author: Geoff Berridge
Tilkidom and the Ottoman Empire: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd, 1906-15
2008
I decided to bring out the letters separately for three reasons. First, I had found it necessary roughly to transcribe most of them for the purposes of writing the biography. Fitzmaurice often wrote in haste and seemed to feel the need for economy in notepaper. As a result, the handwriting in the letters is often difficult and is compounded by his tendency to join up words and also squeeze numerous postscripts into the margins and letterhead. Having transcribed them just to be able to understand them, I assumed – naively as it turned out – that it would be relatively straightforward to knock them into shape for publication. Secondly, it soon became obvious to me that – probably because of the difficulty of the letters and because Fitzmaurice had no previous biographer – they had been little used at all by previous historians. Thirdly, and most importantly, I concluded that other students of the last years of the Ottoman Empire, and particularly of Britain’s relations with it, would find them to be of immense value – and spot in them many points of significance that I had missed.
Fitzmaurice was a great writer of private letters, a form of diplomatic correspondence which became popular in Britain in the nineteenth century because it avoided the risk that their publication in a Blue Book might be required. But some ‘private letters’ were more ‘private’ than others! Those that Fitzmaurice wrote to the powerful William Tyrrell can be found in Foreign Office Private Office papers at The National Archives and an even larger number written from the Yemen frontier to Sir Nicholas O’Conor in 1902-5 are held in the O’Conor papers at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. Smaller collections can be found in the Herbert papers in the Somerset County Archives at Taunton, the Ryan papers in the Middle East Centre Archives at St. Antony’s College Oxford, and the Sykes papers in Hull University Archives. However, these were all tame and for the most part rather thin compared to the ones he wrote to George Lloyd. Indeed, there is no doubt whatever that it is this collection of almost 60 private letters that reveals most fully the workings of Fitzmaurice’s mind and his deepest and most private thoughts – as well as the greatest wealth of varied and colourful detail. It is also this collection that provides the most significant and authentic detail; for example, on the Embassy’s role in supporting Kiamil Pasha after the Young Turks’ revolution in July 1908. These letters are also held at the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge (GLLD 7/1-4 and 9/1/3), and are now published here for the first time.
How have I approached my task? In the interests of brevity, I describe myself on the title page of this book as its ‘Editor’. However, a more accurate description would probably be ‘transcriber and annotater’, for – except for italicizing the dates in order to highlight them – I have transcribed the text of the letters exactly as I found them. Using digital photographs of the originals, I have gone over them with a microscope and reproduced everything they contain: nothing at all of the text has been deleted. Furthermore, I have wittingly made no alterations to the punctuation or spelling, though I have occasionally added ‘[sic]’ after a word to indicate that an eccentric or anachronistic spelling is not a typo of my own and also used inserts in square brackets to add explanations of letters or words obviously omitted by Fitzmaurice by mistake. As a linguist with a classical education, he peppered the letters not only with Latin and Turkish phrases but with French and occasionally German, Italian and Arabic ones as well. He also loved lengthy and sometimes bizarre metaphors, and was fond of quoting Kipling without attribution. I have, therefore, offered translations where necessary and added a few footnotes to illuminate certain references. (To have provided background in the footnotes to all of the subjects dealt with in the letters would probably have doubled the length of the book. Such background can be found in my biography of Fitzmaurice. As a rule, I have only footnoted in The Letters subjects not dealt with in the biography.) As to the headings I have given to each of the letters under ‘Contents’ in these preliminary pages, they are quotations from the letters concerned that seem to capture their flavour or their most important theme.
I have added a ‘Glossary of Turkish words, abbreviations, and private words and phrases used in the letters and endmatter’ and a very long ‘List of persons mentioned in the letters’. In making sense of the many Turkish words and phrases used in the letters I have been assisted chiefly by Professor Dr. A. Nuri Yurdusev of the Dept. of International Relations at METU in Ankara and formerly Vice-President of the Turkish Academy of Sciences but also by the writer, David Barchard. I am, of course, most grateful to both of them.
