Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

Ottoman Capitulations and the Black Sea

Much ink has been spilled over the Ottoman capitulations (ahdname-i hümayun, royal oath/pledge, imperial charter) granted to Christian powers in terms of definition, historical precedence, and significance. The Ottomans traditionally used the confusing term ahdname to refer to both political treaties and commercial-juridical regulations.¹¹ In the second meaning, "capitulations" simply referred to the arrangement of such negotiated charters in "chapters" (Lat. capitulum), with no connotation of surrender or concession.¹² These documents were, rather, "instruments for the regulation and [End Page 704] stimulation of commercial relations," usually requiring a network of consulates, vice-consulates, and agencies.¹³

The mainstream view points to the medieval Latin capitulations granted by either Muslim states or Turkish emirates in the Levant as the source of Ottoman capitulations.¹⁴ Single-source explanations, however, fail to capture the complex nature of such charters. The Ottomans, for instance, renewed the former French capitulations in Egypt in 1528 following Mamluk precedents, almost a decade after they had conquered the country and four decades before the first full-scale French capitulations.¹⁵ At the root of the Mamluk policy, however, lay the Venetian policy of using the capitulations granted by Byzantium (chrysobull, the gold imperial seal) in a unilateral form as a template for obtaining similar grants from the Levantine powers. Most of the Ottoman juridical-commercial charters included an obsolete clause that allowed the capitulatory states to navigate the Black Sea, which can be explained only by the Byzantine precedent.¹⁶ After the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottomans confirmed the previous Genoese chrysobulls that allowed Genoese navigation in the Black Sea.¹⁷ Although the Ottomans gradually prohibited foreign navigation in the Black Sea, the capitulations nonetheless retained the relevant articles in deference to diplomatic norms.

The capitulatory regime fully developed in the 18th century in response to new receivers of the imperial charter: the Austrian Habsburgs (1718), [End Page 705] Sweden (1737), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies [Naples] (1740), Denmark (1746), Tuscany (1747), Prussia (1761), and finally Russia (1774).¹⁸ In the official Turkish view since the 1850s, these were privileges (imtiyazat) unilaterally granted by the sultan to weak Christian states for the duration of his reign, which became barriers to progress and violations of sovereignty after they turned into irrevocable, permanent rights. The French capitulation of 1740 claims pride of place as the catalyst of this process in the writings of late 19th-century international jurists—a view adopted by later generations of Ottomanists.¹⁹

We usually take it for granted that the Ottomans were unable unilaterally to suspend the capitulations after 1740, when they allegedly became perpetual and permanent. Although such treaties were unilateral in form so as to demonstrate the superior status of the sultan who "granted" them, but they were bilateral in content—as suggested by the negotiations preceding the grant and the inclusion in the text of the sultanic pledge to honor the agreedupon capitula. The Ottomans, for instance, abrogated the French capitulations in reaction to the French expedition to Egypt (1798) and confiscated the goods of French nationals in retaliation for the outright invasion of Egypt in a time of peace.²⁰ One should note that the Ottomans presented the case as an unprecedented act of brigandage, underlining the principles of international law rather than succumbing to the Islamist crusading rhetoric of modern times.²¹ In short, the Sublime Porte was in control of the capitulatory system until the end of the 18th century.²² [End Page 706]

It is our contention that the development of the capitulatory regime resulted from the internationalization of the Black Sea rather than the French capitulations of 1740.²³ There was no provision on irrevocability before the 1740 capitulations, but capitulations remained in force without formal renewal by every new sultan. Over time, the addition of a new privilege to the existing capitulation by a supplementary decree proved to be more practical than negotiating the entire text in each reign. Although there were periods of unilateralization and bilateralization depending on shifts in the balance of power,²⁴ the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Convention of 1838 as well as the treaties of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), Paris (1802), and the Dardanelles (1809) have been the usual scapegoats for the turning of these unilateral juridicalcommercial charters into irrevocable concessions guaranteed by bilateral treaties.²⁵ If the French capitulation of 1740 was novel, what made it so was the inclusion of the principle of the most favored state, according to De Groot.²⁶ Hurewitz and Naff noticed at an early date the importance of this principle in the expansion of free merchant navigation through the Straits to all capitulatory states after 1774. All capitulatory states would eventually claim this status in order to sail the Black Sea as Russia did.²⁷ This was pronounced by [End Page 707] 1802, when the capitulatory states began to rely on the obsolete capitulum on navigational rights in the Black Sea to reinforce their arguments that they should achieve equality with Russia. The question of the Black Sea thus occupied the foreground in the evolution of the Ottoman capitulations in the direction of irretrievable multilateralization—hence marked the beginnings of irrevocable concessions.

Despite the most favored state policy, the Ottomans never announced an automatic expansion of trading rights in the Black Sea to all capitulatory states until 1829. They rather negotiated with each state separately the reactivation of the ancient and defunct capitulatory clause before granting renewable licenses that brought a set of limitations on the tonnage of the merchant vessels, the destination, the crew, and the type and volume of the cargo.²⁸ When the Dutch ambassador Frederik Gijsbert, baron van Dedem, claimed in 1803 that his nation had a "right" to navigate the Black Sea in Dutch capitulations, Mahmud Raif Efendi (high dignitary in charge of foreign affairs) reminded him of the ancient custom, which was the preservation of any past "privilege," obsolete or not, in the capitulation. It followed that its application was subject to activation through royal permission (license/diploma).²⁹

Like the Byzantinists, the Ottomanists acknowledge the political nature of capitulations by considering them unfortunate sacrifices for securing Western support.³⁰ The alterations between deactivation and reactivation of the capitulatory clause related to the Euxine were directly linked to the Ottoman mare clausum, which is the expression of a state policy of closing the sea under jurisdiction to foreign navigation until the emergence of Russia as a Black Sea power in the North.

