Shall Turkey Live or Die?

Summary

Shall Turkey Live or Die? is a pamphlet of about thirty pages printed in London by Thomas Bosworth in 1854, when Britain and France were moving toward war with Russia over the Ottoman Empire. Its title page gives the author as 'Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Advocate'. The famous essayist of Chelsea was never an advocate, and the pamphlet's voice, its quotation of the Good Friday collect, and its reverent but careful talk of prophecy fit the Scottish advocate Thomas Carlyle (1803-1855), a leader of the Catholic Apostolic Church. Readers should treat the attribution as probable rather than settled. The pamphlet asks whether Christian Europe may rightly destroy the Ottoman state, and answers no. The author first sets aside two errors: the prophetic speculator who maps the future, and the diplomat who reads events only by 'the mere letter of protocols'. He then examines the actors. He argues that the Turks are not apostates but a people who rose among heathen, and that their conquest of Byzantium was God's judgment on an unfaithful Eastern Church. The Church as Church owns nothing on earth; Judea belongs by original divine right only to the Jews; the Crusades confused spiritual zeal with political right. The Turk must be treated 'Not as a brother Christian, but as a brother man', and a state's rights rest on natural justice, not on its creed. He then turns to the Pope, whom he accuses of having secretly stirred the Holy Places dispute through France; to England, which he says has been too friendly with the Porte for commercial reasons yet has honestly pleaded for Eastern Christians, as at Navarino; and above all to Russia. The Czar, he argues, has no religious standing as protector of churches that are not Russian, no territorial grievance as Autocrat, and a record of turning protectorates into rule. Treaties, he insists, admitted Turkey to the European order 'knowing it well'; Europe may not now put it on trial for its place. If Turkey ever became a public offender, the nations together, not one interested neighbour, would have to judge. The closing pages call Britain to act without zeal for war: 'War is a sad calamity everywhere, and a shameful thing among Christian nations.' Russia must not close the Black Sea, the Baltic or the Danube. The author ends by warning against hasty interpretation of prophecy and resting the whole case on 'scrupulous righteousness between nation and nation, between man and man'. The pamphlet is valuable because it argues from natural law and Scripture together, distinguishes the spiritual from the political with unusual care, and still carries the confessional assumptions of its time, including harsh words for Islam, the Papacy, Greeks, Armenians and unconverted Jews. Students should state its argument fairly, then test both its principles and its judgments against the course of the war.

Plot or Argument

• Two errors about the coming war

  The opening sets the eschatologist who predicts and the protocol-reader who sees no moral question side by side, and asks for a judgment that regards the crisis 'in its highest aspects' without foregone conclusions. 'Destiny' is mocked as the watchword of Napoleon III and the Czar alike.

• The Pope behind the Holy Places

  The author claims recent disclosures show the Pope, 'using France as a cat's-paw', as prime mover of the dispute over the Latin protectorate at Jerusalem, and allows that Russia's blow at the Sultan is partly a blow at Rome.

• The Turk's place among nations

  Turks are not apostates; their conquest of Constantinople was a judgment on Eastern Christendom; Christians have no title to the Holy Land as Christians; and the Turk is owed justice as 'a brother man'. Natural rights of states are not made or unmade by their faith.

• Crusades, Martel and Sobieski

  The Crusades are judged an 'obliteration of moral duty by fancied religious obligation'; Charles Martel and Sobieski are justified because they threw back a power that ruled by force, not because it was Muslim.

• Rome, England and diplomatic recognition

  The Pope's long refusal to recognise the Porte had a right motive and a wrong form. England rightly recognises Turkey but has been too intimate for mammon's sake, while still pleading for Eastern Christians and helping free Greece.

• Russia's pretended protectorate

  The Czar is neither head of the other Eastern churches nor injured as a ruler; crossing the Pruth while denying war, and rejecting the Four Powers' proposal for a joint protectorate, reveals 'the cloven foot'.

• Treaties and the European commonwealth

  Europe admitted Turkey by treaty knowing what it was; it cannot now impose new entrance conditions. A nation that becomes a public offender may be judged by the common verdict of nations, like a madman restrained by neighbours, but not by one interested power.

• Now is the time

  A call to resolute but sober war aims: keep the Black Sea, Baltic and Danube open, protect the Caucasus, warn Austria and Prussia, and remember that 'decision saves blood'.

• Prophecy and righteousness

  The close warns against private or premature interpretation of prophecy, insists that Christians may not 'arise, in self-will, to carry out God's counsels', and turns the charge of harbouring revolutionaries back on the Czar.

Characters

• Nicholas I, Czar of Russia (named as 'the Czar')

  Presented as the self-appointed protector of Eastern Christians whose religious claims mask a drive to rule Ottoman lands.

• Abdülmecid I, Ottoman Sultan (named as 'the Sultan')

  Ruler whose state's right to exist is the pamphlet's subject; not named personally.

