Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Studies on the Eastern Question

1911; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2186769

2161-7953

G. Scelle,

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics

Eastern Europe is at the present moment in such a condition of unstable equilibrium and fermentation that it can not be known whether this abnormal state of affairs can end in peace or in war. The map of the East, so carefully prepared by the Congress of Berlin in 1878, is hardly more than a memory. The state of conventional law which resulted, having been decreed in an arbitrary manner, could only be artificial; and being sustained solely by the balancing of the forces of the Eastern States, it had to be modified according to circumstances, thus furnishing a new illustration of the importance of the harsh rule of interpretation of treaties known as the clause “ rebus sic stantibus.” The sudden happenings of 1908 have for their remote but certain cause the war in Manchuria, that grave political blunder of St. Petersburg. Held in check upon the Bosphorus by England, supplanted little by little at Constantinople by German influence, Russia, modifying the line of policy which she had constantly followed since the testament, spurious or genuine, but undoubtedly realistic of Peter the Great, thought to find in the extreme East an outlet for her political and territorial ambitions. There she disclosed her own military weakness rather than the strength of her adversary, and suffered the annihilation of her political influence in Europe. Even the Western balance of power was affected. France lost Morocco; and as for the Eastern balance of power, it no longer exists, and the kingdom of Servia has lost the reason for its existence. It is through the sudden displacement of the two sides of the scales into which Russia and Austria had thrown the weight of their swords that the Eastern upheaval was created.