The Ottoman Mare Clausum Policy in the Black Sea

Turkish historians usually consider the Euxine a "Turkish lake" or "inner sea" with some pride, whereas the international proponents of this view [End Page 708] consider it in a negative light as the imposition of a command economy on the Black Sea countries.³¹ Part of the confusion stems from the lack of a clear-cut definition of the phenomenon of closing/opening the Black Sea. Mare clausum is less a definition of an inner sea as a physical object than a maritime policy. In this respect, the Black Sea proper, north of Jeddah in the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean east along the imaginary line cutting across the Morea—Crete—Egypt figured as zones of mare clausum in Ottoman history in a descending order of applicability.³² Inattentive use of a set of notions such as "Ottoman monopoly," "right of free trade" (commercial shipping under permitted flags, such as Russian [1774] and Austrian flags [1784]), "right of navigation" (only for capitulatory states with restrictions, 1802–29), and "internationalization" (free trade for all with no restrictions, 1829–56; a demilitarized zone after 1856–71) adds to the confusion (see below).³³ Similarly, alternative dates for the Ottoman enclosure of the Black Sea are available: 1475, 1484, and 1538 (the conquests of Kefe, Kili and Akkerman, and Budjak, respectively). Equally confusing are the dates given for the end of the Ottoman monopoly in this zone: the 1640s (the Cossack raids), 1700 and 1739 (Russian conquests of Azov), and 1774.³⁴

Ottoman rule in the Euxine did not go unchallenged, as demonstrated by Cossack raids and Poland-Lithuania's insistence on its own sovereignty rights near Ochakov until 1633. Obviously, physical enclosure of the Black Sea would have necessitated full topographical knowledge of the Black Sea littoral, mastery over the hydrographical cartography, and a taming of the inhospitable landscape in certain parts.³⁵ It comes as a surprise that hydrographical [End Page 709] charting of the Black Sea barely existed in comparison to that of the oceans until Russian cartographical work began to demystify the exotic Euxine after 1774.³⁶ On paper, the Austrian Habsburgs gained the right to free navigation in the Danube and trade in the Black Sea by using Ottoman ships in 1718. Yet the first Austrian topographic map of the lower course of the Danube only appeared in 1779, the result of a project that grew out of military concerns rather than commercial interests.³⁷ Therefore, as Dariusz Kołodziejczyk warns us, imagining the Black Sea as an Ottoman lake distorts reality, on the one hand, and fails to explain the effective Ottoman control over human activity in the Euxine until 1774, on the other.³⁸

Gheorgu Brătianu's idea of alteration between a free economy with multiple actors and a "state-enforced economy" imposed by Constantinople to feed the imperial seat has much to offer comparative analysis of the Byzantine and Ottoman Black Sea, which he viewed in a negative light. In contradiction to the inclusive juridical-commercial charters, both empires were willing to exclude the capitulatory states from the Euxine to feed Constantinople until the time when a new northern power imposed a bipolar order and favored the transit trade through the Straits.³⁹ Impressed by Brătianu's work, Halil İnalcık proposes the conquest of Budjak (southern Bessarabia) in 1538 as the event that signified a shift from an international to a regional economy. He emphasizes that this change was driven by political motives (laying claim to former Byzantine territories), economic reasons (favoring local merchants over the Latins), and ideological factors (supplying İstanbul). Until then, there were only temporary bans on the purchase of a particular commodity [End Page 710]

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The Hinterland of the Black Sea

Source: Adapted from Patricia Herlihy, Odessa, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 67; Cengiz Fedakar, Kafkasya'da İmparatorluklar Savaşı (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yay., 2014), map 1, xiv; and History of the Ottoman State, Society, and Civilization (Istanbul: IRCICA, 2001), 388.

by a capitulatory state at a particular port (usually Ottoman Kefe) with the purpose of exportation. For instance, the Venetians lost their privilege to call at Kefe and Trabzon in 1540 but continued to sell wine to Poland-Lithuania until 1592. By contrast, neither the Dutch nor the English could navigate the Black Sea until the 19th century despite their inclusive imperial charters of 1612 and 1675, respectively.⁴⁰ [End Page 711]

Therefore, mare clausum as a policy based on Ottoman jurisdictional rights over the Euxine explains the alteration between allowing and withholding foreign navigation in the Black Sea regardless of the theoretical privileges inclusive of the Black Sea trade that capitulatory states had enjoyed since medieval times. What really matters is less determining the moment of a total closing/opening of the Euxine than defining periods of the mare clausum policy until 1774.⁴¹

Black Sea Commerce during the Ottoman-Russian Duopoly

It would be simplistic to characterize the new era by the mere restoration of the ancient transit trade in grains along a north-south axis that would eventually involve the incorporation of the Black Sea into the world market. The question of Black Sea commerce was a matter of diplomacy and prestige for the capitulatory states until the 1830s. When the Porte reassured the British chargé d'affaires Stratton about the admission of British shipping to the Black Sea before the French, the latter rearticulated the British viewpoint that their commercial interests in the Euxine were too negligible to insist on the matter. He hinted that London might drop the idea altogether to keep the French out of the region and deny them resources to build a new navy.⁴² A report that Stratton submitted to his government in March 1805 demonstrated that only a single British ship navigated the Black Sea in 1802 as opposed to 120 Russian, 40 Austrian, 6 Ragusan, and 2 French ships.⁴³ Actually, "the Ottoman trade formed less than 2 percent of the total volume of British overseas trade between 1693 and 1803."⁴⁴ In summary, there was no pressing European interest in Black Sea commerce. Even in the Levant, the prospect of European commerce depended on the exercise of diplomatic influence on the Porte in this era. French trade represented three-fifths of European commerce in the Levant before the French Revolution, and it still ran a deficit in the total volume of trade by as much as one-fifth, which the profits of the French caravane trade between Ottoman ports could partly finance.⁴⁵ [End Page 712]

