Constantinople — the clash of empires
By Jingo the Russians cannot have it — and then they can said Sir Edward Grey. Constantinople had been of supreme cultural and strategic importance since Roman times. It was a prime object of Russian policy to bring it into their empire and a prime object of British policy not to allow it. So it became a bargaining chip in the First World War.
The shame on Christianity
The fall in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks of the Orthodox capital of the world, the new Rome, Constantinople, led among the Russians to the notion that they had been called to make good this shame on Christianity, or, as Nestor Iskander says, ‘to annihilate and obliterate this evil and godless Ottoman faith and to renew and strengthen the whole Orthodox and unstained Christian faith.’
Wil van den Bercken,. Holy Russia and Christian Europe. East and West in the Religious Ideology of Russia
Byzantium will be ours
SOONER or later Byzantium will become ours. That's what I like to declare once more, but from a totally different aspect. Yes, Constantinople should belong to us, not only because this city is a famous harbor, a narrow, a "world centre", "the omphalos of the earth"; not only because today is necessarily recognised by all that Russia, that giant, comes, at last, out of his isolation, where he had been growing and came to touch the ceiling, and now goes ahead to the open air, breathing the free air of the seas and of the oceans. What I want rather is to offer a view, exceptionally important by itself, according to which, Constantinople can not but belong to Russia!
Fyodor Dostoevsky A Writer's Diary, November 1877
By Jingo
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too,
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.
The chorus of a 1878 song by G. H. MacDermott (singer) and George William Hunt (songwriter) commonly sung in pubs and music halls of the Victorian era gave birth to the term "jingoism". The song was written in response to the surrender of Plevna to Russia during the Russo-Turkish War, by which the road to Constantinople was open.
Wikipedia
It has always been British policy to keep Russia out of Constantinople and the Straits... We fought for that object in the Crimean War .. and it was our main policy under Beaconsfield [Disraeli].
Sir Edward Grey Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916
Russia demands
Aide-mémoire from Russian Foreign Minister Sazanoff to British and French ambassadors at Petrograd, 19 February / 4 March 1915
"The course of recent events leads His Majesty Emperor Nicholas to think that the question of Constantinople and of the Straits must be definitely solved, according to the time-honoured aspirations of Russia.
"Every solution will be inadequate and precarious if the city of Constantinople, the western bank of the Bosphorus, of the Sea of Marmara and of the Dardanelles, as well as southern Thrace to the Enez-Midye line, should henceforth not be incorporated into the Russian Empire.
"Similarly, and by strategic necessity, that part of the Asiatic shore that lies between the Bosphorus, the Sakarya River and a point to be determined on the Gulf of Izmit, and the islands of the Sea of Marmara, the Imbros Islands and the Tenedos Islands must be incorporated into the (Russian) Empire
"The special interests of France and Great Britain in the above region will be scrupulously respected."
Britain accepts
British aide-mémoire to the Russian Government, 27 February / 12 March 1915
"Subject to the war being carried on and brought to a successful conclusion, and to desiderata of Great Britain and France in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere being realised, as indicated in the Russian communication herein referred to, His Majesty's Government will agree to the Russian Government's aide-mémoire relative to Constantinople and the Straits, the text of which was communicated to His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador by his Excellency M. Sazonof on February 19 / March 4 instant."
British Memorandum to the Russian Government, 27 February / 12 March 1915
"That document involves a complete reversal of the traditional policy of His Majesty's Government, and is in direct opposition to the opinions and sentiments at one time universally held in England and which have still by no means died out. Sir Edward Grey therefore trusts that the recent general assurances given to M. Sazanof have been most loyally and amply fulfilled. "
A complete secret
The supreme need of encouraging Russia in the midst of her disasters and defeats had led Sir Edward Grey, as early as November 14, 1914, to instruct Sir George Buchanan to inform M Sazanoff that the British Government recognised that 'the question of the Straits and of Constantinople should be settled in conformity with Russian desires.' At the time this had remained a complete secret."
Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol 2 p 198.
