Volume XXI

J. B. MILLET COMPANY Boston and Tokyo

Copyright, 1910 By J. B. Millet Co.

The · Plimpton · Press [W · D · O] Norwood · Mass · U · S · A

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

EDITORIAL NOTE ix

I THE TURKISH PEOPLE 1

II ATROCITIES 15

III EARLY REFORMERS 25

IV THE SPREAD OF CORRUPTION 35

V THE SPREAD OF EDUCATION 54

VI THE RISE OF THE YOUNG TURKS 64

VII DISCONTENT IN THE ARMY 87

VIII THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 101

IX HOW THE REVOLUTION BEGAN 118

X THE STANDARD OF REVOLT 133

XI THE INSURRECTION IN BULGARIA 152

XII THE PALACE AND THE GREEKS 169

XIII A BLOODLESS VICTORY 185

XIV THE COMMITTEE’S ULTIMATUM 198

XV AFTER THE REVOLUTION 207

XVI EUROPEAN ASSISTANCE 222

XVII MUTINOUS PALACE GUARDS 238

XVIII PREPARING FOR SELF-RULE 249

XIX A STRONG ARMY NEEDED 261

XX THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT 281

XXI THE NEW SULTAN 297

INDEX 321

ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

The Entrance to the Black Sea _Frontispiece_

Imperial Palace of the Sweet Waters of Asia 64

Persian Market-woman in Street Dress 112

View of Constantinople 128

Chateau of Asia 224

View of Scutari 272

EDITORIAL NOTE

From the land of the Turks—Turkestan in Central Asia—there descended beginning in A.D. 800 a series of hordes and armies which overran and gradually took possession of that portion of South-Eastern Europe and Western Asia once known as Turkey. After five hundred years Mohammed II seized upon Constantinople, and that city became the capital of the Turkish Empire;—for the next two hundred years the dominion spread until it became an immense and important world-power. Then began a period of decline; and vice and prodigality in harem and seraglio brought about disruption and war. Russia saw her opportunity to extend her borders towards the sea—and went on gaining Turkish territory from early in the 18th until the middle of the 19th century when the Crimean war crippled her power in that corner of Europe. But Turkey could not hold the heterogeneous populations of her European provinces. Insurrection after insurrection broke out and one by one she lost many of the more important of them. She became bankrupt and a concert of the European Powers proposed and partially carried out a scheme for her reform. But she proved stubborn and went to war with Russia in 1877-1878; this ended disastrously for her and more territory was lost. In 1897, came the war with Greece in which she was successful. In recent years after many vicissitudes the spread of the great awakening of the people of Oriental lands has reached Turkey, and the story of the newer political and social life in that country is related in this volume in full and complete detail, from its inception until the famous Revolution of 1908.

No one is better qualified to tell this story than Edward F. Knight, who as a noted correspondent for one of the leading papers of London has seen service in all the wars since 1895, his work having taken him to South America, Africa, and Asia. In 1908, he was specially commissioned to visit Turkey to study the conditions of the recent revolution, and this book is the result of his exhaustive study.

The important position which Turkey occupies on the highway to the Farther East from Europe has made it the subject of continuous political intrigue by the nations of that continent. Its interesting and romantic people and their despotic government; its natural products, some of them unique; its picturesque and poetical language and literature, are full of peculiar and absorbing interest, and no one who wishes to keep abreast of the great world movements of our time can afford to neglect this stirring work.

CHARLES WELSH.

TURKEY