British Strategic Interests versus Ottoman Sovereign Rights: New Perspectives on the Aqaba Crisis, 1906

摘要

During the first days of 1906, a diplomatic argument broke out between Britain and the Ottoman Empire over the location of the still undefined line of demarcation between Egyptian and Syrian territory in the Sinai peninsula. What started as a local dispute gradually gained momentum, resulting in the British fleet steaming towards Istanbul and the possibility of an international conflict drawing in other powers. The conclusion, after months of bitter diplomatic negotiations involving officials in Istanbul, Cairo and London, was a near total capitulation by the Ottoman sultan, Abdlhamid II, with the formal loss of several thousand square miles of territory to Egypt and the establishment of a permanent border. Drawing on a number of different archival collections, this article argues that an uneven British attitude met a resolute and consistent, if ultimately unsuccessful, Ottoman response. The British position was, for example, tentatively resisted all along by the ambassador in Istanbul, Sir Nicholas O'Conor. The dispute serves as an important case study of relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in the years leading up to the First World War, of British policy-making in the Near East and of the Ottoman reaction.