Friedrich Engel-Janosi, “Drei Jahre der Orient-Frage 1856–1859”

Engel-Janosi’s article is a diplomatic history of the Eastern Question from the Paris settlement of 1856 to the Franco-Sardinian-Austrian war of 1859. Its six-part structure moves from Cavour’s early schemes, through the diplomatic personalities in Constantinople, to the Romanian elections, the crisis year 1858, and the aftermath of Cuza’s double election. The central claim is that the “execution” of the Paris treaty became the process by which the post-Crimean order dissolved.

Man kann einen Großteil des diplomatischen Kampfes, der in den Jahren nach dem Pariser Kongreß in und um Konstantinopel stattfand, in die Frage zusammenfassen, ob die Haltung des französischen Kaisers klug war und den gegebenen Tatsachen entsprach.

English translation: A great part of the diplomatic struggle that took place in and around Constantinople in the years following the Congress of Paris can be summed up in the question whether the attitude of the French Emperor was prudent and corresponded to the given facts.

That question makes Napoleon III the hinge of the essay: hostile to simple preservation of the Ottoman Empire, drawn to Balkan nationality, yet never wholly clear in plan. Cavour’s “prelude” shows why the Danubian Principalities mattered beyond Romania. Moldavia, Wallachia, Parma, Modena, the Papal lands, and Austria’s Italian position enter one strategic calculus; nationality becomes both principle and weapon.

Seine Technik ist kaum ausgebildet: der Verschwörer verdeckt zeitweise den Staatsmann.

English translation: His technique is hardly developed: at times the conspirator overshadows the statesman.

The Constantinople chapters are a prosopography of policy. Stratford de Redcliffe and Palmerston defend Turkey as an anti-Russian barrier and push Westernizing reform; Prokesch-Osten defends the empire as a distinct political individuality and fears Russia on Austria’s southeastern frontier; Thouvenel executes Napoleon’s line while privately doubting it. Reschid, Ali, and Fuad appear not as passive clients but as Ottoman statesmen trapped between reform, sovereignty, and humiliation.

Nicht aus dem Innern, nur von außen konnte das Verderben kommen, und zwar auf zwei Wegen, durch Gewalt und durch Überstürzung der Reform.

English translation: Ruin could come not from within but only from without, and by two paths: through violence and through the precipitate rush of reform.

The Romanian elections of 1857 become Engel-Janosi’s test case for diplomatic morality. He refuses the conventional tale of pure national liberals against corrupt Austro-Turkish obstruction: both camps manipulate, bribe, and intimidate. Yet the outcome matters because it exposes the weakening Anglo-Austrian defense of Ottoman integrity and the success of French pressure. Osborne, the fall of Reschid, and the revised elections link the Principalities to the coming Italian war.

Hinter dem Kampf zwischen Paris und Wien um die Fürstentümer steckte mehr. »Denn der Kampf von 1859 begann schon 1857«, schrieb Thouvenel in seinen Memoiren.

English translation: Behind the struggle between Paris and Vienna over the Principalities lay more. "For the struggle of 1859 had already begun in 1857," Thouvenel wrote in his memoirs.

In 1858 the Eastern Question widens: Serbia, Montenegro, Jeddah, the Paris conference on the Principalities, and Plombières all point toward a European confrontation. Austria clings to treaty right but acts hesitantly; Napoleon turns each Austrian objection into proof of hostility; Cavour looks for an eastern pretext to internationalize the struggle against Vienna. The article’s sharpest conceptual contrast is between inherited legality and a new politics of national mobilization.

Aus den Briefen Cavours gewinnt man den Eindruck, daß hier eine neue Form des politischen Lebens, stark und rücksichtslos, auf eine alte und zusammenbrechende einhämmert, zu deren Verteidigung wenig vorgebracht werden konnte außer ihren rechtmäßigen Ansprüchen und vielleicht jener Weisheit, die manchmal in einem Werk verborgen liegt, das in Jahrhunderten gewachsen ist.

English translation: From Cavour's letters one gains the impression that here a new form of political life, strong and ruthless, is hammering upon an old and collapsing one, in defence of which little could be adduced apart from its lawful claims and perhaps that wisdom which sometimes lies hidden in a work that has grown over centuries.

The final movement shows this new politics creating facts: Cuza’s double election realizes Romanian union de facto; the Porte protests but lacks support; Cavour sends agents and arms; the Italian war confirms that the Oriental Question was not peripheral to 1859 but one of its preparatory theaters. Engel-Janosi’s relevance lies in joining Romanian unification, Ottoman decline, and Italian nationalism into a single diplomatic crisis of legitimacy.

Wenn dies, wie wir allen Grund haben zu hoffen, das Ende der Welt sein soll, wird alles irgendwie geregelt werden. Wenn dies jedoch nicht das Ende der Welt ist, wird alles noch viel schlechter werden.

English translation: If this, as we have every reason to hope, is to be the end of the world, then somehow everything will be settled. But if this is not the end of the world, then everything will become much worse.