• Pius IX, Pope (named as 'the Pope')

  Accused of secretly reviving Latin claims to the Holy Places through France.

• Napoleon III, Emperor of the French (alluded to as 'a child of destiny')

  Protector of the Latin interest whose zeal for holy places raised fears of conquest.

• George Canning, British statesman (cited)

  Remembered for foreseeing a coming 'war of principles'.

• Charles Martel and John Sobieski, historical exemplars

  Defenders of Europe whose wars the author justifies on political, not religious, grounds.

Lessons

• A brother man, not a brother Christian

  The pamphlet's central moral distinction is that the Turk is owed justice because he is a man, whatever one thinks of his religion. The author grounds the rights of persons and states in a natural law that Christ came 'not to destroy but to fulfil'. This is a strong example of a Christian writer refusing to let religious difference cancel common justice.

  • What does the author mean by distinguishing a 'brother Christian' from a 'brother man'?
  • How does he use the saying 'Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil' to defend natural law?
  • Where in his own pamphlet does he fail to extend the fairness he asks for?

• The Church owns no territory

  The author denies that the Christian Church, as a Church, has any right to land, including Jerusalem, and judges the Crusades by that rule. Students can test this against the medieval theory of holy war and against the author's own call for European action in 1854.

  • Why does he say the Crusaders were 'more like usurpers'?
  • If faith confers no title to land, on what grounds may Britain fight Russia at all?
  • How does this argument compare with Augustine's or Grotius's thinking on just war?

• Protectorates and pretexts

  The pamphlet takes apart Russia's claim to protect Ottoman Christians: the Czar is not their spiritual head and has suffered no injury as ruler, and a religious protectorate would turn into political rule. The lesson applies widely: a humanitarian or religious reason for intervention must be examined for the interests it serves.

  • List the author's reasons for rejecting the Czar's protectorate. Which is strongest?
  • Why does he think a joint protest by all Christian powers would have been better than Russia's single-handed demand?
  • How can a citizen tell a real reason for intervention from a pretext?

• Prophecy and duty

  Writing among Christians who read the Eastern crisis as fulfilled prophecy, the author warns against 'private or premature interpretation' and says believers must not try to bring about God's counsels by their own will. Duty, not speculation about the end, should govern action.

  • What two errors about the war does the opening paragraph describe?
  • Why does the author fear that prophetic excitement could lead to 'breach of duty'?
  • What does it mean to 'expect His salvation in the way of strict duty'?

Context

The Crimean War grew from a dispute over Latin and Orthodox rights at the Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which France pressed for the Catholics and Russia for the Orthodox. In 1853 Russia demanded recognition as protector of the Sultan's Orthodox subjects, occupied the Danubian Principalities across the Pruth, and destroyed an Ottoman squadron at Sinope. British and French fleets entered the Black Sea in early 1854, and the two powers declared war on Russia at the end of March 1854. The pamphlet, speaking of 'the European war now impending', belongs to the months just before or around that declaration.

Composition

Printed for Thomas Bosworth, 215 Regent Street, London, by G. Barclay, and dated MDCCCLIV on the title page. The author is styled 'Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Advocate'. The text reacts to the Russian occupation of the Principalities, the fleets in the 'Euxine', and Russia's rejection of the Four Powers' proposal for a collective protectorate of Christians.

Reception

Little is known of the pamphlet's reception; it was one among many British tracts on the Eastern Question in 1853-54. Its modern visibility comes largely from the Project Gutenberg transcription (#46608), which has led catalogues to group it with the essayist Thomas Carlyle's works.

Comparisons

• Latter-Day Pamphlets

  The essayist Thomas Carlyle's 1850 pamphlets share a name and a decade but not a voice: they rage against democracy and philanthropy in coined words, while this 1854 tract argues soberly from treaties, natural law and Scripture. Reading a page of each is the quickest way to see why the attribution needs care.

• The Rights of War and Peace (Book I)

  The pamphlet's claim that the rights of 'heathen men and states' are as sacred as those of Christians, and that faith is no condition of a ruler's title, restates a principle Grotius set out in the law of nations two centuries earlier.

• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Selections)

  Gibbon narrates the Ottoman capture of Constantinople as the end of Rome; this author treats the same conquest as God's judgment on a schismatic Eastern Church and the Turks as 'a living tree' planted where a withered one had stood.

• Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not

  Nightingale's work grew from the war this pamphlet urges Britain to enter with resolve; her hospital experience at Scutari shows the human cost of a conflict that the pamphlet discusses in terms of treaties and principles.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The title page: who is 'Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Advocate'?
• Every place the author separates spiritual claims from political rights.
• How he treats each actor in turn: Pope, Turk, England, Czar.
• His appeal to treaties and to the 'European commonwealth' of nations.
• Period judgments about Muslims, Greeks, Armenians and Jews that students should note and weigh historically.

