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“Est-Ce Au Medecin Ou a L'heritier?”: the Crescendo and Decrescendo of Tsar Nikolai I's Management of Ottoman Decline, 1825

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“Est-Ce Au Medecin Ou a L'heritier?”: the Crescendo and Decrescendo of Tsar Nikolai I's Management of Ottoman Decline, 1825 “EST-CE AU MEDECIN OU A L'HERITIER?”: THE CRESCENDO AND DECRESCENDO OF TSAR NIKOLAI I'S MANAGEMENT OF OTTOMAN DECLINE, 1825-53 A Master's Thesis by Richard Ruoff Department of History İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University Ankara December 2020 ABSTRACT “Est-ce au medecin ou a l'heritier?”: The Crescendo and Decrescendo of Tsar Nikolai I's Management of Ottoman Decline, 1825-53 Ruoff, Richard M.A., Department of History Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Evgeniy Radushev December 2020 This thesis provides a history of Tsar Nikolai I's foreign policy toward the Ottoman Empire, in particular regards to his attempt to both protect and dominate the Empire in its decline and to manage what he viewed as its imminent and inevitable fall. While the Tsar adeptly carried out this policy throughout most of his reign, he committed a number of critical diplomatic blunders in the 1850's climaxing in Russia's defeat in the Crimean War. In this thesis I investigate his increasingly aggressive policy toward the Ottomans and the causes of his ultimate failure to maintain Russia's dominance through diplomatic means, as well as catalog the evolution of Nikolai's strategy to manage the Ottomans' collapse. I conclude that the Tsar's personal ideology and prideful inflexibility proved to be the cause of Russia's diplomatic failure and isolation, ultimately resulting in their defeat in the Crimean War and that Nikolai's diplomatic failures correlate with his increasingly aggressive plotting to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. Key Words: Crimean War, Eastern Question, Holy Places Dispute, Nicholas I, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire, Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi, Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca ii ÖZET Est-ce au medecin ou a l'heritier?”: Çar I. Nikolay’ın Osmanlının Gerilemesini İdare Etmede- ki İnişleri ve Çıkışları, 1825-53 Ruoff, Richard Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Tarih Bölümü Danışmanı: Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Evgeniy Radushev Aralık 2020 Bu tez çalışması Çar I. Nikolay’ın hem İmparatorluğa hakim olmak hem de İmparator- luğu korumak adına yaptığı girişim ile olmasını yakın ve kaçınılmaz olarak tasvir ettiği çöküşü idare etmesine istinaden Osmanlı İmparatorluğuna karşı uyguladığı dış politikanın tarihini sun- maktadır. Çar bu politikayı hükümranlığının büyük bir bölümünde beceriyle icra etse de 1850’lerde Rusya’nın Kırım Savaşı yenilgisiyle ciddi seviyelere ulaşan birkaç diplomatik hataya düşmüştür. Bu tez çalışmasında Osmanlıların çöküşünü idare etme hususunda Nikolay’ın strate- jisinin gelişimini listelemenin yanı sıra Osmanlılara karşı gittikçe agresifleşerek güttüğü poli- tikayı ve diplomatik yollarla Rus hakimiyetini devam ettirme konusundaki nihai başarısızlığının nedenlerini araştırıyorum. Ulaştığım sonuçlar Çar’ın şahsi ideolojisi ve gururlu eğilmez duruşu- nun en sonunda Kırım Savaşında yenilgiyle yüzleşen Rusya’nın diplomatik başarısızlığının ve yalnızlaşmasının nedenini oluşturması ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğunu parçalamaya yönelik git- tikçe agresifleşen tasavvurlarının Nikolay’ın diplomatik başarısızlığıyla ilişkili olmasıdır. Anahtar Sözcükler: I. Nikolay, Kırım Savaşı, Kutsal Mekanlar İhtilafı, Küçük Kaynarca Antlaş- ması, Hünkâr İskelesi Antlaşması, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Rus İmparatorluğu, Şark Meselesi iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................ii ÖZET.............................................................................................................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................................iv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION........................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: SOURCES....................................................................................................4 CHAPTER THREE: 1721-1833.................................................................................................6 3.1 The Black Sea, The Turkish Straits and Russia's Quest for a Warm Water Port......6 3.2 Russo-Ottoman Relations in the Reigns of Pavel and Alexander............................ 