CORRECTIONS AND FURTHER CLARIFICATIONS
It is inevitable that at odd points Fitzmaurice’s handwriting should have defeated me. This forced me to leave a query here and there ‘[?]’, and also to make mistakes of transcription where knowledge of Turkish and a better grasp of the context would have enabled me to deduce his meaning. Three readers have already picked up some of these and kindly sent them on. They are Christopher Young (CY), formerly Judge of the Crown Court in Leicester and in his retirement doing a Ph.D. on Harry Lynch at the Oriental Institute in Oxford; Peter Clark (PC) , formerly of Ace Cultural Tours; the late Andrew Mango (AM); and Mrs Pamela Button (PB), a freelance Home Office interpreter for Turkish and Greek, and great-granddaughter of Joseph Bowman, who was second messenger and gaoler at the British consulate-general in Constantinople for the last four years of Fitzmaurice’s time there as chief dragoman. For the benefit of others, I note their corrections and comments in the following list. I also encourage anyone who spots any more to inform me so that I can add them to it:
p. 23, line 9, DARGIN: I suggest “angry” rather than “resentful” (PB).
p. 35: ‘Senniyeh ‘, not ‘Servia [?]’. This was another name for the Ottoman line of steamers on the Tigris (CY).
p. 35 and subsequently: ‘D’arcy’, not ‘Darey’. W. K. D’arcy was an Anglo-Australian oil prospector (CY)
p. 43, para 2, line 5, BALTA LIMAN: This merits explanation. A small village on a bay on the European side of the Bosphoros. It had a stream, fields and forests, also a coastal white palace with the same name, subsequently a hospital. A popular place for outings, meals out, relaxing. A place of great beauty in Fitzmaurice’s days. Joseph’s son, Henry, built a house there, the house in which I was born and grew up! The Baltaliman Convention was signed in this Palace in the 19th Century (PB).
p. 43: Yusuf Effendi was Yussuf Tatorian an Armenian Catholic from Mardin (CY)
p. 43 (line 2 up): trsl. of ‘Tamam’. ‘Well, that’s all’ is better than ‘Agreed’ (PC)
p. 46: ‘Chok chok shukur, I think, is really a thankyou to Lloyd for sending him the carpet, not Thank Goodness’ (PC).
p. 47, line 3, YAVRI PONY : “young pony”. “Yavri” is from the Constantinople Greek dialect, derived from the Turkish “Yavru”, meaning “the young of an animal”. “Yavri” is still commonly used colloquially by modern-day Istanbul Greeks as a term of endearment, including by my own parents. It is often used by a parent to a young child. It is an affectionate term for a “little one”. It can also be used between close adult friends, married or otherwise, typically by the older to the younger, where there is a significant age difference, as between Fitzmaurice and Lloyd. Fitzmaurice would have heard the word being regularly used within the (very much larger!) Greek-speaking Community in his day. There is no obviously equivalent word in English. … [It is] incidentally the only one of Ottoman Greek origin I have spotted so far used by Fitzmaurice (PB).
p. 47, para 1, line 16, KOUSH : “bird” (PB).
p. 48, par 1, line 1, also p. 65, line 7, also p.93, para 2, line 9 : GHIAOUR.
This is a slightly contemptuous Farsee word, and means “non-muslim”. If used metaphorically, can mean “merciless” or “cruel” (PB)
p. 51, para 3, line 3 : BAKSHEESH. Our generation generally fully aware means “TIP” or “BRIBE”, but younger students might not know the word (PB).
p. 51, para 4, line 7 : NASREDIN stories. Refers to Nasreddin Hoja, writer ot wit, wisdom and fables, who lived in Turkey in the 13th Century. I would suggest equivalent to Aesop in Western literature (PB).
p. 54, para 2, line 10: CONSOLOS BEY. “Mr Consul” (PB)
p. 55: (line 9 down) ‘Mersina (Mersin)’, not ‘Messina’ (AM)
p. 57: ‘Hamdi Bey – Osman Hamdi – might have merited a footnote and a biographical note. He was a remarkable man – a painter and archaeologist, and founder of the Archaeological Museum. Some of his paintings are quite iconic in an “orientalist” tradition – he studied art in Paris. They can be seen in the Pera Museum, between the Pera Palas and the Grande Hotel de Londres. And I suspect Behek should be Bebek …’ (PC).
p. 72, line 13, SCALA : the second Greek word I have found. “Pier” is OK, but a bit more specific, namely “boat station”. These boat stations were the lifeline for the Bosphoros villages in the days before roads were built. Some were grand structures, others more basic, little more than piers. Turkish word is “iskele” (PB).
p. 73, line 11 : INGLIZ SERAI : “English Palace” (Embassy) (PB).
p. 81: ‘Balin’ was the German-Jewish chairmam of the Hamburg Amerika Line (CY)
p. 82, para 2 : INFLUENZIJ : “without influence” – a multi-lingual hybrid word (PB).
p. 86, para 3, line 5 : YAVRI : “little one” or “baby” (PB).