Conversely, for the decision makers of the two riparian powers Black Sea commerce surely was more than a matter of diplomacy. While Russian Black Sea ports shipped only 3 percent of all Russian exports by the beginning of the 19th century, this figure would rise to one-third by the 1850s.⁴⁶ The resources of the Black Sea, in contrast, were essential for the provisioning of İstanbul, one of the most crowded cities in Europe, as well as for replenishing Ottoman naval supplies. We should also point out that certain trends we associate with the internationalization of the Black Sea had begun to take hold prior to the formation of the duopoly. The Sublime Porte and the Crimean khan, for instance, fully realized the potential of Hocabey—the future Odessa—as an outlet for Polish-Ukrainian grain in the 1760s and modernized its fort and the port area to accommodate Tatar, Polish, and Muscovite merchants in 1765.⁴⁷ These trends only gained momentum through the emergence of a bipolar order after 1774.

Incorporation into the world system was by no means the "manifest destiny" of the Black Sea, and it should not be the yardstick in assessing the proper place of the Black Sea in global history. Remarkably, the Russian policy of feeding its armies operating along the western and eastern shores of the Euxine was even more important than the transit trade, particularly in wartime, for the integration of the hinterland. Polish-Ukrainian grain transformed the western Caucasus and northern Black Sea into a single market, enriching the landowning magnates of the North. Similarly, the Ottoman-Iran war in 1723–46 benefited the southern ports of the Black Sea by transporting supplies and logistics to the eastern front.⁴⁸ The development of the international maritime trade along the Anatolian coast of the Euxine, however, would have to wait until the Ottomans acceded to regular and unimpeded access to their ports by the Treaty of Adrianople (14 September 1829). As clearly demonstrated by several Turkish historians,⁴⁹ the kind of port facilities [End Page 713] necessary for international trade as well as commercial emporia integrated with the hinterland were absent before the 1830s.⁵⁰

We do not know much about the regional trade due to a dearth of evidence before the 19th century. But the evidence at hand invites a reevaluation of a number of presumptions about the economy of the Black Sea. True, İstanbul enjoyed a privileged status, owing to long-term Ottoman provisionist policies that culminated in the mare clausum. The imperial seat, however, was not always the dead point in the Black Sea trade but also the main entrepôt for northern Black Sea goods. Local captains from the southern shores of the Black Sea frequented the city to buy Black Sea goods rather than going to the Ottoman Crimean ports, where deterrent custom regulations prevailed.⁵¹ Apparently, even the grain traffic was not a unidirectional flow toward İstanbul despite the provisionist policies. Black Sea trade with Crimea and the western shores was indispensable to the identity of the local magnates of northern Anatolia, despite suppositions concerning their notorious lack of interest in maritime trade.⁵² Trade between western and southern ports in the Black Sea—particularly in tobacco, textiles, and copper utensils—noticeably grew in the 18th century. A populous landlocked Anatolian town such as Tokat owed its prosperity to marketing local dyes and textiles at Rumelian fairs in the 18th century, where Dutch merchants and the merchants from Trabzon met annually.⁵³ It is remarkable that Ottoman currency circulated in the Black Sea territories that passed under Russian rule well into the 1820s, despite the Russian ban.⁵⁴

The Black Sea trade was predominately Russo-Turkish until the 1830s, although most of the Ottoman, Austrian, and Russian shipowners were Greek [End Page 714] and Italian.⁵⁵ Obviously, it was more profitable for Ottoman Greek shipowners to shift their allegiance to Russia (after 1774) and other powers (after 1802) to enjoy capitulatory rights of low taxation and consular jurisdiction. This shift led to problems of extraterritoriality and double identities as the great powers struggled to obtain the status of protector of various Ottoman Christian communities in the 19th century, based on their capitulations. The Ottomans, in turn, took steps to reserve the Black Sea trade for Muslims and favored the local Greeks over the Greeks of the Archipelago with tangible results. Muslims accounted for 73 percent (2,420) of the 4,184 Ottoman merchants who entered the Black Sea in 1780–1846.⁵⁶ The number of Greekowned ships sailing to the Black Sea increased from 212 in 1780–87 to 993 in 1792–1806. By the 1820s, half of the exports in volume from southern Russian ports belonged to Greek and British shipowners, most of whom were actually Greek diaspora merchants.⁵⁷

The Ottoman Empire had a large coastal shipping fleet, and more than 80 percent of the Greek-owned ships that traded in the western Mediterranean in 1780–1810 used the Ottoman flag; their zone of operation expanded as far as the Caribbean.⁵⁸ Harlaftis suggested that "the Northern Invasion" of the Mediterranean coined by Fernand Braudel was indeed an "Eastern invasion" by Greek-owned ships, mostly flying the flag of the neutral Ottoman Empire during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Little wonder that the Ottomans sent chargés d'affaires to several European port cities to protect their own merchants at exactly this time. They even demanded, among other things, direct trade with British colonies in return for reopening the Black Sea to British shipping during the peace negotiations with Britain at the Dardanelles in 1808.⁵⁹ [End Page 715]

