Extraterritorial Prosecution, the Late Capitulations, and the New International Lawyers

Hanley, Will

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-48932-6_6

Will Hanley⁴

Abstract

This contribution considers the international debate among legal specialists on the status of the so-called ‘capitulations’ sparked by the ‘Joris affair’. Joris’s trial and incarceration revealed the inconsistencies and ambiguities of the legal system governing the status of foreign subjects in the Ottoman domains. The influential Belgian expert on international law Albéric Rolin argued for the extradition of Joris to the Belgian judiciary based on the Belgian-Ottoman treaty of 1838. The fact that Belgium was a small and relatively ‘powerless’ nation encouraged Ottoman legal scholars to respond without risking entrapment in major political or diplomatic incidents. Rolin’s position met with serious criticism from the Ottoman Gabriel Noradounghian and others in the growing community of international lawyers. The Joris affair incited debate about the access of ‘non-Christian’ states to the civilized international community of nations. The chapter situates this episode in two broader, interlocking legal histories: that of the capitulations, which were drawing to a close at the beginning of the 20th century, and that of international law in the modern state system, which was in the midst of its precipitous ascent.

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Notes

1.
‘Sultan’s Act of Clemency’, The Times (London), 24 December 1907.
2.
Enquête sur l’attentat commis dans la journée du 21 juillet (1905) (Istanbul: F. Loeffler). Melhame was the third man to head the investigation commission, and by far the most effective. For a fairly detailed sketch of his findings, see ‘The Attempt on the Sultan’, Times, 25 January 1906. On the Melhame family more generally, see J. Hanssen (2011) ‘“Malhamé–Malfamé”: Levantine Elites and Transimperial Networks on the Eve of the Young Turk Revolution’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43 (1), 25–48.
3.
M. S. Kebedgy, ‘L’affaire Jooris’, Gazette de Lausanne, 16 May 1906.
4.
Compare on this issue Chaps. 4 and 5.
5.
Belgium and the Ottoman Empire exchanged at least half a dozen notes concerning the trial in the year that followed it. I have reconstructed this series from N. Politis (1906) ‘Les capitulations et la justice répressive ottomane, à propos de l’affaire Joris’, Revue de droit international privé et de droit pénal international, 2, p. 660 and from news reports, and it may be deficient.
6.
In a letter to Victor Resseler of 1 December 1905, Georges Lorand states that the Belgian Foreign Minister had initially rejected this legal argument, and was planning only to request clemency. W. Resseler and B. Suykerbuyk (1997) Dynamiet voor de sultan: Carolus Eduard Joris in Konstantinopel (Antwerp: B+B), p. 82.
7.
These notes were sent by Belgium on 9 January 1906 and by the Ottomans on 2 February 1906.
8.
‘The Attempt on the Sultan’, Times, 7 May 1906. In an unpublished paper delivered at the workshop ‘The Assassination Attempt on Abdulhamid II: Rethinking Ottoman-European Entanglements’, organized at the University of Antwerp, 21 June 2013, Saro Dadyan stated that various relevant Ottoman legal memos can be found in Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi [hereafter BOA], in particular the following files: BOA, Y.PRK.TKM 18/42; BOA, BEO 2725/204356, 2725/204357, 2727/204493; and BOA, İ.HUS 48/22.
9.
Mixed nationality civil and commercial law cases were treated differently from the criminal case discussed here. Cases involving real property or sums of less than one thousand piasters were heard by the Nizamieh courts. On the Nizamieh courts, see A. Rubin (2011) Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Cases involving commercial law, as well as civil suits for sums greater than one thousand piasters were heard by the Mixed (Ticaret) Courts. For the text of the relevant laws, see G. Young (1905) Corps de droit ottoman; recueil des codes, lois, règlements, ordonnances et actes les plus importants du droit intérieur, et d’études sur le droit coutumier de l’Empire ottoman (Oxford: The Clarendon Press), vol. 1, Chaps. 7 to 15. For exhaustive analysis of commercial and civil jurisdiction for foreigners in the Ottoman Empire, see A. Mandelstam (1907) ‘La justice ottomane dans ses rapports avec les puissances étrangères’, Revue générale de droit international public’, 14–15, 53–148, 534–600, 329–384.
10.
As we will see, this last scenario was not the case before the 1870s, nor was it the case in Egypt. This jurisdictional arrangement is described in G. Noradounghian (1906) ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838 et la compétence en matière pénale des autorités ottomanes envers les étrangers’, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, 38, 126–132; Politis, ‘Les capitulations’, 662–672; E. R. Salem (1906) ‘Effets en Turquie de la naturalisation d’un sujet ottoman’, Journal du droit international (Clunet), 33, p. 76.
11.
This procedural ploy was not without precedent: in the 1890 Lorando case, the French embassy refused to send a dragoman or assessors to a case held at an Ottoman court. BOA, HR.HMŞ.İŞO 156/6/#12 no 4136, 4201 (30 June 1890).
