Mathieu Vaugrenard, Imperium of Rust: The Fragility of Empires, (Livres de Figaro: 1972)
…The assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Belgrade radical during the Paris Exposition was the closest call for the Habsburg royals till then. While it was fortunate that the bullet only pieced through his upper right forearm, the resulting damage to the bone and sinew rendered the limb enough to be permanently impaired. While Ferdinand’s right arm did heal over the next six months, he would never regain complete control of it for the rest of his life.
In a way, the attempt on the archduke underscored the rising tensions that were entangling the empires and nation-states of late 19th century Europe. Despite the rising economies and lavish expositions, the politics between the various polities were also becoming more combative and toxic. Upon his trial, the Paris assassin – whose name was Novak Golubović – revealed of his involvement in Serbian nationalist groups and his personal plan to unite every Serb-majority region in the Balkans through violent revolution, exposing once again the consequences of ethnic nationalism and radical ideology to a horrified Europe. While his actions were condemned by every head of state, it also brought fresh air to the perennial conundrum as to the place of ethnic minorities in multinational empires, such as Austria-Hungary.
Perhaps the biggest poster child for this problem was none other than the Ottoman Empire. From the Balkans to North Africa, the question of minorities had become a mindbender for the Porte, with Bulgarian nationalism being the most prominent and irritating. While the empire had retained Rumelia during the Russo-Turkish War [1], the conflict had inadvertently made Bulgarian aspirations to be a
cause celebre amongst several European politicians, along with the idea of liberating ethnic Greeks still living under Kostantiniyyian overlordship. The Levant was even worse, with ethnic separatism amongst both Maronite Christians and the Druze being the most troublesome, as well as the perennial status of holy Jerusalem as European royals performed pilgrimages, consecrated churches, and asked for concessions in the region. For now, stability was ensured through the large indemnity payments by Russia from the 1877 war. But as Russian roubles filled the vaults of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, some voiced whether the funds – or the modernization projects fuelled by them – were enough to keep troubles at bay.
For Imperial Russia, the answer was simple: ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’. Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II [2], his ultra-conservative successor Alexander III tried to stamp out any radical movements that might undermine Romanov rule. Hundreds of socialists, anarchists, and rabble-rousers were locked up by the authorities and deported to Siberia. The authorities, in turn, instituted a policy of ‘Russifying’ the various ethnic and social groups of the empire, re-writing educational materials and tinkering with learning institutions to promote the ideal of a strong, monarchical Russia. In fact, from 1881 to 1904, the only large ethnic grouping that escaped Russification were the Finns. Elsewhere, autocracy was the word from Warsaw to Vladivostok.
And with that, came the expulsions. While the migration of Poles, Ukrainians, and other ethnicities from Imperial Russia increased during this period, none matched the scale of the Jewish peoples and the Muslim Caucasians. Blamed as scapegoats for the 1877 war and the assassination of Alexander II, the new government under his son was overflowing with anti-Semites at the local level, stoking tensions in the Pale of Settlement as well as viewing the Muslim minorities of the Caucasus mountains as Ottoman collaborators. Pogroms and expulsions exploded in occurrence, with settlers and townsfolk looting or taking over lands and businesses owned by their Abrahamic cousins. The passing of the July Laws, which severely restricted Jews in work, travel, and association, added fuel to the fire.
In the Final Fifteen Years, over 2,000,000 Jews and 360,000 Muslim Caucasians [3] of various ethnic groups left the Russian Empire, treading paths that would lead them to Europe, the Levant, the Americas, and beyond…
Emiliana Ardelean, The Great War: An Overview, (Editorial Humanitas: 1981)
…Many historians cite the Horrible Compromise of Tunisia as the beginning of Europe’s slide into industrial war, with the crisis of 1879 arousing deep resentment on many sides over the matter of colonial expansion and international sea routes. [4]
As the fallout from the compromise was made clear, several European nations began ramping up their colonial projects in Africa and Asia, all in the name of securing resources, markets, and international prestige. It also began the quest for several Great Powers to secure naval choke points or stopover ports to secure trade and national interests, as Great Britain’s vehement intercession over the Tunisia Crisis for continued access though the Sicily Strait showed. While it shouldn’t be said that the Ottoman Empire’s use of Alula or Russia and Austria-Hungary’s quest for naval ports in Sundaland [5] were all inspired by the rupture, it is important to note how the Crisis blew fresh air to the issue of acquiring stopover places for global influence.
