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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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'.