1837–1841 EARLY DIPLOMATIC VENTURES on 20 July 1837, A

1837–1841 EARLY DIPLOMATIC VENTURES On 20 July 1837, a number of deputies in the National Assembly of Wallachia, among whom the elder Brătianu – father to two of this book’s protagonists – rejected what they regarded as an infamous ‘additional article’ of the Russian-sponsored Organic Statutes (1831– 32). The article required the Wallachian assembly to seek Russian and Ottoman authorisation for any change to the Statutes, the country’s earliest modern and highly controversial quasi-constitutional charter.32 One of the rebel deputies, Ion Câmpineanu, an early champion of the unification of the two Principalities and of independence from Turkey, visited Paris and, more unusually for a Romanian in 1839, London, where he worked closely with the Polish émigrés to arouse concern over Russian expansionism in Western chancelleries. He met Lord Palmerston himself, and was given well-meaning reassurances that “the moment is not far when Europe will decide to take measures against Russia’s actions in the East and at that point his memoranda and reports will be given serious consideration.”33 Unfortunately for Câmpineanu’s objectives, his visit to London could not have come at a worse time. 1839 marked a shift in British political attitudes to Rus- sia, from an often vaguely-defined distrust to a more positive, prag- matic cultivation of relations with the Eastern empire in the interests of the European balance of power. Anglo-Russian clashes of interest in Central Asia, especially in Afghanistan, and the Near Eastern crisis provoked by the rebel Pasha of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, had persuaded the Foreign Secretary and the Whig cabinet that the only way to contain Russia and pre-empt the growth of her influence in Constantinople, 32 These documents are also known in the historical literature as the Organic Reg- ulations or as the Règlement Organique. See Ioan C. Filitti, Domniile române sub Regulamentul Organic 1834–1848 (Bucharest, 1915) and Vitcu and Bădărău, eds, Regulamentul Organic al Moldovei (text and introductory study). For the Wallachian protest against the additional article, see Radu R. Florescu, The Struggle against Russia in the Romanian Principalities, 1821–1854 (Iaşí, 1997; 1st edn. 1962, Munich), 184–5 and idem, “R. G. Colquhoun, Ion Câmpineanu and the Pro-Western Opposition in Wallachia, 1834–1840”, Slavonic and East European Review, 41, 97 (1963): 403–19. 33 Ion Ghica, “Ion Câmpineanu”, a speech delivered at the Romanian Academy, 28 March 1880, quoted in Din arhiva lui D. Brătianu, 1: 11. early diplomatic ventures 29 was by co-opting her into international agreements regarding the sta- tus of the Ottoman Empire. This political re-alignment was to result in the Straits Convention signed in London in July 1841. In spite of a great deal of opposition both in Parliament and in the press, and excluding France from the proceedings, Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria agreed by that treaty to safeguard the integrity of the Otto- man Empire against the Pasha’s expansionist ambitions in Syria and, crucially, to have the Straits closed to foreign warships in times of peace. Contrary to most expectations, this strategy of containment was to bear fruit in the following months and usher in a period of Anglo- Russian entente which was to last up to the Crimean War.34 It also illustrated Palmerston’s cornerstone belief that too much liberalism in foreign affairs was not necessarily a good thing and that a great power such as Britain should maintain “an influence both with the free, and the despot.”35 In spite of attacks in the press and extravagant accusations from circles close to the colourful Turcophile diplomat, MP and bête noire of Victorian politics, David Urquhart, that he was a “Russian spy”, in the longer term Palmerston could and did take credit for limiting Rus- sian influence in Constantinople by placing the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ under the joint protection of the five great powers and thus giving European Turkey a new lease of life.36 Unfortunately for the Romanian deputy, in the new circumstances created in 1839–1841, concern for Turkish and Russian policies in the Balkans and South-East Europe was momentarily frozen in Britain. Pro-Turkish, pro-Polish and anti- Russian MPs and politicians such as David Urquhart, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Dudley Stuart, Sir Henry Bulwer Lytton, continued to maintain a low-key, but steady, pressure on the cabinet. However, their efforts were not going to bear visible fruit until the 1850s and in the aftermath of the Crimean War. Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart earned his liberal political credentials in the 1830s by joining forces with the supporters of the Reform Bill and by defending the cause of dismembered Poland and the rights of the Polish refugees in Britain. He was involved in the activities of 34 John Howes Gleason, The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), Ch. 9: “The Near Eastern Crisis, 1839–1841”. 35 E. D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855–1865 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 16. 36 Gleason, The Genesis of Russophobia, 267. .

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