However, it is undeniable that the resignation of Otto Von Bismarck as German Chancellor on June 11, 1890 also played a key role in unravelling regional – and thus, global – peace. While Bismarck was conservative in playing global politics, the newly-crowned Kaiser Wilhelm II [6] wanted to see the German Empire become an active world power and viewed the chancellor’s careful manipulation of foreign affairs as hindering, as he called it, “Our rightful place in the sun.” After the dismissal of Bismarck, Wilhelm carefully appointed a slew of weak successors to prevent another Iron Chancellor from taking the helm of government, but it also opened the way for the emperor’s bellicose actions to make itself known across the world, resulting in numerous diplomatic mishaps.
Perhaps chief of these was the alliance between France and Russia. Since the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck had used every possible opportunity to prevent any European nation from allying with the Third Republic and form an anti-German alliance. This all unravelled following the Iron Chancellor’s exit, though the seeds of rapprochement were already sown as far back as the mid-1880’s when Parisian bankers gave generous loans to St. Petersburg to fuel the latter empire’s industrial growth. Bismarck’s exit simply removed the final hurdle and both sides formalized military agreements in the spring of 1891, driven in part to counter German influence and maintain the balance of power in the continent.
The front cover of the 1893 edition of the Petit Journal
, commemorating the Franco-Russian alliance.
The Balkans and eastern Mediterranean also became another hotspot for the Great Powers, with the troubles of the Balkans being the most prominent. However, the 1890’s also saw the rise of another state that sought gains at another’s expense: the Kingdom of Italy. Their failed grab at Tunisia saw Italian foreign policy taking a distinctly anti-Ottoman bent as nationalists sought to claim the state as a successor to the Roman Empire; plans for an Italian Tunisia and Libya were shelved but never fully forgotten, and Neopolitan merchants continued to settle and create businesses all over the Mediterranean rim. Some academics have posited that Rome’s colonization of coastal territories in the Horn of Africa were a method of going against Egyptian and Ottoman policy without provoking direct confrontation.
But all this changed during the Cretean Crisis of 1894. Up to this point, the island of Crete had been an autonomous state under the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a system in which Christian Greeks were given prominent status in both governance and military matters. While the arrangement did quell tensions for the short-term, it never truly erase the deep aspiration among nationalists of union with the nearby Kingdom of Greece. However, such dreams often meant butting heads with the island’s minority Muslim Greeks and Turks whom make up around 31% of the population, with communal violence breaking out in 1881, 1888, and 1892 [7]. The fact that several past governor-generals tinkered with both Ottoman and Cretan policy did not help matters.
This all came to a head in 1894 with the arrival of Alexander Karatheodori Pasha, an Ottoman Greek politician whom sought to apply the island’s policies vis-à-vis the government in Kostantiniyye. While nobly intentioned, his tenure as governor-general angered Muslim Greeks whom revolted against his implementation of Cretan law, resulting in the island becoming an inter-communal war zone by the following year. Intent on halting the bloodshed, Sultan Abdul Hamid II revoked the island’s autonomous status and sent troops to quell the violence, only to find the majority Greek population now arrayed against them. With lurid reports circulating on the broadsheets, a decision was made by July for an international force from all the Great Powers to march and stabilize the island.
A contingent of British troops from the international force marching in Crete.
