Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres

Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman MassacresAuthor(s): Peter MarshSource: Journal of British Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 63-83Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The North American Conference on BritishStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/175076 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 06:50

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press and The North American Conference on British Studies are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of British Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.204 on Fri, 9 May 2014 06:50:23 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=nacbs

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=nacbs

http://www.jstor.org/stable/175076?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres

In 1876, and again from 1894 to 1896, thousands of Christians in Bulgaria and Armenia, then provinces of the Ottoman Empire, were massacred by Turkish troops, local irregulars known with romantic barbarity as bashi-bazouks, and Moslem tribesmen. The victims were raped or mutilated, many were burned alive. Weeks later streets were littered with corpses. The Armenians, even in the best of times, were subjected to an almost systematic starvation: Moslem tribesmen were permitted to take the crops of Armenian farms when times were peaceful, and to burn them in periods of violence. Naturally such treatment provoked insurrections, which renewed the cycle of repression.

These massacres drove a section of the English public to peaks of moral indignation.' Nonconformist ministers and liberal aca- demics, and their followers, were imbued with a reverence for the independent individual. High church clergy had rediscovered a religious affinity with the ancient Churches of the Near East. Humanitarian concern for the sufferings of one's fellow men - prison inmates and child laborers at home, for example, or slaves abroad - had been a steady force in the nineteenth century, and fortified these sectarian sensitivities. These Englishmen would have been distressed by the Ottoman massacres even if the British Government had been in no way involved. Since they believed the Government to be in fact gravely responsible, they conducted extensive political agitations.

Britain was the foremost defender of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish control of the Straits made it possible for British ships to pass into the Black Sea, and thus to counter a Russian attack on India, while Turkey's Asian territories formed a partial land barrier to Russian expansion. Moreover, the obvious decay of the Ottoman Empire posed a threat to Suez and Britain's links with India, since the dissolution of the Turkish state might enable Russia to become the predominant power in the Near East. The blood of the Bulgarians and Armenians was laid at the door of the British Government by the English agitators, who insisted that Britain either intervene itself or allow another

1. The Bulgarian agitation and Gladstone's response to it are most ably analyzed in R. T. Shannon's Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876 (London, 1963).



THE JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES

Power, specifically Russia, to do so in order to bring relief to the

suffering peoples. However, both alternatives were dangerous: under the cloak of protecting the defenseless, Russia might be able to extend its sphere of influence; unilateral British intervention would be equally unwelcome to Russia and might touch off a

European war. The dictates of moral concern and of national interest seemed to be incompatible.

The debate in England was intensified in 1876 because the two rival political leaders voiced or were thought to voice the opposing views in extreme form. Coming to power after a decade of meekness in foreign affairs, Disraeli was determined to lead Britain to a proud reassertion of its role in the councils of the mighty. He initiated his party into the joys of imperialism with grand gestures, and his over-riding concern in Near Eastern politics as elsewhere was simply to assert the greatness of England. Poorly informed about the situation and impatient of detail, when revolts broke out in the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875, Disraeli first responded by making sure that Britain was consulted. When the Bulgarians revolted, he sus-

pected Russian incitement. He was therefore concerned not so much to avenge and protect the Bulgarians but to prevent Russia from increasing its power in the area. He alienated an uneasy public by flippantly belittling the massacres; his speeches em-

phasized the Russian menace and the need jealously to safeguard the national interest. As for those Englishmen who abandoned themselves to humanitarian sentimentalism, the lesser ranks he disparaged as misguided, the leaders he denounced for giving comfort to the enemy.

Gladstone, on the other hand, responded to the public agitation with the rapture of a prophet who had regained a sense of moral rapport with his people. Having retired from active politics after the emphatic repudiation of his first Ministry in 1874, he was summoned forth by the thunder of the agitation over the Bulgarian massacres. What he advocated was autonomy for Bulgaria within the Ottoman Empire, not independence; but his fervor made his conclusions seem more extreme.

One of the perplexities in this debate was that, after sixteen months during which it was carried on quietly but with intensity inside Disraeli's Cabinet, the man who emerged as Disraeli's most able lieutenant was the third Marquis of Salisbury, a man whose religious and, to a lesser extent, moral affinities lay with Gladstone. Salisbury's attempt to reconcile the dictates of morality and national

64



LORD SALISBURY AND THE OTTOMAN MASSACRES

interest in the wake of the Bulgarian massacres was studied by his daughter, Lady Gwendolen Cecil:2 but though she emphasized the personal strength of his Christian faith, perhaps she unduly discounted the political repercussions of his religious feelings on his Ottoman policy. Salisbury is a particularly rewarding subject for study on the issue of moral concern and foreign policy thus

raised, because he was to become Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in 1895 when large scale massacres again stained the Ottoman Empire, this time in Armenia.

Salisbury believed that simple moral judgments were out of

place in international affairs. He experienced some difficulty in

accepting the applicability of Christian ethics even to the individual, despite his faith in their divine authority:3 they were hard to reconcile with such institutions as property and with the bonds of

responsibility to those above and below one in the social order.

Certainly in relations between governments the promptings of Christian ethics did not, in his estimation, possess the force of commandments. Again and again in his speeches on Ottoman affairs he stressed that the Government was a trustee of the interests of the Queen's subjects4 and could not sacrifice those interests. Salisbury came down unequivocally on the side of national interests over ethics in international dealings. He could not share the easy confidence of crusaders such as Gladstone that the policy which recommended itself to his moral judgment was the one which would forward God's will.5

Yet he shared Gladstone's religious sympathies. Both men were conscientious high churchmen, whose churchmanship bred a sense of catholic affinity with the suffering Bulgarian and Armenian

2. Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (London, 1921-32), particularly vol. I, chap. 4, and vol. II, chaps. 4-8. R. W. Seton-Watson comes close to the point in Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London, 1935) but, preoccupied with the two chief protagonists, he just glances at Salisbury. Salisbury's diplomacy from the Congress of Berlin to the fall of the Disraeli Ministry in 1880 is treated in L. M. Penson's "The foreign policy of Lord Salisbury, 1878-80: The problem of the Ottoman Empire," Studies in Anglo-French History, ed. Alfred Coville and H. W. V. Temperley (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 125-42, and much more extensively in W. N. Medlicott's The Congress of Berlin and After (2nd ed.; London, 1963).