p. 87: (line 13 up) ‘Khanakin’, not ‘Kharakin’ (AM)
p. 93: The ‘Jewish deputy’ for Bagdad referred to here was, writes Christopher Young, “Haskiel Sassoon, usually known as Sassoon Effendi. He was a Young Turk of considerable influence, with connections to the British Sassoons. If there was one individual who was principally responsible for the failure of Lynch to obtain his monopoly on the river, it was he (see pp. 129-130). I find it strange that Fitzm doesn’t mention this, especially when one recalls his anti-semitic views. After the Great War, Sassoon became financial advisor to King Feisal of Iraq, and was rewarded for his services with an honorary KBE from the British Government. More than anything poor old Fitzm ever got.”
p. 95, line 5: INTRIJA : “intrigue” – a multi-lingual hybrid word (PB).
p. 103, line 1, BAZARLIK : ” bargaining” (PB)
p. 132: ‘”Fueris” is future perfect, so the translation should read, “of which you will have played a great part”‘(PC).
p. 133, para 3, reference to “English School “. This is the English High School for Boys in Nisantas, Istanbul. Building Plans drawn up in 1910. Built in 1912. Closed in 1914 due to War and used as barracks. Re-opened 1920. Integrated into Turkish Educational Sysem in 1951 as “Ingiliz Lisesi”. Went co-educational in 1969. Now known as “Anadolu Lisesi”. This information from my personal School Yearbook for 1971 to 1972, Editor’s Letter. HM Queen Elizabeth 11 visited the School in 1971 whilst I was a pupil! (PB)
p. 134: ‘Elchi Bey’s brother was James Lowther, the Speaker of the House of Commons’ (PC).
p. 146: (line 16 down), ‘istim’, not ‘islim’ (AM)
p. 146, end of para 2, BIMBASHI. Turkish Military Officer (Captain) in charge of 1000 Men (PB)
p. 150, para 2, line 2 : ROUM : “Byzantium”, “Eastern Rome” or “Constantinople” (PB).
Additions to ‘GLOSSARY …[etc.]’
B.I. British Indian Steam Navigation Company (CY)
H.A. Hamburg Amerika Line (CY)
Socio-Linguistic Observations,
by Mrs Pamela Button (nee Bowman)
Fitzmaurice follows the Levantine trend of using metaphors, words and sentences etc of the “lingua franca”. He does so for dramatic effect, also to maintain element of secrecy. He also “borrows” from other languages, such as Italian, Arabic, Farsee. Not surprising, given he would have heard all those languages being spoken as part of the daily course.
100 years on, modern Turkish-speakers can still understand his fragments of Turkish, that despite Ataturk’s reforms of the Turkish Language in 1928, when the Arabic alphabet was replaced, and in 1932, when Arabic and Farsee words were removed and replaced with Turkic words.
Using the English alphabet, he manages to get his Turkish words as close as phonetically possible to the originals, in some cases identical to the modern spelling. He was using the vernacular language and idioms, as he heard spoken around him every day. Such language is the very basis of modern Turkish, as spoken today.
First published by The Isis Press (Istanbul, 2008) and subsequently in Turkish translation by Kirmizi Kedi in Gerald H. Fitzmaurice: İngiliz Gizli Belgelerinde ‘Yahudi Dönmesi İttihatçılar’.
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Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and third president of the United States (1801-9), was one of the warmest and most influential American supporters of the French revolution. He had also been a diplomat. In fact, he had joined the American mission in France in 1784, and replaced Benjamin Franklin as minister in the following year. He witnessed the outbreak of the revolution in 1789 and was then appointed secretary of state by George Washington. This scintillating book by Conor Cruise O'Brien, himself a former diplomat, analyses the blossoming and slow - very sl...
Peacemaking 1919
Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century
The Washington Embassy: British ambassadors to the United States, 1939-77
Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006
Book review by Geoff Berridge
British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866
The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-1880
Once more students of Ottoman diplomatic history are in debt to the scholar-publisher, Sinan Kuneralp, for Sir Henry Layard was one of the most remarkable and controversial of British ambassadors to Turkey in the nineteenth century and served there during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 – and yet the volumes of his memoirs dealing with this period have hitherto languished unpublished in the British Library, in part perhaps because of their size. (Layard admits himself to having been ‘somewhat minute, perhaps a great deal too much so’, p. 692.)They are here published almost in their entir...
Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers of the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies
The papers presented at the 24th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in Cambridge in 1990, are collected in this volume. It is a detailed examination of Byzantine diplomacy from the empire’s emergence in late antiquity to its death throes when the Ottoman Turks conquered it. This is not just a narrow study of political […]
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain's ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Evolution of Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities
Excerpt from the lecture 1: Principles and concepts, evolution and instruments; Online course on Diplomatic Law: Privileges and Immunities.