Ottoman policies in the era of duopoly contradict the commonplace view that the mare clausum was necessary for provisioning İstanbul. For instance, Ottoman subjects retained the right to till the land around Kinburun and export their grains to the Ottoman Empire through Russian ports aboard Ottoman vessels even when it became a Russian territory after 1774.⁶⁰ The overwhelming diplomatic considerations notwithstanding, Selim III and Mahmud II had to take public pressure into account in parting with this time-honored policy. After the signing of the tariff agreement with Russia (10 June 1783), growing numbers of Greek ships began to transport grain under the Russian flag. A case of Russo-Ottoman cooperation was the replacement of the 1783 tariff with a new one. Russia initially refused even to negotiate the new tariff, dated 1799, since the impetus behind it was to increase Ottoman custom revenues by modifying prices. Nevertheless, it then decided to accept the tariff to secure Ottoman cooperation on the eve of concluding the 1799 defensive alliance against France.⁶¹

It is ironic that while the Ottoman grand vizier Halil Hamid Pasha argued in the 1780s in favor of the participation of foreign merchants in the transit trade as a means of offsetting Russian commercial interests, Russia deemed it essential for the development of its ports. Moreover, the city dwellers were in the habit of ascribing any food shortage in İstanbul to the sultan's policy of banning foreign ships from the Black Sea in the new era. The Porte, for instance, hired neutral French ships to rush grains to İstanbul from the nearby Black Sea ports during the Russian War of 1787–92. The sultans even had to refrain from imposing transit dues on foreign shipping; instead, they stipulated compulsory delivery of part of the Russian iron and grain to İstanbul so that public opinion would not turn against them in times of scarcity for letting foreign grain ships pass by İstanbul in return for a fee.⁶²

As this brief discussion demonstrates, internationalization of the Euxine was not a foregone conclusion of the erosion of the Ottoman mare clausum. Özveren cogently argued that the 18th-century Black Sea was like the [End Page 716] 16th-century Mediterranean in terms of imperial collisions.⁶³ Nevertheless, Russia was a capitulatory state (Spain was not), willing to restore the international trade in the Euxine (which was the norm in the Mediterranean) on its own terms, while uneasy relations across the Black Sea involved as much cooperation as conflict in this era of duopoly. This surely implied something more than mere incorporation into the world system through the grain trade. Against this backdrop, the Euxine turned into a global space in the midst of ensuing global rivalries.

The Black Sea in Global Rivalries

The story of the internationalization of the Black Sea misrepresents the periodic attempts of European states to enter the Black Sea as sustained efforts to overcome the vehement Ottoman opposition throughout the ages. The Turkish view does not challenge the mainstream approach but rather takes some pride in resisting European and Russian pressure for almost a century after Karlowitz.⁶⁴ This is largely a result of the anecdotal use of evidence on the intense diplomatic rivalry that flared up during particular military clashes. In the early 17th century, the Venetians, French, and British briefly engaged in a diplomatic race in İstanbul to obtain trading rights in the Black Sea when it appeared to be a safer route to access Persian goods during the Ottoman wars with Austria and Persia. Peace negotiations in 1699 also placed the Black Sea on the agenda. In his response to a letter from Peter the Great, Ahmed III said, "the Black Sea is our exclusive preserve and not a single boat of another power is allowed by my royal oath [the capitulation], since none has any business in it." Misinterpreted as a clear expression of the centuries-long Ottoman resoluteness in terms of closing the Black Sea, it in fact simply stated that the recent peace treaty did not allow Russian navigation in the Black Sea despite its status as a riparian power.⁶⁵ Another piece of anecdotal evidence is the much-quoted observation of the English ambassador to the Porte, Henry Grenville, in 1765, that described the Euxine as "the Nursing Mother of Constantinople" on the eve of an imminent crisis in [End Page 717] Poland-Lithuania that would once again shift the focus to alternative Black Sea routes in European diplomacy.⁶⁶

There were even occasions when the status of the Euxine was explained by making "sexual connotations with harems and virgins," which await proper analysis in the literature.⁶⁷ The Ottoman authorities were partly responsible for this tendency, since they described the mare clausum policy as a physical reality and were likely to exaggerate the dangers of navigating the Euxine to deter interlopers.⁶⁸ This is best revealed in the words of Aleksandr Mavrokordato, the interpreter of the Imperial Council, who said that the Ottomans considered the Black Sea "a spotless virgin" (i.e., free of foreign navigation) during a meeting with the Russian extraordinary envoys who brought the aforementioned letter of Peter the Great to İstanbul.⁶⁹ Such forceful observations mislead historians to exaggerate the economic resources of the Black Sea.

British and French interest in the Black Sea at this particular time was political in nature. Based on the principle of the most favored nation, the British sought the Porte's permission for the traffic of British ships in the Black Sea after the conclusion of a Russo-Ottoman peace in 1774 in order to counterbalance similar French attempts earlier. Nevertheless, both powers were distracted from the region because of the war in the American colonies.⁷⁰ The focus of Franco-British rivalry definitely shifted north by the 1780s due to the weakening grip of the Sublime Porte over the Egyptian-Mesopotamian and the Balkan-Black Sea regions.⁷¹ Much to London's consternation, France [End Page 718] was likely to gain in both regions.⁷² Thus in the South, London dropped its earlier policy of reopening the Suez route in 1782 and supported the Ottoman mare clausum policy north of Jeddah to nullify similar French attempts to utilize the Suez route. France had been making plans since 1763 for a potential occupation of Egypt, and it secured a commercial treaty with the Egyptian beys (22 February 1785), provoking harsh reaction in İstanbul and London.⁷³ Although the Porte's official denunciation quashed the treaty, the Mamluk beys, backed by French and Russian consuls, rebelled on the eve of the Ottoman war with Russia and Austria in 1787–92.⁷⁴ The interception of Russian plans of a naval attack to seize Suez and Basra in order to ensure the British acquiescence to Russian ambitions in the Black Sea would further frustrate London.⁷⁵

In the North, British resentment against Russia grew even more as Catherine II undermined British interests in the Baltic by supporting the League of Armed Neutrality. Moreover, she signed the Franco-Russian trade pact in 1787, which replaced Britain with France as the most favored nation.⁷⁶ Russian policy was to undermine the Ottoman mare clausum with the support of France, which saw the Euxine as a potential supplier of cheaper naval stores. Therefore, Russians opened their ports to foreign merchants in a series of ukases to develop the Black Sea transit trade, with the first beneficiaries being Austria (1784), France (1787), and Naples (1787).

