Italo-Turkish Diplomacy and the War Over Libya, 1911-1912

289 Pages·1990·5.774 MB·English

by  Timothy W. Childs

ITALO-TURKISH DIPLOMACY
AND THE WAR OVER LIBYA
1911-1912
SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL
STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
ETUDES SOCIALES, ÉCONOMIQUES ET
POLITIQUES DU MOYEN ORIENT
VOLUME XLII
ITALO-TURKISH DIPLOMACY
AND THE WAR OVER LIBYA
1911-1912
TIMOTHY W. CHILDS
E.J. BRILL
LEIDEN • NEW YORK • K0BENHAVN • KÖLN
1990
Comité de rédaction—Editorial committm
E. Gellner (London School of Economics), C. Is&awi (Princeton University), S.
Khalaf (American University of Beirut), M. F. al-Khatib (Cairo University), §. Mai­
din (Bogaziçi University, Istanbul), U. Steinbach (Deutsches Orient Institut, Ham­
burg), M. Zghal (Université de Tunis).
Rédacteur—Editor
C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze
Le but de la collection est de faciliter la communication entre le grand public interna­
tional et les spécialistes des sciences sociales étudiant le Moyen-Orient, et notamment
ceux qui y résident. Les ouvrages sélectionnés portent sur les phénomènes et problèmes
contemporains: sociaux, culturels, économiques et administratifs. Leur principales orien­
tales relèvent de la théorie générale, de problématiques plus précises, et de la politologie:
aménagement des institutions et administration des affaires publiques.
The series is designed to serve as a link between the international reading public and
social scientists studying the contemporary Middle East, notably those living in the area.
Works included are characterized by their relevance to actual phenomena and problems:
whether social, cultural, economic, political or administrative. They are theory-oriented,
problem-oriented or policy-oriented.
ISSN 0085-6913
ISBN 90 04 09025 8
© Copyright 1990 ty E.J. Brill, Laden, The Netherlands
AU rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
translated in any form, ty print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche
or any other means without written permission from the publisher
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ............................................................................. vu
Author’s note on spelling and transliteration................................ ix
Preface................................................................................................ xi
Maps
1. The Ottoman Empire............................................................... xiv
2. The Ottoman Empire in Europe before the Balkan Wars
(1912-1913)................................................................................ xv
3. The Dodecanese and Southwestern Anatolia........................... xvi
I. Italian diplomatic preparations for the Libyan enterprise:
the woes and disarray of the Ottoman Empire................. 1
II. To be Malthusian is vile ..................................................... 29
III. Italy goes to war.................................................................... 49
IV. Military and diplomatic developments through Italy’s
annexation decree .................................................................. 71
V. The diplomatic stalemate ..................................................... 92
VI. The Sazonov mediation attempts........................................ 106
VII. Ottoman problems in Libya; Italian moves into Aegean
and early peace feelers: the Volpi mission............................ 132
VIII. A confusing July: the abortive peace talks and the
collapse of the Sait Pasa Cabinet........................................ 160
IX. The negotiations leading to the Peace of Lausanne—Phase
One: 3 August to 15 September, 1912 ............................... 174
X. The negotiations leading to the Peace of Lausanne—Phase
Two: 16 September to 18 October, 1912............................. 201
XI. Conclusions; Epilogue: Lausanne’s Aftermath.................... 231
Appendices A—F ................................................................................ 241
Bibliography......................................................................................... 254
Index ..................................................................................................... 258

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should like to express my thanks to the personnel, respectively, of the
Digiçleri Bakanligi Hazine-i Evrak in Istanbul and of the Archivio Cen­
trale dello Stato in Rome for their courteous assistance to me while I was
working in their archives. I am also grateful to the personnel of the
Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Osteuropa-Abteilung, Berlin
for their help in locating material published in the Soviet Union, and to
Mr. Brian Barrett for translating it. To my young Turkish research assis­
tant, Dr. Ahmet Bayta;, my debt is great indeed: he not only helped me
to locate sources inside and outside of Turkey, but he translated the rele­
vant passages of a number of modern Turkish historians and memoirists
of the last years of the Ottoman Empire. I am also indebted to Ilse Hig­
gins for her translation of the relevant passages of the memoirs of Field-
Marshal tzzet Paya, and to Dr. Heath Lowry and Chilton Watrous for
their support and help. The Turkish and American personnel of the U.S.
Consulate-General at Istanbul and the U.S. Embassy at Ankara were of
invaluable assistance in helping me to cope with and surmount the in­
evitable bureaucratic misunderstandings. In Rome, where I was able to
be more self-sufficient, I am nonetheless indebted to the Contessa Anna
Lea Lelli for her sage counsel and intimate knowledge of all things
Roman. To my kinsman and friend, J. Vinton Lawrence, I am indebted
for the maps. To Alneater Gilliam, for typing the manuscript, and to
Mr. and Mrs. Owen W. Seals Jr., for transferring it to word-processor,
my thanks. I am also grateful to Twin Oaks Indexing Collective of
Louisa, Virginia, for preparing the index. Professors Thomas Heide and
John Ruedy of Georgetown University, and Roderick Davison of The
George Washington University in Washington, D.C. made many helpful
suggestions. Finally, I wish to exprès my profound gratitude to my wife,
Hope, for her unstinting support, encouragement, and loving kindness
while I have been engaged in this study.
Norfolk, Connecticut, 1987

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON SPELLING AND TRANSLITERATION
When writing of the history of the peoples and places that make up the
Mediterranean basin, where political sovereignties and frontiers have so
often changed, where linguistic and orthographic anomalies are indeed
so exasperating, one is occasionally tempted to throw up one’s hands and
cry “a plague on all your houses”! It is impossible to be unfailingly con*
sistent; one can but attempt it. In this study then, the spelling of people’s
names and places will conform to modem usage and modern political
sovereignties: that is, Ottoman officials’ names, and places now in the
Turkish Republic will be transliterated according to the dictates of
modern Turkish orthography; Aegean islands forming part of the Ot­
toman Empire in 1912, occupied by Italy until the end of World War It,
and now part of Greece, will be transliterated according to the dictates
of modem Greek; Libyan place-names will be transliterated according to
the dictates of literary Arabic. There will, however, be exceptions to the
above: cities, provinces, and bodies of water for which there exist com­
mon forms in English will be referred to by those forms, e.g. Rome,
Cyrenaica, the Dardanelles.