Key terms and names

Eastern Question

The nineteenth-century diplomatic problem of what should become of the weakening Ottoman Empire and who should gain from it.

The Porte

The Sublime Porte, the Ottoman government at Constantinople, named after the gate of the grand vizier's offices.

Holy Places

Shrines in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, over whose keys and custody Latin and Orthodox clergy quarrelled in the early 1850s.

Protectorate

A claimed right of one state to protect people inside another; Russia sought it over the Sultan's Orthodox subjects, France over Latin interests.

The Principalities

Moldavia and Wallachia, Ottoman vassal provinces on the Danube that Russia occupied in 1853 by crossing the Pruth.

Mare clausum

Latin for 'closed sea'; the author fears Russia would close the Black Sea and Baltic to other nations.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What two errors does the opening paragraph warn against in thinking about the war?
2. Comprehension Why does the author deny that the Turks should be treated as apostates?
3. Comprehension What does the author say Russia did at the Pruth, and why does he call it a trick?
4. Interpretation How can the author both condemn the Crusades and approve the victories of Charles Martel and Sobieski?
5. Interpretation Why does he think England has been right to recognise Turkey but wrong in the closeness of its friendship?
6. Interpretation The pamphlet compares a lawless nation to a madman put in a strait waistcoat. What does the comparison assume about who has the right to judge?
7. Big Question Can a nation ever rightly go to war to protect people of its own faith living under another government?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 5:17 (Scripture)

  The author applies 'I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil' to the law of nature as well as the law of Moses, so that Christian faith must respect the natural rights of non-Christian states.

• Psalm 24:3-4 (Scripture)

  The pamphlet ends with 'He only that has clean hands shall prosper in his deed', echoing the psalm's clean hands; ask whether Britain's hands, by the author's own account, are clean enough.

• 2 Peter 1:19-20 (Scripture)

  Behind the warning against 'private or premature interpretation' of prophecy lies Peter's 'sure word of prophecy' and 'no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation'.

• Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (Great Conversation)

  Grotius argued that differences of religion do not by themselves justify war, the same ground on which this author denies the Czar's religious protectorate.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Rights of persons and states belong to natural justice, not to religious profession; the Turks hold their place in Europe by conquest and by treaties that admitted them knowing what they were; Russia has no spiritual or temporal standing to act alone as protector of Ottoman Christians, and its protectorate would become conquest; therefore Turkey may not be destroyed by one interested power, and Britain should defend it while urging all Christian powers together to secure equal law for Eastern Christians.

Rhetorical device: anaphora. In the closing call the author repeats 'Let her not make' for the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Danube, the last 'a European pipe with a Russian plug', so that the list of feared closures builds into a single picture of Russian control.

Debate: Resolved: that Britain and France were justified in defending the Ottoman Empire against Russia in 1854.

Writing Prompts

Essay: The author argues that the Czar's claim to protect Ottoman Christians is a pretext. Lay out his evidence from the Pruth crossing, the Four Powers' proposal and the Czar's two 'characters', and judge whether his case is convincing.

Comparison with The Rights of War and Peace (Book I): Compare Grotius's reasoning about war against unbelievers with this pamphlet's claim that a heathen state 'has as good a claim to subsist' as England or China. Where do they agree, and where does the pamphlet go further or less far?

Medical Lens

The pamphlet has almost no medical content. One simile is of interest for the history of psychiatry: the author compares a lawless nation voted out of Europe to a madman put in a strait waistcoat by his neighbours, assuming restraint of the insane as a common, communal practice in 1854. The war it anticipates later became central to the history of military nursing and sanitation, but none of that appears in the text.

• Section on treaties and Turkey's place in Europe (paragraph beginning 'No European confederacy')

  Simile comparing a nation expelled by common consent to madmen restrained in a strait waistcoat and offenders 'sent to Coventry'.

  Asylum Institution Madness Psychosis

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  On a blank map of the Black Sea region in 1854, mark the Pruth, the Danubian Principalities, Sinope, the Bosphorus, Jerusalem and the Baltic, then annotate each with one sentence from the pamphlet's argument.

• Essay

  The author says a Christian may not 'build up religion on the ruins of justice'. Explain what he means, show how he applies it to the Crusades and to Russia, and judge whether he applies it consistently to Britain.

• Dialogue

  Write a dialogue between the pamphlet's author and an Orthodox priest from Jerusalem who welcomes the Czar's protection, each arguing from Scripture and from experience.

Further Reading

• Shall Turkey Live or Die?, Thomas Carlyle, Advocate

  Attached Project Gutenberg #46608, from the 1854 Bosworth printing.

• The Crimean War: A History, Orlando Figes

  Modern narrative that gives the religious dispute over the Holy Places full weight.

• The Rights of War and Peace, Hugo Grotius

  Classic source for the law-of-nations reasoning the pamphlet relies on.