3. Cecil, Salisbury, I, 102. 4. E.g. at the Lord Mayor's banquet in 1876, quoted in F. S. Pulling, The

Life and Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury (London, 1885), I, 241-42; and on the same occasion twenty years later, 9 Nov. 1896, reported in The Times, 10 Nov. 1896.

5. Salisbury's doubt is implicit in the "axiom of his that, in foreign affairs, the choice of a policy is as a rule of less importance than the methods by which it is pursued." Cecil, Salisbury, II, 136.

65




Christians. Salisbury retained the friendship of the foremost high church agitators, at the time of each set of massacres, Canon Liddon in the 1870s, Canon MacColl in the 1890s. Especially concerning the Armenian massacres, Gladstone recognized that

Salisbury shared his sensibilities. In both instances Salisbury proclaimed his hope that the humanitarian and religious desires of the country would be found to coincide with the national interest.

If, however, this could not be so, then the national interest would have to override moral concerns. They might also be over- ridden by such political considerations at home as the will of the Cabinet. Somewhat isolated in the House of Lords, Salisbury was affected only marginally by the foreign policy leanings of the

Parliamentary party. The Cabinet was quite another matter. An aristocrat by intellect as well as by birth, Salisbury was attracted to Cabinet government. In 1867 Salisbury had angrily resigned from the Cabinet over the second Reform bill, and his feelings of bitterness at Disraeli's apostasy persisted for several years. Yet he entered Disraeli's Cabinet in 1874 determined to work with his colleagues; he would not entertain the thought of resignation. When Lord Carnarvon, who had resigned with him in 1867 and shared his feelings on foreign policy ten years later, suggested that possibility, Salisbury retorted that "this was a card which could not be played twice by the same persons."6 Unlike Carnarvon who remained a maverick in the Tory party, Salisbury was coming to

suspect such behavior as smacking of irresponsibility. The dividend of loyalty was the influence it gave him within the Cabinet. When he became Prime Minister, he respected the limitations which this view of the Cabinet imposed: he proved willing to be overruled by his Cabinet even on matters of foreign affairs for which he was particularly responsible and about which he felt deeply.

Salisbury attempted to weave together political, moral and national considerations into the fabric of his foreign policy. The result was a strong cloth. He was a diplomatist without contempo- rary equal in Britain or, after the fall of Bismarck, in Europe, a domestic leader capable of unyielding toughness but also master of the arts of conciliation. His moral sensitivities, realistically integrated with political considerations, could prove more effective than the untempered conscience of the crusader: but they could also find themselves frustrated by political restraints.

6. Arthur Hardinge, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourti Earl of Carnarvon (London, 1925), II, 357.

66




I

It was not until September 1876 that the magnitude of the Bulgarian massacres, which had taken place in May and June, was fully appreciated. Salisbury, then Secretary for India, reacted initially by seeking to prevent a polarization within the Govern- ment. He tried to persuade the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, and Disraeli, to protect the Christians of the Ottoman Empire from further misgovernment.7 At the same time he attempted to calm his fellow high church Conservatives, Lord Carnarvon within the Cabinet and Lord Bath in the royal household, by drawing attention to the limits imposed upon the Government by its responsibilities and the practicalities of the situation.8

He parted company with the popular agitators, particularly Gladstone, in his reaction to the popular agitation. Vox populi was certainly not vox Dei, preeminently in the conduct of foreign affairs. Salisbury sympathized with the public feeling, and later he welcomed it as a restraint upon Disraeli and his supporters in the Cabinet who wished to pursue a Turcophile policy. Never- theless, diplomacy was a delicate craft even for the well informed. Public discussion ought to be conducted with deference toward the Government because of its responsibilities, experience and information. To secure that respect Salisbury attempted in a speech at the Mansion House9 to combine insistence upon the national interest with concern for the sufferers:

Those who are in office have their feelings like other men; but they hold the resources and power of England not as owners, but as trustees. An owner may do what he likes, looking to his sympathies, his anxieties, and his wishes, but a trustee must act according to the strict rights and interests committed to his charge. . . . We do not believe that in the long-run the sentiments which are natural to the people of this country will be found at variance with the duties which policy imposes on us. We believe that if we uphold the rights and interests of England, and adhere to the treaties by which England is bound, and look upon that course as the first and chiefest of those duties prescribed

7. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Derby, 21 Sept. 1876, copy, and to Disraeli, 23 Sept. 1876, copy, Salisbury Papers. Disraeli had just been created Earl of Beaconsfield but will be referred to throughout this paper by his more familiar name. I wish to thank the fifth Marquis of Salisbury for permission to cite his grandfather's papers.

8. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Carnarvon, 13 Sept. 1876, copy, and to Bath, 10 Nov. 1876, copy, Salisbury Papers.

9. Pulling, Life and Speeches, I, 241-42.

67




to us, we shall thereby be doing the utmost that in us lies to maintain the real interests of peace, humanity, and civilization.

Salisbury's belief that the popular sentiment and national interests could be integrated is strikingly evident in his response to the Near Eastern crisis as it affected his own department, the India Office. India's forty million Moslems looked to the Sultan of Turkey as a religious leader, and there was a risk of rebellion if he was overthrown. Salisbury saw this as additional reason to protect the Sultan, not against Russia, but against internal rebellion over bad government;10 hence the need for reform. At the end of 1876 when Salisbury was sent as Britain's special representative to the conference at Constantinople on the crisis, one of his ob- jectives in his talks with the Russian emissary, Ignatieff, was to work out a settlement to secure the north-west frontier of India as well as to stabilize the Near East."

