Tragedy and Hope
A History of the World in Our Time
By Carroll Quigley
PART FOUR
Part Four—The Buffer Fringe
In the first half of the twentieth century the power structure of the world was entirely transformed. In 1900, European civilization, led by Britain and followed by other states at varying distances, was still spreading outward, disrupting the cultures of other societies unable to resist and frequently without any desire to resist. The European structure which pushed outward formed a hierarchy of power, wealth, and prestige with Britain at the top, followed by a secondary rank of other Great Powers, by a tertiary rank of the wealthy secondary Powers (like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden), and by a quaternary rank of the lesser or decadent Powers (like Portugal or Spain, whose world positions were sustained by British power).
At the turn of the twentieth century the first cracklings of impending disaster were emitted from this power structure but were generally ignored: in 1896 the Italians were massacred by the Ethiopians at Adowa; in 1899-1902 the whole might of Britain was held in check by the small Boer republics in the South African War; and in 1904-1905 Russia was defeated by a resurgent Japan. These omens were generally not heeded, and European civilization continued on its course to Armageddon.
By the second half of the twentieth century, the power structure of the world presented a quite different picture. In this new situation the world consisted of three great zones: (1) Orthodox civilization under the Soviet Empire, occupying the heartland of Eurasia; (2) surrounding this, a fringe of dying and shattered cultures: Islamic, Hindu, Malayan, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and others: and (3) outside this fringe, and chiefly responsible for shattering its cultures, Western Civilization. Moreover, Western Civilization had been profoundly modified. In 1900 it had consisted of a core area in Europe with peripheral areas in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and the fringes of Africa. By 1950 Western Civilization had its center of power in America, the fringes in Africa were being lost, and Europe had been so reduced in power, in wealth, and in prestige that it seemed to many that it must make a choice between becoming a satellite in an American-dominated Western Civilization or joining with the buffer fringe to try to create a Third Force able to hold a balance of power between America and the Soviet bloc. This impression was mistaken, and by the late 1950's Europe was in a position, once again, to play an independent role in world affairs.
In previous chapters we have examined the background of Western Civilization and of the Russian Empire to the second decade of the twentieth century. In the present chapter we shall examine the situation in the buffer fringe until about the end of that same decade. At the beginning of the twentieth century the areas which were to become the buff r fringe consisted of (1) the Near East dominated by the Ottoman Empire, (2) the Middle East dominated by the British Empire in India, and (3) the Far East, consisting of two old civilizations, China and Japan. On the outskirts of these were the lesser colonial areas of Africa, Malaysia, and Indonesia. At this point we shall consider the three major areas of the buffer fringe with a brief glance at Africa.
Chapter 8: The Near East to 1914
For the space of over a century, from shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until 1922, the relationships of the Great Powers were exacerbated by what was known as the "Near East Question." This problem, which arose from the growing weakness of the Ottoman Empire, was concerned with the question of what would become of the lands and peoples left without government by the retreat of Turkish power. The problem was made more complex by the fact that Turkish power did not withdraw but rather decayed right were it was, so that in many areas it continued to exist in law when it had already ceased to function in fact because of the weakness and corruption of the sultan's government. The Turks themselves sought to maintain their position, not by remedying their weakness and corruption by reform, but by playing off one European state against another and hy using cruel and arbitrary actions against any of their subject peoples who dared to become restive under their rule.
The Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the period 1526-1533 with the conquest of Hungary and the first siege of Vienna. A second siege, also unsuccessful, came in 1683. From this point Turkish power declined and Turkish sovereignty withdrew, but unfortunately the decline was much more rapid than the withdrawal, with the result that subject peoples were encouraged to revolt and foreign Powers were encouraged to intervene because of the weakness of Turkish power in areas which were still nominally under the sultan's sovereignty.
At its height the Ottoman Empire was larger than any contemporary European state in both area and population. South of the Mediterranean it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in Morocco to the Persian Gulf; north of the Mediterranean it stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Caspian Sea, including the Balkans as far north as Poland and the whole northern shore of the Black Sea. This vast empire was divided into twenty-one governments and subdivided into seventy vilayets, each under a pasha. The whole structure was held together as a tribute-gathering military system by the fact that the rulers in all parts were Muslims. The supreme ruler in Constantinople was not only sultan (and thus head of the empire) but was also caliph (and thus defender of the Muslim creed). In most of the empire the mass of the people were Muslims like their rulers, but in much of the empire the masses of the peoples were non-Muslims, being Roman Christians, Orthodox Christians, Jews, or other creeds.
Linguistic variations were even more notable than religious distinctions. Only the peoples of Anatolia generally spoke Turkish, while those of North Africa and the Near East spoke various Semitic and Hamitic dialects of which the most prevalent was Arabic. From Syria to the Caspian Sea across the base of Anatolia were several languages, of which the chief were Kurdish and Armenian. The shores of the Aegean Sea, especially the western, were generally Greek-speaking. The northern shore was a confused mixture of Turkish, Greek, and Bulgarian speaking peoples. The eastern shore of the Adriatic was Greek-speaking up to the 40th parallel, then Albanian for almost three degrees of latitude, merging gradually into various South Slav languages like Croat, Slovens, and (in the interior) Serb. The Dalmatian shore and Istria had many Italian speakers. On the Black Sea shore Thrace itself was a mixture of Turkish, Greek, and Bulgar from the Bosporus to the 42nd parallel where there was a solid mass of Bulgarians. The central Balkans w as a confused area, especially in Macedonia where Turkish, Greek, Albanian, Serb, and Bulgar met and mingled. North of the Bulgarian-speaking groups, and generally separated from them by the Danube, were Romanians. North of the Croatians and Serbs, and generally separated from them by the Drava River, were the Hungarians. The district where the Hungarians and Romanians met, Transylvania, was confused, with great blocs of one language being separated from their fellows by blocs of the other, the confusion being compounded by the presence of considerable numbers of Germans and Gypsies.
The religious and linguistic divisions of the Ottoman Empire were complicated by geographic, social, and cultural divisions, especially in the Balkans. This last-named area provided such contrasts as the relatively advanced commercial and mercantile activities of the Greeks; primitive pastoral groups like Albanian goat-herders; subsistence farmers scratching a living from small plots of Macedonia's rocky soils; peasant-size farms on the better soils of Serbia and Romania; great rich landed estates producing for a commercial market and worked by serf labor in Hungary and Romania. Such diversity made any hopes of political unity by consent or by federation almost impossible in the Balkans. Indeed, it was almost impossible to draw any political lines which would coincide with geographic and linguistic or religious lines, because linguistic and religious distinctions frequently indicated class distinctions. Thus the upper and lower classes or the commercial and the agricultural groups even in the same district often had different languages or different religions. Such a pattern of diversity could be held together most easily by a simple display of military force. This was what the Turks provided. Militarism and fiscalism were the two keynotes of Turkish rule, and were quite sufficient to hold the empire together as long as both remained effective and the empire was free from outside interference. But in the course of the eighteenth century Turkish administration became ineffective and outside interference became important.
The sultan, who was a completely absolute ruler, became very quickly a completely arbitrary ruler. This characteristic extended to all his activities. He filled his harem with any women who pleased his fancy, without any formal ceremony. Such numerous and temporary liaisons produced numerous children, of whom many were neglected or even forgotten. Accordingly, the succession to the throne never became established and was never based on primogeniture. As a consequence, the sultan came to fear murder from almost any direction. To avoid this, he tended to surround himself with persons who could have no possible chance of succeeding him: women, children, Negroes, eunuchs, and Christians. All the sultans from 1451 onward were born of slave mothers and only one sultan after this date even bothered to contract a formal marriage. Such a way of life isolated the sultan from his subjects completely.
