Written between 23 and 28 March 1853.

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 3740, 12 April 1853, leading article]

We are astonished that in the present discussion of the Eastern question the English newspapers have not more sharply stressed the vital interests that ought to make Great Britain the implacable and unyielding opponent of Russia’s annexationist and expansionist ambitions. England cannot afford to allow Russia to become the master of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Both commercially and politically such an event would deal a severe, if not a fatal, blow to British power. We need only glance at Britain’s trade relations with Turkey.

Before the discovery of the direct sea route to India, Constantinople was the market for an extensive trade. And even today the Turkish ports mediate a very significant and rapidly growing traffic between Europe and the interior of Asia, even though Indian products reach Europe by the land route through Persia, Turan and Turkey. To grasp this, it is enough to glance at the map. From the Black Forest to the sandy heights of Veliky Novgorod, the whole inland area is traversed by rivers that flow into the Black Sea or the Caspian. The Danube and the Volga, those two giant streams of Europe, the Dniester, the Dnieper and the Don, all form natural canals for the transport of inland products to the Black Sea; and the Caspian can be reached only via the Black Sea. Two-thirds of Europe—that is, part of Germany and Poland, all of Hungary, the most fertile parts of Russia, and in addition European Turkey—are thus by their very nature dependent, for their export and their exchange of products, on the Euxine <the Black Sea>, all the more so as agriculture predominates in all these countries and the great mass of their products will always point them to the waterway as the principal means of transport. Hungarian, Polish and South Russian grain, wool and hides from the same countries appear in annually increasing quantities on our Western markets, and are all shipped at Galatz, Odessa, Taganrog and other ports of the Black Sea. Another important branch of trade is also pursued there. Constantinople, and especially Trebizond in Asiatic Turkey, are the main markets for the caravan trade with Inner Asia, with the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, with Persia and Turkestan. This trade, too, is rapidly increasing. Greek and Armenian merchants from these two cities import large quantities of English manufactured goods, whose low price is rapidly displacing domestic industry in the harems of Asia. Trebizond, by its location, is better suited than any other point for this trade. In its hinterland it has the Armenian heights, which are far more practicable than the Syrian desert, and it lies within convenient proximity of Baghdad, Shiraz and Tehran; the latter place serves as an intermediate market for the caravans from Khiva and Bukhara. The great importance that this trade and the trade of the Black Sea in general are acquiring can be seen at the Manchester Exchange, where dark-complexioned Greek buyers are increasing in number and influence, and Greek and South Slavonic languages are frequently heard alongside German and English.

The trade of Trebizond is also becoming a serious political problem, because it is causing the interests of Russia and England in Inner Asia to come into conflict with each other anew. Until 1840 the Russians had an almost exclusive monopoly on the trade in foreign manufactured goods in that region. Russian goods had penetrated as far as the Indus and were even occasionally preferred to English ones. It can be confidently asserted that until the Afghan war and the conquest of Sind and the Punjab, British trade with Inner Asia was practically nil. Now the situation is different. The inescapable necessity for the ceaseless expansion of trade—that fatum which haunts modern England like a spectre and which, if it is not satisfied at once, calls forth those terrible convulsions that are felt from New York to Canton and from St. Petersburg to Sydney—this inexorable necessity compels English trade to attack Inner Asia from two sides at once: from the Indus and from the Black Sea. And although we know very little of Russia’s exports to this part of the world, we may safely infer from the increase of English exports into those regions that Russian trade there must have markedly declined. The commercial battlefield between Russia and England has been shifted from the Indus to Trebizond, and the Russian trade, which formerly ventured as far as the frontiers of the British Empire in the Orient, is now confined to the defence of the outermost edge of its own customs frontier. The significance of this fact is obvious in view of any future solution of the Eastern question, and of the role that England and Russia will play in it. They are today, and must remain for all the future, opponents in the East.