British resentment against Russia culminated in the "Ochakov crisis" in the spring of 1791. London entertained the idea of establishing an alternative Polish-Ottoman commercial traffic through Ochakov, which was under Russian occupation. As Russians refused to evacuate this last Ottoman fortress [End Page 719] on the northern shore, British Prime Minister William Pitt Jr. prepared for a naval attack on Ochakov while convincing Prussia to press Vienna into making peace with the Sublime Porte. Due to lack of public support and accurate nautical maps, the British had to abandon any idea of an expedition in the Black Sea, particularly after Pitt's parliamentary defeat.⁷⁷ Aware of British ignorance of this region, Foreign Minister Lord Grenville commissioned a number of reports on the Black Sea to encourage merchants to venture into the Euxine because the fierce business rivalry between the Levant Company and the English Company in Moscow was undermining British policy in this zone.⁷⁸ However, all these reports subscribed to the view that the main beneficiary of free navigation in the Black Sea would be the French navy.⁷⁹ Furthermore, even the most elaborate among them, the report by William Lindsay, proved to be inadequate. His main source, the French ambassador to Constantinople, François-Emmanuel Guignard, comte de Saint-Priest, as it turned out, did not disclose French explorations in the region.⁸⁰

The need for "new markets" for domestic products is a common theme in explaining French insistence on trading in the Black Sea, where they explored the commercial potential and nautical aspects of this region before the British. Political calculations are, however, noticeable in the activities of the French ambassadors who argued for purchasing naval supplies from Russian ports in the Black Sea rather than Baltic ports after the Prussian annexation of Pomerania in 1772.⁸¹ The French even inquired into the navigability of the Dniester in 1769, and a French merchant, Ignace Anthoine de Saint-Joseph, established a trading company in Kherson in 1782. Nonetheless, access to cheaper naval goods remained an illusion and the company went bankrupt, not least because of the lack of accurate maps—a challenge the French struggled to overcome by drawing maps and charts, based on information released by the Russian Admiralty.⁸² French trade in the Black Sea was never profitable before the turn of the century because of the resilient Ottoman policies [End Page 720] to keep the Black Sea transit trade to a minimum by imposing a strict Straits regime until 1829.⁸³

In the final analysis, what accounted for the internationalization of the Black Sea was neither commercial potential nor resources but Russo-Ottoman policies followed in the era of duopoly. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Sublime Porte acted in accordance with the principle of the "most favored nation" to conclude peace and retain allies in exchange for ending the mare clausum; this was decisive in forestalling the establishment of a potential Russian mare clausum as well. The admission of the capitulatory states to the navigation in the Black Sea came into effect only after the peace settlement at Amiens in 1802, with Russia's support in principle. As a result, we must examine the peace negotiations, relying on Ottoman documentation.

The Scramble for the Black Sea and the Question of the Straits

The relatively short period between 1800 and 1802 was a time of protracted peace negotiations and annulled treaties for Ottoman diplomacy when the Black Sea and the capitulations came to the fore in negotiations. The Porte realized most of its goals concerning the restoration of Egypt and its recent gains in the Adriatic by the Paris Preliminaries (9 October 1801), which admitted France to navigation in the Black Sea according to the principle of the most favored nation.⁸⁴ The Russians and British, however, were opposed to a separate French-Ottoman treaty since the preliminary treaty in London (2 October 1801) signed earlier called for the convention of a peace conference at Amiens. While the Russian ambassador to İstanbul, Vasilii S. Tomara (1798–1802), argued that nonrenewal of the French capitulations should have been a prerequisite of the Franco-Ottoman peace,⁸⁵ the British ambassador, Lord Elgin (1799–1803), raised objections to considering France the [End Page 721] most favored nation and admitting its ships to the Black Sea.⁸⁶ Facing stiff resistance, the Porte decided to reject the treaty on the pretext that Seyyid Ali Efendi, the Ottoman ambassador to Paris (1797–1802), was unaware of the London Preliminaries when signing it, which was not true.⁸⁷

Although many scholars believe otherwise, the Ottomans were invited to Amiens, but Napoleon detained the plenipotentiary Galib Efendi so that he could sign a separate treaty with the Ottomans in Paris. The British and Russian plenipotentiaries at Amiens would no doubt have alleviated any French pressure on him regarding the question of the Black Sea. To the dismay of the Ottomans, the peace conference at Amiens (25 March 1802) neither explicitly recognized the recent Ottoman acquisitions in the Adriatic nor included the Porte as a signatory, leaving it as the only state officially at war with France.⁸⁸ In a state of panic, İstanbul instructed Ali Efendi to resume negotiations until Galib Efendi, who had instructions to conclude a separate peace in three days, could reach Paris. He was to leave all the details concerning trade (i.e., capitulations) for future negotiations in İstanbul as was customary. The question of the Black Sea dominated the negotiations that led to the Franco-Ottoman Peace Treaty (26 June 1802). Napoleon and Talleyrand spared no efforts to neutralize the Russo-Ottoman alliance by reviving the Franco-Ottoman Treaty of Defensive Alliance (23 May 1796), never ratified by the Directory. Nowhere during the negotiations did they base their arguments on the perpetuity of the French capitulations of 1740. Instead, they claimed the status of most favored nation to challenge Britain and Russia in the Black Sea, dreaming of sending a fleet up the Straits as an Ottoman ally against Russia.