11 3.3 Tsar-Father: The Creation and Evolution of an Absolute Monarch.........................17 3.4 The Treaty of Adrianople.........................................................................................28 3.5 The Kochubey Conference.......................................................................................38 3.6 The First Oriental Crisis...........................................................................................42 3.7 “One of the Most Misunderstood Documents in Middle Eastern History”.............53 3.8 Münchengratz: Nikolai's Lost Opportunity?............................................................59 CHAPTER FOUR: 1833-1844....................................................................................................65 4.1 A Lull in Conflict: The Uneasy Peace with Egypt and Great Britain.......................65 4.2 The Second Oriental Crisis.......................................................................................68 4.3 The Convention of London......................................................................................72 4.4 “Russian Skill and Turkish Imbecility”...................................................................76 4.5 Ten Years After Münchengratz.................................................................................80 4.6 The Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1844...................................................................83 iv CHAPTER FIVE: 1848-1853......................................................................................................89 5.1 Cracks at the Seams: The 1848 Revolutions and the Canning Incident...................89 5.2 The Holy Places Dispute.................. .......................................................................94 5.3 Nikolai's Final Solution............................................................................................98 5.4 The Seymour Conversations..................................................................................101 5.5 The Menshikov Mission.........................................................................................107 5.6 The Vienna Note.....................................................................................................115 5.7 The Fall of Nikolai I...............................................................................................122 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION.............................................................................................127 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................136 v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION There is little debate that Tsar Nikolai I's foreign policy in regards to the Near East was a catastrophic failure, considering that his reign ended with Russia isolated in a hopeless struggle against the United Kingdom, France and the Ottoman Empire, embroiled an unwinnable war Russia never should have had to fight. However, there is more room for discussion as to why Nikolai drove Russia into such an unfortunate position. Nicholas Riasanovsky attributes Nikolai's foreign policy failures to “conviction that the Porte could not survive in the modern world, and that therefore the leading European states had to arrange for a proper redistribution of possessions and power in the Balkans and the Near East in order to avoid anarchy, revolution, and war.”1 By contrast, W. Bruce Lincoln calls Nikolai the relic of past ages: “He did not comprehend the political system within which British diplomats were obliged to work, and he found the institution of Parliament and its political debates incomprehensible.”2 Constantin De Grunwald sees a “Last Crusader”, full of “faith in his mission, and even of Christian piety, which had always thrust him towards dangerous and unselfish actions.”3 Bolsover faults him with an overly strong faith in his “personal charm and diplomatic frankness,” which “cannot in themselves banish hard political realities, and even good intentions cannot excuse blunders in statesmanship and may sometimes pave the road to war.”4 And while Western historians such as LeDonne and Pipes cast Nikolai as an expansionist and warmongerer whose aggression was “not a phase but a constant”, part of the Russian Empire's “expansionist urge that would remain unabated until 1917”, an urge that led Nikolai into a humiliating defeat,5 the Tsar in fact spent the vast majority of his reign as the decaying Ottoman Empire's de facto suzerain publicly committed to its preservation, and for the vast majority of his 1 Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. p. 338 2 W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978, p. 331 3 Constantin de Grunwald, Tsar Nicholas I. Translated by Bridget Patmore. Macmillan, 1955. p. 261 4 G.H. Bolsover,“Nicholas I and the Partition of Turkey.” Slavonic and East European Review 27 (1948), pp.115-45. p.145 5 Matthew Rendall, “Restraint or Self-Restraint of Russia: Nicholas I, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the Vienna System, 1832-1841”. The International History Review, vol. 24, no. 1 (Mar. 2002). pp. 37-63. p. 37. 1 reign adeptly and occasionally even brilliantly managed his relations with the Ottoman Porte and Russia's position in the Balkans
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