The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay
George Eversley
Lord Eversley
The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay
PREFACE
The favour with which, two years ago, my book on The Partitions of Poland was received by the public has induced me to devote the interval to a study of the history of another State which, in modern times, has almost disappeared from the map of Europe – namely Turkey.
The subject is one in which I have for many years past taken great interest. In the course of a long life, I have witnessed the greater part of the events which have resulted in the loss to that State of all its Christian provinces in Europe and all its Moslem provinces in Africa, leaving to it only its capital and a small part of Thrace in Europe, and its still wide possessions in Asia.
So long ago, also, as in 1855 and 1857, I spent some time at Constantinople and travelled in Bulgaria and Greece, and was able to appreciate the effects of Turkish rule. As a result, I gave a full support, in 1876, to Mr. Gladstone in his efforts to secure the independence of Bulgaria, and in 1879 was an active member of a committee, presided over by Lord Rosebery, which had for its object the extension of the kingdom of Greece so as to include the provinces inhabited by Greeks still suffering under Turkish rule.
In 1887 and 1890 I again visited the East and travelled over the same ground as thirty years earlier, and was able to observe the immense improvements which had been effected in the provinces that had gained independence, and how little change had taken place at Constantinople.
In view of these experiences and of the further great changes portended in Turkey after the conclusion of the present great war, I have thought it may be of use to tell, in a compact and popular form, the story of the growth and decay of the Turkish Empire.
History may well be told at many different lengths and from different points of view. That of the Ottoman Empire, from the accession of Othman in 1288 to the treaty of Kainardji in 1774, which secured to Russia a virtual protectorate in favour of the Christian subjects of Turkey, has been told at its greatest length by the German professor, Von Hammer, in eighteen volumes. He is the only historian who has explored for this long period both Greek and Turkish annals.
The British historian, Knolles, writing in 1610, told the story of the growth of the Turkish Empire in two bulky folio volumes, much admired by two such different authorities as Dr. Johnson and Lord Byron. The work is based on a few only of the Greek annals. It is very discursive and imperfect, but it contains many most terse and striking passages. Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, and Sir Edwin Pears, in his most interesting book on the Destruction of the Greek Empire, have also relied on Greek authorities up to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, before which date there were no Turkish historians. Very recently, in 1916, Mr. Herbert Gibbons, of the Princeton University, published a very valuable work on the foundations of the Ottoman Empire, dealing with its first four great Sultans. He has again examined with very great care the numerous and conflicting early Greek authorities, and has thrown much new light on the subject.
Other historians of Turkey, writing in English and French, such as Creasy, Lane Poole, La Jonquière, and Halil Ganem (a Young Turk), have drawn their facts mainly from Von Hammer’s great work. Their books are all of interest and value. But these writers, and especially Sir Edward Creasy, in his otherwise admirable History of the Ottoman Empire, written at the time of the Crimean War, to which I have been much indebted, took what would now be considered too favourable a view of Turkish rule in modern times, and were over sanguine, as events have shown, as to the maintenance and regeneration of the Empire. I have followed their example in basing my narrative mainly on Von Hammer’s work, correcting it in some important respects from the other sources I have named, compressing it into much smaller c