PREFACE.
No one who has talked with many people on the Eastern Question can have failed to remark the wide difference of opinion held on things which ought to be matters of certainty, and on which two opinions ought to be impossible. This divergence of view is only a very natural consequence of the want of any book of authority on the subject. How is one to learn what manner of men these Bulgarians and Greeks of Turkey really are? Hitherto our information has been chiefly obtained from newspaper correspondents: and it is hardly necessary to observe that the nature of their selected information depends upon the tendency of the paper. There have, of course, been notable exceptions to this common rule of a party-conscience: the world of journalists is but now lamenting the untimely death of one of its most distinguished members, with whose name honor and truth and indefatigable thoroughness must ever be associated. But granting the honesty and impartiality of a correspondent, allowing the accuracy of his report of what he has seen, it must be conceded that his opportunities for observation are short and hurried, that he judges almost solely from the immediate present, and that by the nature of his profession he is seldom able to make a very long or intimate study of a people’s character. One accepts his reports as the evidence of an eye-witness; but one does not necessarily pledge one’s self to his deductions. For the former task he has every necessary qualification: for the latter he may have none, and he probably has not the most important. Especially unsafe is it to trust to estimates of nations formed hastily on insufficient experience in the midst of general disorder, such as that in which many summary verdicts have lately been composed.
But if newspaper correspondents are placed at some disadvantage, what can be said for those well-assured travellers who pay a three months’ visit to Turkey, spend the time pleasantly at Pera, or perhaps at the country-houses of some Pashas, and then consider themselves qualified to judge the merits of each class in each nationality of the mixed inhabitants of the land. It is unpleasant to have to say it; but it is well known that scarcely a single book upon Turkey is based upon a much longer experience than of three months.
In this dearth of trustworthy information, it was with no little interest that I learnt that an English lady, who had lived for a great part or her life in various provinces of European and Asiatic Turkey, and whose linguistic powers perfected by experience enabled her to converse equally with Greeks, Turks, and Bulgarians as one of themselves, had formed a collection of notes on the people of Turkey—on their national characteristics, the way they live, their manners and customs, education, religion, their aims, and ambitions. In any case the observations of one who had for more than twenty years enjoyed such exceptional advantages must be valuable. Of the opportunities of the Author there could be as little doubt as of her conscientious accuracy in recording her experience. The only question was not the quality but the quantity of the information. But in this the manuscript surpassed all expectations. Every page teemed with details of life and character entirely novel to all but Eastern travellers. Every subject connected with the people of Turkey seemed to be exhaustively treated, and it was rarely that any need for more ample information was felt.
In editing what, as I have had nothing to do with the matter of it, I may without vanity call the most valuable work on the people of Turkey that has yet appeared, I have strictly kept in view the principle laid down by the Author—that the book was to be a collection of facts, not a vehicle for party views on the Eastern Question, nor a recipe for the harmonious arrangement of South-eastern Europe. Politically the book is entirely colorless. It was felt that thus only could it commend itself to both, or rather all, the disputing parties on the question, and that only by delicately avoiding the susceptible points of each party could the book attain its end—of generally imparting a certain amount of sound information on the worst-known subject of the day.
The reader, therefore, must not expect to find here a defence of Turkish rule nor yet an attack thereon: he will only find an account of how the Turks do rule, with a few incidental illustrations scattered throughout the book. Comment is, as a rule, eschewed as superfluous and insulting to the intelligence of the reader. Still less must he look for any expression of opinion on the wisdom or folly of the policy of Her Majesty’s Government. All these things are apart from the aim of the work. It is wished to provide the data necessary to the formation of anyworthy views on the many subdivisions of the Eastern Question. It is not wished to point the moral. Once conversant with the actual state of the people of Turkey, once knowing how they live, what are their virtues and vices, what their aims and ambitions, and it is easy for any rational man to draw his conclusions; easy to criticise favorably or otherwise according to the merits of the case the policy of the British Government towards Turkey and towards Greece, to decide whether after all the supposed rising in Bulgaria (about which little is said here, because everything has already been well said) was ever a rising at all; whether the Turks are or are not incapable of the amenities which many believe them then to have indulged in; whether the Bulgarians are friendly to Russia, or are really the very humble servants of the Porte; in short, whether half the questions which have for two years been the subject of perpetual contention admit of debate at all.
