Diplomats assembled at Congress of Paris - Painting by Edouard Dubufe
The Congress of Paris is the name for a series of diplomatic meetings held in 1856 in Paris, France, to negotiate peace between the warring powers in the Crimean War that had started almost three years earlier.[1]
The Congress was attended by diplomatic representatives from the nations of France, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, as well as from the Ottoman Empire and Piedmont-Sardinia and was presided by the French Prime-Minister Alexandre Colonna-Walewski. The agreement resulted in continued recognition of the Ottoman Empire and the return to pre-war territorial borders for Russia and the Empire.
Background
The Crimean War was fought mainly on the Crimean Peninsula by Russia on one side and Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Piedmont-Sardinia on the other side for two main official reasons.
One reason often communicated was the Russians' demand for both better treatment of and their right to protect the Ottoman Empire's Orthodox subjects.[2] That would be promised by the sultan at the Congress of Paris.
Another reason was a dispute between the Russians and the French about the privileges of the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches in Palestine.[2]
The reasons and interests playing a role in the background can be read from the following agreements negotiated in the peace treaty: the Black Sea became neutral, meaning its waters were closed to all warships and the building of fortresses was forbidden, the Danube was opened to the shipping of all nations.
Also important appeared to be a multilateral agreement on some basic legal principles of maritime warfare, resulting in the separate Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, that was acceded by altogether 55 nations.
Backed by Britain and France, the sultan declared war against Russia on 4 October 1853.[2] On 28 March 1854, both of the other powers declared war against Russia. On 26 January 1855, Piedmont-Sardinia also entered the war by sending 10,000 troops to aid Britain and France against Russia.[2]
Throughout the war, the Russian Army's main concern was to make sure that the Austrian Empire stayed out of the war. Its threats to enter the war did put an end to military actions on the side of Russia.
Congress
Épinal print of the sovereigns of Europe during the Congress of Paris, 1856
France, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia and the Ottoman Chaliphate were at that time considered as the great powers in Europe, they were all represented at the congress as was Piedmont-Sardinia as warring party.[1][3] They assembled soon after 1 February 1856, when Russia accepted the first set of peace terms after Austria threatened to enter the war. It is also notable that the meeting took place in Paris, after the 1855 Exposition Universelle[2]
The Congress of Paris worked out the final terms from 25 February to 30 March 1856, the Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856 with Russia on one side and France, Great Britain, Turkey and Piedmont-Sardinia on the other.[1] at the Quai d'Orsay.[4]
One of the representatives who attended the Congress of Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire was Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha, who was the Ottoman Empire's grand vizier.[4] Russia was represented by Prince Orlov and Baron Brunnov. Britain sent Lord Cowley, its ambassador to France.
The Congress of Vienna (1814) with over 200 nations participating, spread questions and issues for different committees to resolve. The Congress of Paris could resolved everything in a relatively short period of time.[5]
A significant diplomatic victory was scored by Piedmont-Sardinia although it was not considered a European great power by being granted a seat by French Emperor Napoleon III, mostly for having sent an expeditionary corps of 18,000 men to fight against Russia, but also possibly because of the influence of the attractive minded Countess of Castiglione, who had caught Napoleon's attention. Foreign minister Camillo Benso di Cavour seized the opportunity to denounce Austrian political and military interference in the Italian Peninsula, which he said was stifling the wish of Italians to choose their government.
Multilateral agreement restoring peace
Picture of the territory affected by the Congress. In light green, to the left, is the area of the Danubian Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia). In light green is the border of southern Bessarabia, which was transferred from Russia to Moldavia between the Danube River and Moldavia.
