The Treaty of Paris and Turkey’s Status in International Law

Abstract

Writers on international law agree that its development in its present form began in the 16th century among the Christian States of Europe, when the feudal organization of the continent gave place to its modern organization in the “sovereign, independent” States of the traditional terminology, and that originally it was considered as not applying, or as not fully applying, to States outside the pale of Christian civilization. At the end of the 18th and until well into the 19th centuries it was common for treatises on the subject to bear titles referring not to “International Law” but to “European International Law,” although such a title had ceased to be appropriate after the attainment of independence by the United States. It is also usually said that Turkey, the first Mohammedan State to join the family of States between which international law is in force, was brought into the family and made for the first time a subject or “person” of international law by Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris of March 30, 1856, which terminated the Crimean War. This view has, however, been disputed by A. H. Smith who argues that “for many centuries Turkey had maintained diplomatic intercourse and concluded treaties with Great Britain and other European Powers and … the general body of international law was considered to apply,” and that the alleged recognition appears to have made no practical difference; and who accordingly suggests the meaning of the article to be that Turkey was formally “admitted to the specifically European group of nations which was deemed to have been established by the Vienna settlement of 1815.” Smith gives no details regarding the evidence on which his view is based, and other writers habitually content themselves with quoting the text of the article. It may be interesting to consider what light contemporary evidence throws upon the matter.