The book has been divided into four parts. In the first, the general characteristics of the various races of Turkey are sketched. Very little is said about their history, for it is not the history but the present state—or rather the state just before the war—of the people that is the subject of the book. But the Author has tried to bring home to the reader the social condition and the national character of their different races. The Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, Armenians, and Jews are in turn described, and the, for the time, scarcely less important Circassians, with the Tatars and Gypsies, have their chapter.
In the second part, the tenure of land in Turkey and the state of the small peasant farmers are explained, and an account is given of houses and hovels in Turkey, including that most superb of Turkish houses, the Seraglio of the Sultan, to which with its inmates a very detailed notice is devoted; and the part ends with an account of Municipality and Police in Turkey, together with the kindred subject of Brigandage.
The third part is occupied with the manners and customs of the races. Few things give such an insight into the character of a people as a study of their customs, and it is believed that these chapters on the extraordinary ceremonies employed in Turkey on the occasion of a birth or marriage, or a death, the dress, food, amusements, of the Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, and Armenians will prove of as much value as interest. The fact, for example, that in many parts of Bulgaria the weddings take place not in the church but in the cellar of the bridegroom’s house speaks volumes on the insecurity of a woman’s person while Turkish governors rule in Bulgarian towns. The custom of the Bulgarian bridegroom flinging a halter over his bride’s neck and dragging her into his house is an interesting relic of capture, and the subsequent knocking of the bride’s head against the wall as a warning against infidelity illustrates the general chastity of the people. The indecent exhibitions, again, at Turkish weddings help to explain the want of refinement and womanly feeling among Turkish ladies. The ceremonies of the Greeks are interesting from another point of view, inasmuch as very many of them are identical with those of the ancient Greeks.
The last part is devoted to the education, superstition, and religion of the people of Turkey. It is here that we get to the root of Turkish manners; for we see how the Turk is brought up, how he learns the vices that have become identified with the thought of his race, how he remains, in spite even of a western education, deeply imbued with superstition, and finally how he loses all the energy of the old Othmanli character by the operation of the fatal doctrine of Kismet. The chapters on Education are among the most valuable in the book; whilst those on Religion will serve to explain some of the difficulties that beset the proper adjustment of affairs in Southern Europe.
The study of the facts thus brought together points to a considerable modification of the views commonly entertained with regard to the characters of the peoples of Turkey. The Author’s long experience leaves no doubt of the vast superiority of the Greeks to the other races; yet there is no people that one is more accustomed to hear spoken of with distrust and even contempt. The Greeks are commonly charged with a partiality for sharp practice, with intolerable vanity; their character is summed up as petty. There is always a grain of truth in a calumny: when plenty of mud is thrown some of it sticks, not because of the quantity of the mud, but because there is sure to be an adhesive sympathy with some part of the object of the attack. The Greeks have in some degree laid themselves open to these charges. It was very unwise of them to take the first rank as merchants in the East, and thus arouse the jealousy of the merchants of all European nations, whom they have eclipsed by their superior business capacities. Envy will pick holes anywhere, but it is especially easy to criticise the customs of a merchant class. Mercantile morality all over the world is a thing of itself, not generally understanded of the people. But there is nothing to show that the Greek merchants are less scrupulous than the rest, though their temptations are infinitely greater. If a little sharp business is said to be permissible, and even perhaps necessary, at Liverpool, for instance, it isà fortioriessential in Turkey. It is a perfectly well-understood principle that in Turkey, where everything is done by bribery and corruption, a merchant, unless he wishes to be ruined, must steer a somewhat oblique course. So long as the late Turkish rule extended over Greek subjects, it was necessary to do in Turkey as the Turks do. French and English merchants sin as much as the Greeks in this manner; but the superior commercial ability of the Greeks and their consequent success have drawn on them the whole evil repute. It is not that the Greeks cheat more than other commercial nations: it is merely that they make more money on the same amount of cheating.Hinc illæ iræ!
The Greeks, again, are certainly conceited, and with excellent reason. It would be absurd to expect anything else. They are but newly freed; after centuries of Ottoman tyranny, followed by a generation of Bavarian despotism, they have at last been allowed to enjoy some fifteen years of freedom. Even under the stiff court of George, but much more during the last fifteen years, they have made prodigious progress. Having worked out their own freedom, they have been making themselves fit for freedom. From craven slaves of the Turk they have become a liberty-loving people. Their thoughts have been casting back to the noble ancestry which they claim as their own, and looking onward to the great future that is in store for them. They have measured themselves intellectually with the rest of Europe and have not been worsted. They have spent the last twenty years in the work of self-education, and so successful have been their efforts that it is well known that no nation can compare with Greece in the general education of its people—that to Greece alone can be applied the ambiguous taunt that she is over-educated.
