Cabinets desire to move away from any Anglo-Ottoman alliance against Russia, see Granville to Gladstone, 4 June 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence, 132. Medlicott, The Gladstone Government and the Cyprus Convention, 193 94. On the stumbling block presented by Article 61, see Gladstone to Granville, 9 June 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence 133 34. For the extent of and limits to Armenian agency in these matters, see Bloxham, Terrorism and Imperial Decline, 30124.
204
M. P. Fitzpatrick
Gladstone diary entry, 14 May 1880, in Matthew, ed., The Gladstone Diaries, 524. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, 73. Knaplund, Gladstones Foreign Policy, 152. Granville to Goschen, very condential, 10 June, FO 78/3074, No. 71. Medlicott. The Gladstone Government and the Cyprus Convention, 192. Gladstone papers, as cited in Knaplund, Gladstones Foreign Policy, 15455. By 1886, Gladstone was advocating the idea of simply allowing Russia to take Constantinople and the Straitsan action which would have precipitated war with Russia under Disraeli and spelt the end of the Ottoman Empire, and a European scramble for its territories. Knaplund, Gladstones Foreign Policy, 159. Newspaper report, Politische Korrespondenz, R13068 PAAA: ein asiatisches Bulgarien zu schaffen. Bismarck to Radowitz, 13 Oct. 1883, 112. This harked back to the now abandoned plan of Russias Loris Melikof to create a unied Armenian polity. In suggesting a transnational approach, Bismarck hoped to bury the issue, understanding that it was in the interests of neither Britain nor Russia to embrace it. On Melikof, see Zeidner, Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question, 474 75. Knaplund, Gladstones Foreign Policy, 157. Granville to Gladstone, 4 June 1880, in Ramm, ed., Political Correspondence, 132. Halborn, ed., Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen, 232. Sandiford, WE Gladstone and Liberal-Nationalist Movements, 27 30. Medlicott. The Gladstone Government and the Cyprus Convention, 208. Contra Bass. Freedoms Battle, 8 9. Similar conclusions have recently been reached regarding Gladstones stance on slavery by Roland Quinault. See Quinault Gladstone and Slavery, 363 83. Margin note on report from Marschall, 9 Oct. 1895 in Lepsius et al., Die Grosse Politik X, 71.
[83] [84] [85] [86] [87]
[88]
[89]
[90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95]
[96]
References
Anderson, M. L. Down in Turkey Far Away: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany. Journal of Modern History 79, no. 1 (2007): 80 113. Anderson, M. S. Great Britain and the Russo-Turkish War of 176874. English Historical Review, 69, no. 270 (1954): 39 58. . The Eastern Question 1774 1923: A Study in International Relations. London: Macmillan, 1966. , ed. The Great Powers and the Near East, 17741923. London: Edward Arnold, 1970. Anscombe, F. F. Islam and the Age of Ottoman Reform. Past and Present 208 (2010): 159 89. rkisch-Asien, Preuische Jahrbu cher 46 (1880): 576 77. Aus Tu Bass, G. J. Freedoms Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. New York: Knopf, 2008. Bloxham, D. Terrorism and Imperial Decline: The Ottoman-Armenian Case. European Review of History 14, no. 3 (2007): 301 24. Canis, Konrad. Bismarcks Aussenpolitik 1870 bis 1890: Aufstieg und Gefahrdung. 2nd edn. Paderborn: ningh, 2008, Ferdinand Scho Dadrian, V. N. The History of the Armenian Genocide. Ethnic Conict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York: Berghahn, 2004. Davison, R. H. Russian Skill and Turkish Imbecility: The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji Reconsidered. Slavic Review 35, no. 3 (1976): 463 83. c k Kaynarca. Bulletin of the School of Oriental . The Dosografa Church in the Treaty of Ku u and African Studies 42, no. 1 (1979): 46 52. DeVore, R. M. British Military Consuls in Asia Minor 18781882. Diss., Indiana University, 1973.
205
Fink, C. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews and International Minority Protection, 1878 1938. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Fleming, K. E. Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography. American Historical Review 105, no. 4 (2000): 121833. Friedman, I. Germany, Turkey and Zionism, 18971918. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Friis, A. Die Aufhebung des Artikels V des Prager Friedens. Historische Zeitschrift 125, no. 1 (1922). r. Frankfurt: Propyla en, 1980. Gall, Lothar. Bismarck: Der weie Revolutiona Geiss. I. Der Berliner Kongre 1878: Protokolle und Materialien. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1978. i, V. N. Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire: International Trade and Relations, Geyikdag 1854 1914. London: I. B. Taurus, 2011. Gillard, D., ed. British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Ofce Condential Print Part I, Series B: The Near and Middle East 1856 1914, Vol. 4, The Ottoman Empire and the War with Russia, 18771878, The Powers and the Treaty of San Stefano, 1878. London: University Publications of America, 1984. Gooch, Brison D. A Century of Historiography on the Origins of the Crimean War. American Historical Review 62, no. 1 (1956): 33 58. Hildebrand, Klaus. Das vergangene Reich: deutsche Auenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, 1871 1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1995. Holborn, Hajo, ed. Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria von Radowitz. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1925. rkei, 1878 1890. Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft fu r Politik und . Deutschland und die Tu Geschichte, 1926. Kaiser, H. Imperialism, Racism and Development Theories: The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians. Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute, 1997. rkei, Kieser, H. L. Der Verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu 1839 1938. Zurich: Chronos, 2000. Knaplund, Paul. Gladstones Foreign Policy. London: Frank Cass, 1970. Komsalova, R. Bulgarians and Greeks during the Eastern Crisis (1875 1878) in Count Ignatievs Notes. Etudes Balkaniques 4 (2005): 29 39. Lee, D. E. Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of 1878. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. rkische Problem, 1895. Berlin: Lepsius, J., Bartholdy, A. M. and Thimme, F. Die Grosse Politik X: Das tu r Politik und Geschichte, 1924. Deutsche Verlag fu Marsh, P. Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres. Journal of British Studies 11, no. 2 (1972): 63 83. Matthew, H. C. G., ed. The Gladstone Diaries with Cabinet Minutes and Prime-Ministerial Correspondence, Vol. 9, January 1875December 1880. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Mazower, M. The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 19331950. The Historical Journal 47, no. 2 (2004): 379 98. Medlicott, W. N. The Gladstone Government and the Cyprus Convention, 188085. Journal of Modern History 12, no. 2 (1940): 186 208. ffentliches Meinen wa hrke, Claus-Dietrich. Deutsche Presse und O hrend der orientalischen Mo t, Mu nster, 1954. Krisis 1875 1879. Diss., Westfalische Wilhelms-Universita Mommsen, Wolfgang J. Grossmachtstellung und Weltpolitik: die Aussenpolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1870 bis 1914. Berlin: Ullstein, 1993. Mosse. W. E. The End of the Crimean System: England, Russia and the Neutrality of the Black Sea, 187071. The Historical Journal 4, no. 2 (1961): 17175. . Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The British Public and the War-Scare of November 1870. The Historical Journal 6, no. 1 (1963): 38 58. Moyn, S. Spectacular Wrongs: Gary Basss Freedoms Battle. The Nation 13 Oct. 2008.
206
M. P. Fitzpatrick
Panze, Otto. Bismarck: der Reichskanzler. Munich: Beck, 1998. Pogany, I. Humanitarian Intervention in International Law: The French Intervention in Syria Re-examined. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1986). Quinault, R. Gladstone and Slavery. The Historical Journal 52 (2009): 36383. Ramm, Agatha, ed. The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville 1876.1886, Vol. 1. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962. Salt, J. Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878 1896, New York. Routledge, 1993. Sandiford, K. A. P. WE Gladstone and Liberal-Nationalist Movements. Albion 13, no. 1 (1981): 27_42. Scherer, F. Adler und Halbmond: Bismarck und der Orient, 1878 1890. Paderborn: Ferdinand ningh, 2001. Scho der, Hans. Die Stellung der Nationalliberalen und Sozialdemokraten zur auswa rtigen Politik des Schro hrend der Orientkrisis 1885 87. Rostock: Rats- und Universita tsDeutschen Reiches wa Buchdruckerei, 1927. Suny, R. G. Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993. ische Lage am Jahresschlusse. Preuische Jahrbu cher 40 (1877): von Treitschke, Heinrich. Die europa 669 71. Weitz, E. D. From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Mission. American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (2008): 131343. Winckler, M. B. Die Aufhebung des Artikels V des Prager Friedens und Bismarcks Weg zum Zweibund. Historische Zeitschrift 179, no. 3 (1955): 471509. Wolfframm, Peter. Die deutsche Auenpolitik und die groen deutschen Tageszeitungen (1871 1890). Zeulenroda: Bernhard Sporn, 1936. Zeidner, Robert F. Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question. International Journal of Middle East Studies 7, no. 4 (1976): 465 83.

1878-83 Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response To Britain-Matthew Fitzpatrick

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

1878-83 Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response To Britain-Matthew Fitzpatrick

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [Flinders University of South Australia] On: 20 May 2013, At: 20:50 Publisher:

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

[83] [84] [85] [86] [87]

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

[90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95]

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 20:50 20 May 2013

You might also like