The Congress of Arras, 1435
Diplomacy in Ancient Greece
Side-Lights on English Society, or Sketches from Life, Social and Satirical
Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815-1914
The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
If God ever gave mankind a mission – it was not so much to multiply as to walk. And walk we did, to the farthest corners of the earth. Homo sapiens sapiens is the only mammal to have spread from its place of origin, Africa, to every other continent – before settling down to sedentary life ogling a TV screen or monitor, that is.
The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914
Instruzione e formazione del diplomatico: la tradizione inglese
The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy
Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations
Foreign ministries and the management of the past
In his paper, Keith Hamilton looks at Foreign Ministries’ treatment of historical diplomacy, and specifically, the publication of diplomatic documents. Through his historical analyses, the author examines the various aims of these documents, such as, to shed light on past developments and help in current and future negotiations; to influence parliamentarians and a wider public; and to further international relations’ studies.
Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador
Negotiating with the Chinese Communists: The United States Experience, 1953-1967
US Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?
The post-'9/11' revival of interest in US public diplomacy encompasses a wide variety of opinions, all overwhelmingly critical.
The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland
Central Eurasia refers to the countries in the Caucasus and to the five countries of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These countries that had once been part of the Russian and Soviet Empire were broken off and set adrift when the Soviet Union self-destructed at the end of 1991. They belatedly joined Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, three countries that also emerged from the sphere of influence of an empire, the British one, to become – in the words of Charles De Gaulle speaking of the newly independent African states – the dust of empire.
The History of Diplomatic Immunity
This is a massive book in more than one sense. It is over 700 pages long, including an invaluable bibliography which itself stretches over 70 pages. While dwelling chiefly on the Western tradition, it also takes in the Ottoman Empire and the Far East. It begins in ancient times (though having less on the second […]
The Diplomats, 1919-1939
Japanese middle-power diplomacy
Searching for the prehistoric origins of diplomacy
What if diplomacy had started in the first contact between two distinct bands of nomadic Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers in the Palaeolithic period, even before the advent of agriculture and the transition from nomadism to Neolithic sedentary societies? In this post, prepared especially for this blog, a summary of the author’s argument, originally published by the Cambridge Review of International Affairs [1], is presented to DiploFoundation readers searching for the ancient origins of the diplomatic practice.
The Imperial Component in Iran’s Foreign Policy: Towards Arab Mashreq and Arab Gulf States
One of the most important developments the Middle East has witnessed in the 20th centaury was the success of the Iranian revolution of Islamist ideology, with ambitions to control.
Munitions of the Mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era
Post Cold War diplomatic training
Victor Shale's paper refers to a specific time period: the post-Cold War period which brought about new forms of conflicts, and high levels of terrorism. In the light of the change in traditional diplomacy, his paper examines multistakeholder diplomatic training and its importance as an approach in penetrating different cultures, and examines whether this approach could be used to minimise intractable conflicts.
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
When I feel dispirited about the current crop of political leaders in Switzerland or around the world, I like to take refuge in one of the most uplifting political stories of mankind – the American Revolution.
Under the Wire: How the telegraph changed diplomacy
Nickles, who is a State Department historian, has written what I believe is the first full-length study of this important and intriguing subject. Excluding an introduction and short conclusion, it has seven chapters presented in three parts ('Control', 'Speed', and 'The Medium'), each having a chapter devoted to a case study: the Anglo-American crisis of 1812, the further Anglo-American crisis of 1861 ('the Trent affair'), and the Zimmerman telegram of January 1917 - which of course also involved the United States.
History and the evolution of diplomacy
Update: Visit our page on History of Diplomacy and Technology, where we try to discover how civilizations dealt with ‘new’ technologies, from simple writing, via the telegraph, to the internet.
The Practice of Diplomacy: Its evolution, theory and administration
First published in 1995, the long-awaited second edition of this valuable textbook on the history of diplomacy has at last appeared. The first chapter has been expanded to include non-European traditions, and a wholly new chapter has been added to take account of developments over the last 15 years. It is for the main part a work of relaxed authority, clearly written, and – unusually for an introductory work – full of intriguing detail which it would be difficult if not impossible to find in other secondary sources.
The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd ed
Documenting diplomacy, Evaluating documents: The case of the CSCE
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Rather than individual documents, Dr Keith Hamilton looks at the process and purpose of compiling collections of documents. He focuses on his own experience as the editor of Documents on British Policy Overseas, and particularly on his work publishing a collection of documents concerning the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1972 until 1975.
The Breaking of Nations
Robert Cooper is Director-General of External and Politico-Military Affairs for the Council of the EU and thus a man steeped in world affairs. Though he makes no claim to establishing a ‘theory’ of how nations grow and decay, he has presented in this slim volume a rigorous typology of today’s nations. His thoughts are worth setting out in some detail.