At Constantinople Salisbury fell out of sympathy with Disraeli, and set up a private cypher with Lord Carnarvon,12 through whom he urged his views in Cabinet discussion at home. Like Disraeli, Salisbury was determined that Constantinople must not become a Russian possession; but he believed that that threat was still distant. Like Gladstone, he believed that an independent Bulgaria would turn "violently" against Russia, as had other parts of the Turkish empire whom Russia had similarly encouraged.13 Salisbury therefore worked out with Ignatieff a plan which included pro- vision for the autonomy of the western half of Bulgaria, the part farthest from Constantinople. Salisbury urged the Cabinet to exert force to persuade the Porte to accept the plan. It was well within his instructions; and he was afraid that if so reasonable a proposal was rejected by the Porte, it would find itself without European allies and at war with Russia.l4 He met with a chilly refusal.'5 Disraeli would not insist upon anything which Turkey deemed intolerable.

10. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Derby, 5 Oct. 1876, copy, Salisbury Papers.

11. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Sir Louis Mallet, 19 Jan. 1877, copy, Salisbury Papers.

12. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Carnarvon, 14 Dec. 1876, copy, Salisbury Papers.

13. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Disraeli, 22 Dec. 1876, copy, Salisbury Papers.

14. Royal Archives, Salisbury to the Queen, 4 Jan. 1877, H. 12/18. I wish to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen to cite the Royal Archives.

15. Royal Archives, Disraeli to the Queen, 22 Dec. 1876, H. 11/272.

68




The one accomplishment of the Constantinople Conference, in Salisbury's estimation, was to demonstrate so all might see that Britain must never again fight on Turkey's behalf.6l Upon his return to London, he began a battle with Disraeli for the support of the moderates who held the balance within the Cabinet, North- cote, W. H. Smith, and Richard Cross. Even Cairns, the Lord Chancellor, who was strongly disposed to support Disraeli's hard line, could not turn a deaf ear to Salisbury's arguments. Indeed, Disraeli himself began to feel new respect for his Cabinet opponent. Had Disraeli found a Minister who embodied his youthful ideal of the aristocratic ruler - an aristocrat so unlike Carnarvon, whose petulance earned him the nickname "Twitters" - a man of high birth, self possessed, and with great talents, devoted to the service of his country?

The Cabinet divided sharply in March over Derby's demand that, before Britain could endorse Russia's final proposals, Russia must agree to disarm. In an attempt to win support for Derby, Disraeli began the Cabinet's meeting on the twenty-third with a statement comparing "the two policies now in conflict: the Im- perial Policy of England, and the Policy of Crusade." To Salisbury the conflict was not that simple. His reply was described by Disraeli in a report to the Queen:17

There was a pause, & then Lord Salisbury spoke: low, but clear, & with becoming seriousness. . . . He said, however strong, or the reverse, the party of crusaders were in the country, he hoped, that the P. Minister did not believe there was any Crusader in the Cabinet. But the religious sentiments of bodies of our countrymen could not be dis- regarded, nor could our own convictions be set aside - still he was prepared on this vast question to bow to the opinion of the majority of his colleagues, & he had recognized, at the last meeting of the Cabinet, that the majority of his colleagues was in accordance with the views of the Prime Minister.

Once war between Russia and Turkey broke out in April, the status of Constantinople became the focus of Cabinet discussion. Russia denied any intention of acquiring Constantinople perma- nently but refused to rule out temporary occupation if that should prove militarily necessary. This possibility threw the divisions within the Cabinet into clear relief. There were four principal

16. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Carnarvon, 11 Jan. 1877, copy, Salisbury Papers.

17. Royal Archives, Disraeli to the Queen, 23 Mar. 1877, H. 12/200.

69




responses. Disraeli regarded the neutrality of Constantinople as too vital a British interest to allow even temporary Russian occupation. Carnarvon regarded Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria as too horrifying to permit Britain to fight against the Power which had intervened to protect the Bulgarians. Derby agreed with Disraeli's estimate of British interests, but with one critical limitation: he would never subject Britain to the risk of war "not absolutely forced upon us by necessity and self-defense."18 The strong pacifist streak in British foreign policy from Waterloo to World War I took a Conservative form in Derby's mind. Too often war bred domestic upheaval.

Salisbury shared both Derby's Conservative horror of war and Carnarvon's revulsion over the Bulgarian massacres. But Salisbury also believed, though as yet he had said little about it,19 that British interests made anything more than a strictly temporary occupation of Constantinople by Russia intolerable. He was shocked to discover that Carnarvon thought otherwise.20 On July 21, as Russia's army advanced toward Constantinople without encountering serious resistance, the Cabinet was asked to treat occupation of the city as a casus belli if Russia would not arrange for immediate with- drawal. To the astonishment of everyone present, Salisbury vigorously endorsed the request. The rest of the Cabinet quickly fell into line.21 The point of agreement was obscured when Turkey succeeded in blocking the Russians' advance at Plevna. But, on December 9, Plevna fell, and the road to Constantinople lay open again. Derby and Carnarvon persisted in their opposition to intervention. After a brief hesitation, Salisbury accepted Disraeli's demand for an immediate summoning of Parliament, an increase in the armed forces, and an attempt to mediate between Russia

18. Royal Archives, Derby to the Queen, 11 June 1877, H. 14/75. 19. It was implicit in his fear during the Constantinople Conference that,

unless the Powers' united proposals were accepted by Turkey, it would find itself without allies and at war with Russia, whiEh could then impose its own peace settlement.

20. Christ Church, Oxford, narrative of the events of 1877-78, and Salisbury's notes on the narrative, in the Salisbury Papers' collection of papers used by Lady Gwendolen Cecil in writing the biography of her father.

