On August 21

On this day in ...
... 1762, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (left) died at age 73 in her birth city, London, a year after returning to the city on the urgings of her daughter, then wife to Britain's Prime Minister. Montagu had lived abroad much of her adult life. She'd been born into an aristocratic family, befriended a women's rights activist, Mary Astell, and eloped with Edward Montagu over her father's objection. Edward also was a member of the British elite, and while he served as Ambassador at Istanbul, she wrote the Turkish Embassy Letters for which she is best known. (image credit) Having herself been disfigured by disease, she became an expert on and advocate, through her letters, of the Turkish method of smallpox vaccination -- the only one then available.

(Prior August 21 posts are here, here, and here.)

On August 10

On this day in ...
... 1920 (90 years ago today), in a community outside Paris, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed by representatives of the Allied Powers who'd won World War I and of the Ottoman Empire they'd defeated. By the treaty's terms the Ottoman Empire was abolished. Turkey was to give up rights to Arab Asia and North Africa, while Armenia was to become independent and Kurdistan autonomous, and Greece was to control specified regions. (credit for photo of Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos signing the treaty) "Rejected by the new Turkish nationalist regime, the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne," Switzerland, the 1923 pact discussed in this post.

(Prior August 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

On February 3

On this day in ...
... 1830 (180 years ago today), ministers plenipotentiary for Britain, France, and Russia, signed Protocole* (No 1) tenu à Londres le 3 Février 1830, relatif à l’indépendance de la Grèce. Together with 2 additional instruments signed that day, this London Protocol established Greece as an independent monarchy within defined borders. The accords "were the outcome of the destruction" by Britain, France, and Russia "of the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets" the previous autumn at the Battle of Navarino, now Pylos, Greece. (credit for map of Greece circa 1830)

(Prior February 3 posts are here and here.)

On January 5

On this day in ...
... 1809, at what is now Çanakkale, Turkey, delegates from Britain and the Ottoman Empire signed Treaty of Peace, Commerce, and Secret Alliance commonly known as the Treaty of the Dardanelles, named after the Turkish strait depicted at right. Ratifications would be exchanged in July of the same year. The pact provided inter alia for an end to hostilities between the 2 powers, restoration of seized property, establishment of diplomatic and trade relations, and a British promise to support the Ottomans in the event of an attack by France. A point of treaty-drafting interest:

[T]he treaty is of particular interest because of its language. Normally, treaties are drawn in the language of the parties negotiating them. Because the Ottomans had a limited knowledge of English, however, they insisted that the treaty be drawn in Turkish and French, with which they were much more comfortable. This was a matter of some discussion in the foreign office, but the Ottoman position prevailed.

(Prior January 5 posts are here and here.)

On September 14

On this day in ...
... 1829 (180 years ago today), a years-long armed conflict between Russia and the Ottoman Empire ended with the signing of the Treaty of Edirne in the city of that name -- a city in modern-day Turkey that also had been known as Adrianople. Impetus for the war had been the intervention of Russia, allied with Britain and France, in Greeks' struggle for independence from the Ottomans. The treaty's "most important clause granted Greece complete independence"; on account of this and other provisions, the pact "marked another step in the decline of the Ottoman Empire," which would cease altogether after World War I. (credit for 1828 caricature by Briton William Heath, published during the war, depicting Russia's czar encaging a turkey)

(Prior September 14 posts are here and here.)

On May 7

On this day in ...
... 1832, a protocol was signed by Bavaria and other states in London, by which Greece was declared an independent kingdom, to be ruled by Prince Otto of Bavaria, with an indemnity being paid to the Ottoman Empire for loss of the territory.
... 1948 (60 years ago today), began a congress at The Hague, Netherlands, at which states' diplomats started discussing the possibility of European intergovernmental cooperation. They further "adopted a resolution calling for the drafting of a charter of human rights and the setting up of an independent European court to enforce them"; eventual results would include the Council of Europe, with its various intergovernmental units, and the European Court of Human Rights.