The Congress resulted in a pledge by all powers to jointly maintain "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire", thus guaranteeing its independence.[1]
Also, Russia gave up the left bank of the mouth of the Danube River, including part of Bessarabia,[3] to Moldavia, as well as its claim to the special protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Moldavia and Wallachia, which together would become Romania in 1858, along with Serbia, were recognized as quasi-independent self-governing principalities under protection of the other European powers. The Ottoman sultan agreed, in return, to help to improve the status of the Christian subjects in his empire.[3]
The territories of Russia and the Ottoman Empire were restored to their prewar boundaries.[3] The Black Sea was neutralized and so that no warships were allowed to enter, but it was open to all other nations.[3] It also opened the Danube River for shipping from all nations.[1]
Multilateral agreement on naval warfare, open for accession
After signing the peace treaty, on a proposal of the French Prime-Minister, the plenipotentiaries assembled in the conference also agreed on a declaration respecting maritime law during wartime. This was mainly the outcome of a modus vivendi signed between France and Britain at the dawn of the Crimean War in 1854. Both large naval powers had different opinions on certain issues in maritime warfare and being allies for the first time, they had to find a common line. They agreed they would not seize enemy goods on neutral vessels nor neutral goods on enemy vessels and they would not issue letters of marque. The Declaration all warring parties agreed upon at the Congress of Paris regulated four issues:
Privateering is and remains abolished;
The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war;
Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag;
Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective-that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient enough to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.[6]
As an important juridical novelty in international law the treaty for the first time in history created the possibility for nations that were not involved in the establishment of the agreement and did not sign, to become a party by acceding the declaration afterwards.[7] Within a short period after signing, 55 states, royal houses and free cities ratified the Declaration, which meant a big step in the globalisation of international (maritime) law.
Aftermath
Turkish historians still express dissatisfaction: "Although [the] Ottoman Empire was on the side of victors, the Porte also lost the right to have a navy in the Black Sea together with Russia. Put differently, the Empire had become a part of the European Concert, but not an actor in the European balance of power. Thus it was not recognized as a great power that could claim compensation in case of territorial gain by another member of the system".[8]
The conditions of the Paris Congress collapsed after the defeat of France in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. After the surrender of the fortress of Metz, when France lost hope of winning the war, Russia announced its refusal to comply with the terms of the treaty. Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov denounced the treaty's Black Sea clauses on 31 October 1870, which was documented by the Treaty of London (1871).
Treaty of Paris may refer to one of many treaties signed in Paris, France:
The Crimean War was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between the Russian Empire and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom, and Sardinia-Piedmont.
Pax Britannica was the period of relative peace between the great powers. During this time, the British Empire became the global hegemonic power, developed additional informal empire, and adopted the role of a "global policeman".
Alexandre Florian Joseph, Count Colonna-Walewski, was a Polish and French politician and diplomat, the unacknowledged son of French emperor Napoleon I.
The Treaty of Paris of 1856 brought an end to the Crimean War between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The Concert of Europe was a general agreement among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War (1853–1856) represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.
The Treaty of Berlin was signed on 13 July 1878. In the aftermath of the Russian victory against the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the major powers restructured the map of the Balkan region. They reversed some of the extreme gains claimed by Russia in the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano, but the Ottomans lost their major holdings in Europe. It was one of three major peace agreements in the period after the 1815 Congress of Vienna. It was the final act of the Congress of Berlin and included Great Britain and Ireland, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck was the chairman and dominant personality.
The Treaty of Sèvres was a 1920 treaty signed between the Allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire. The treaty ceded large parts of Ottoman territory to France, the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, as well as creating large occupation zones within the Ottoman Empire. It was one of a series of treaties that the Central Powers signed with the Allied Powers after their defeat in World War I. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros.
The 1878 Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano was a treaty between the Russian and Ottoman empires at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. It was signed at San Stefano, then a village west of Constantinople, on 3 March [O.S. 19 February] 1878 by Count Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev and Aleksandr Nelidov on behalf of the Russian Empire and by Foreign Minister Saffet Pasha and Ambassador to Germany Sadullah Bey on behalf of the Ottoman Empire.
The Paris Declaration respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was an international multilateral treaty agreed to by the warring parties in the Crimean War gathered at the Congress at Paris after the peace treaty of Paris had been signed in March 1856. As an important juridical novelty in international law the treaty for the first time created the possibility for nations that were not involved in the establishment of the agreement and did not sign, to become a party by acceding the declaration afterwards. So did altogether 55 nations, which otherwise would have been impossible in such a short period. This represented a large step in the globalisation of international law.