21. Royal Archives, Disraeli's telegram of 21 July and letter of 22 July 1877 to the Queen, B. 52/10-11. In a memorandum composed two years later, Carnarvon maintained that the Cabinet was inclining toward the abandonment of the proposal when Salisbury spoke up. Carnarvon thought that this intervention marked the watershed in the Cabinet's discussion. "It revived the drooping spirits of the Turkish section of the Cabinet, it turned the balance of parties, and it is not too much to say that it led directly to the important changes in the composition of the Govern- ment which subsequently followed." Hardinge, Carnarvon, II, 359.

70




and Turkey.22 And in mid-January it was Salisbury himself who proposed to send the British fleet up the Straits with the permission of the Sultan23 - Disraeli's policy of the previous June, implying as it did an informal alliance with Turkey.

The change in Salisbury was not a change in principles. He still entertained a low estimate of the Porte's ability to govern its empire particularly in the Balkans. He still favored some form of moderate partition which, while continuing to provide protection for British interests, would also protect the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities. Knowing that when the moment of Derby's final resignation arrived, Disraeli would ask Salisbury to take over the Foreign Office, he was careful to forewarn Disraeli of the lines upon wvhich he would proceed.24

Salisbury became Foreign Secretary at the end of March; and the agreements which he negotiated with Russia and Turkey to ensure a successful congress of the Powers at Berlin were consistent with these principles. It was the Anglo-Turkish Convention which most accurately reflected Salisbury's blending of moral and national concerns. During the war Russia had made a small but, to her, prized advance into Armenia. Salisbury, as an alternative to threatening renewal of war to regain the territory for Turkey, devised a limited alliance with Turkey, confined to defense of its altered Asiatic frontier. In return, Turkey gave Britain control of Cyprus and promised to introduce reforms, to be agreed upon later with Britain, for the protection of the Christians and other subjects of the Porte in Asia.

Both these Turkish commitments had a bearing upon the defensibility of Turkey-in-Asia. Reform in Armenia would prevent disturbances which Russia might use as an excuse to intervene. Cyprus was intended to serve, not so much as a base from which British forces could move quickly to Asiatic Turkey,25 but as "a symbol to Russia and the peoples of Asia Minor of Britain's deter- mination to defend her interests,"26 a symbol all the more effective

22. Royal Archives, Disraeli's memorandum for the Queen on the Cabinet of 18 [17] Dec. 1877, B. 54/21.

23. Royal Archives, Disraeli to the Queen, 12 Jan. 1878, B. 54/69. 24. Salisbury to Disraeli, 21 Mar. 1878, reprinted in H. W. V. Temperley and

L. M. Penson (eds.), Foundations of British Foreign Policy from Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902) (Cambridge, 1938), p. 366.

25. A base on the Persian Gulf closer to Armenia would have been better for this purpose. See H. W. V. Temperley, "Further evidence on Disraeli and Cyprus," English Historical Review, XLVI (1931), 457-60.

26. Penson, "The foreign policy of Lord Salisbury, 1878-80: The problem of the Ottoman Empire," Studies in Anglo-French History, p. 131.

71




because of its appeal to the British electorate. Britain would cling to it, Salisbury hoped, as she clung to Gibraltar.

Equally, the Turkish commitments required by Salisbury reflected moral concern. This was obvious in the pledge of reform, but not in the transfer of Cyprus which to many Gladstonians27 and to all foreign Powers, including Turkey, discredited Britain's frequent pose of unselfishness. What Salisbury had in mind was that Cyprus could serve as a showpiece of the firm yet impartial government which the Ottoman Empire's provinces needed.28 He was delighted, as he told a Conservative gathering later,29 that when Britain finally took possession of Cyprus,

not one voice, not one hand, was lifted up to resist the transfer, and the proclamation of Queen Victoria's name was everywhere received with enthusiasm, while other nations, perhaps militarily more powerful than ourselves, have to struggle with the deep reluctance of the people to undergo the blessings they profess to offer. What is the reason of the difference? It is that we, at all events in the cause of civilization, have won our spurs before the world. We have shown in governing India that where English rule and English influence extend, peace and order revive, prosperity and wealth increase. ... Have we a right to throw away, to hide under a bushel, to conceal in a comer, such influence?

The acquisition of Cyprus was, in part, an expression of what must be called moralizing imperialism.

Salisbury's hopes for reform of the Turkish government in Armenia were quickly disappointed. Once the Berlin settlement had dispelled the threat of Russian conquest, the Porte declined to accept Salisbury's demands. There was little desire remaining in Turkey to please Britain after its continual moral hectoring and its filching of Cyprus. Coercion was out of the question, unless massacres should recur. But not bribery: Turkey might swallow much unpalatable medicine in return for a sorely needed loan. Turcophile and Gladstonian alike were, however, tired of the Near Eastern morass and unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to render the Anglo-Turkish Convention more than a temporary expedient. Most Gladstonians were now more interested in economy than in Turkey's Christian minorities. Disraeli, too, was unrespon-

27. Not to James Bryce or to Liddon (though Liddon in regular politics was no Gladstonian), Seton-Watson, Disraeli, pp. 525-26.

28. Penson, "The Foreign Policy of Lord Salisbury," Studies in Anglo-French History, pp. 131-34.

29. In the Duke of Wellington's Riding School, 27 July 1878, reported in The Times, 29 July 1878.

72




sive when Salisbury discussed Turkish reform and finance with him in September; and a trial balloon in the House of Commons at the end of the year made it clear that the Tory majority would not cooperate with Salisbury's plans.30

For the final fifteen months of Disraeli's Ministry, Salisbury had to fall back on the military consuls whose admission to Armenia he had secured. Within the limits of their power - investigation of local complaints and vigorous diplomatic representations - they were remarkably effective31 until the end of 1879 when a Turkish Ministry more resistant to foreign interference was installed. There- after, well before Gladstone withdrew the consuls in 1882, Salis- bury's plan for reform in Armenia was a failure. By propping Turkey up in 1878, Britain had renewed its liability to the charge of responsibility for Turkey's barbaric administration, particularly in Armenia.