All these things are legitimate subjects of pride. It is no wonder that the Greeks are vain of their adopted ancestors; no marvel that they are proud of their keen wits and facile intelligence. They have formed a justly high estimate of their national worth, and are justly proud of the progress they have already made, and they take no pains to conceal it. Their faults are only exaggerations of national virtues, the outcome of the reaction from a long servitude; they are the necessary but temporary result of the circumstances. A little time for development, a closer association with the other powers of Europe, and a worthier trust on the part of these, and the Greeks will lose their blemishes of youth; conceit will be toned down to a proper pride, and high intelligence will no longer be called over-cleverness. The nation has marched steadily forward in the little time it has been free; it has made great steps in educating itself and in spreading knowledge among its members still subject to the alien; it has shown itself able to govern itself, even to restrain itself under terrible provocation when there was much to gain and little that could be lost. If it is given fair play, the time may yet come when a seventh Great power shall arise in Europe, when the Greeks shall again rule in Byzantium, and Europe shall know that the name of Hellenes is still a sacred name.
The Author’s account of the Bulgarians differs little from the ordinary opinion, except on one important point. She describes them as honest hard-working peasants, rather slow and stupid, but excellent laborers. But she absolutely denies the ferocious character ascribed to them by some writers. Every one knows that they exacted a terrible vengeance from the Turks, and no man of spirit can blame them for it; though it is much to be regretted that, if the accounts be true, they carried their revenge to the length of Turkish barbarity. But this was an exceptional time: it has had its parallel in most nations, as those who remember the feeling in England at the time of the Indian mutiny can witness. As a rule the Bulgarian is, on the contrary, rather too tame. He is a very domestic animal, lives happily with his family, keeps generally sober, enjoys his dance on the common on feast-days, and goes with perfect willingness and satisfaction to his daily work in the fields or at the rose-harvest. He is an admirable agricultural laborer, with a stolidity more than Teutonic, without the Teuton’s energy. Yet these Bulgarians seem to have a good deal of sound common sense, and show many of the qualities necessary in a people that is to govern itself. It has hitherto submitted with curious tranquillity to the Turkish yoke, and the Sultan has probably had few less ill-affected servants than the Bulgarians. On the other hand, it seems that the Bulgarians entertain a very decided hostility to Russia, an enmity second only to their hatred for the Greeks.
The third important element in the future of South-East Europe is the Turks. Of them it is not necessary to say much: most people are fairly enlightened as to the manners and rule of the Turk, and the Author has intentionally avoided crowding her pages with Turkish atrocities: they are all very much alike, and they are not pleasant reading. The official classes meet with scant respect at her hands; but with most writers she speaks favorably of the Turkish peasant. The principal vice he has is his religious fanaticism, which is the result partly of Mohammedanism itself, and partly of the form and manner in which it is inculcated in Turkey. Islam may be broad and tolerant enough; but not the rigid orthodox Islam as taught in the primary schools of the Ottoman Empire. Islam is an excellent creed by itself; but a ruling Mohammedan minority in a Christian country is an endless source of trouble. But the religious question is only one of those which have disturbed the position of the Porte. The system of administration, as described in these pages, is enough to overturn any power, and an official class brought up under vicious home influences, educated in fanatical mosque-schools, living the self-indulgent indolent life of Stamboul, getting and keeping office by bribery, administering “justice” to the highest bidder, is a doomed class. When one sees how a Turkish child is brought up he begins to wonder how any Turk can help being vicious and dishonest. It is quite certain that there is no hope for the Turks so long as Turkish womenremain what they are, and home-training is the initiation of vice. So far as can be judged, the Turk naturally possessed some of the true elements of greatness; but it is rarely they come to bear fruit: they are choked by the pernicious social system which destroys the moral force of the women and thereafter the men of the empire. It is this carefully inculcated deficiency in all sense of uprightness and justice, and this trained tendency to everything that is a crime against the community, that renders the Pasha incapable of governing. It is this fact which compels one to admit that, whatever the decisions of the Berlin Congress, it is a clear gain that the war has won for Europe, to be able to speak of Turkish rule in the past tense.
With full knowledge of the experience and research of the Author, I must yet say there are some points—notably the Greek Church of Russia—in which I cannot bring myself to agree with her; and I must also add that, owing to the haste with which the book was put through the press, I have allowed a few misprints to escape me.
Stanley Lane Poole.
June 20th, 1878.