In diplomatic history, the Eastern question was the issue of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries and the subsequent strategic competition and political considerations of the European great powers in light of this. Characterized as the "sick man of Europe", the relative weakening of the empire's military strength in the second half of the eighteenth century threatened to undermine the fragile balance of power system largely shaped by the Concert of Europe. The Eastern question encompassed myriad interrelated elements: Ottoman military defeats, Ottoman institutional insolvency, the ongoing Ottoman political and economic modernization programme, the rise of ethno-religious nationalism in its provinces, and Great Power rivalries. In an attempt to triangulate between these various concerns, the historian Leslie Rogne Schumacher has proposed the following definition of the Eastern Question:
The "Eastern Question" refers to the events and the complex set of dynamics related to Europe's experience of and stake in the decline in political, military and economic power and regional significance of the Ottoman Empire from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the formation of modern Turkey in 1923.
A pacific blockade is a blockade exercised by a great power for the purpose of bringing pressure to bear on a weaker state without actual war. It can be employed only as a measure of coercion by maritime powers able to bring into action such vastly superior forces to those the resisting state can dispose of that resistance is out of the question. The term was created by Laurent-Basile Hautefeuille, a French writer on international maritime law.
The Danubian Principalities was a conventional name given to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which emerged in the early 14th century. The term was coined in the Habsburg monarchy after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) in order to designate an area on the lower Danube with a common geopolitical situation. The term was largely used then by foreign political circles and public opinion until the union of the two principalities in 1859. Alongside Transylvania, the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia became the basis for the Kingdom of Romania, and by extension the modern nation-state of Romania.
In admiralty law prizes are equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and its cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, it would be made the subject of a prize case: an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece being the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798–1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers in the World War I, and was defeated. During the war, the British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism, and the Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s.
The territorial evolution of the Ottoman Empire spans seven centuries.
The United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, commonly called United Principalities or Wallachia and Moldavia, was the personal union of the Principality of Moldavia and the Principality of Wallachia. The union was formed 5 February [O.S. 24 January] 1859 when Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected as the Domnitor of both principalities. Their separate autonomous vassalage in the Ottoman Empire continued with the unification of both principalities. On 3 February [O.S. 22 January] 1862, Moldavia and Wallachia formally united to create the Romanian United Principalities, the core of the Romanian nation state.
The Danube River has been a trade waterway for centuries, but with the rise of international borders and the jealousies of national states, commerce and shipping has often been hampered for reasons of conflict and parochialism rather than cooperation between various powers in control of parts of the river. In addition, natural features of the river, most notably the sanding of the delta, has often hampered international trade. For these reasons, diplomats over the decades have worked to internationalize the Danube River in an attempt to allow commerce to flow as smoothly as possible.
The Commissions of the Danube River were authorized by the Treaty of Paris (1856) after the close of the Crimean War. One of these international commissions, the most successful, was the European Commission of the Danube, or, in French, Commission Européenne du Danube, the CED, which had authority over the three mouths of the river — the Chilia in the north, the Sulina in the middle, and the St. George in the south and which was originally designed to last for only two years. Instead, it lasted eighty-two years. A separate commission, the International Danube Commission, or IDC, was authorized to control commerce and improvements upriver beyond the Danube Delta and was supposed to be permanent, but it was not formally organized until after 1918.
This article covers worldwide diplomacy and, more generally, the international relations of the great powers from 1814 to 1919. This era covers the period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), to the end of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920).
References
R.R. Palmer, Joel Colton, Lloyd Kramer (2002). A History of the Modern World since 1815. McGraw Hill. ISBN0-07-250280-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
1 2 3 4 5 "Paris, Treaty of (1856)". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Volume 9. 15th ed. pp. 153-154. 2007.
↑ Candan Badem, The Ottoman Crimean War (1853-1856). Leiden-Boston.1970.p.403
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