12.
Kebedgy, ‘L’affaire Jooris’; ‘L’affaire Joris’ (1906), Revue de droit international privé et de droit pénal international, 2, 379–392.
13.
A. Rolin (1906) ‘L’affaire Joris’, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, 38, pp. 52–56; Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’; A. Rolin (1906) ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, 38, 363–382. This last article was also excerpted in the Journal du droit international privé et de la jurisprudence comparée (1906): 1079–1081.
14.
On ‘semi-peripheral lawyers’, see A. B. Lorca (2015) Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
15.
Politis, ‘Les capitulations’ (which later appeared in pamphlet form); Salem, ‘Effets’.
16.
Mandelstam, ‘La justice ottomane’.
17.
E. Eldem (2006) ‘Capitulations and Western Trade’, in: S. Faroqhi (ed.) The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 295.
18.
For an over-determined statement of this view, see T. Kuran (2011) The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
19.
The chief recent surveys are U. Özsu (2013) ‘Ottoman Empire’, in B. Fassbender and A. Peters (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, 429–448 (Oxford: Oxford University Press); C. Bell (2009) ‘Capitulations’, in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law; Eldem, ‘Capitulations and Western Trade’; M. H. van den Boogert (2005) The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls, and Beratlis in the 18th Century (Leiden: Brill); L. T. Darling (1995) ‘Capitulations’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press), 257–260; J. E. Wansbrough et al. (1986) ‘Imtiyazat’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill), 1178–1195.
20.
Van den Boogert, Capitulations, p. 50.
21.
A. H. De Groot (2003) ‘The Historical Development of the Capitulatory Regime in the Ottoman Middle East from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries’, Oriente Moderno, 83 (3), p. 577.
22.
A. Anghie (2005) Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
23.
For instance, J. Lorimer (1883) The Institutes of the Law of Nations: A Treatise of the Jural Relations of Separate Political Communities (Edinburgh; London: W. Blackwood and Sons), vol. 1, pp. 101–103.
24.
S. Kuneralp and E. Öktem (eds.) (2012) Chambre des conseillers légistes de la Sublime Porte: Rapports, avis et consultations sur la condition juridique des ressortissants étrangers, le statut des communautés non musulmanes et les relations internationales de l’Empire ottoman (1864–1912) (Istanbul: Les éditions Isis), p. 9.
25.
G. Noradounghian (ed.) (1897) Recueil d’actes internationaux de l’Empire ottoman traités, conventions, arrangements, déclarations, protocoles, procès verbaux, firmans, berats, lettres patentes et autres documents relatifs au droit public extérieur de la Turquie (Paris: F. Pichon).
26.
M. Koskenniemi (2002) The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 19.
27.
For an appreciation, see C. de Visscher (1939) ‘Notice sur le baron Albéric Rolin’, Annuaire de l’Académie Royale, 365–390.
28.
Politis, ‘Les capitulations’, p. 665.
29.
On these treaties, see E. Augusti (2011) ‘From Capitulations to Unequal Treaties: The Matter of an Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire’, Journal of Civil Law Studies, 4(2), 285–307.
30.
The original quotation is: ‘…ve Belçika tabisi kendi hallerinde arz ve edeb ve kârü kesb ve ticaretler-iyle meşgul oldukda hiç bir vakitde hükkâm ve zabitan-ı memleket taraflarından dahl ü taarruz ve habs olunmayıp, töhmet ve kabahatleri mütehakkik oldukda sair müste’minin haklarında muamele olunduğu vechile elçi ve maslahatgüzar ve konsolos ve konsolos vekilleri marifetiyle müttehimlerin te’dibine mübaderet kılına.’ (1842) Ahdname mecmuası (Istanbul: Daruttıbaatil’âmire); Mandelstam, ‘La justice ottomane’, p. 554. In the American version of this treaty, the article ends with ‘…elçi ve konsolosları marifetiyle iktiza-i te’dibleri icra oluna.’ Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 87.
31.
The original goes as follows: ‘Les Belges vaquant honnêtement et paisiblement à leurs occupations ou à leur commerce ne pourront jamais être arrêtés ou molestés par les autorités locales. Mais, en cas de crime ou de délit, l’affaire sera remise à leur ministre, chargé d’affaires, consul ou vice-consul; les accusés sont jugés par lui, et punis selon l’usage établi à l’égard des Francs.’
32.
He parses the term ‘punir’. Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: étude sur la Capitulation’, p. 374.
33.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 121.
34.
This collection was about to be superseded by Young, Corps de droit ottoman. Young became the standard collection; the first Arabic-language textbook of private international law, published in 1924, cites Young to the exclusion of Noradounghian. W. Hanley (2016) ‘International Lawyers without Public International Law: The Case of Late Ottoman Egypt’, Journal of the History of International Law, p. 18.
35.
Rolin states, for example, that Noradounghian confuses ‘application’ with ‘execution’. ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, pp. 377–378.
