Arbitration and Capitulations

In the 1901 Consular Convention between the Ottoman Empire and Greece, a product of arbitration conducted by the Six Great European Powers, we find many key elements of nineteenth-century international law, such as intervention, arbitration and the Capitulations. In this article, by examining the works of four prominent Ottoman and Greek international lawyers, namely, Nicolas Politis, Georgios Streit, Hasan Fehmi and İbrahim Hakkı, the author analyzes some of the historical as well as ideological frameworks within which nineteenth-century international jurists operated. 　The bone of contention within the Consular Convention arbitration lay in the character of the Capitulations. For the Greeks, “European public law” dictated that Christian states discriminate against “semi-barbarous” states like the Ottoman Empire; thereby, Greece, as a civilized Christian state, had a natural right to enjoy the same privileges as the Great Powers. In turn, the Great Powers arbitrated the case in favor of the Greeks, so as to affect the manner in which they would deal with the Capitulations regime as a whole. 　On the other side, the Ottoman jurists demanded equal treatment between the Ottoman Empire and Greece, arguing that the “general principle of international law” necessitated respect for the sovereign rights of every state regardless of race or creed. The Capitulations, argued the Ottomans, deviated greatly from this rule of egalitarianism by granting “unjust” privileges to the Great Powers. At the same time, the Ottomans did not lose faith in international law and its universality, while condemning Western imperialism. 　In the end, despite the European ideal of secular and universal international law which transcended the borders of Europe, in actual practice, Christian chauvinism continued to dominate the ideas of the nineteenth-century European international lawyers, as shown by their treatment of the Ottoman Muslims, whose presence in Europe became time and again the acid test for to what extent international law really was universal.