In the aftermath, it was decided for Crete to have its own parliament and be executively led by a member of the Greek royal family, yet still maintain its place as a part of the Ottoman Empire. This enraged the government in Athens, whom sought to include the island as a new part of the Greek nation. A faction of pro-war politicians advocated to take Crete by force, only to be met by a standoff at the Yanya Vilayet and a wall of Ottoman naval cruisers in the Aegean, patrolling the island as a contingency measure against outside Greek meddling. Additionally, both the governments of Great Britain and Austria-Hungary spoke out against the venture, wanting to secure Ottoman integrity in the Balkans.
As a result, Greece began eying for prospective partners. An alliance with Serbia was already in the books since the 1877 war [8], yet countering Ottoman supremacy required an even bigger and diplomatically superior backer. Russia was seriously considered, yet few were eager to stoke the explosive implications just yet. Spain was considered, yet their improper handling of the Cuban and Philippine conflicts became a stumbling block.
Then, Italy was brought up.
It wasn't a welcoming suggestion, especially since there were voices in Rome whom espoused taking the Ionian Islands as, “integral Italian soil”. Nevertheless, the Italian government’s anti-Ottoman stance was well-known and the state’s diplomatic clout was internationally substantial. It also helped that several Italian founding fathers like Garibaldi supported the previous Cretan uprisings and that anti-Greek irredentism was mostly seen as ludicrous. Prospective feelers were sent out in mid-1897, with a tentative non-aggression pact signed the next year. By August 1888, an agreement was hashed out that both Athens and Rome would support the other against Ottoman aggression…
…With all the alliances going on, it is perhaps understandable why so many historians overlook the personal relations of the imperial monarchs themselves, and especially those of Wilhelm II and the Austrian Habsburgs. While the Kaiser may have seen his Germany as a new Great Power, his unpredictable and bellicose statements against the Balkan Slavs saw the creation of a diplomatic rift with his Austrian counterparts. Both crown prince Rudolf [9] and archduke Ferdinand saw Wilhelm’s words as aggravating ethnic tensions within the empire, and even Emperor Franz Joseph admitted in his journals that the German emperor, “…[has] verbal barbs that do more than anything to drive the Serbians for Russia”.
There was also the fact that favouring a stable Balkan Peninsula also meant drifting closer to the foreign policy of Great Britain, which was what happened to both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian governments during the ‘90s. But Wilhelm disliked Britain, seeing it as both a partner and rival to his German ambitions. He wanted his nation to be as great as the British, but equally envied it and sought to eclipse both the United Kingdom and the British Empire in wealth, power, and territorial reach. Perhaps then it is no surprise that he saw Austro-Hungarian rapprochement with London in both Europe and the East Indies [10] as a traitorous insult to German brotherhood. Though Berlin and Vienna still maintain close ties, the distance between its monarchs began to grow…
A contemporary postcard from Germany, presenting the supposed friendship between Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph.
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Notes:
[1] See post #566 on the Russo-Turkish War.
[2] See post #674 on Tsar Alexander II’s death.
[3] I based this from the 1897 Russian census on the Dagestan and Tersk Oblasts.
[4] See post #710 about the Tunisia Crisis.
[5] Posts #1004, #1027, and #1090 respectively.
[6] He still exists, though his ITTL persona is a bit different due to his mother birthing him normally for the period. Without a deformed left arm, his mother won’t be as obsessive on his health as OTL, saving Wilhelm from developing a severe inferiority complex with his royal cousins, though he still harbours some personality issues from his upbringing and reactionary views from his tutors.
[7] Some OTL censuses on Crete showed its Muslim population as much lower for the period. ITTL, the victory of the Ottomans staved off some migration from the island.
[8] Based on the OTL Greco-Serbian alliance of 1867, which was scuppered due to the Serbian prince being murdered shortly after the agreement. ITTL an alliance did not happen until the end of the Russo-Turkish War.
[9] Unlike his OTL counterpart, Rudolf is still breathing!
[10] Remember the Oil Policy?