The Sublime Porte had been using the question of the Black Sea as a bargaining chip in finding allies since the end of the First Coalition Wars. In the aforementioned defensive alliance, the Sublime Porte allowed French commercial shipping in the Black Sea on the same conditions as granted to the Russians and the Austrian Habsburgs (after 1784). According to the French ambassador, Raymond de Verninac Saint-Maur (1795–97), who negotiated the terms, the clause on the Black Sea was the main advantage of the treaty. However, the new Directory regime refused to ratify the treaty, for it discharged the Ottomans from involvement in a Franco-British war while [End Page 722] obliging France to supply a fleet and army against possible Russian aggression against İstanbul.⁸⁹ The subsequent French efforts to sign an offensive alliance with the Porte failed after the French invasion of Egypt (1798).⁹⁰ In search of allies against France, the Porte this time joined forces with Russia and tried to secure British adherence to the Russo-Ottoman alliance by promising it the right to trade in the Black Sea after the war. The Ottomans thus set a precedent for letting other capitulatory states into the Black Sea according to the principle of the most favored nation on the eve of the Second Coalition Wars.⁹¹

Prior to the conclusion of the Paris Preliminaries in October 1801, Ali Efendi had tried to counteract Talleyrand's insistence on mentioning the French capitulations in the preliminaries. He had then argued that the principle of the most favored nation would in any case entail the admission of French shipping into the Black Sea when peace was restored. Nevertheless, he was not sincere, as the Porte's later policy on that subject revealed. The Porte would evaluate similar demands by each capitulatory state as separate cases rather than declaring the Black Sea a free commercial zone for all capitulatory states (Table 1).⁹² While using the dysfunctional capitulatory clause about the Black Sea trade as a bargaining chip, therefore, the Porte tried to represent it as a unilateral grant to be arranged in İstanbul by arguing against its inclusion in treaties.

At the negotiations of the final Franco-Ottoman peace in June 1802, the French referred repeatedly to Napoleon's insistence on equal treatment with Britain and Russia in the Black Sea, as well as signing a treaty of alliance declaring France the guarantor of Ottoman territorial integrity.⁹³ Talleyrand attempted to outwit Galib Efendi by debating the Ottoman nomenclature with the intention of giving the treaty the appearance of an alliance. When Galib Efendi rejected the substitution of "all French ships without exception" for "merchant ship" because the initial phrasing included warships, Talleyrand claimed that the verb amed şüd (Arabic: come and go) mentioned [End Page 723]

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Table 1.

International Navigation in the Black Sea

in the article denoted the voyage of merchant ships in Ottoman usage. Had he wanted to send warships to the Black Sea, he maintained, he would have used the verb geşt-ü-güzar (Persian; come and go), which was allegedly reserved for warships in Turkish nomenclature. Baffled as he was by Talleyrand's pretensions to understand Turkish grammar, Galib dismissed the argument, stating both phrases were synonymous.⁹⁴ Talleyrand even suggested deploying two French frigates in İstanbul to protect French merchants from "pirate attacks," another attempt to resurrect the unratified treaty of 1796. Aware of his hidden agenda, Galib Efendi curtly answered that there were no pirates in the Black Sea. Talleyrand then criticized the unimpeded passage of Russian warships through the Straits. For him, Russia could not have precedence over France, "the ancient friend of the Sublime Porte." Galib Efendi explained that the current alliance with Russia kept the Straits open to Russian warships only in wartime.⁹⁵

Talleyrand sought to obtain the more advantageous Russian tariff (22 August 1799) and thereby the right to open consulates in Black Sea ports instead of the restoration of the French capitulations of 1740.⁹⁶ He formulated an article to this effect and started a diversionary debate on the substitution of "merchant consul" for konsolos (consul) in the article, because the latter was Napoleon's official title in France. By contrast, Galib Efendi, like his predecessor Ali Efendi, argued that matters concerning tariffs and consuls [End Page 725] had to be arranged in "trade agreements" (i.e., capitulations) and in İstanbul. He tried to deceive Talleyrand by claiming that the proposed clause would not secure the full extension of the Russian tariff to the French, for it was impossible to cite every article of the tariff in a peace treaty.⁹⁷

Relying on his instructions, Galib Efendi objected to the insertion of the word "alliance" in the treaty as much as he could. When Talleyrand claimed the existence of a "natural alliance" since the first French capitulations, Galib Efendi argued that no "alliance by treaty" between the two powers had ever existed.⁹⁸ He did not actually have much room to maneuver in the negotiations, given that Napoleon was determined to sign a treaty of alliance with the only power that remained at war with France.⁹⁹ The resulting treaty looked rather like an alliance, for it gave mutual guarantees for territorial integrity. It recognized both signatories as the most favored nation, renewed past treaties, and allowed French commercial shipping in the Black Sea.¹⁰⁰ The inclusion of the Black Sea trade in the treaty was a last-ditch option. Having read the drafted suggestions, Selim III simply ordered him to "conclude the matter at once by permitting them to trade in the Black Sea."¹⁰¹ Frightening rumors that French troops in Ancona would invade the Morea probably influenced his decision.¹⁰²

