SIR STRATFORD CANNING

 

Holdwater: I didn't do my research on Stratford Canning, and I should know better than to take the word of the sensationalistic book where the following is from... "The Sultans" (USA, 1973) by Noel Barber, a writer who would be close to the hearts of Greeks and Armenians, regarding the bias that looms in his work. However, my senses told me these passages are probably not too exaggerated, so for the time being, I wanted to pay tribute to a man who apparently was a real friend of the Turks. (What is described are some steps leading to the Crimean War in the early 1850s... which fellow Englishman Eversley blamed on one man: Stratford Canning.)

Sir Stratford Canning

It was now that Stratford Canning, the life-long friend of Turkey, returned to the scene. After being ambassador to Constantinople, Canning had retired to England only a year previously, where he had been rewarded with a peerage. Now Britain sent him back — as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe — and as the threat of war loomed he was told to use Britain’s influence to neutralise the alarming position that was developing; for the danger was that Nicholas had now gone too far to withdraw — if he wanted to withdraw.

Stratford was a curious man. An old Etonian, he had spent most of his working life in Turkey and he had exercised enormous influence over Abdul Mejid. Eversley, who regarded him as the most distinguished diplomat ever employed by the British Government, also felt that he was one of those men who ‘took much responsibility upon themselves, and dictated rather than followed the policy of their Governments.’ He was tall, dignified and impeccably honest. The Turks trusted him implicitly, and they were highly impressed with his steadfast refusal to deal with any Turkish statesman ‘whose hands were known to be stained with blood.’ He loved Turkey; and he loved England. His two missions in life were simple: to compel Turkey to reform, and to serve his country. Tragically, in both of these he failed; perhaps because of a third obsession: that he felt it his duty, as Eversley put it, ‘to oppose the schemes of Russia at every turn.’ It was a bigoted hatred, stemming from a snub when the Czar Nicholas refused in 1833 to receive him as ambassador to his court. His bigotry had not much mattered in the past, though it had embarrassed his government more than once, but at least Stratford had given Britain a powerful voice in the Turkish court. The Turks worshipped him, christening him ‘The Great Elchis,’ the Great Ambassador.

As the threat of war grew nearer, it became clear that the sanctimonious Russian excuses of ‘saving the Christians’ masked the Czar’s main reason for going to war. This might be a ‘Holy War’ in the censored Russian newspapers but it was, in fact, a war for Constantinople, and Britain could not afford to let the Ottoman capital fall into Russian hands, since this would cut her lifeline to India. The political reasons in England were disguised too. A generation had passed since the Napoleonic wars, and a war spirit was aroused in which the hatred of the French had been replaced —in the minds of the adventurous who knew nothing of war — by a fear of the Russian Czar.

Austria and France were equally afraid of Russia. France saw a danger of her superiority in the Mediterranean vanishing if the Russians took Constantinople. Austria feared a land attack if the Russians became all-powerful. Therefore, Europe made one last desperate bid for peace. All the European powers except Russia met in Vienna and produced a formula for settling the religious differences between Russia and Turkey. It was reasonable, and gave Nicholas a chance to back down without losing face. Delightedly, he agreed to the terms. The European powers commended the agreement to the Turks, and Britain instructed its ambassador ‘to use all his efforts to obtain its consent’. Stratford’s influence over the Sultan was so powerful that Britain knew he could persuade Abdul Mejid to agree. But could Stratford be trusted? Lord Aberdeen, the British Prime Minister, had such doubts that he sent a note to the Foreign Ministry warning that ‘I have prepared the Queen for the possibility of Stratford’s resignation.’ Lord Clarendon, by then Foreign Minister, complained bluntly that ‘it is a misfortune that the government cannot feel sure of Stratford acting with us for a peaceful solution.’ But there was an insuperable problem to recalling him. ‘We have no one fit to take his place.’

Their worst fears were soon confirmed. Stratford, with his almost paranoiac hatred of Russia and his belief that the Turks were being humiliated, was unable to face up to his duty. Officially, he performed his task of asking the Turks to agree; but the Turks knew their man, and the very manner in which he spoke the words left no doubt in their minds that he disagreed with his government. Flatly the Turks rejected the Vienna proposals, and so, as Eversley summed up, ‘He was undoubtedly the main cause of the war which soon ensued between Great Britain and Russia.’

To the rapturous Turks Stratford was still the Great Elchis, for though he was largely responsible for the deaths of thousands of his fellow countrymen he pushed the Turks into a war in which they played only a minor role but which, thanks to Britain and France, gave the tottering Empire a respite of twenty years.