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and prepared for eventual alienation. Egypt, Tunisia, Eastern Rumelia, Krete--these had all been withdrawn
from Ottoman control since the Berlin settlement, and now Macedonia seemed to be going the same way.
Bitter to swallow as the other losses had been--pills thinly sugared with a guarantee of suzerainty--the loss of
Macedonia would be more bitter still; for, if it were withdrawn from Ottoman use and profit, Albania would
follow and so would the command of the north Aegean and the Adriatic shores; while an ancient Moslem
population would remain at Christian mercy.
It was partly Ottoman fault, partly the fault of circumstances beyond Ottoman control, that this district had
become a scandal and a reproach. In the days of Osmanli greatness Macedonia had been neglected in favour
of provinces to the north, which were richer and more nearly related to the ways into central Europe. When
more attention began to be paid to it by the Government, it had already become a cockpit for the new-born
Christian nationalities, which had been developed on the north, east, and south. These were using every
weapon, material and spiritual, to secure preponderance in its society, and had created chronic disorder which
the Ottoman administration now weakly encouraged to save itself trouble, now violently dragooned. Already
the powers had not only proposed autonomy for it, but begun to control its police and its finance. This was the
last straw. The public opinion which had slowly been forming for thirty years gained the army, and Midhat's
seed came to fruit.
By an irony of fate Macedonia not only supplied the spectacle which exasperated the army to revolt, but by its
very disorder made the preparation of that revolt possible; for it was due to local limitations of Ottoman
sovereignty that the chief promoters of revolution were able to conspire in safety. By another irony, two of the
few progressive measures ever encouraged by Abdul Hamid contributed to his undoing. If he had not sent
The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria--Serbia--Greece--Rumania--Turkey 135
young officers to be trained abroad, the army, the one Ottoman institution never allowed wholly to decay,
would have remained outside the conspiracy. If he had never promoted the construction of railways, as he
began to do after 1897, the Salonika army could have had no such influence on affairs in Constantinople as it
exerted in 1908 and again in 1909. As it was, the sultan, at a mandate from Resna in Macedonia, re-enacted
Midhat's Constitution, and, a year later, saw an army from Salonika arrive to uphold that Constitution against
the reaction he had fostered, and to send him, dethroned and captive, to the place whence itself had come.
7
Revolution
Looking back on this revolution across seven years of its consequences, we see plainly enough that it was
inspired far less by desire for humane progress than by shame of Osmanli military decline. The 'Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity' programme which its authors put forward (a civilian minority among them, sincerely
enough), Europe accepted, and the populace of the empire acted upon for a moment, did not express the
motive of the movement or eventually guide its course. The essence of that movement was militant
nationalism. The empire was to be regenerated, not by humanizing it but by Ottomanizing it. The Osmanli, the
man of the sword, was the type to which all others, who wished to be of the nation, were to conform. Such as
did not so wish must be eliminated by the rest.
The revolutionary Committee in Salonika, called 'of Union and Progress', held up its cards at first, but by
1910 events had forced its hand on the table. The definite annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by
Austria-Hungary in 1908, and the declaration of independence and assumption of the title Tsar by the ruler of
Bulgaria, since they were the price to be paid by the revolutionaries for a success largely made in Germany,
were opposed officially only _pro forma_; but when uninformed opinion in the empire was exasperated
thereby against Christendom, the Committee, to appease reactionaries, had to give premature proof of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]