II

It was in Armenia that large-scale massacres next broke out; and Salisbury's course was strikingly similar to his response to the Bulgarian massacres. His consistency, and the nature of his failure, are all the more striking because so much had changed in the diplomatic and political situation, and in his personal position. Since 1876 Russia and Britain had reversed roles: Russia had supplanted Britain as the European Power to which the Porte looked for protection, and Britain was the champion of intervention on behalf of the oppressed Christians. At home Gladstone had retired in 1894 as Liberal leader and Prime Minister. Disraeli was long dead, but his legacy of self-assertive imperialism had become a dominant sentiment in Conservative and Unionist circles, and indeed had contributed to a transformation of the moral climate of the country as a whole. Salisbury was now the highly regarded leader of the Conservative party, having served for over six years as Prime Minister.

In 1891 and 1892, just before the fall of the second Salisbury Ministry, Turkey's rough treatment of the Armenians was serious enough to raise questions in Parliament32 but not enough to enable the Government to do more than make yet another verbal protest. It fell to the Liberals to deal with the 'revival of widespread massacres in the summer of 1894, just after Rosebery had succeeded

30. Cecil, Salisbury, II, 312-14. 31. W. N. Medlicott, Congress of Berlin, pp. 305-06. 32. Hansard, 3rd series, CCCLIV, 1060-1 (22 June 1891).

73




Gladstone as Prime Minister. Armenians in the district of Sassun had attacked Kurdish tribesmen near one Armenian village. The Kurds retaliated with a slaughter throughout some twenty-five villages, in which ten to twenty thousand Armenians were killed. Pregnant women were ripped open, children torn limb from limb, one group of young men were reported to have been bound, buried under brushwood and burned. Where the Kurds were not equal to the task, Turkish troops were ready to assist them.33

The Liberal Cabinet was scandalized but divided. Harcourt and Bryce voiced a Gladstonian cry for vigorous action,34 and Lord Kimberley, the Foreign Secretary, proposed that the fleet force its way up the Dardanelles to make the Sultan mend his ways.35 However, in view of the certainty of Russian displeasure, Rosebery opposed any unilateral resort to force as dangerously quixotic. Some, if not all, of the "quixotes" in the Cabinet yielded. Instead, the Cabinet, at Kimberley's initiative, decided to try to deal with the problem in cooperation with France and Russia. The combined Powers, known as the Armenian Triplice, persuaded the Sultan to consent to the appointment of an investigatory commission, which included the three Powers' vice-consuls in Armenia. By May 1895, before the commission reported, the Powers agreed upon a scheme of reforms which was presented to the Sultan. In mid-June, when the Sultan had not responded, Kimberley pressed France and Russia to demand a clear, categorical reply. At this point, the Liberal Government was defeated on a snap vote in the Commons and resigned. Just before the Unionist Ministry took office, Kimberley was informed that the Tsar would not agree to his proposals.

Salisbury placed himself in the Foreign Office, as he had done in his first Ministry, and addressed himself to the Armenian question. For the next five and a half months, the course he followed makes it clear that he was determined to do more than his pred- ecessors had attempted, and more than public opinion required, to protect the Armenians. About his motives he said little, but enough to indicate that they were religious and humanitarian. Active intervention on the Armenians' behalf would not substantially affect

33. There are good accounts of the massacres in H. Whates, The Third Salis- bury Administration, 1895-1900 (London, 1900), book I, and in A. 0. Sarkissian, "Concert Diplomacy and the Armenians, 1890-1897," in Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography, ed. A. 0. Sarkissian (London, 1961), pp. 48-75.

34. R. Rhodes James, Rosebery (London, 1963), p. 377. 35. Stephen Gwynn and G. M. Tuckwell, The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

W. Dilke (London, 1917), II, 491.

74




British interests. While it might demonstrate Britain's continued potency in Ottoman affairs, there was no pressing need for, and some risk in, such a demonstration. Conversely, there were no British interests which might rule out intervention, so long as it did not provoke war with a European Power. The Porte's relations with Russia had become so harmonious, and those with Britain so filled with mutual dislike, that Constantinople and the Straits could scarcely be considered in neutral hands. In any case, the importance of Constantinople to Britain had been reduced by Britain's new position in Egypt since 1882. The main risk in intervention would be that it might precipitate partition of the Ottoman Em- pire. To Salisbury, however, the Armenian massacres indicated that the Empire was already in the throes of dissolution; partition would occur soon, whether or not Britain acted to save the Armenians.

Both in private and in public, Salisbury's remarks were re- strained, in keeping with his personal reticence concerning his religious and moral life.36 His first public statement on the Armen- ian question after taking office,37 though stem in its warning to the Sultan that failure to reform would undermine the Powers' willingness to preserve his empire, was circumspect and austere in comparison to Gladstone's speech a few days earlier.38 The public nevertheless sensed the strength of his feeling. Five months later, after his proposals for intervention had been frustrated, he was mo- mentarily outspoken: Islam was, he said, "capable of the most atro- cious perversion and corruption of any religion on the face of the globe."39 However, Salisbury's reputation as a skillful diplomat made foreigners, and, later, diplomatic historians, unable to believe that he might be impelled by sentiments usually associated with Gladstone's following. Holstein, the German ambassador, suspected a plot to involve the Triple Alliance in a war with Russia.40 Some historians have concluded that Salisbury was in- duced to act as he did by public opinion.41

36. Cecil, Salisbury, I, 99-100. 37. At the beginning of the new Parliament. Hansard, 4th series, XXXVI,

49-50 (15 Aug. 1895). 38. At Chester on 6 Aug. 1895, reported in The Times, 7 Aug. 1895. 39. The Times, Salisbury's speech to the Nonconformist Unionist Association,

31 Jan. 1896, reported on 1 Feb. 1896, The remark was indiscreet because of the millions of Moslems under British rule in India.

40. See J. A. S. Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The close of the nineteenth century (London, 1964), pp. 31-43.

41. C. J. Lowe, Salisbury and the Mediterranean, 1886-1896 (London, 1965), p. 100, and, more hesitantly, Sarkissian, "Concert Diplomacy," Studies in Diplo- matic History, p. 62.