This isolation applied to the process of government as well as to the ruler's personal life. Most of the sultans paid little heed to government, leaving this to their grand viziers and the local pashas. The former had no tenure, being appointed or removed in accordance with the whims of harem intrigue. The pashas tended to become increasingly independent, since they collected local taxes and raised local military forces. The fact that the sultan was also caliph (and thus religious successor to Muhammad), and the religious belief that the government was under divine guidance and should be obeyed, however unjust and tyrannical, made all religious thinking on political or social questions take the form of justification of the status quo, and made any kind of reform almost impossible. Reform could come only from the Sultan, but his ignorance and isolation from society made reform unlikely. In consequence the whole system became increasingly weak and corrupt. The administration was chaotic, inefficient, and arbitrary. Almost nothing could be done without gifts and bribes to officials, and it was not always possible to know what official or series of officials were the correct ones to reward.
The chaos and weakness which we have described were in full blossom by the seventeenth century, and grew worse during the next two hundred years. As early as 1699 the sultan lost Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia to the Habsburgs, parts of the western Balkans to Venice, and districts in the north to Poland. In the course of the eighteenth century, Russia acquired areas north of the Black Sea, notably the Crimea.
During the nineteenth century, the Near East question became increasingly acute. Russia emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as a Great Power, able to increase its pressure on Turkey. This pressure resulted from three motivations. Russian imperialism sought to win an outlet to open waters in the south by dominating the Black Sea and by winning access to the Aegean through the acquisition of the Straits and Constantinople. Later this effort was supplemented by economic and diplomatic pressure on Persia in order to reach the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Russia regarded itself as the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and as early as 1774 had obtained the sultan's consent to this protective role. Moreover, as the most powerful Slav state, Russia had ambitions to be regarded as the protector of the Slavs in the sultan's domains.
These Russian ambitions could never have been thwarted by the sultan alone, but he did not need to stand alone. He generally found support from Britain and increasingly from France. Britain was obsessed with the need to defend India, which was a manpower pool and military staging area vital to the defense of the whole empire. From 1840 to 1907, it faced the nightmare possibility that Russia might attempt to cross Afghanistan to northwest India, or cross Persia to the Persian Gulf, or penetrate through the Dardanelles and the Aegean onto the British "lifeline to India" by way of the Mediterranean. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 increased the importance of this Mediterranean route to the east in British eyes. It was protected by British forces in Gibraltar, Malta (acquired 1800), Cyprus (1878), and Egypt (1882). In general, in spite of English humanitarian sympathy for the peoples subject to the tyranny of the Turk, and in spite of England's regard for the merits of good government, British imperial policy considered that its interests would be safer with a weak, if corrupt, Turkey in the Near East than they would be with any Great Power in that area or with the area broken up into small independent states which might fall under the influence of the Great Powers.
The French concern with the Near East was parallel to, but weaker than, that of Britain. They had cultural and trade relations with the Levant going back, in some cases, to the Crusades. In addition the French had ancient claims, revived in 1854, to he considered the protectors of Roman Catholics in the Ottoman Empire and of the "holy places" in Jerusalem.
Three other influences which became increasingly strong in the Near East were the growth of nationalism and the growing interests of Austria (after 1866) and of Germany (after 1889). The first stirrings of Balkan nationalism can be seen in the revolt of the Serbs in 1804-1812. By seizing Bessarabia from Turkey in 1812, Russia won the right for local self-government for the Serbs. Unfortunately, these latter began almost immediately to fight one another, the chief split being between a Russophile group led by Milan Obrenovich and a Serb nationalist group led by George Petroviๆ (better known as Karageorge). The Serb state, formally established in 1830, was bounded by the rivers Dvina, Save, Danube, and Timok. With local autonomy under Turkish suzerainty, it continued to pay tribute to the sultan and to support garrisons of Turkish troops. The vicious feud between Obrenovich and Karageorgevic continued after Serbia obtained complete independence in 1878. The Obrenovich dynasty ruled in 1817-1842 and 1858-1903, while the Karageorgevic group ruled in 1842-1858 and 1903-1945. The intrigues of these two against each other broadened into a constitutional conflict in which the Obrenovich group supported the somewhat less liberal constitution of 1869, while the Karageorgevic group supported the somewhat more liberal constitution of 1889. The former constitution was in effect in 1869 1889 and again in 1894-1903, while the latter was in effect in 1889-1894 and again in 1903-1921. In order to win popular support by an appeal to nationalist sentiments, both groups plotted against Turkey and later against Austria-Hungary.
A second example of Balkan nationalism appeared in the Greek struggle for independence from the sultan (1821-1830). After Greeks and Muslims had massacred each other by the thousands, Greek independence was established with a constitutional monarchy under the guarantee of the three Great Powers. A Bavarian prince was placed on the throne and began to establish a centralized, bureaucratic, constitutional state which was quite unsuited for a country with such unconstitutional traditions, poor transportation and communications, a low level of literacy, and a high level of partisan localism. After thirty turbulent years (1832-1862), Otto of Bavaria was deposed and replaced by a Danish prince and a completely democratic unicameral government which functioned only slightly better. The Danish dynasty continues to rule, although supplanted by a republic in 1924-1935 and by military dictatorships on sundry occasions, notably that of Joannes Metaxas (1936-1941).
The first beginnings of Balkan nationalism must not be overemphasized. While the inhabitants of the area have always been unfriendly to outsiders and resentful of burdensome governments, these sentiments deserve to be regarded as provincialism or localism rather than nationalism. Such feelings are prevalent among all primitive peoples and must not be regarded as nationalism unless they are so wide as to embrace loyalty to all peoples of the same language and culture and are organized in such fashion that this loyalty is directed toward the state as the core of nationalist strivings. Understood in this way, nationalism became a very potent factor in the disruption of the Ottoman Empire only after 1878.
Closely related to the beginnings of Balkan nationalism were the beginnings of Pan-Slavism and the various "pan-movements" in reaction to this, such as Pan-Islamism. These rose to a significant level only at the very end of the nineteenth century. Simply defined, Pan-Slavism was a movement for cultural unity, and, perhaps in the long run, political unity among the Slavs. In practice it came to mean the right of Russia to assume the role of protector of the Slav peoples outside Russia itself. At times it was difficult for some peoples, especially Russia's enemies, to distinguish between Pan-Slavism and Russian imperialism. Equally simply defined, Pan-Islamism was a movement for unity or at least cooperation among all the Muslim peoples in order to resist the encroachments of the European Powers on Muslim territories. In concrete terms it sought to give the caliph a religious leadership, and perhaps in time a political leadership such as he had really never previously possessed. Both of these pan-movements are of no importance until the end of the nineteenth century, while Balkan nationalism was only slightly earlier than they in its rise to importance.
These Balkan nationalists had romantic dreams about uniting peoples of the same language, and generally looked back, with a distorted historical perspective, to some period when their co-linguists had played a more important political role. The Greeks dreamed of a revived Byzantine state or even of a Periclean Athenian Empire. The Serbs dreamed of the days of Stephen Dushan, while the Bulgars went further back to the days of the Bulgarian Empire of Symeon in the early tenth century. However, we must remember that even as late as the beginning of the twentieth century such dreams were found only among the educated minority of Balkan peoples. In the nineteenth century, agitation in the Balkans was much more likely to be caused by Turkish misgovernment than by any stirrings of national feeling. Moreover, when national feeling did appear it was just as likely to appear as a feeling of animosity against neighbors who were different, rather than a feeling of unity with peoples who were the same in culture and religion. And at all times localism and class antagonisms (especially rural hostility against urban groups) remained at a high level.
Russia made war on Turkey five times in the nineteenth century. On the last two occasions the Great Powers intervened to prevent Russia from imposing its will on the sultan. The first intervention led to the Crimean War (1854-1856) and the Congress of Paris (1856), while the second intervention, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, rewrote a peace treaty which the czar had just imposed on the sultan (Treaty of San Stefano, 1877) .
In 1853 the czar, as protector of the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire, occupied the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia north of the Danube and east of the Carpathians. Under British pressure the sultan declared war on Russia, and was supported by Britain, France, and Sardinia in the ensuing "Crimean War." Under threat of joining the anti-Russian forces, Austria forced the czar to evacuate the principalities and occupied them herself, thus exposing an Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans which continued for two generations and ultimately precipitated the World War of 1914-1918.