36.
Noradounghian, Recueil, vol. 2, p. 245. This was also the argument of the Belgian note of February. Politis, ‘Les capitulations’, p. 665.
37.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 124.
38.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 365.
39.
Predictably, he deems the French more precise. Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 374.
40.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 382.
41.
Authors who support Ottoman competence along with Belgian execution include the anonymous author of ‘L’affaire Joris’ and Kebedgy, ‘L’affaire Jooris’.
42.
De Groot suggests that with this innovation, ‘the capitulatory system reached its completion.’ De Groot, ‘Historical Development’, p. 599. The prominence given to this status in debates over Joris tends to confirm this view.
43.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, pp. 132–135; Politis, ‘Les capitulations’, p. 678.
44.
Only the Austrians formally renounced this right, however—the others did so as a matter of practice.
45.
He explained an 1896 case in which the Belgian defendant was tried by the Belgian minister as an oversight—had the Ottoman government known of it, it would have demanded jurisdiction. Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, pp. 122–123.
46.
Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, p. 176.
47.
On the question of Ottoman efforts under Abdülhamid II to take on the trappings of European statehood, see S. Deringil (1998) The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris).
48.
Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, p. 69.
49.
Rolin and Noradounghian argued about the meaning of an 1836 French circular that aimed to parse this practice; each took its ambiguities to confirm his own position. Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 55; Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 121. See also Salem, ‘Effets’, pp. 82–83.
50.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 371.
51.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, pp. 381-382.
52.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, pp. 367-370.
53.
The Belgian version, dated February 17, 1881, was quote by Noradounghian in extenso. Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, pp. 130–131; Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris’, p. 55.
54.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, pp. 129–132.
55.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 367.
56.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 376.
57.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, pp. 372–373.
58.
U. Özsu (2014) Formalizing Displacement : International Law and Population Transfers (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 8.
59.
N. Politis (1902) ‘La convention consulaire gréco-turque, et l’arbitrage des ambassadeurs des grandes puissances à Constantinople du 2 avril 1901’, Revue générale de droit international public, 9, 202–262, 406–468.
60.
Politis, ‘Les capitulations’.
61.
Politis, ‘Les capitulations’. p. 26.
62.
On Salem, see M. Anastassiadou (1997) Salonique, 1830–1912: Une ville ottomane à l’âge des Réformes (Leiden: Brill), pp. 346–347; D. G. Lewental (2015) ‘Salem, Emmanuel Raphael’, Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Brill Online).
63.
Much of this exchange, which was very similar in content to the Joris debate, is reproduced in J. B. Moore (1906) A Digest of International Law, 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office), pp. 668–714.
64.
P. M. Brown (1914) Foreigners in Turkey; Their Juridical Status (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 78–79. For the diplomatic version of these events, see Foreign Relations of the United States (1905), pp. 885–898.
65.
Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 75.
66.
Salem cited, for example, the unsuccessful Ottoman claim to criminal jurisdiction over Greek subjects detailed in Politis, ‘Convention consulaire gréco–turque’.
67.
Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 92.
68.
On Mandelstam, see H. P. Aust (2014) ‘From Diplomat to Academic Activist: André Mandelstam and the History of Human Rights’, European Journal of International Law, 25 (4), 1105–1121. The Almanach de Gotha first listed him as a member of the Russian consular staff in 1899, p. 1346.
69.
For the other two narratives, see Salem, ‘Effets’, pp. 78–86.
70.
Mandelstam, ‘La justice ottomane’, p. 540.
71.
Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 85.
72.
Mandelstam, ‘La justice ottomane’, pp. 534–563.
73.
The original reads, ‘…état tout nouvellement constitué en 1838, n’ayant eu encore aucun lien important, aucun rapport d’amitié avec la cour ottomane, pouvait-elle raisonnablement demander à celle-ci de lui accorder une immunité complète et absolue de juridiction en faveur de ses nationaux…’ Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 121.
74.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 125.
75.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 364.
76.
‘The Attempt on the Sultan II’, The Times, 26 January 1906.
