Constantinople Agreement
The Constantinople Agreement (also known as the Straits Agreement) was a
Though the Allied attempt to seize the area in the
Historical background
Access to the
In early 1907, in the talks leading up to the
On 12 October 1908, the Russian Ambassador to France,
Alexander Izvolsky, the Russian Foreign Minister, in the latter part of 1908 was able to get conditional support for a change in the Straits regime from Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Tommaso Tittoni and the German Ambassador to Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen as well as from Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Edward Grey, Grey on 14 October 1908 being clearest on the subject while indicating that Turkish agreement was a prerequisite. [7]
During the Bosnian Crisis of 1908, in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911/12 as well as during the Balkan Wars of 1912/13, Russia made attempts to obtain the opening of the straits for Russian warships but failed for want of support from the Great powers.[8] In April/May 1912, the straits were closed for some weeks, and in response to subsequent threats of closure Russia indicated that it would take action in the event of a prolonged closure.[9]
At the outbreak of war, the Ottoman Empire was diplomatically isolated; it had sought an alliance with Britain at the end of 1911, between May and July 1914 with France and Russia, and on 22 July with Germany,[a] to no avail.[11] Russia was concerned about the potential arrival in the Black Sea of two modern warships being built by British shipyards for the Ottoman Navy, the Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel, which had been completed and was making preparations to leave, and the Reşadiye. On 30 July, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Sazonov instructed Benckendorff:[b]
it is a matter of the highest importance for us that Turkey should not receive the two dreadnoughts..point out to the English government the immense importance of this matter for us, and energetically insist upon the retention of these two ships in England."
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had by then already decided on requisition and when the Turkish ambassador protested on 1 August, he was informed that "in view of the serious situation abroad it was not possible to allow a battleship to leave these waters and pass into the hands of a foreign buyer".[12]
The pursuit of the two German warships Goeben and Breslau by the Royal Navy led to their being allowed to enter the Dardanelles on 10 August 1914.[13][c]
Details
Historian Dmitrii Likharev, analysing key contributions in the historiography of the subject points to contributions of C. Jay Smith who obtained access to the Asquith papers in the 1960s and to William Renzi in 1970 who made use of records released by the British National Archives to date Britain's promise of Constantinople to the Russians to November 1914 [d] and its genesis to earlier in September [e], prior to the Ottoman entry into the war.[17]
From 4 March to 10 April 1915, the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia secretly[18] discussed how to divide up the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was to control an even larger zone in Persia, while Russia would get the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. The Dardanelles were also promised to Russia. The language of the agreement described the following boundaries:
...the city of
islands.
The British and the French sought to limit Russian claims, but were not able to do so, and also had to contend with the possibility that Russia might make a separate peace with the Central Powers.[19] The agreement was one of a series of agreements regarding the partition of the Ottoman Empire by the Triple Entente and Italy following the war, including the Treaty of London (1915), the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) and the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (April to August 1917). The British
See also
References
Footnotes
- Ottoman Empire and the German Empire on August 2, 1914.[10]
- ^ Sazonov had made a similar request earlier in June but had been refused on the grounds that the government could not intervene in a commercial matter.
- Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, to his office to inform him that the Cabinet had decided "unanimously" to open the Straits to the Goeben and Breslau.[14]
- ^ "This affirmation was repeated in a memorandum dated November 14 which Buchanan delivered to the Russian Foreign Office. Again, Grey made the promised contingent on Germany's defeat."[15]
- ^ "This early [September 23], then, the inexorable logic of events clearly suggested an arrangement with Russia regarding Constantinople and the Straits."[16]
Citations
- ^ Cathal J. Nolan, ed. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations: A-E, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 350.
- ISBN 978-0-300-02203-2.
- ^ Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917 (1967) pp 706-7.
- ISBN 90-247-3464-9.
- ^ Langer 1929, p. 68.
- ^ Macfie 1981, p. 328.
- ^ Macfie 1981, pp. 323–324.
- ^ Macfie 1998, p. 183-184.
- ^ Macfie 1998, p. 184.
- ^ The Treaty of Alliance Between Germany and Turkey, Yale.
- ISBN 978-0-8050-6884-9.
- ISBN 978-0-429-63992-0.
- ISBN 0-224-04092-8.
- ^ Hamilton & Herwig 2005, p. 163.
- ^ Renzi 1970, p. 6.
- ^ Smith 1965, p. 1023.
- ^ Likharev 2019, pp. 273–275.
- ^ "He [Sir Edward Grey] had emphasized, too, that the Constantinople agreement they had just reached was to be kept secret". David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (2001), p.139
- JSTOR 125120.
- ISBN 9780470766293.
Bibliography
- Fitzgerald, Edward Peter (1994). "France's Middle Eastern Ambitions, the Sykes-Picot Negotiations, and the Oil Fields of Mosul, 1915-1918". The Journal of Modern History. 66 (4): 697–725. ISSN 0022-2801.
- OCLC 53814831.
- Helmreich, Paul C. (1976). "Italy and the Anglo-French Repudiation of the 1917 St. Jean de Maurienne Agreement". The Journal of Modern History. 48 (2): 99–139. ISSN 0022-2801.
- Pınar Üre: Constantinople Agreement, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Hamilton, Richard F.; Herwig, Holger H. (2005). Decisions for War,1914–1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-51119-678-2.
- Renzi, William A. (March 1970). "Great Britain, Russia, and the Straits, 1914–1915". The Journal of Modern History. 42 (1): 2–20. S2CID 144998651.
- Bobroff, Ronald (24 February 2006). Roads to Glory: Late Imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-142-7.
- Smith, C.Jay (July 1965). "Great Britain and the 1914–1915 Straits Agreement with Russia: The British Promise of November 1914". American Historical Review. 70 (4): 1015–1034. JSTOR 1846901.
- Macfie, A.L. (1981). "The Straits Question,1908–1914". Political Science Quarterly. 22 (2): 321–332. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
- Macfie, A.L. (6 December 2006). "The straits question in the First World War, 1914–18". Middle Eastern Studies. 19 (1): 43–74. JSTOR 1905979.
- Macfie, A.L (1998). The end of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923. Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-28763-1.
- Langer, William L. (January 1929). "Russia, the Straits Question, and the European Powers, 1904-8". The English Historical Review. 44 (173): 59–85. JSTOR 552495.
- Langer, William L. (September 1928). "Russia, the Straits Question and the Origins of the Balkan League, 1908–1912". Political Science Quarterly. 43 (3): 321–363. JSTOR 2142971.
- Kerner, Robert J. (September 1929). "Russia, the Straits, and Constantinople, 1914-15". The Journal of Modern History. 1 (3): 400–415. S2CID 143987882.
- S2CID 154130755.
- Yıldız, Gültekin (July 1962). "How to Defend the Turkish Straits Against the Russians: A century-long 'Eastern Question' in British defence planning, 1815–1914". The Mariner's Mirror. 105 (1): 40–59. S2CID 159387741.
- Likharev, Dmitrii V. (June 11, 2019). "Constantinople and the Black Sea straits as Russia's war aims in 1914–1917: A comparison of Russian and American interpretations". The Historian. 81 (2): 260–281. S2CID 197703133. Retrieved 15 October 2019.