75




Salisbury's response to the Armenian massacres is particularly impressive because the popular agitation in the 1890s was weaker than in the 1870s over the Bulgarian atrocities. The national rally in St. James's Hall on October 19, 1896 was a pale reflection of its

predecessor in the same place twenty years earlier. Rosebery, be-

lieving the Liberal rank and file sympathetic to the agitation, toward which he felt cool, resigned the party leadership;42 but he was

painfully sensitive to criticism, and was relieved to be rid of the

leadership. Salisbury did not reckon the agitation to be a formid- able force.43 Moreover, at the national rally Gladstone and other

speakers declared their confidence in "our great Prime Minister. "44 If Salisbury's prime concern had been, uncharacteristically, to ap- pease popular sentiment, he need only have pursued the policy inherited from Kimberley, a policy involving no risks, diplomatic or political, since, as Salisbury appreciated, it was doomed to fu-

tility. For Kimberley had failed to seek agreement with his part- ners in the Triplice about how to enforce their demands, thus re-

peating the difficulty which Salisbury had faced in 1876.

Salisbury was quick to assure the Sultan, and later the public, that the new Government would do no less than its predecessor on behalf of the Armenians.45 The existing policy was explicitly maintained.46 But within a week of taking office, Salisbury began to explore the possibilities of a tougher course: a unilateral display of force. In his first letter to Sir Philip Currie, the ambassador at

42. James, Rosebery, pp. 390-96. 43. Except briefly in mid-December 1895, when it was responding to the

autumn massacres, the longest and largest of all. Before the end of the month he told Chamberlain, "The Armenian squall seems to be blowing out." Earlier, at the beginning of August, he even welcomed the prospect of Gladstone's speaking up on the massacres. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 17 Dec. 1895, copy, Salisbury Papers; Birmingham University Library, Salisbury to Chamberlain, 23 Dec. 1895, Chamberlain Papers; Malcolm McColl, Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. G. W. E. Russell (London, 1914), p. 145.

44. The Bishop of Hereford's words, reported in The Times, 20 Oct. 1896. 45. Public Record Office, Salisbury to Currie, 10 July 1895, copy, F. 0.

78/4606, and Hansard, 4th series, XXXVI, 49 (15 Aug. 1895). 46. Salisbury modified it only by trying to sharpen its teeth. He paid close

attention to the points he considered essential to the effectiveness of any scheme of reform: selection of a Turkish administrator for Armenia whom Europe could trust, with full powers and security of tenure so that the Sultan could not undercut or dismiss him; alternatively, the creation of a supervisory commission including representatives of the Powers. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury's telegrams to Currie, 29 June and 1 July 1895, and his letters to Currie, 1 July and 12 Aug. 1895, copies, Salisbury papers; and Public Record Office, Salisbury's letter to Currie, 10 July 1895, draft, F. 0. 78/4606, Salisbury's telegram to Currie, 16 Aug. 1895, and Sanderson's telegram to Currie from a minute by Salisbury, 29 Aug. 1895, F. 0. 78/4627.

76




Constantinople, Salisbury asked whether a naval demonstration up the Tigris River was feasible:47

It would frighten the Sultan more than any other step: for it would loosen the allegiance of his Arab subjects which is loose enough already. It would give a chance of our com- municating with Armenians from the other side: & it might give them heart. Our allies would not like it but they cannot well prevent it.

When this idea was rejected because the Tigris was not sufficiently deep, Salisbury suggested occupying Jeddah on the Red Sea,48 observing that the British vice-consul in Jeddah had recently been murdered. Though Salisbury proposed to give full assurances that Britain did not wish to retain the city or annex any territory, he admitted to Currie that the action was "very likely to bring down the Turkish Empire with a run."49 By the end of August, he had discussed the possibility of such strong action with members of the Cabinet, who responded favorably, or so he told Currie.50

Russia was certain to react sharply to military or naval intervention. But Salisbury also understood the considerations which would make Russia hesitate.51 Russia still prided herself upon be- ing the defender of the Ottoman Christians,52 and she would be slow to throw away this title. She was also experiencing difficul- ties among her own Armenian subjects, which might be exacer- bated by agitation among the Ottoman Armenians. Russia had rejected the idea of creating an autonomous state out of Ottoman Armenia since the Russian Armenians would want to join it: but Salisbury agreed with Russia on this point53 because Armenians were scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire and did not con- stitute a majority in any of its administrative divisions. In mid- summer Salisbury was informed that Russia would not tolerate the use of force against Turkey. Yet he continued to hope that Russian ambivalence would keep her from forcibly resisting British intervention.

47. Christ Church, Oxford, 1 July 1895, Salisbury Papers. 48. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 27 July and 12 Aug. 1895,

copies, and his telegram to Currie, 7 Aug. 1895, Salisbury Papers. 49. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 12 Aug. 1895, copy, Salisbury

Papers. 50. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 27 Aug. 1895, copy, Salisbury

Papers. 51. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 27 Aug. and 13 Sept. 1895,

copies, Salisbury Papers. 52. The Armenians were not, however, Orthodox, and Russia treated its non-

Orthodox minorities harshly. 53. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 10 July 1895, Salisbury

Papers.

77




The massacres began again in September, this time not only in Armenia but wherever there was a sizeable Armenian minority, particularly in Constantinople. The ambassadors of the Powers feared for the Europeans in the empire; but when only Armenians were killed, and in their tens of thousands, it seemed that the Porte was attempting to restore order by exterminating the Armenians. The Powers' first response, a shocked protest, won a deceptive vic-

tory. In mid-October the Sultan issued orders sanctioning the reforms they had been urging. Now he insisted that he be given time to implement the reforms. He used the time to continue the massacres.