Let us now examine this Black Sea trade somewhat more closely. According to the London _Economist_, English exports to the Turkish dominions, including Egypt and the Danubian Principalities, were:

1840 .................... £1,440,592

1842 .................... £2,068,842

1844 .................... £3,271,333

1846 .................... £2,707,571

1848 .................... £3,626,241

1850 .................... £3,762,480

1851 .................... £3,548,595

Of these amounts, at least two-thirds must have gone to the ports of the Black Sea, including Constantinople. And this whole, rapidly growing trade depends on the confidence that may be reposed in the power which governs the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, the keys to the Black Sea. Whoever holds these in his hands can, at will, open or close the access to this remotest corner of the Mediterranean. Who will entertain the expectation that Russia, once in possession of Constantinople, will keep open the door through which England has penetrated into the domain of Russian trade?

So much for the commercial importance of Turkey and especially of the Dardanelles. It is clear that not only an extensive trade but also the main traffic between Europe and Inner Asia, and consequently the principal possibility of reopening this vast territory to civilisation, depends on the unimpeded freedom to trade through these gates of the Black Sea.

Now let us consider the matter from the military point of view. The commercial significance of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus makes them at the same time military positions of the first rank, i.e. positions of decisive influence in any war. Such points are Gibraltar and also Elsinore on the Sound. But the Dardanelles are even more important on account of their geographical situation. The guns of Gibraltar and Elsinore cannot command the entire strait on which they lie, and need the assistance of a fleet to close it; the strait of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, on the other hand, is so narrow that a few properly sited and well-armed fortifications—such as Russia, once in possession of this passage, would erect without a moment’s hesitation—could defy the combined fleets of the whole world should they attempt to force their way in. Then the Black Sea would be nothing but a Russian lake, more so even than Lake Ladoga, which lies in the heart of Russia. The resistance of the Caucasians could be broken at once by starvation; Trebizond would become a Russian port, the Danube a Russian river. Likewise, after the seizure of Constantinople, the Turkish Empire would be cut in two: Asiatic and European Turkey would have no means of communicating with or supporting each other, and the main force of the Turkish army, once forced back into Asia, would be condemned to complete inaction. Macedonia, Thessaly, Albania, once outflanked and cut off from the main army, would not even give the conqueror the trouble of having to be subjugated, for nothing would remain for them but to beg for mercy and to ask for an army to maintain internal order.

But can it be supposed that this colossally grown and extended great power will stop halfway, when it is already on the path to becoming a world empire? Even if it wanted to, circumstances would not allow it. By the annexation of Greece and Turkey, it gains excellent seaports, and the Greeks supply it with skilful sailors for its war fleet. With the acquisition of Constantinople it stands on the threshold of the Mediterranean; with the possession of Durazzo and the Albanian coast from Antivari to Arta, it is directly in the centre of the Adriatic, within sight of the British Ionian Islands and thirty-six hours’ steaming from Malta. And since Russia will then encircle the Austrian possessions from the north, east and south, it will be able to count the Habsburgs among its vassals. Something else would be possible, indeed even probable. The torn and winding western frontier of the empire, which does not coincide with any natural frontier line, would require rectification, and it would turn out that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Danzig or perhaps Stettin to Trieste. And as surely as one conquest follows another and one annexation entails the next, so surely would the conquest of Turkey by Russia be merely the prelude to the annexation of Hungary, Prussia, Galicia, and to the final realisation of that Slavonic empire of which some fanatical Panslavist philosophers have dreamed.

Russia is decidedly a conquering nation, and was so for a whole century, until the great movement of 1789 created a formidable antagonist, full of mighty vigour. We mean the European Revolution, the explosive force of democratic ideas, and the innate urge for freedom in man. Since that epoch there have in fact been only two powers on the European continent: Russia with its absolutism on the one side, the Revolution with democracy on the other. For the moment the Revolution seems to be suppressed, but it lives, and is as much dreaded as ever. This is attested by the terror of the reaction at the news of the latest rising in Milan. If, however, Russia gets possession of Turkey, its strength will be nearly doubled, and it will gain a preponderance over all the rest of Europe put together. Such an event would be an indescribable calamity for the revolutionary cause. The maintenance of Turkish independence, or, in the event of a possible dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the foiling of Russian plans of annexation, are matters of the highest importance. In this the interests of revolutionary democracy and those of England coincide; neither can permit the Tsar to make Constantinople one of his capitals, and if the worst comes to the worst we shall see that both will offer him equally vigorous resistance.