Commercial and Navigation Treaties

COMMERCIAL AND NAVIGATION TREATIES

allowed european merchants special privileges in trading with the ottoman empire; regulated passage of ships through the dardanelles.

Beginning in 1352, the Ottoman Empire granted special privileges to the merchants of Genoa, Venice, and Florence. These privileges, known as the capitulations, placed European merchants under the direct jurisdiction of their own consular representatives—who judged the civil and criminal cases that involved their own citizens. In addition, the capitulations granted Europeans the right to travel and trade freely within the empire and to pay low customs duties on imports and exports. The capitulations allowed European merchants to organize almost all trade between the empire and Europe.

The first commercial treaty with a maritime state of western Europe, the Draft Treaty of Amity and Commerce, was negotiated with France in 1535. Based on the model of the earlier capitulations, this treaty, which was never confirmed by Sultan Süleyman (reigned 1520–1566), stated that French merchants would be permitted to move and trade freely within the empire and to pay only the taxes and duties paid by Turkish merchants. These privileges were eventually granted in 1569. In 1580, a similar treaty was concluded, granting these privileges to Britain, to English merchants who until this point had been required to conduct business with the empire under the French flag. In 1581, the English Levant company was chartered: All English consular and diplomatic officials became employees of the company, which supervised the execution of the capitulations.

These treaties governed commerce between the empire and western Europe until 1809, when the Treaty of Peace, Commerce, and Secret Alliance (the Dardanelles treaty) was signed between the empire and Great Britain. This treaty, which followed a brief period of British–Ottoman enmity, reaf-firmed the capitulations while granting limited reciprocal privileges to Ottoman merchants. More importantly, the treaty granted the empire the right to close passage through the Bosporous and Dardanelles straits (the Turkish Straits) to foreign warships during times of war. The issue of free passage through the Straits would be a subject of diplomacy for the next 150 years. On 7 May 1830 the United States signed its first commercial and navigation treaty with the Ottoman Empire. This treaty extended to the United States the same privileges granted to European merchants.

Following British assistance to the sultan in defeating the army of Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the Commercial Convention of Balta Liman was signed on 16 August 1838. This treaty, a renewal of the Commercial Convention of 1820, was a decisive defeat for the Ottoman government, which had sought to ease its fiscal constraints by raising the duties paid by British merchants. The negotiated increase from 3 to 5 percent ad valorem on imports was offset by a large reduction of duties paid on the internal movement of goods. The benefits accruing to Britain were strengthened by the 1861–1862 convention, which raised the external tariff to 8 percent in exchange for the gradual reduction of duties on exports to 1 percent; this convention transformed the empire into a virtually free-trading country. The 1838 and 1861 conventions expressed the political incapacity of the Ottoman government to substitute for the capitulations a new mode of organizing trade, and it signaled the continuing economic subordination of the empire to Western states.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, the Lausanne Treaty of Peace with Turkey and the accompanying Straits Convention was signed at the conclusion of the Turkish war of independence, dated 24 July 1923. It reestablished the principle of freedom of navigation through the Straits by demilitarizing the shores; it also established an international supervisory commission, under the permanent presidency of Turkey, to execute this agreement. In addition, the treaty bound the Republic of Turkey to maintain the prewar level of tariffs at their low rates.

Angered by the restrictive clauses of the treaty's Straits Convention, Turkey pushed for revisions, resulting in the Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits, dated 20 July 1936. This conferred on Turkey all the duties and powers previously granted to an international commission, while permitting the remilitarization of the Straits. The passage through the Straits of warships that threatened Turkey was left to the discretion of the Turkish government, subject to ratification by the League of Nations.

In 1945, after World War II, the USSR demanded that unilateral Turkish control over the Straits granted by the Montreux Convention be replaced by joint Turkish–Soviet responsibility; the Soviets also demanded the right to establish military bases in Turkey for the defense of the Straits. These veiled threats were countered by the admission of Turkey into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

see also balta liman, convention of (1838); capitulations; dardanelles, treaty of the (1809); ibrahim ibn muhammad ali; lausanne, treaty of (1923); montreux convention (1936); north atlantic treaty organization (nato); ottoman empire; straits, turkish.

Bibliography

Hurewitz, J. C. The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, 2d edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.

Owen, Roger. The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914. London and New York: Methuen, 1981.

Puryear, Vernon John. International Economics and Diplomacy in the Near East: A Study of British Commercial Policy in the Levant, 1834–1853. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1969.

Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976–1977.

David Waldner