When, by the beginning of November, it was clear that the massacres were continuing, and on a greater scale than in 1894, Salisbury initiated Cabinet discussion about Britain's course.54 At the Guildhall, on November 9, he made public his doubts concern-

ing the Sultan's intentions, and again warned Turkey that the Powers might abandon their policy of preservation of the Ottoman

Empire. For the next three weeks Salisbury engaged in discussions with the other Powers on the need for action. The six principal Powers agreed to bring a few gunboats up the Dardanelles. The Porte did not resist, nor did it end the massacres. Austria-Hungary proposed that, if the danger to Europeans and their property continued and the Porte was unable to restore order, a joint fleet should be dispatched, prepared to use force.55 Salisbury agreed; but the proposal foundered because of Russian opposition.

Russia readied her Black Sea fleet to sail through the Bosphorus the moment any other fleet entered the Dardanelles; she also dispatched three ships from the Baltic to strengthen her Mediter- ranean squadron.56 This threat, like the Russian advance toward Constantinople in 1877, diverted Salisbury's attention from the moral question to the political question of the neutrality of the Straits, and thus brought ruin to his hopes of ending the sufferings of the Armenians.

The Russian threat only increased Salisbury's desire to act

vigorously. Though the substance of Britain's interest in the Straits had been sharply reduced since the 1870s, still, as he put it:57

54. Royal Archives, Salisbury to the Queen, 7 Nov. 1895, H. 37/62. 55. Grenville, Salisbury and Foreign Policy, p. 48. 56. W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902 (2nd ed.; N.Y.,

1956), 207. 57. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Goschen, 3 Dec. 1895, Salisbury

Papers.

78




the keeping of Cple. out of Russian hands has now for near half a century, if not more, been made a vital alticle of our political creed: it has been proclaimed as such by all states- men of all parties, at home and in the East: our fame & prestige are so tied up with it: that when it fails the blow will be tremendous.

He asked the Cabinet, quite apart from the course of the other Powers, to empower Sir Philip Currie at Constantinople to summon a British naval force up the Dardanelles if he believed that Russia was about to invade the Bosphorus. British willingness to resist Russian threats to the Straits had, however, ebbed. Goschen, backed by Balfour and Chamberlain, prevented the Cabinet from agreeing to the proposal.58 Goschen, the First Lord of the Admir-

alty, held that the expedition was impossible from the naval point of view, as well as impolitic. During the 1880s Turkey had stiff- ened the shore batteries defending the Dardanelles. Since 1891 Russia had been in alliance with France, and if the British Mediter- ranean fleet moved into Turkish waters, the French fleet would be free to sail out of Toulon and attack the British from the rear. Goschen also felt sure that Russia would reply to force with force.

Salisbury contended that an unexpectedly quick attack could succeed since Turkey and Russia would be caught off guard: hence the importance of enabling Currie to summon the fleet without the delay of wiring for permission. Salisbury discounted the risk of war: unlike occupation of Jeddah, a British naval expedition up the Dardanelles to maintain the freedom of the Straits would not convey the suggestion of partition. Furthermore, he believed that France would not give Russia naval support on this issue and that, even if she did, the British navy would prevail.59

Goschen's cooperation at the Admiralty was indispensable. When it became clear that Goschen would not agree, Salisbury ex- ploded angrily - reputedly the only time he ever did so in Cabinet - and poured scorn on the faint hearts of the sailors.60 For if Britain lacked the might to resist a Russian threat to the Straits, Russia could call Britain's bluff at any time on any Ottoman question, even partition. As for the Armenians, the immediate implications of Goschen's refusal were grim. The stern line which Salis-

58. Public Record Office, Currie's telegram no. 756 of 28 Nov. 1895, F. 0. 78/4629; Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Goschen, 28 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1895, and Goschen to Salisbury, 30 Nov. and 2 and 7 Dec. 1895, Salisbury Papers.

59. Gloucestershire County Record Office, Salisbury to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, 2 Jan. 1896, St. Aldwyn Papers.

60. Langer, Diplomacy of Imperialism, p. 205.

79




bury had taken toward Turkey in public undoubtedly, like Kim- berley's policy, had the effect - from which Salisbury had not shied - of encouraging the Armenians to defy the Sultan. Now they would be left to their fate.

Despite the serious implications of the rebuff on diplomatic and on moral grounds, Salisbury did not resign. Nor did he give any thought to this possibility. He had been checked just as he had checked Disraeli. Resignation on this issue would only pub- licize the Government's unwillingness to defend the freedom of the Straits or to intervene to protect the Armenians.

Russia's threat to the Straits had succeeded cleverly in frus- trating Salisbury, for it had elicited a fine but critical difference of opinion within the Cabinet. Goschen, though opposed to forc- ing the Straits, was not averse to a naval expedition against Jed- dah; it was feasible from the Admiralty's point of view, and he discussed it with Salisbury61 in an attempt to compose their disagreement. With caution bred of his newfound vulnerability, Salisbury sounded out Austria-Hungary, only to be told that Austria-Hungary (though ignorant of the disagreement in the British Cabinet) now opposed armed intervention as likely to set the Powers at each other's throats.62 Any confidence that at least one of the Powers would sympathize if Britain intervened was thus gone. It was at this point that the United States chose to quarrel with Britain over Venezuela, and that the situation in South Africa worsened because of the Jameson Raid. The moment when intervention might have been practicable had passed.63

Salisbury gave free expression to his feelings in a remarkable speech at the end of January 1896 to the Nonconformist Unionist Association,64 in which he praised the demonstrations of public feeling during the past autumn:

I hold it morally to be a very high honour to the religious people in this country that they have taken so intense and deep an interest in the fate of the Armenians. They can have nothing naturally to gain by it, politically or otherwise. It is merely the outcome of a genuine feeling of sympathy for those who suffer and of horror at the cruelties under which they suffer.

61. Christ Church, Oxford, Goschen to Salisbury, 29 Nov., 2 and 7 Dec. 1895, Salisbury Papers.

62. Public Record Office, Salisbury's telegrams to Sir E. Monson, 2 Dec. 1895, and to Currie, 16 Dec. 1895 and 7 Jan. 1896, F. 0. 78/4627, 4698 and 4884. 63. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Goschen, 18 and 23 Dec. 1895,

Salisbury Papers. 64. This was the speech quoted supra, p. 75.