The Russo-Ottoman alliance concluded against France on 3 January 1798 and reaffirmed on 23 September 1805 lies at the root of a new diplomatic problem: the use of the Straits by foreign navies. With the exception of the unratified treaty of alliance signed with France in 1796, these treaties were the first to allow a capitulatory power to use the Straits for military purposes, albeit for a stipulated period—the duration of alliance being eight years in both cases. Russian fleets freely passed through the Straits on several occasions in 1798–1806 to check French military presence in the Adriatic region. This enticed France to revive the unmaterialized alliance in 1796 in the peace negotiations in 1801–2 in order to station a French fleet in the Black Sea as described above. In the inconclusive peace negotiations carried out secretly [End Page 726] with the British representative Sir Arthur Paget at the Dardanelles in the summer of 1807, the Sublime Porte contemplated pitting the British fleet against Russia in the Black Sea. This, it hoped, would persuade Russia to restore peace as stipulated by the Armistice of Slobozia (25 August 1807), signed as a result of French mediation.¹⁰³ Then the British entertained the same idea in reaction to the Russo-French rapprochement after the settlement at Tilsit. Plans for a joint Anglo-Ottoman attack on Crimea in the summer of 1809 did not materialize only because the British Admiralty could not supply any ships at the time, and when it did, winter had already arrived.¹⁰⁴

In the famous public article 11 of the Treaty of Dardanelles (5 January 1809), Britain promised to respect in the future "the ancient rule of the Sublime Porte," which prohibited foreign warships from entering the Straits in peacetime. In retrospect, scholars would criticize the Porte for limiting its own sovereignty, since it made "the ancient principle" an international obligation by pledging to apply it to all states in a bilateral treaty.¹⁰⁵ A contextual analysis of the process, however, would emphasize in this treaty the reaffirmation of Ottoman sovereignty. When proposing this article, the Sublime Porte simply sought international recognition for its "ancient principle," because the English raid on İstanbul (19 February–2 March 1807) as well as the occasional Russian and French demands to open the Straits for military use all happened during times of peace. As such, it would serve as a model for the Straits Convention (1841) in that "only the Sublime Porte could decide who should use the Straits in wartime, and even the condition of alliance did not routinely [emphasis in original] provide access to foreign powers' ships, however friendly their governments might be."¹⁰⁶

The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) declared the Black Sea open to all foreign powers, confining the zone of the Ottoman mare clausum policy to the Straits in practice. This essentially gave rise to the question of the Straits in the fullest sense of the word. From the Russian viewpoint, the two riparian powers were the only rightful owners of the Euxine. Foreign flags were acceptable for exporting Russian grain and developing Russian Black Sea ports, for which manipulation of the Ottoman mare clausum was necessary. The ultimate aim was to implement a kind of Russian mare clausum, evident in the Caspian and the Baltic by keeping the Straits wide open for ships flying [End Page 727] the Russian flag while closing it to other foreign warships.¹⁰⁷ Russian claims to an unlimited right of naval transit through the Straits are encapsulated in the "Gorianov thesis," based on a faulty interpretation of the secret clauses in the Russo-Ottoman treaties of alliance.¹⁰⁸ Later, the Soviet Union would also capitalize on this view when it claimed naval bases at the Straits in 1945.¹⁰⁹ The assertion that these treaties established the principle of unconditional free passage of Russian warships through the Straits at all times is still resonant in modern Russian scholarship.¹¹⁰

As described above, Galib Efendi assured Talleyrand that Russian warships would use the Straits only in wartime. This suffices to nullify the later Russian interpretation. However, the Porte did contradict Galib Efendi by allowing Russia to send fleets up and down the Straits until 1806, even though it was then at peace with all powers concerned. Evidently, to avoid setting a precedent for other powers, in October 1802 Aleksandr Vorontsov, the minister of foreign affairs, refused Tomara's suggestion demanding from the Porte the right of free passage for Russian warships if it admitted capitulatory states to the Black Sea.¹¹¹ His concern was not without reason, for a possible raid on İstanbul by one of the warring parties—Britain, France, or Russia—in the midst of a bedazzling shift of alliances was always a dangerous option by the time of the Third Coalition Wars. Napoleon even wrote to Selim III on 30 January 1805, asking him to prohibit the passage of the Russian Black Sea fleet through the Straits because the Russians "may invade your capital … they wish to reign over the Black Sea and they cannot do so without possessing Constantinople."¹¹² Halet Efendi, the acting reis efendi in 1807, would blame General Horace Sébastiani, extraordinary French representative in İstanbul (August 1806–April 1807), for spreading rumors that the Sublime [End Page 728] Porte had invited the British fleet to İstanbul to fight the Janissaries.¹¹³ By doing so, he hoped to rally the populace against Selim III, who had asked him to leave İstanbul at the request of the British ambassador on the eve of the British attack on the Dardanelles. The events after the British fleet left İstanbul culminated in a series of rebellions. A military coup that cost Selim III his throne in May 1807 was followed by a pro-Selim countercoup that caused the assassination of Selim by the supporters of Sultan Mustafa IV and the enthronement of Mahmud II in July 1808. A final Janissary-led uprising resulted in a civil war in İstanbul that lasted until Mahmud remained the single male member of the dynasty in November 1808.¹¹⁴

Russia came close to its objectives by signing the Treaty of Hünkar İskelesi (1833), which closed the Dardanelles to foreign warships in the event of an attack on Russia—although it said nothing about opening it to the Russian Black Sea fleet. Stimulated by the Egyptian Question (1833–41), this defensive treaty justified the anchoring of the Russian Black Sea fleet to prevent a possible Egyptian occupation of İstanbul. It equally upset Britain, who suspected a Russian design on the Black Sea similar to the recent Russian acquisition of exclusive rights to navigation on the Caspian Sea (the Treaty of Turkmenchay, 10 February 1828). The British and French diplomats condemned the treaty because it transformed the Black Sea into a "Russian lake," and their fleets began maneuvering outside the Dardanelles.¹¹⁵

