English Diplomats In Istanbul example essay topic

One of the few Christian leaders who sent diplomats to Istanbul to open up trade was Protestant English Queen, Elisabeth I (1558-1603). She did this at the same time as she was supporting the likes of Sir Francis Drake in his trade voyages to America and elsewhere. It was not until 1650 after the civil war in England that the English, then with a formidable navy, re-entered the Mediterranean and turned it from an Ottoman lake to an English lake. The English attacked, conquered and set up strategic bases in Tangiers (1662 under Charles 2nd), Gibraltar (1704 under Queen Anne and at the time of the Duke of Marlborough conquests in France), together with Sardinia (1708) and Minorca (1708).

Notwithstanding these fortresses, Napoleon invaded Egypt to open up the old trade routes to the east via the Red Sea. Indeed it was Napoleon who was the first from Christian Europe to enter and occupy any of the Islamic Ottoman territories for 500 years. When the English heard about this audacious invasion of what they thought was their private route to their eastern Empire, they were quick to react and sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, found the French fleet attacked and destroyed it. Napoleon was well inland away from his fleet at the time.

Napoleon was finally beaten by the English at the Battle of Waterloo (in Belgium) in 1815. This was a watershed for the English influence amongst the Ottomans as up to this point the French diplomats in Istanbul had always had their own agenda but after 1815 the English were seen by the Ottomans to be the best ally and the French very often came in to endorse the English ideas. About this time many parts of Europe were subjected to undercurrents for recreating or even creating (new) national boundaries. This applied to the Ottoman Empire as much as it did to the Austro-Hungarian, the Swedish or even the British.

The Irish tried to leave the British Empire (not achieved for almost 100 years) and the Jews tried to set up a new state in Ottoman Palestine, (not achieved for almost 100 years). The Norwegians wanted independence from Sweden (achieved 1905). The countries of Italy (1870) and Germany (1871) were created from independent city states ruled or influenced from abroad. The English supported the Greeks who fought for 8 years for independence from the Ottoman Empire, achieved in 1830.

At a similar time a naval alliance between England, France and Russia fought together to annihilate the Turkish fleet (1827) The Crimea is a peninsular jutting out into the Black Sea from southern Ukraine / Russia. At the height of their empire the Ottoman Turks occupied much of this area. At this time the land was in Russian hands which did not please the Ottomans. What was worse was the simmering wish by the Russians, who were effectively custodians of the Eastern / Greek Orthodox Christian Church, to "liberate" the Eastern Christian areas of Serbia and Moldova with a final goal of Istanbul / Constantinople itself. The English diplomats in Istanbul drafted many a letter on behalf of the Sultan in an attempt to avoid a war but to no avail. When the Russians sent an army into Serbia, Turkey declared war on Russia.

The last thing the English wanted was a Russian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean which if Istanbul was taken, the Russians would achieve. So the English persuaded the now like minded French, to join forces against the Russians in a combined English / French/ Turkish offensive. The Crimean War began. Many events from this war are still talked about in England mainly because of the huge losses (200,000) on both sides. Very little territory changed hands and after three years of fighting both sides called a truce largely due to sickness. The Russians were kept out of the Mediterranean and Istanbul remained part of the Ottoman Empire.

This war was the catalyst to the "liberation" of the Balkan states from some 500 years of Ottoman rule. The English regrouped with France and Russia to form a persuasive unified front to peacefully force the Ottomans to give up, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro (1878). Previously in 1881 the Ottomans had been persuaded to give (back) Thessaly to Greece (Thessaly included the town of Thessalonica and the land east almost to Istanbul.) Bulgaria was the last Balkan state to break away from the Ottomans which they achieved with persuasive talk from the Russians.