80



LORD SALISBURY AND THE OTTOMlAN MASSACRES

He described the massacres as "horrors to the like to which Europe has not listened since the days of Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane," and he left no doubt about his contempt for the Turkish Govern- ment, though he denied that it had ordered the massacres.

Having spoken his mind, Salisbury proceeded to clear his diplomatic slate, lest his words keep up the false hopes of the Arme- nians. He renounced the policy he had inherited from the Lib- erals, telling the House of Lords65 that the only way to induce the Sultan to govern the Armenians fairly was to risk war, not only against the Sultan but also against the Tsar. In March, his Parlia- rnentary Under-Secretary in the House of Commons (Curzon) re-

peated earlier assertions that Britain's obligation to defend Turkey- in-Asia had lapsed.66 Thereafter Salisbury tried to minimize his

public speaking engagements until Armenian affairs cooled.67 When he did speak,68 it was to pooh-pooh the notion of armed British intervention and to warn about the danger of aggravating Turkey's religious rivalries by demonstrations of sympathy.

Resumption of the massacres at the end of August in Constan-

tinople provided Salisbury with an opportunity to canvass again the possibilities of intervention, this time on the occasion of the Tsar's September visit to Balmoral. He suggested, first, deposition of the Sultan, a scheme with which the Tsar toyed and then rejected;69 and secondly, joint intervention by the Powers if, as Salis- bury claimed was likely, the next disturbances at Constantinople were directed against Europeans. This the Tsar did not rule out. The Tsar also agreed to consider the proposal which Salisbury was to circulate to all the Powers of the concert in October,70 call- ing for the ambassadors in Constantinople to draw up a fresh scheme of reform. Adhering to his initial criticism of the policy he had inherited from the Liberals, Salisbury's circular stipulated that first the Powers must agree to insist, if need be by force, that the Sultan carry out the resolutions to which their ambassadors would unanimously agree. Salisbury's persistence did not mean that he expected success. He did not in fact foresee an end to the

65. Hansard, 4th series, XXXVII, 54-8 (11 Feb. 1896). 66. Hansard, 4th series, XXXIX, 449 (30 Mar. 1896). 67. Christ Church, Oxford, note by Salisbury to S. K. McDonnell, 2 Mar.

1896, copy, Salisbury Papers. 68. To the Primrose League, 29 Apr. 1896, reported in The Times, 30 Apr.

1896; and in Parliament, Hansard, 4th series, XLIII, 113 (20 July 1896). 69. Margaret Jefferson, "Lord Salisbury's conversations with the Tzar at

Balmoral, 27 and 29 September 1896," The Slavonic and East European Review, XXXIX (1960), 216-22.

70. Parliamentary Papers, Turkey No. 2 (1897), no. 2.

81




slaughter of Armenians "until the growing penury of the Empire induces some ruined Turk to cut the Sultan's throat."71 His circular was likely to do little more than make clear, as Liberal critics had been demanding,72 that the burden of responsibility for neglecting the Armenians did not rest primarily on Britain.

After some vacillation, Russia, tantalized by the opportunity which the proposal might provide for seizing the Bosphorus, did not rule out the use of force by the concert.73 This was enough to induce the Sultan to decide that there should be no further massacres.74 With the outbreak of war between Greece and Tur- key over Crete, the focus of attention in the Near East shifted from Armenia. Turkey's sweeping victory in this war undermined the diplomatic foundation of Salisbury's October circular, since he had based his appeal not on sympathy for the Armenians but on fear of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Now Turkey had proved its health in battle. The luckless Armenians were rele- gated to the shadows. Death by massacre was to be their lot in 1904, and again in 1915/16 when the number of deaths, passing the Bulgarian thousands of 1876 and the Armenian tens of thousands in the 1890s, reached one and one-half millions.

III

The failure of Salisbury's Armenian policy is clear. It is a dis- turbing failure for those who continue to hope that moral considerations and the demands of national interest and domestic politics can be integrated in the fashioning of foreign policy, indeed that they must be if that foreign policy is to command both popular support and political effectiveness. It is no consolation to know that Gladstone, champion of the imperatives of morality, w6uld have done no more than Salisbury. Gladstone made it clear75 that, though (like Salisbury) unwilling to be deterred by "those phan- tasms of European war" conjured up to prevent Britain's taking unilateral action, he would not engage in such a war. Confronted by a real threat of this sort, he would draw back, content to point

71. Christ Church, Oxford, Salisbury to Currie, 22 Sept. 1896, Salisbury Papers.

72. E.g. James Bryce speaking at Aberdeen, 21 Jan. 1896, reported in The Times, 22 Jan. 1896.

73. Langer, Diplomacy of Imperialism, pp. 330-48. 74. Royal Archives, Salisbury to the Queen, 12 Jan. 1897, D. 43/36. 75. In the last great speech of his life, on 24 Sept. 1896, at Liverpool, reported

in The Times, 25 Sept. 1896.

82




the finger of moral responsibility at the Powers which preferred war to letting Britain protect the Armenians.

The sincerity of Salisbury's concern about the massacres, and the strength of his desire to stop them, did not ease his personal sense of responsibility. By the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1878, and again by his public chastisement of the Sultan's Government in 1895, he had knowingly encouraged the hopes of the Arme- nians. When, thus cheered, they turned to action, Salisbury found himself unable to defend them from barbaric retaliation. Glad- stone on his deathbed remembered, "Those poor Armenians!" Salisbury, even in the intimacy of his close family, was never able to find words to relieve his mind on the subject.76

PETER MARSH

76. Lady Gwendolen Cecil recalled this in the uncompleted draft of a fifth volume (p. 86) to her biography of her father, now at Christ Church, Oxford.

83



Documents

Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres