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The Limits of Intervention: Coercive Diplomacy and the Jewish Question in the Nineteenth Century

2014; Routledge; Volume: 36; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07075332.2013.836118

1949-6540

Abigail Green,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

AbstractThis paper argues that exploring diplomatic responses to the Jewish question casts new light on the purpose of humanitarian intervention within the international system during the nineteenth century. It contrasts international responses to the question of Jewish minority rights in Morocco and Romania during the 1860s and 1870s, with particular reference to the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the Conference of Madrid (1880). The former resulted in a Treaty endorsing the principle of religious equality in the Ottoman Empire and the emerging nation-states of the Balkans, while the latter resulted only in a non-binding Declaration in favour of religious freedom. Thus the international system favoured humanitarian intervention in the Christian polity of Romania but not in the Muslim polity of Morocco: a conclusion that complicates assumptions about humanitarian intervention as essentially directed by Christian powers against the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Paradoxically, diplomatic attempts to enforce religious equality in the Ottoman Empire and the emerging Christian states of the Balkans reflected a willingness to recognise these powers as fully fledged members of the emerging international system, provided that they adopted certain constitutional norms. Morocco was given greater latitude, because diplomats and Western observers ultimately believed it incapable of making this leap.Keywords: humanitarian interventionJewsminority rights Notes1. G.J. Bass, Freedom's Battle. The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York, 2008); B. Simms and D.J.B. Trim, 'Towards a History of Humanitarian Intervention' in Simms and Trim (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge, 2011), 1–24; D. Rodogno, Against Massacre. Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914. The Emergence of a European Concept and International Practice (Princeton, 2012). Both Bass and Rodogno focus on the Ottoman interventions, while Simms and Trim devote a section to each of these issues.2. On the difficulties of defining humanitarian intervention as a historical practice see Trim and Simms, 'Towards a History of Humanitarian Intervention', 2–7. On the origins of humanitarianism, see R. Ashby Wilson and R.D. Brown (eds), Humanitarianism and Suffering. The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge, 2009) and M. Barnett, Empire of Humanity. A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, 2011), though neither really addresses humanitarian intervention. For opposing views of the longer-term origins of 'human rights' see L. Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights. A Brief Documentary History (Boston, 1996); L. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights. A History (New York, 2007) and S. Moyn, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History (Cambridge, 2010), especially ch. 1.3. See for instance L.H. Gann, 'The Berlin Conference and the Humanitarian Conscience' and S. Miers, 'Humanitarianism at Berlin: Myth or Reality?' in S. Forster et al. (eds), Bismarck, Europe, and Africa. The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (Oxford, 1988), 321–31, 332–45.4. On humanitarianism and empire see A. Porter, 'Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism' in A. Porter (ed), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume III, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999), 198–221.5. These connections are explored in detail in A. Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge, MA, 2010).6. On the connections between Edwardian anti-slavery and the international structures of the inter-war period, see K. Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (Oxford, 2005). On the continuities between pre-war Jewish activism and inter-war minority rights, see above all C. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others. The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge, 2004); also M.R. Marrus, 'International Bystanders to the Holocaust and Humanitarian Intervention' in Wilson and Brown (eds), Humanitarianism and Suffering, 156–74. For an alternative perspective on Jewish diplomacy at Versailles see M. Levene, War, Jews and the New Europe. The Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914–1919 (London, 1992).7. See F. Guesnet, 'Textures of Intercession - Rescue Efforts for the Jews of Prague (1744–1748)', Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, iv (2005), 355–75.8. On this episode see G. Abbattista, 'Edmund Burke, the Atlantic American War and the "Poor Jews at St. Eustatius". Empire and the Law of Nations', Cromohs, xiii (2008),1–39. More generally see B. Simms, '"A False Principle in the Law of Nations": Burke, State Sovereignty [German] Liberty, and Intervention in the Age of Westphalia' in Simms and Trim (eds), Humanitarian Intervention, 89–110.9. Marrus, 'International Bystanders', 159, n.8.10. Principalities. No.1 (1877) Correspondence Respecting the Condition and Treatment of the Jews in Servia and Roumania 1867–1876, Parliamentary Accounts and Papers (London, 1877), 47.11. See A. Green, 'Intervening in the Jewish Question, 1840–1878' in Simms and Trim (eds), Humanitarian Intervention, 139–58, and Marrus, 'International Bystanders', 158–9.12. See for instance Marrus, 'International Bystanders', 162.13. S. Lambroza, 'The Pogroms of 1903–1906' in J.D. Klier and S. Lambroza (eds), Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History (Cambridge, 1992), 216, 231.14. Both Bass, Freedom's Battle and Rodogno, Against Massacre contain relatively detailed accounts of this violence, of which Rodogno's is the more balanced. For an account from an Ottoman/Muslim perspective see the contentious J. McCarthy, Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821–1922 (Princeton, 1995).15. On the Armenian case see D. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2005), ch. 1 and Rodogno, Against Massacre, ch. 8.16. See Green, 'Intervening in the Jewish Question'. More generally, on the interplay between such interventions and British humanitarian ideology see A. Green, 'The British Empire and the Jews: An Imperialism of Human Rights?' Past & Present, cxcix (2008), 175–205.17. For the text of the firman see L. Loewe (ed), Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Comprising Their Life and Work as Recorded in Their Diaries from 1812 to 1883 (London, 1890), i. 278–9. On Ottoman Jewry, see E. Benbassa and A. Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry. A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th–20th Centuries (Berkeley, 1993); B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society (New York, 1982). On Montefiore see above all Green, Montefiore.18. The dahir granted Montefiore served as an initial point of reference in the collective address on religious liberty from the representatives of the Powers at the Conference of Madrid in 1880 to the Sultan of Morocco. Protocole No. 12 of the Madrid Conference, séance du 26 Juin 1880, text of the collective note on religious freedom addressed to the Sultan of Morocco in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid in 1880 Respecting the Right of Protection of Moorish Subjects by the Diplomatic and Consular Representatives of Foreign Powers in Morocco (House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1880: Morocco no. 1), no. 146 Inclosure 1, 170.19. See Green, 'Intervening in the Jewish Question', 147–9; Green, 'British Empire and the Jews', 197–8.20. See for instance C. Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919). De l'Exclusion à l'Emancipation (Aix en Provence, 1978).21. See J. Frankel, The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge, 1997).22. See Green, Montefiore, 278–81. On the Mortara Affair see D.I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (London, 1997).23. In addition, I make use of archival sources analysed in the context of my biographical work on Sir Moses Montefiore.24. On the 'Court Jew' paradigm see S. Stern, The Court Jew. A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe (Philadelphia, 1950). On Shtadlanut see F. Guesnet, 'Die Politik der 'Fürsprache' - Vormoderne jüdische Interessenvertretung' in Dan Diner (ed), Synchrone Welten: Zeiträume jüdischer Geschichte (Göttingen, 2005), 67–92; Guesnet, 'Politik der Vormoderne - Shtadlanut am Vorabend der polnischen Teilungen', Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow Instituts, i (2002): 235–55.25. See F. Guesnet, 'Textures of Intercession' and B. Mevorach, 'Die Interventionsbestrebungen in Europa zur Verhinderung der Vertreibung der Juden aus Böhmen und Mähren, 1744–1745', Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte, ix (1980), 15–81.26. D. Sorkin, 'Montefiore and the Politics of Emancipation', Jewish Review of Books, I, no. 2 (2010).27. On Crémieux see S. Posener, Adolphe Crémieux, a Biography (Philadelphia, 1940) and D. Amson, Adolphe Crémieux, L'Oublié de la Gloire (Paris, 1988). On the interplay between national politics and international Jewish advocacy see Green, 'Intervening in the Jewish Question'.28. British Jews were not fully emancipated until 1848 however. See M.C.N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of the Jews to Parliament 1828–1860 (London, 1982).29. See E. Bar-Chen, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen. Internationale jüdische Organisationen und die Europäisierung 'rückständiger' Juden (Würzburg, 2005). More specifically on the emergence of the Alliance Israélite see L. Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity. The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth Century France (Stanford, 2006); M. Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France. From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Stanford, 1996). On its activities see A. Chouraqui, Cent Ans d'Histoire. L' Alliance Israélite Universelle et la Renaissance Juive Contemporaine (1860–1960) (Paris, 1965); A. Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews. The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington, 1990).30. On the role of these organisations as proxies for imperial rivalry see Y. Tsur, 'Religious Internationalism in the Jewish Diaspora - a Glance at the Community of Tunis at the Dawn of the Colonial Period' in A. Green and V. Viaene (eds), Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities Since 1750 (Basingstoke, 2012), 186–205.31. Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 641.32. See A. Green, 'Old Networks, New Connections: The Emergence of the Jewish International' in Green and Viaene (eds), Religious Internationals in the Modern World, 53–81; A. Green, 'Nationalism and the "Jewish International": Religious Internationalism in Europe and the Middle East c.1840–c.1880', Comparative Studies in Society and History, l, no. 2 (April 2008), 535–58.33. L.P. Gartner, 'Documents on Roumanian Jewry, Consul Peixotto, and Jewish Diplomacy, 1870–1875' in S. Liebermann and A. Hyman (eds), Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem, 1974), i. 467–90; L.P. Gartner, 'Roumania, America, and World Jewry: Consul Peixotto in Bucharest, 1870–1876', American Jewish Historical Quarterly, lviii (1968), 25–117.34. See J. Frankel, 'Crisis as a Factor in Modern Jewish Politics, 1840 and 1881–2' in J. Reinharz (ed), Living with Antisemitism. Modern Jewish Responses (Hanover, 1987), 42–58.35. See Levene, War, Jews and the New Europe and Fink, Defending the Rights of Others.36. Green, Montefiore.37. Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity.38. A. Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield Of Faith. Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York, 2012), ch. 11 deals with this in a slightly later period.39. On Morocco, see A.K. Bennison, Jihad and Its Interpretations in Pre-Colonial Morocco. State-Society Relations During the French Conquest of Algeria (London, 2002). On the Ottoman world, see S. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 2009).40. On the problematic of modernisation and reform in the Ottoman Empire see M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 2008).41. Note, however, that Britain did take an active interest in the plight of Persian Jewry, as outlined in D. Tsadik, Between Foreigners and Shi'is. Nineteenth-Century Iran and Its Jewish Minority (Stanford, 2007).42. The classic account of the Eastern Question remains M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923. A Study in International Relations (London, 1966). On Moroccan foreign relations see the monumental J.-L. Miège, L'Ouverture, vol. 2 of Le Maroc et l'Europe (1830–1894) (Paris, 1961); F. Rosebro Flournoy, British Policy Towards Morocco in the Age of Palmerston (1830–1865) (Baltimore, 1935).43. On Hay see Ben-Srhir, Britain and Morocco During the Embassy of John Drummond Hay, 1845–1886 (London, 2005). On Canning see A. Cunningham, 'Stratford Canning and the Tanzimat' in W.R. Polk and R.L. Chambers (eds), Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East. The Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1968), 245–64.44. On the British tradition of humanitarian politics see Grant, A Civilised Savagery. On humanitarianism and British attitudes to the Eastern Question see M. Tusan, Smyrna's Ashes. Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East (Berkeley, 2012).45. Treaty Between Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey for the Settlement of Affairs in the East. Signed at Berlin, July 13, 1878 (House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 1878: Turkey. no. 44).46. On events in Lebanon and Syria see L. Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War. Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London, 1994); U. Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, 2000); C.E. Farah, The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon, 1830–1861 (London, 2000).47. See the seminal R.T. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London, 1963).48. On this see especially Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, Prologue.49. On this see Rodogno, Against Massacre, 167–8.50. For details of the Serbian appeal see Green, Montefiore, 342–3.51. See Green, 'Nationalism and the 'Jewish International'; A. Green, 'Sir Moses Montefiore and the Making of the 'Jewish International', Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vii, no. 3 (2008), 287–307; Green, 'Old Networks, New Connections'.52. The classic account of Moroccan Jewry in this period is M. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans Au Maroc, 1859–1948. Contribution à l'Histoire Des Relations Inter-Communautaires en Terre d'Islam (Casablanca, 1994). H.Z. Hirschberg, From the Ottoman Conquests to the Present Time, vol. 2 of A History of the Jews in North Africa (Leiden, 1981) provides a useful Zionist counterpoint.53. The classic history of Romanian Jewry remains Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie, available in slightly abridged translation as C. Iancu, Jews in Romania 1866–1919: From Exclusion to Emancipation (New York, 1996).54. For general demographic statistics see Iancu, Jews in Romania, 47.55. The classic account of Moroccan Jewish life remains S. Deshen, The Mellah Society. Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco (Chicago, 1989). On Muslim-Jewish coexistence see also E. Gottreich, The Mellah of Marrakesh. Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City (Bloomington, 2007). For a summary of the debate over Moroccan Jewry see D.J. Schroeter, The Sultan's Jew. Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford, 2002), 4–10.56. For more information see Green, Montefiore, 255–58, 300–1.57. The best account of the campaign is found in Iancu, Jews in Romania.58. Telegram Communicated to Lord Stanley by the Chief Rabbi, Letter 30, Principalities. No.1 (1877) Correspondence respecting the condition and treatment of the Jews in Servia and Roumania 1867–1876, 14.59. Sir John Drummond Hay to Earl Granville, Tangier, 24 June 1880, in Morocco. No. 1 1880, 137–9.60. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, Prologue.61. On Bleichröder's role see above all F. Stern, Gold and Iron. Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire (Harmondsworth, 1977), ch. 14.62. This argument is further elaborated in Green, 'Intervening in the Jewish Question'.63. Note from the Chambers of the Vatican to the Ambassador Extraordinary of Austria-Hungary at the Holy See, 5 May 1880, in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, 100.64. Translation from the Arabic of a letter addressed by F.A. Matthews to the Grand Vizier of the Emperor of Morocco, on the occasion of the recent atrocities committed on the Israelites of Morocco, 21 Feb. 1880, [Papers Relating to the] F[oreign] R[elations of the] U[nited] S[tates], Transmitted to Congress, December 6, 1880, 796.65. Letter from His Eminence Cardinal Nina, extracted in Protocol No. 12, of the session of 26 June 1880, on the Question of Religious Toleration, FRUS 1880, 6. Dec. 1880, 915.66. Count Károlyi, London, to Granville in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, no. 105, 99–100.67. 'The Morocco Conference', The Jewish Chronicle, 28 May 1880, 968. See the argument in Miers, 'Humanitarianism at Berlin'.69. L. S. Sackville-West, Madrid, to Earl Granville (received 3 June) in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, no. 107, 103.70. Granville, Foreign Office, 5 June 1880, to Károlyi in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, no. 109, 104.71. Sackville-West, Madrid, 3 June 1880, to Granville (received June 7) in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, no. 112, 109–10.72. Translation from the Arabic of a letter addressed by F.A. Matthews to the Grand Vizier of the Emperor of Morocco, on the occasion of the recent atrocities committed on the Israelites of Morocco, 21 Feb. 1880; WM. M. Evarts, Washington, 15 June 1880, to Fairchild, FRUS 1880, no. 578, 897.73. Mathews, Tangier, to Evarts, FRUS 1880, no. 505, 791.74. Granville, Foreign Office, 15 June 1880, to Hay in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, no. 118, 117.75. See Preston, Sword of the Spirit.76. See B. Wallace Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Case: 1858–1859 (Cincinnati, 1957).77. Green, 'British Empire and the Jews'.78. Mathews, Tangier, to Sidi Mohamed Bargash, FRUS 1880, no. 505, Inclosure 2 in no. 358, 794.79. Memorandum of the Language held by Her Majesty's Representative at Tangier to the Anglo-Jewish association in England respecting the Protection hitherto afforded to the Jewish Population in Morocco by the Foreign Representatives, Inclosure 2 in no. 40 in Correspondence Relative to the Conference Held at Madrid, 56–7.80. 'The Jews of Morocco', The Jewish Chronicle, 12 Nov. 1880, 4.81. 'Persecution of Jews in Moldavia', The Jewish Chronicle, 8 July 1867, 7.82. Aus dem Leben König Karls von Rumänien. Aufzeichnungen eines Augenzeugen, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1894), 201.