77.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 382.
78.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris’, p. 56.
79.
Kebedgy, ‘L’affaire Jooris’.
80.
In W. Hanley (forthcoming) ‘The 1876−1883 Reform and Its Implementation: Many Institutions or One?’, in K. Fahmy and A. Shalakany (eds.) New Approaches to Modern Egyptian Legal History (Cairo: AUC Press)‚ I argue that in Egypt, the various legal authorities that held jurisdiction were not in conflict, but rather cooperated with each other to maintain control over troublesome subjects.
81.
Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 376.
82.
M. Shipley (1905) ‘Results of the Practical Abolition of Capital Punishment in Belgium’, Publications of the American Statistical Association, 9 (71), p. 309.
83.
Anarchists were a source of concern in the eastern Mediterranean during the first decade of the twentieth century. See I. Khuri-Makdisi (2010) The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
84.
He argued that fear of disorder was key to the 1875 judicial reorganization in Egypt. Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 92.
85.
On Congo in international legal thinking, see Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, pp. 155−166.
86.
A. Fitzmaurice (2012) ‘AHR Forum: Liberalism and Empire in Nineteenth-Century International Law’, American Historical Review, 117 (1), pp. 122–140.
87.
The original reads, ‘Nous tenons à faire remarquer que les lois turques, c’est le Coran, que tout le système oriental des lois est purement religieux et que, tant que ce système demeurera ce qu’il est, la conception des pays hors chrétienté demeurera également une conception nécessaire pour tout les peuples européens.’ Journal des tribunaux de Bruxelles, 14 January 1906, reprinted in ‘Faits et informations: Belgique: Affaire Joris, droit pour les Puissances européennes de juger leurs compatriotes ayant commis des crimes ou délits en terre ottomane, même à l’égard d’Ottomans’ (1906), Journal du droit international (Clunet), 33, pp. 255–256.
88.
Mandelstam, ‘La justice ottomane’, p. 29.
89.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 135.
90.
If the lawyers themselves did not make this explicit, other publicists made the parallel. See, for example, J. Perkins (2015) ‘The Congo of Europe: The Balkans and Empire in Early Twentieth-Century British Political Culture’, The Historical Journal, 58 (2), 565–587.
91.
On mobility, see A. McKeown (2008) Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press), especially Chap. 2; V. Huber (2013) Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
92.
I. Agmon (2006) Family & Court: Legal Culture and Modernity in Late Ottoman Palestine (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press); Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts. The dissertation in progress of Zülâl Muslu concerning the Ottoman Mixed Courts should provide further insights.
93.
See, for instance, the articles in Mediterranean Historical Review 24 (2).
94.
J. Berchtold (2009) Recht und Gerechtigkeit in der Konsulargerichtsbarkeit: Britische Exterritorialität im Osmanischen Reich 1825–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg).
95.
W. Hanley (2013) ‘When Did Egyptians Stop Being Ottomans? An Imperial Citizenship Case Study’, in W. Maas (ed.) Multilevel Citizenship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 89–109.
96.
Noradounghian, ‘Le traité turco-belge de 1838’, p. 125; Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 82.
97.
Salem cited general principles on freedom to change nationality (referring to Cogordan, Weiss, Calvo, Martens, Firoe, and Catellani) and the precedence of the law of venue in cases of dual nationality (referring to Asser, Bluntscli, Calvo, and Weiss). Salem, ‘Effets’, p. 68, 71.
98.
A rare departure comes when he cites Dalloz on the status of custom before 1838 and a verdict from the Cour d’appel d’Aix. Rolin, ‘L’affaire Joris: Étude sur la capitulation’, p. 368, 369.
99.
Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making; A. B. Lorca (2010) ‘Universal International Law: Nineteenth-Century Histories of Imposition and Appropriation’, Harvard International Law Journal, 51, 475–552.
100.
L. A. Benton (2010) A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); A. Orford (ed.) (2006) International Law and Its Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); G. Agamben (2005) State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

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Florida State University, FL, USA
Will Hanley

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Department of History, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Houssine Alloul
Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Edhem Eldem
Department of History, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Henk de Smaele

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Hanley, W. (2018). Extraterritorial Prosecution, the Late Capitulations, and the New International Lawyers. In: Alloul, H., Eldem, E., de Smaele, H. (eds) To Kill a Sultan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48932-6_6

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