The British interpretation of the Treaty of Dardanelles as an Ottoman concession regarding its own sovereignty rights was based on a retrospective analysis in reaction to the Hünkar İskelesi. Only then did the Treaty of Dardanelles serve as the frame of reference for Britain in its formulation of the Question of the Straits, aimed at offsetting Russian gains in the Straits. This view led to the conclusion of the London Straits Convention (1841), a multilateral treaty that gave international recognition to "the ancient principle" of the Sublime Porte to close the Straits to all warships as long as it remained at peace. Russia abandoned its gains from the Hünkar İskelesi to reach a common understanding with Britain based on a definition of mutual [End Page 729] spheres of influence, with the Straits as a diplomatic frontier between them.¹¹⁶ If we shift the focus from diplomacy to trade, the Hünkar İskelesi was a reiteration of the common understanding reached at the Akkerman Convention (25 September 1826) and the Treaty of Adrianople (1829): that Russian mercantile interests in the Ottoman Empire would in no way be threatened. It follows that Nicholas I may have considered the multilateral London Straits Convention as better suited for the protection of Russian ports and shipping from aggression in the Black Sea while granting Russian merchant vessels access to the Mediterranean in comparison to the bilateral Hünkar İskelesi, which expired in 1841 in any case.¹¹⁷

The final nail in the coffin of the Russo-Ottoman duopoly, which had been eroding since 1841, was the Congress of Paris (1856), which ended the Crimean War. This multilateral treaty imposed mare liberum under the supervision of an international commission and banned even warships of the riparian powers from the Euxine to ensure full demilitarization.

Conclusion

In its quest to acknowledge the place of the Black Sea in global rivalries, this article has analyzed the interplay between the complex process of internationalization of the Euxine and the Question of the Straits—favorite topics of the Eastern Question paradigm. It concludes that after the French Revolution the Ottomans attempted to find allies and buy peace, efforts that culminated in opening up the Black Sea to all capitulatory states according to the principle of the "most favored nation," which entailed the equal treatment of all capitulatory states. Russia had the most advantageous capitulation and tariff agreements since it was the first capitulatory state to participate in the Black Sea transit trade and thereby invited the jealousy of other capitulatory states.

The Eastern Question paradigm and world system theory have obscured the historical background of the internationalization of the Black Sea in the 19th century. The Eastern Question paradigm gained wide currency in history writing and journalism to denote the erosion of Ottoman sovereignty over its territories and jurisdictional rights over its subjects between 1774 and 1923.¹¹⁸ In this sense, a fundamental cause of the Eastern Question was [End Page 730] the transformation of the Ottoman unilateral juridical-commercial charters into irrevocable multilateral concessions. Apart from becoming the first and only riparian power enjoying capitulations in the Black Sea after 1774, Russia also set a precedent as the first capitulatory power to send fleets through the Straits, relying on the Russo-Ottoman alliances (1799, 1805).

Ottomanists are in the habit of underlining the Muslim and Turkic origins of the Ottoman capitulations, but concerning the Straits and the Black Sea region, the Ottomans actually followed the Byzantine charters granted to Italian maritime states. Over the course of centuries, they were able to deactivate the capitulatory provision on the Black Sea trade in favor of an Ottoman mare clausum. They were able to swiftly dismiss the occasional pleas of several capitulatory states for the reactivation of this obsolete clause until 1774. The Ottoman rollback from the northern Black Sea littoral in favor of Russia coincided with British-French rivalries unfolding on a global scale. The question of the Black Sea would definitely enter the agenda of both powers after 1774. As Hope and Cernovodeanu have unequivocally pointed out, political motivations rather than economic expectations shaped British diplomacy in the Levant and the Black Sea at this particular time. It was not long before Britain and France realized the absence of nautical and geographical information to exploit the commercial potential of the Black Sea. The Russians, in contrast, launched a relatively late "age of discovery" in the Black Sea by exploring the region's seascape and landscape, while the Austrians initiated a cartographic project in the Danubian basin. Military concerns rather than economic interests nonetheless motivated the latter two powers in this endeavor.

The bipolar system that emerged after 1774 evolved into a Russo-Ottoman duopoly, which was not always shaped by conflict. This could have evolved into a Russian mare clausum as well, had it not been for the political choices of both riparian powers. For Russia, the implementation of this policy proved to be inconceivable without the conquest of İstanbul. Deterred by the international complications such a conquest might cause, Russia chose the second option crystallized in the Treaty of Hünkar İskelesi: keeping the Ottomans as faithful allies and reinterpreting past Russo-Ottoman alliances to gain unlimited access to the Straits. As for the Ottomans, they gradually reactivated the obsolete capitulatory provision about foreign transit trade in the Black Sea in order to find allies to counteract the threats posed by Napoleon and, later, Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt.

The Russo-Ottoman duopoly was eclipsed by a free-navigation-for-capitulatory-states policy in 1829 and the complete internationalization and demilitarization of the Euxine by the 1841 Straits Convention and the 1856 [End Page 731] Paris Congress, respectively. While the nature of the capitulations oscillated between unilateral grants and bilateral treaties depending on shifts in the balance of power throughout Ottoman history, the pendulum swung decisively in the direction of bilateralism in response to the Russian presence in the Black Sea and the ensuing diplomatic rivalry among the capitulatory states. It was already too late when the Ottomans first demanded the abolition of capitulations at the Paris Congress, relying on "the law of nations" (i.e., international law). As propounded by Âli Pasha, the Ottoman plenipotentiary, these concessions were not only contrary to sovereignty rights because of the question of extraterritoriality—a problem traceable to the emergence of Greek shipowners under Russian protection in the Black Sea—but also impediments to progress because of the low customs tariffs.¹¹⁹ The process stretching from 1774 to 1856 imposed mare liberum on the Black Sea, while limiting the Ottoman mare clausum to the Straits—a legacy that has lasted until the present day. [End Page 732]