The Congress of Paris of 1856 sought to remove all possibility of any future Russian intervention in Turkish affairs. The integrity of Turkey was guaranteed, Russia gave up its claim as protector of the sultan's Christian subjects, the Black Sea was "neutralized" by prohibiting all naval vessels and naval arsenals on its waters and shores, an International Commission was set up to assure free navigation of the Danube, and in 1862, after several years of indecision, the two principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, along with Bessarabia, were allowed to form the state of Romania. The new state remained technically under Turkish suzerainty until 1878. It was the most progressive of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire, with advanced educational and judicial systems based on those of Napoleonic France, and a thorough-going agrarian reform. This last, which was executed in two stages (1863-1866 and 1918-1921), divided up the great estates of the Church and the nobility, and wiped away all vestiges of manorial dues or serfdom. Under a liberal, but not democratic, constitution, a German prince, Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1866-1914), established a new dynasty which was ended only in 1948. During this whole period the cultural and educational systems of the country continued to be orientated toward France in sharp contrast to the inclinations of the ruling dynasty, which had German sympathies. The Romanian possession of Bessarabia and their general pride in their Latin heritage, as reflected in the name of the country, set up a barrier to good relations with Russia, although the majority of Romanians were members of the Orthodox Church.
The political and military weakness of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Russian pressure and Balkan nationalisms made it obvious that it must westernize and it must reform, if it was going to survive. Broad verbal promises in this direction were made by the sultan in the period 1839-1877, and there were even certain efforts to execute these promises. The army was reorganized on a European basis with the assistance of Prussia. Local government was reorganized and centralized, and the fiscal system greatly improved, chiefly by curtailing the use of tax farmers; government officials were shifted from a fee-paid basis to a salaried basis; the slave market was abolished, although this meant a large reduction in the sultan's income; the religious monopoly in education was curtailed and a considerable impetus given to secular technical education. Finally, in 1856, in an edict forced on the sultan by the Great Powers, an effort was made to establish a secular state in Turkey by abolishing all inequalities based on creed in respect to personal freedom, law, property, taxation, and eligibility for office or military service.
In practice, none of these paper reforms was very effective. It was not possible to change the customs of the Turkish people by paper enactments. Indeed, any attempt to do so aroused the anger of many Muslims to the point where their personal conduct toward non-Muslims became worse. At the same time, these promises led the non-Muslims to expect better treatment, so that relations between the various groups were exacerbated. Even if the sultan had had every intention of carrying out his stated reforms, he would have had extraordinary difficulties in doing so because of the structure of Turkish society and the complete lack of trained administrators or even of literate people. The Turkish state was a theocratic state, and Turkish society was a patriarchal or even a tribal society. Any movement toward secularization or toward social equality could easily result, not in reform, but in complete destruction of the society by dissolving the religious and authoritarian relationships which held both the state and society together. But the movement toward reform lacked the wholehearted support of the sultan; it aroused the opposition of the more conservative, and in some ways more loyal, groups of Muslims; it aroused the opposition of many liberal Turks because it was derived from Western pressure on Turkey; it aroused opposition from many Christian or non-Turkish groups who feared that a successful reform might weaken their chances of breaking up the Ottoman Empire completely; and the efforts at reform, being aimed at the theocratic character of the Turkish state, counteracted the sultan's efforts to make himself the leader of Pan-Islamism and to use his title of caliph to mobilize non-Ottoman Muslims in India, Russia, and the East to support him in his struggles with the European Great Powers.
On the other hand, it was equally clear that Turkey could not meet any European state on a basis of military equality until it was westernized. At the same time, the cheap machinery-made industrial products of the Western Powers began to pour into Turkey and to destroy the ability of the handicraft artisans of Turkey to make a living. This could not be prevented by tariff protection because the sultan was bound by international agreements to keep his customs duties at a low level. At the same time, the appeal of Western ways of life began to be felt by some of the sultan's subjects who knew them. These began to agitate for industrialism or for railroad construction, for wider opportunities in education, especially technical education, for reforms in the Turkish language, and for new, less formal, kinds of Turkish literature, for honest and impersonal methods of administration in justice and public finance, and for all those things which, by making the Western Powers strong, made them a danger to Turkey.
The sultan made feeble efforts to reform in the period 1838-1875, but by the latter date he was completely disillusioned with these efforts, and shifted over to a policy of ruthless censorship and repression; this repression led, at last, to the so-called "Young Turk" rebellion of 1908.
The shift from feeble reform to merciless repression coincided with a renewal of the Russian attacks on Turkey. These attacks were incited by Turkish butchery of Bulgarian agitators in Macedonia and a successful Turkish war on Serbia. Appealing to the doctrine of Pan-Slavism, Russia came to the rescue of the Bulgars and Serbs, and quickly defeated the Turks, forcing them to accept the Treaty of San Stefano before any of the Western Powers could intervene (1877). Among other provisions, this treaty set up a large state of Bulgaria, including much of Macedonia, independent of Turkey and under Russian military occupation.
This Treaty of San Stefano, especially the provision for a large Bulgarian state, which, it was feared, would be nothing more than a Russian tool, was completely unacceptable to England and Austria. Joining with France, Germany, and Italy, they forced Russia to come to a conference at Berlin where the treaty was completely rewritten (1878). The independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania was accepted, as were the Russian acquisitions of Kars and Batum, east of the Black Sea. Romania had to give Bessarabia to Russia, but received Dobruja from the sultan. Bulgaria itself, the crucial issue of the conference, was divided into three parts: (a) the strip between the Danube and the Balkan mountains was set up as an autonomous and tribute-paying state under Turkish suzerainty; (b) the portion of Bulgaria south of the mountains was restored to the sultan as the province of Eastern Rumelia to be ruled by a Christian governor approved by the Powers; and (c) Macedonia, still farther south, was restored to Turkey in return for promises of administrative reforms. Austria was given the right to occupy Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar (a strip between Serbia and Montenegro). The English, by a separate agreement with Turkey, received the island of Cyprus to hold as long as Russia held Batum and Kars. The other states received nothing, although Greece submitted claims to Crete, Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia, while France talked about her interest in Tunis, and Italy made no secret of her ambitions in Tripoli and Albania. Only Germany asked for nothing, and received the sultan's thanks and friendship for its moderation.
The Treaty of Berlin of 1878 was a disaster from almost every point of view because it left every state, except Austria, with its appetite whetted and its hunger unsatisfied. The Pan-Slavs, the Romanians, the Bulgars, the South Slavs, the Greeks, and the Turks were all disgruntled with the settlement. The agreement turned the Balkans into an open powder keg from which the spark was kept away only with great difficulty and only for twenty years. It also opened up the prospect of the liquidation of the Turkish possessions in North Africa, thus inciting a rivalry between the Great Powers which was a constant danger to the peace in the period 1878-1912. The Romanian loss of Bessarabia, the Bulgarian loss of Eastern Rumelia, the South Slav loss of its hope of reaching the Adriatic or even of reaching Montenegro (because of the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Novi-Bazar), the Greek failure to get Thessaly or Crete, and the complete discomfiture of the Turks created an atmosphere of general dissatisfaction. In the midst of this, the promise of reforms to Macedonia without any provision for enforcing this promise called forth hopes and agitations which could neither be satisfied nor quieted. Even Austria, which, on the face of it, had obtained more than she could really have expected, had obtained in Bosnia the instrument which was to lead eventually to the total destruction of the Habsburg Empire. This acquisition had been encouraged by Bismarck as a method of diverting Austrian ambitions southward to the Adriatic and out of Germany. But by placing Austria, in this way, in the position of being the chief obstacle in the path of the South Slav dreams of unity, Bismarck was also creating the occasion for the destruction of the Hohenzollern Empire. It is clear that European diplomatic history from 1878 to 1919 is little more than a commentary on the mistakes of the Congress of Berlin.
To Russia the events of 1878 were a bitter disappointment. Even the small Bulgarian state which emerged from the settlement gave them little satisfaction. With a constitution dictated by Russia and under a prince, Alexander of Battenberg, who was a nephew of the czar, the Bulgarians showed an uncooperative spirit which profoundly distressed the Russians. As a result, when Eastern Rumelia revolted in 188; and demanded union with Bulgaria, the change was opposed by Russia and encouraged by Austria. Serbia, in its bitterness, went to war with Bulgaria but was defeated and forced to make peace by Austria. The union of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia was accepted, on face-saving terms, by the sultan. Russian objections were kept within limits by the power of Austria and England but were strong enough to force the abdication of Alexander of Battenberg. Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was elected to succeed Alexander, but was unacceptable to Russia and was recognized by none of the Powers until his reconciliation with Russia in 1896. The state was generally in turmoil during this period, plots and assassinations steadily following one another. A Macedonian revolutionary organization known as IMRO, working for independence for their area, adopted an increasingly terrorist policy, killing any Bulgarian or Romanian statesman who did not work wholeheartedly in cooperation with their efforts. Agitated Bulgarians formed insurgent bands which made raids into Macedonia, and insurrection became endemic in the province, bursting out in full force in 1902. By that date Serb and Greek bands had joined in the confusion. The Powers intervened at that point to inaugurate a program of reform in Macedonia under Austro-Russian supervision.
The Congress of Berlin began the liquidation of the Turkish position in North Africa. France, which had been occupying Algeria since 1830, established a French protectorate over Tunis as well in 1881. This led to the British occupation of Egypt the following year. Not to be outdone, Italy put in a claim for Tripoli but could get no more than an exchange of notes, known as the Mediterranean Agreement of 1887, by which England, Italy, Austria, Spain, and Germany promised to maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Aegean, and the Black seas, unless all parties agreed to changes. The only concrete advantage to Italy in this was a British promise of support in North Africa in return for Italian support of the British position in Egypt. This provided only tenuous satisfaction for the Italian ambitions in Tripoli, but it was reinforced in 1900 by a French-Italian agreement by which Italy gave France a free hand in Morocco in return for a free hand in Tripoli.
Berlin to Baghdad Railroad Scheme
By 1900 an entirely new factor began to intrude into the Eastern Question. Under Bismarck (1862-1890) Germany had avoided all non-European adventures. Under William II (1888-1918) any kind of adventure, especially a remote and uncertain one, was welcomed. In the earlier period Germany had concerned itself with the Near East Question only as a member of the European "concert of Powers" and with a few incidental issues such as the use of German officers to train the Turkish Army. After 1889 the situation was different. Economically, the Germans began to invade Anatolia by establishing trading agencies and banking facilities; politically, Germany sought to strengthen Turkey's international position in every way. This effort was symbolized by the German Kaiser's two visits to the sultan in 1889 and 1898. On the latter occasion he solemnly promised his friendship to "the Sultan Abdul Hamid and the three hundred million Muhammadans who revere him as caliph." Most important, perhaps, was the projected "Berlin to Bagdad" railway scheme which completed its main trunk line from the Austro-Hungarian border to Nusaybin in northern Mesopotamia by September 1918. This project was of the greatest economic, strategic, and political importance not only to the Ottoman Empire and the Near East but to the whole of Europe. Economically, it tapped a region of great mineral and agricultural resources, including the world's greatest petroleum reserves. These were brought into contact with Constantinople and, beyond that, with central and northwestern Europe. Germany, which was industrialized late, had a great, unsatisfied demand for food and raw materials and a great capacity to manufacture industrial products which could be exported to pay for such food and raw materials. Efforts had been made and continued to be made by Germany to find a solution to this problem by opening trade relations with South America, the Far East, and North America. Banking facilities and a merchant marine were being established to encourage such trade relations. But the Germans, with their strong strategic sense, knew well that relations with the areas mentioned were at the mercy of the British fleet, which would, almost unquestionably, control the seas during wartime. The Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway solved these crucial problems. It put the German metallurgical industry in touch with the great metal resources of Anatolia; it put the German textile industry in touch with the supplies of wool, cotton, and hemp of the Balkans, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia; in fact, it brought to almost every branch of German industry the possibility of finding a solution for its critical market and raw-material problems. Best of all, these connections, being almost entirely overland, would be within reach of the German Army and beyond the reach of the British Navy.
For Turkey itself the railway was equally significant. Strategically it made it possible, for the first time, for Turkey to mobilize her full power in the Balkans, the Caucasus area, the Persian Gulf, or the Levant. It greatly increased the economic prosperity of the whole country; it could be run (as it was after 1911) on Mesopotamian petroleum; it provided markets and thus incentives for increased production of agricultural and mineral products; it greatly reduced political discontent, public disorder, and banditry in the areas through which it ran; it greatly increased the revenues of the Ottoman treasury in spite of the government's engagement to pay subsidies to the railroad for each mile of track built and for a guaranteed income per mile each year.
The Ottoman Empire Was Divided into Exclusive Spheres of
Influence by Money Powers
The Great Powers showed mild approval of the Baghdad Railway until about 1900. Then, for more than ten years, Russia, Britain, and France showed violent disapproval, and did all they could to obstruct the project. After 1910 this disapproval was largely removed by a series of agreements by which the Ottoman Empire was divided into exclusive spheres of influence. During the period of disapproval the Great Powers concerned issued such a barrage of propaganda against the plan that it is necessary, even today, to warn against its influence. They described the Baghdad Railway as the entering wedge of German imperialist aggression seeking to weaken and destroy the Ottoman Empire and the stakes of the other Powers in the area. The evidence shows quite the contrary. Germany was the only Great Power which wanted the Ottoman Empire to be strong and intact. Britain wanted it to be weak and intact. France generally shared the British point of view, although the French, with a $500,000,000 investment in the area, wanted Turkey to be prosperous as well. Russia wanted it to be weak and partitioned, a view which was shared by the Italians and, to some extent, by the Austrians.
The Baghdad Railway
The Germans were not only favorably inclined toward Turkey; their conduct seems to have been completely fair in regard to the administration of the Baghdad Railway itself. At a time when American and other railways were practicing wholesale discrimination between customers in regard to rates and freight handling, the Germans had the same rates and same treatment for all, including Germans and non-Germans. They worked to make the railroad efficient and profitable, although their income from it was guaranteed by the Turkish government. In consequence the Turkish payments to the railroad steadily declined, and the government was able to share in its profits to the extent of almost three million francs in 1914. Moreover, the Germans did not seek to monopolize control of the railroad, offering to share equally with France and England and eventually with other Powers. France accepted this offer in 1899, but Britain continued to refuse, and placed every obstacle in the path of the project. When the Ottoman government in 1911 sought to raise their customs duties from 1 l to 14 percent in order to finance the continued construction of the railway, Britain prevented this. In order to carry on the project, the Germans sold their railroad interests in the Balkans and gave up the Ottoman building subsidy of $275,000 a kilometer. In striking contrast to this attitude, the Russians forced the Turks to change the original route of the line from northern Anatolia to southern Anatolia by threatening to take immediate measures to collect all the arrears, amounting to over 57 million francs, due to the czar from Turkey under the Treaty of 1878. The Russians regarded the projected railway as a strategic threat to their Armenian frontier. Ultimately, in 1900, they forced the sultan to promise to grant no concessions to build railways in northern Anatolia or Armenia except with Russian approval. The French government, in spite of the French investments in Turkey of :.5 billion francs, refused to allow Baghdad Railway securities to be handled on the Paris Stock Exchange: To block the growth of German Catholic missionary activities in the Ottoman Empire, the French persuaded the Pope to issue an encyclical ordering all missionaries in that empire to communicate with the Vatican through the French consulates. The British opposition became intense only in April, 1903. Early in that month Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne made an agreement for joint German, French, and British control of the railroad. Within three weeks this agreement was repudiated by the government because of newspaper protests against it, although it would have reduced the Turks and Germans together to only fourteen out of thirty votes on the board of directors of the railway. When the Turkish government in 1910 tried to borrow abroad $30 million, secured by the customs receipts of the country, it was summarily rebuffed in Paris and London, but obtained the sum without hesitation in Berlin. In view of these facts, the growth of German prestige and the decline in favor of the Western Powers at the sultan's court is not surprising, and goes far to explain the Turkish intervention on the side of the Central Powers in the war of 1914-1918.
Secret Agreement Divides Turkey into Spheres of Foreign Influence
The Baghdad Railway played no real role in the outbreak of the war of 1914 because the Germans in the period 1910-1914 were able to reduce the Great Powers' objections to the scheme. This was done through a series of agreements which divided Turkey into spheres of foreign influence. In November, 1910, a German-Russian agreement at Potsdam gave Russia a free hand in northern Persia, withdrew all Russian opposition to the Baghdad Railway, and pledged both parties to support equal trade opportunities for all (the "open-door" policy) in their respective areas of influence in the Near East. The French were given 2,000 miles of railway concessions in western and northern Anatolia and in Syria in 1910-1912 and signed a secret agreement with the Germans in February 1914, by which these regions were recognized as French "spheres of influence," while the route of the Baghdad Railway was recognized as a German sphere of influence; both Powers promised to work to increase the Ottoman tax receipts; the French withdrew their opposition to the railway; and the French gave the Germans the 70-million-franc investment which the French already had in the Baghdad Railway in return for an equal amount in the Turkish bond issue of 1911, which France had earlier rebuffed, plus a lucrative discount on a new Ottoman bond issue of 1914.
Various Monopolies Over Natural Resources Established
The British drove a much harder bargain with the Germans. By an agreement of June 1914, Britain withdrew her opposition to the Baghdad Railway, allowed Turkey to raise her customs from 11 percent to 15 percent, and accepted a German sphere of interest along the railway route in return for promises (1) that the railway would not be extended to the Persian Gulf 'out would stop at Basra on the Tigris River, (2) that British capitalists would be given a monopoly on the navigation of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and exclusive control over irrigation projects based on these rivers, (3) that two British subjects would be given seats on the board of directors of the Baghdad Railway, (4) that Britain would have exclusive control over the commercial activities of Kuwait, the only good port on the upper Persian Gulf: (5) that a monopoly over the oil resources of the area from Mosul to Baghdad would be given to a new corporation in which British finances would have a half-interest, Royal Dutch Shell Company a quarter-interest, and the Germans a quarter-interest; and (6) that both Powers would support the "open-door" policy in commercial activities in Asiatic Turkey. Unfortunately, this agreement, as well as the earlier ones with other Powers, became worthless with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. However, it is still important to recognize that the Entente Powers forced upon the Germans a settlement dividing Turkey into "spheres of interest" in place of the projected German settlement based on international cooperation in the economic reconstruction of the area.
The Struggles of the Money Powers for Profit and Influence
These struggles of the Great Powers for profit and influence in the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire could not fail to have profound effects in Turkish domestic affairs. Probably the great mass of the sultan's subjects were still untouched by these events, but an animated minority was deeply stirred. This minority received no encouragement from the despotic Abdul-Hamid II, sultan from 1876 to 1909. While eager for economic improvements, Abdul-Hamid II was opposed to the spread of the Western ideas of liberalism, constitutionalism, nationalism, or democracy, and did all he could to prevent their propagation by censorship, by restrictions on foreign travel or study abroad by Turks, and by an elaborate system of arbitrary police rule and governmental espionage. As a result, the minority of liberal, nationalistic, or progressive Turks had to organize abroad. This they did at Geneva in 1891 in a group which is generally known as the "Young Turks." Their chief difficulty was to reconcile the animosities which existed between the many linguistic groups among the sultan's subjects. This was done in a series of congresses held in Paris, notably in 190' and in 1907. At the latter meeting were representatives of the Turks, Armenians, Bulgars, Jews, Arabs, and Albanians. In the meantime, this secret organization had penetrated the sultan's army, which was seething with discontent. The plotters were so successful that they were able to revolt in July 1908, and force the sultan to reestablish the Constitution of 1876. At once divisions appeared among the rebel leaders, notably between those who wished a centralized state and those who accepted the subject nationalities' demands for decentralization. Moreover, the orthodox Muslims formed a league to resist secularization, and the army soon saw that its chief demands for better pay and improved living conditions were not going to be met. Abdul-Hamid took advantage of these divisions to organize a violent counterrevolution (April 1909). It was crushed, the sultan was deposed, and the Young Turks began to impose their ideas of a dictatorial Turkish national state with ruthless severity. A wave of resistance arose from the non-Turkish groups and the orthodox Muslims. No settlement of these disputes was achieved by the outbreak of the World War in 1914. Indeed, as we shall see in a later chapter, the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 precipitated a series of international crises of which the outbreak of war in 1914 was the latest and most disastrous.
Chapter 9: The British Imperial Crisis:Africa, Ireland, and India to 1926
Introduction
The old statement that England acquired its empire in a fit of absentmindedness is amusing but does not explain very much. It does, however, contain an element of truth: much of the empire was acquired by private individuals and commercial firms, and was taken over by the British government much later. The motives which impelled the government to annex areas which its citizens had been exploiting were varied, both in time and in place, and were frequently much different from what an outsider might believe.
Britain acquired the world's greatest empire because it possessed certain advantages which other countries lacked. We mention three of these advantages: (1) that it was an island, (2) that it was in the Atlantic, and (3) that its social traditions at home produced the will and the talents for imperial acquisition.
English Channel Provides Security for Britain
As an island off the coast of Europe, Britain had security as long as it had control of the narrow seas. It had such control from the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 until the creation of new weapons based on air power in the period after 1935. The rise of the German Air Force under Hitler, the invention of the long-range rocket projectiles (V-2 weapon) in 1944, and the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1945-1955 destroyed England's security by reducing the defensive effectiveness of the English Channel. But in the period 1588-1942, in which Britain controlled the seas, the Channel gave England security and made its international position entirely different from that of any continental Power. Because Britain had security, it had freedom of action. That means it had a choice whether to intervene or to stay out of the various disputes which arose on the Continent of Europe or elsewhere in the world. Moreover, if it intervened, it could do so on a limited commitment, restricting its contribution of men, energy, money, and wealth to whatever amount it wished. If such a limited commitment were exhausted or lost, so long as the British fleet controlled the seas, Britain had security, and thus had freedom to choose if it would break off its intervention or increase its commitment. Moreover, England could make even a small commitment of its resources of decisive importance by using this commitment in support of the second strongest Power on the Continent against the strongest Power, thus hampering the strongest Power and making the second Power temporarily the strongest, as long as it acted in accord with Britain's wishes. In this way, by following balance-of-power tactics, Britain was able to play a decisive role on the Continent, keep the Continent divided and embroiled in its own disputes, and do this with a limited commitment of Britain's own resources, leaving a considerable surplus of energy, manpower, and wealth available for acquiring an empire overseas. In addition, Britain's unique advantage in having security through a limited commitment of resources by control of the sea was one of the contributing factors which allowed Britain to develop its unique social structure, its parliamentary system, its wide range of civil liberties, and its great economic advance.
European Wars
The Powers on the Continent had none of these advantages. Since each could be invaded by its neighbors at any time, each had security, and thus freedom of action, only on rare and brief occasions. When the security of a continental Power was threatened by a neighbor, it had no freedom of action, but had to defend itself with all its resources. Clearly, it would be impossible for France to say to itself, "We shall oppose German hegemony on the Continent only to the extent of 50,000 men or of $10 million." Yet as late as 1939, Chamberlain informed France that England's commitment on the Continent for this purpose would be no more than two divisions.
European Powers Focus on the Continent
Since the continental Powers had neither security nor freedom of action, their position on the Continent always was paramount over their ambitions for world empire, and these latter always had to be sacrificed for the sake of the former whenever a conflict arose. France was unable to hold on to its possessions in India or in North America in the eighteenth century because so much of its resources had to be used to bolster French security against Prussia or Austria. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803 because his primary concern had to be his position on the Continent. Bismarck tried to discourage Germany from embarking on any overseas adventures in the period after 1871 because he saw that Germany must be a continental power or be nothing. Again, France in 1882 had to yield Egypt to Britain, and in 1898 had to yield the Sudan in the same way, because it saw that it could not engage in any colonial dispute with Britain while the German Army stood across the Rhineland. This situation was so clear that all the lesser continental Powers with overseas colonial possessions, such as Portugal, Belgium, or the Netherlands, had to collaborate with Britain, or, at the very least, be carefully neutral. So long as the ocean highway from these countries to their overseas empires was controlled by the British fleet, they could not afford to embark on a policy hostile to Britain, regardless of their personal feelings on the subject. It is no accident that Britain's most constant international backing in the two centuries following the Methuen Treaty of 1703 came from Portugal and that Britain has felt free to negotiate with a third Power, like Germany, regarding the disposition of the Portuguese colonies, as she did in 1898 and tried to do in 1937-1939.
Britain's Control of the Sea
Britain's position on the Atlantic, combined with her naval control of the sea, gave her a great advantage when the new lands to the west of that ocean became one of the chief sources of commercial and naval wealth in the period after 1588. Lumber, tar, and ships were supplied from the American colonies to Britain in the period before the advent of iron, steam-driven ships (after 1860), and these ships helped to establish Britain's mercantile supremacy. At the same time, Britain's insular position deprived her monarchy of any need for a large professional, mercenary army such as the kings on the Continent used as the chief bulwark of royal absolutism. As a result, the kings of England were unable to prevent the landed gentry from taking over the control of the government in the period 1642-1690, and the kings of England became constitutional monarchs. Britain's security behind her navy allowed this struggle to go to a decision without any important outside interference, and permitted a rivalry between monarch and aristocracy which would have been suicidal on the insecure grounds of continental Europe.
The Landed Oligarchy in Britain
Britain's security combined with the political triumph of the landed oligarchy to create a social tradition entirely unlike that on the Continent. One result of these two factors was that England did not obtain a bureaucracy such as appeared on the Continent. This lack of a separate bureaucracy loyal to the monarch can be seen in the weakness of the professional army (already mentioned) and also in the lack of a bureaucratic judicial system. In England, the gentry and the younger sons of the landed oligarchy studied law in the Inns of Court and obtained a feeling for tradition and the sanctity of due process of law while still remaining a part of the landed class. In fact this class became the landed class in England just because they obtained control of the bar and the bench and were, thus, in a position to judge all disputes about real property in their own favor. Control of the courts and of the Parliament made it possible for this ruling group in England to override the rights of the peasants in land, to eject them from the land, to enclose the open fields of the medieval system, to deprive the cultivators of their manorial rights and thus to reduce them to the condition of landless rural laborers or of tenants. This advance of the enclosure movement in England made possible the Agricultural Revolution, greatly depopulated the rural areas of England (as described in The Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith), and provided a surplus population for the cities, the mercantile and naval marine, and for overseas colonization.
The Unique Status of the Landed Oligarchy in Britain
The landed oligarchy which arose in England differed from the landed aristocracy of continental Europe in the three points already mentioned: (1) it got control of the government; (2) it was not opposed by a professional army, a bureaucracy, or a professional judicial system, but, on the contrary, it took over the control of these adjuncts of government itself, generally serving without pay, and making access to these positions difficult for outsiders by making such access expensive; and (3) it obtained complete control of the land as well as political, religious, and social control of the villages. In addition, the landed oligarchy of England was different from that on the Continent because it was not a nobility. This lack was reflected in three important factors. On the Continent a noble was excluded from marrying outside his class or from engaging in commercial enterprise; moreover, access to the nobility by persons of non-noble birth was very difficult, and could hardly be achieved in much less than three generations. In England, the landed oligarchy could engage in any kind of commerce or business and could marry anyone without question (provided she was rich); moreover, while access to the gentry in England was a slow process which might require generations of effort acquiring land-holdings in a single locality, access to the peerage by act of the government took only a moment, and could be achieved on the basis of either wealth or service. As a consequence of all these differences, the landed upper class in England was open to the influx of new talent, new money, and new blood, while the continental nobility was deprived of these valuable acquisitions.
England Developed an Aristocracy
While the landed upper class of England was unable to become a nobility (that is, a caste based on exalted birth), it was able to become an aristocracy (that is, an upper class distinguished by traditions and behavior). The chief attributes of this aristocratic upper class in England were (1) that it should be trained in an expensive, exclusive, masculine, and relatively Spartan educational system centering about the great boys' schools like Eton, Harrow, or Winchester; (2) that it should imbibe from this educational system certain distinctive attitudes of leadership, courage, sportsmanship, team play, self-sacrifice, disdain for physical comforts, and devotion to duty; (3) that it should be prepared in later life to devote a great deal of time and energy to unpaid tasks of public significance, as justices of the peace, on county councils, in the county militia, or in other services. Since all the sons of the upper classes received the same training, while only the oldest, by primogeniture, was entitled to take over the income-yielding property of the family, all the younger sons had to go out into the world to seek their fortunes, and, as likely as not, would do their seeking overseas. At the same time, the uneventful life of the typical English village or county, completely controlled by the upperclass oligarchy, made it necessary for the more ambitious members of the lower classes to seek advancement outside the county and even outside England. From these two sources were recruited the men who acquired Britain's empire and the men who colonized it.
The British Empire
The English have not always been unanimous in regarding the empire as a source of pride and benefit. In fact, the middle generation of the nineteenth century was filled with persons, such as Gladstone, who regarded the empire with profound suspicion. They felt that it was a source of great expense; they were convinced that it involved England in remote strategic problems which could easily lead to wars England had no need to fight; they could see no economic advantage in having an empire, since the existence of free trade (which this generation accepted) would allow commerce to flow no matter who held colonial areas; they were convinced that any colonial areas, no matter at what cost they might be acquired, would eventually separate from the mother country, voluntarily if they were given the rights of Englishmen, or by rebellion, as the American colonies had done, if they were deprived of such rights. In general, the "Little Englanders," as they were called, were averse to colonial expansion on the grounds of cost.
Colonies Could Be a Source of Riches
Although upholders of the "Little England" point of view, men like Gladstone or Sir William Harcourt, continued in political prominence until 1895, this point of view was in steady retreat after 1870. In the Liberal Party the Little Englanders were opposed by imperialists like Lord Rosebery even before 1895; after that date, a younger group of imperialists, like Asquith, Grey, and Haldane took over the party. In the Conservative Party, where the anti-imperialist idea had never been strong, moderate imperialists like Lord Salisbury were followed by more active imperialists like Joseph Chamberlain, or Lords Curzon, Selborne, and Milner. There were many factors which led to the growth of imperialism after 1870, and many obvious manifestations of that growth. The Royal Colonial Institute was founded in 1868 to fight the "Little England" idea; Disraeli as prime minister (1874-1880) dramatized the profit and glamour of empire by such acts as the purchase of control of the Suez Canal and by granting Queen Victoria the title of Empress of India; after 1870 it became increasingly evident that, however expensive colonies might be to a government, they could be fantastically profitable to individuals and companies supported by such governments; moreover, with the spread of democracy and the growing influence of the press and the expanding need for campaign contributions, individuals who made fantastic profits in overseas adventures could obtain favorable support from their governments by contributing some part of their profits to politicians' expenses; the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium, using Henry Stanley, to obtain the Congo area as his own preserve in 1876-1880, started a contagious fever of colony-grabbing in Africa which lasted for more than thirty years; the discovery of diamonds (in 1869) and of gold (in 1886) in South Africa, especially in the Boer Transvaal Republic, intensified this fever.
John Ruskin
The new imperialism after 1870 was quite different in tone from that which the Little Englanders had opposed earlier. The chief changes were that it was justified on grounds of moral duty and of social reform and not, as earlier, on grounds of missionary activity and material advantage. The man most responsible for this change was John Ruskin.
Until 1870 there was no professorship of fine arts at Oxford, but in that year, thanks to the Slade bequest, John Ruskin was named to such a chair. He hit Oxford like an earthquake, not so much because he talked about fine arts, but because he talked also about the empire and England's downtrodden masses, and above all because he talked about all three of these things as moral issues. Until the end of the nineteenth century the poverty-stricken masses in the cities of England lived in want, ignorance, and crime very much as they have been described by Charles Dickens. Ruskin spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged, ruling class. He told them that they were the possessors of a magnificent tradition of education, beauty, rule of law, freedom, decency, and self-discipline but that this tradition could not be saved, and did not deserve to be saved, unless it could be extended to the lower classes in England itself and to the non-English masses throughout the world. If this precious tradition were not extended to these two great majorities, the minority of upper-class Englishmen would ultimately be submerged by these majorities and the tradition lost. To prevent this, the tradition must be extended to the masses and to the empire.
Cecil Rhodes Sets Up a Monopoly Over the Gold and
Diamond Mines in South Africa
Ruskin's message had a sensational impact. His inaugural lecture was copied out in longhand by one undergraduate, Cecil Rhodes, who kept it with him for thirty years. Rhodes (1853-1902) feverishly exploited the diamond and goldfields of South Africa, rose to be prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), contributed money to political parties, controlled parliamentary seats both in England and in South Africa, and sought to win a strip of British territory across Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Egypt and to join these two extremes together with a telegraph line and ultimately with a Cape-to-Cairo Railway. Rhodes inspired devoted support for his goals from others in South Africa and in England. With financial support from Lord Rothschild and Alfred Beit, he was able to monopolize the diamond mines of South Africa as De Beers Consolidated Mines and to build up a great gold mining enterprise as Consolidated Gold Fields. In the middle 1890's Rhodes had a personal income of at least a million pounds sterling a year (then about five million dollars) which was spent so freely for his mysterious purposes that he was usually overdrawn on his account. These purposes centered on his desire to federate the English-speaking peoples and to bring all the habitable portions of the world under their control. For this purpose Rhodes left part of his great fortune to found the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford in order to spread the English ruling class tradition throughout the English-speaking world as Ruskin had wanted.
Cecil Rhodes Organized a Secret Society in 1891
Among Ruskin's most devoted disciples at Oxford were a group of intimate friends including Arnold Toynbee, Alfred (later Lord) Milner, Arthur Glazebrook, George (later Sir George) Parkin, Philip Lyttelton Gell, and Henry (later Sir Henry) Birchenough. These were so moved by Ruskin that they devoted the rest of their lives to carrying out his ideas. A similar group of Cambridge men including Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher), Sir John B. Seeley, Albert (Lord) Grey, and Edmund Garrett were also aroused by Ruskin's message and devoted their lives to extension of the British Empire and uplift of England's urban masses as two parts of one project which they called "extension of the English-speaking idea." They were remarkably successful in these aims because England's most sensational journalist William T. Stead (1849-1912), an ardent social reformer and imperialist, brought them into association with Rhodes. This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher), and Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle of Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization). Brett was invited to join this organization the same day and Milner a couple of weeks later, on his return from Egypt. Both accepted with enthusiasm. Thus the central part of the secret society was established by March 1891. It continued to function as a formal group, although the outer circle was, apparently, not organized until 1909-1913.
Financial Backing of the Secret Society
This group was able to get access to Rhodes's money after his death in 1902 and also to the funds of loyal Rhodes supporters like Alfred Beit (1853-1906) and Sir Abe Bailey (1864-1940). With this backing they sought to extend and execute the ideals that Rhodes had obtained from Ruskin and Stead. Milner was the chief Rhodes Trustee and Parkin was Organizing Secretary of the Rhodes Trust after 1902, while Gell and Birchenough, as well as others with similar ideas, became officials of the British South Africa Company. They were joined in their efforts by other Ruskinite friends of Stead's like Lord Grey, Lord Esher, and Flora Shaw (later Lady Lugard). In 1890, by a stratagem too elaborate to describe here, Miss Shaw became Head of the Colonial Department of The Times while still remaining on the payroll of Stead's Pall Mall Gazette, In this post she played a major role in the next ten years in carrying into execution the imperial schemes of Cecil Rhodes, to whom Stead had introduced her in 1889.
The Toynbee Hall Is Set Up
In the meantime, in 1884, acting under Ruskin's inspiration, a group which included Arnold Toynbee, Milner, Gell, Grey, Seeley, and Michael Glazebrook founded the first "settlement house," an organization by which educated, upper-class people could live in the slums in order to assist, instruct, and guide the poor, with particular emphasis on social welfare and adult education. The new enterprise, set up in East London with P. L. Gell as chairman, was named Toynbee Hall after Arnold Toynbee who died, aged 31, in 1883. This was the original model for the thousands of settlement houses, such as Hull House in Chicago, now found throughout the world, and was one of the seeds from which the modern movement for adult education and university extension grew.
Roundtable Group Established
As governor-general and high commissioner of South Africa in the period 1897-1905, Milner recruited a group of young men, chiefly from Oxford and from Toynbee Hall, to assist him in organizing his administration. Through his influence these men were able to win influential posts in government and international finance and became the dominant influence in British imperial and foreign affairs up to 1939. Under Milner in South Africa they were known as Milner's Kindergarten until 1910. In 1909-1913 they organized semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States. These still function in eight countries. They kept in touch with each other by personal correspondence and frequent visits, and through an influential quarterly magazine, The Round Table, founded in 1910 and largely supported by Sir Abe Bailey's money.
The Royal Institute and Council on Foreign Relations Are Set Up
In 1919 they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) for which the chief financial supporters were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of The Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the period 1919-1927. After 1925 a somewhat similar structure of organizations, known as the Institute of Pacific Relations, was set up in twelve countries holding territory in the Pacific area, the units in each British dominion existing on an interlocking basis with the Round Table Group and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the same country. In Canada the nucleus of this group consisted of Milner's undergraduate friends at Oxford (such as Arthur Glazebrook and George Parkin), while in South Africa and India the nucleus was made up of former members of Milner's Kindergarten. These included (Sir) Patrick Duncan, B. K. Long, Richard Feetham, and (Sir) Dougal Malcolm in South Africa and (Sir) William Marris, James (Lord) Meston, and their friend Malcolm (Lord) Hailey in India. The groups in Australia and New Zealand had been recruited by Stead (through his magazine The Review of Reviews) as early as 1890-1893; by Parkin, at Milner instigation, in the period 1889-1910, and by Lionel Curtis, also at Milner's request, in 1910-1919. The power and influence of this Rhodes-Milner group in British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. We might mention as an example that this group dominated The Times from 1890 to 191, and has controlled it completely since 1912 (except for the years 1919-1922). Because The Times has been owned by the Astor family since 1922, this Rhodes-Milner group was sometimes spoken of as the "Cliveden Set," named after the Astor country house where they sometimes assembled. Numerous other papers and journals have been under the control or influence of this group since 1889. They have also established and influenced numerous university and other chairs of imperial affairs and international relations. Some of these are the Beit chairs at Oxford, the Montague Burton chair at Oxford, the Rhodes chair at London, the Stevenson chair at Chatham House, the Wilson chair at Aberystwyth, and others, as well as such important sources of influence as Rhodes House at Oxford.
Roundtable Groups Seek to Extend the British Empire
From 1884 to about 1915 the members of this group worked valiantly to extend the British Empire and to organize it in a federal system. They were constantly harping on the lessons to be learned from the failure of the American Revolution and the success of the Canadian federation of 1867, and hoped to federate the various parts of the empire as seemed feasible, then confederate the whole of it, with the United Kingdom, into a single organization. They also hoped to bring the United States into this organization to whatever degree was possible. Stead was able to get Rhodes to accept, in principle, a solution which might have made Washington the capital of the whole organization or allow parts of the empire to become states of the American Union. The varied character of the British imperial possessions, the backwardness of many of the native peoples involved, the independence of many of the white colonists overseas, and the growing international tension which culminated in the First World War made it impossible to carry out the plan for Imperial Federation, although the five colonies in Australia were joined into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and the four colonies in South Africa were joined into the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Egypt and the Sudan to 1922
Disraeli's purchase, with Rothschild money, of 176,602 shares of Suez Canal stock for ฃ3,680,000 from the Khedive of Egypt in 1875 was motivated by concern for the British communications with India, just as the British acquisition of the Cape of Good Hope in 1814 had resulted from the same concern. But in imperial matters one step leads to another, and every acquisition obtained to protect an earlier acquisition requires a new advance at a later date to protect it. This was clearly true in Africa where such motivations gradually extended British control southward from Egypt and northward from the Cape until these were joined in central Africa with the conquest of German Tanganyika in 1916.
The extravagances of the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879), which had compelled the sale of his Suez Canal shares, led ultimately to the creation of an Anglo-French condominium to manage the Egyptian foreign debt and to the deposition of the khedive by his suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey. The condominium led to disputes and finally to open fighting between Egyptian nationalists and Anglo-French forces. When the French refused to join the British in a joint bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, the condominium was broken, and Britain reorganized the country in such a fashion that, while all public positions were held by Egyptians, a British army was in occupation, British "advisers" controlled all the chief governmental posts, and a British "resident," Sir Evelyn Baring (known as Lord Cromer after 1892), controlled all finances and really ruled the country until 1907.
Inspired by fanatical Muslim religious agitators (dervishes), the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed led a Sudanese revolt against Egyptian control in 1883, massacred a British force under General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon at Khartoum, and maintained an independent Sudan for fifteen years. In 1898 a British force under (Lord) Kitchener, seeking to protect the Nile water supply of Egypt, fought its way southward against fanatical Sudanese tribesmen and won a decisive victory at Omdurman. An Anglo-Egyptian convention established a condominium known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the area between Egypt and the Congo River. This area, which had lived in disorder for centuries, was gradually pacified, brought under the rule of law, irrigated by extensive hydraulic works, and brought under cultivation, producing, chiefly, long staple cotton.
East Central Africa to 19 10
South and east of the Sudan the struggle for a British Africa was largely in the hands of H. H. (Sir Harry) Johnston (1858-1927) and Frederick (later Lord) Lugard (1858-1945). These two, chiefly using private funds but frequently holding official positions, fought all over tropical Africa, ostensibly seeking to pacify it and to wipe out the Arab slave trade, but always possessing a burning desire to extend British rule. Frequently, these ambitions led to rivalries with supporters of French and German ambitions in the same regions. In 1884 Johnston obtained many concessions from native chiefs in the Kenya area, turning these over to the British East Africa Company in 1887. When this company went bankrupt in '895, most of its rights were taken over by the British government. In the meantime, Johnston had moved south, into a chaos of Arab slavers' intrigues and native unrest in Nyasaland (1888). Here his exploits were largely financed by Rhodes (1889-1893) in order to prevent the Portuguese Mozambique Company from pushing westward toward the Portuguese West African colony of Angola to block the Cape-to-Cairo route. Lord Salisbury made Nyasaland a British Protectorate after a deal with Rhodes in which the South African promised to pay ฃ1,000 a year toward the cost of the new territory. About the same time Rhodes gave the Liberal Party a substantial financial contribution in return for a promise that they would not abandon Egypt. He had already (1888) given ฃ10,000 to the Irish Home Rule Party on condition that it seek Home Rule for Ireland while keeping Irish members in the British Parliament as a step toward Imperial Federation.
Rhodes's plans received a terrible blow in 1890-1891 when Lord Salisbury sought to end the African disputes with Germany and Portugal by delimiting their territorial claims in South and East Africa. The Portuguese agreement of 1891 was never ratified, but the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 blocked Rhodes's route to Egypt by extending German East Africa (Tanganyika) west to the Belgium Congo. By the same agreement Germany abandoned Nyasaland, Uganda, and Zanzibar to Britain in return for the island of Heligoland in the Baltic Sea and an advantageous boundary in German Southwest Africa.
As soon as the German agreement was published, Lugard was sent by the British East Africa Company to overcome the resistance of native chiefs and slavers in Uganda (1890-1894). The bankruptcy of this company in 1895 seemed likely to lead to the abandonment of Uganda because of the Little Englander sentiment in the Liberal Party (which was in office in 1892-1895). Rhodes offered to take the area over himself and run it for ฃ25,000 a year, but was refused. As a result of complex and secret negotiations in which Lord Rosebery was the chief figure, Britain kept Uganda, Rhodes was made a privy councilor, Rosebery replaced his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, in Rhodes's secret group and was made a Trustee under Rhodes's next (and last) will. Rosebery tried to obtain a route for Rhodes's railway to the north across the Belgian Congo; Rosebery was informed of Rhodes's plans to finance an uprising of the English within the Transvaal (Boer) Republic and to send Dr. Jameson on a raid into that country "to restore order"; and, finally, Rhodes found the money to finance Kitchener's railway from Egypt to Uganda, using the South African gauge and engines given by Rhodes.
The economic strength which allowed Rhodes to do these things rested in his diamond and gold mines, the latter in the Transvaal, and thus not in British territory. North of Cape Colony, across the Orange River, was a Boer republic, the Orange Free State. Beyond this, and separated by the Vaal River, was another Boer republic, the Transvaal. Beyond this, across the Limpopo River and continuing northward to the Zambezi River, was the savage native kingdom of the Matabeles. With great personal daring, unscrupulous opportunism, and extravagant expenditure of money, Rhodes obtained an opening to the north, passing west of the Boer republics, by getting British control in Griqualand West (1880), Bechuanaland, and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1885). In 1888 Rhodes obtained a vague but extensive mining concession from the Matabeles' chief, Lobengula, and gave it to the British South Africa Company organized for the purpose (1889). Rhodes obtained a charter so worded that the company had very extensive powers in an area without any northern limits beyond Bechuanaland Protectorate. Four years later the Matabeles were attacked and destroyed by Dr. Jameson, and their lands taken by the company. The company, however, was not a commercial success, and paid no dividends for thirty-five years (1889-1924) and only 12.5 shillings in forty-six years. This compares with 793.5 percent dividends paid by Rhodes's Consolidated Gold Fields in the five years 1889-1894 and the 125 percent dividend it paid in 1896. Most of the South Africa Company's money was used on public improvements like roads and schools, and no rich mines were found in its territory (known as Rhodesia) compared to those farther south in the Transvaal.
In spite of the terms of the Rhodes wills, Rhodes himself was not a racist. Nor was he a political democrat. He worked as easily and as closely with Jews, black natives, or Boers as he did with English. But he had a passionate belief in the value of a liberal education, and was attached to a restricted suffrage and even to a non-secret ballot. In South Africa he was a staunch friend of the Dutch and of the blacks, found his chief political support among the Boers, until at least 1895, and wanted restrictions on natives put on an educational rather than on a color basis. These ideas have generally been held by his group since and have played an important role in British imperial history. His greatest weakness rested on the fact that his passionate attachment to his goals made him overly tolerant in regard to methods. He did not hesitate to use either bribery or force to attain his ends if he judged they would be effective. This weakness led to his greatest errors, the Jameson Raid of 1895 and the Boer War of 1899-1902, errors which were disastrous for the future of the empire he loved.
South Africa, 1895-1933
By 1895 the Transvaal Republic presented an acute problem. All political control was in the hands of a rural, backward, Bible-reading, racist minority of Boers, while all economic wealth was in the hands of a violent, aggressive majority of foreigners (Uitlanders), most of whom lived in the new city of Johannesburg. The Uitlanders, who were twice as numerous as the Boers and owned two-thirds of the land and nine-tenths of the wealth of the country, were prevented from participating in political life or from becoming citizens (except after fourteen years' residence) and were irritated by a series of minor pinpricks and extortions such as tax differentials, a dynamite monopoly, and transportation restrictions) and by rumors that the Transvaal president, Paul Kruger, was intriguing to obtain some kind of German intervention and protection. At this point in 1895, Rhodes made his plans to overthrow Kruger's government by an uprising in Johannesburg, financed by himself and Beit, and led by his brother Frank Rhodes, Abe Bailey, and other supporters, followed by an invasion of the Transvaal by a force led by Jameson from Bechuanaland and Rhodesia. Flora Shaw used The Times to prepare public opinion in England, while Albert Grey and others negotiated with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain for the official support that was necessary. Unfortunately, when the revolt fizzled out in Johannesburg, Jameson raided anyway in an effort to revive it, and was easily captured by the Boers. The public officials involved denounced the plot, loudly proclaimed their surprise at the event, and were able to whitewash most of the participants in the subsequent parliamentary inquiry. A telegram from the German Kaiser to President Kruger of the Transvaal, congratulating him on his success "in preserving the independence of his country without the need to call for aid from his friends," was built up by
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