Foreign Consuls Research Articles

Israeli Policy on the Foreign Consulates in Jerusalem in the Early 1950s

From the mid-nineteenth century, consulates of foreign countries and religious institutions operated in Jerusalem. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the consulates continued to operate as independent entities, regardless of the fact that the international political reality in Jerusalem and the country as a whole had changed completely. The status of West Jerusalem under Israeli administration in the early 1950s was complex. The state envisioned it as Israel's capital city but did not take decisive measures to make this official due to international opposition and the stance of the UN, which recommended a "special international regime" for Jerusalem. The foreign delegates who served in the Jerusalem consulates did not adhere to any of the protocols established by international convention. Perhaps most notable was the fact that these consuls and consular officers did not present their credentials or request an exequatur for engaging in consular activities in keeping with standard diplomatic norms. The State of Israel refrained from hard and fast rules, and policy with regard to the consulates in the city remained vague. The article looks at the consulates that operated in Jerusalem, Israeli policy on Jerusalem consulates in the early 1950s, the attitude of the Israeli public, the interaction between consular officials, Israeli bureaucrats, and the Jerusalem Municipality, and the stance of the Israeli courts.

Walking into Democratic Citizenship: Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania’s Capital

Walking into Democratic Citizenship: Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania’s Capital

MAIN TRENDS IN MARKETING INNOVATIONS OF THE TOURISM SECTOR

The article deals with the main types of modern innovations in the tourism sector. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate the means of increasing the efficiency of the use of innovations in the field of tourism, outlining the directions of marketing activities of travel companies and defining the general objectives of marketing policy in the service sector. The directions of marketing innovations are determined in the service sector; the importance of productive, managerial, service, technological innovations are outlined. The factors to increase the efficiency of introduction of innovations in the tourist industry of economy, in particular, such as economic, normative-legal, social, technological, are listed. The main guidelines for the formation of marketing policy in the service sector are outlined. The development and effective use of innovations in the field of tourism requires an increase in the volume of investment of enterprises, the introduction of such an investment policy that would determine the priority of financing innovative activity. The effectiveness of the introduction of innovations in the tourism sector requires an active search for opportunities for the successful implementation of all elements of the marketing complex, which is possible due to the combination of information, investment, innovation, personnel, material and time resources. The marketing activities of travel companies should be aimed at maintaining contacts with foreign consulates, missions and national tourism administrations in order to have timely information about events taking place in the tourist world, planned activities that can be used to attract customers and streamline marketing policies. The main element of the innovation policy of organizing an effective advertising campaign should be the joint plan of stimulation and promotion, which involves both national operators and foreign representative organizations.

Rethinking the Violence in the Sasun Mountains (1893-1894)

In the late summer of 1894, Ottoman soldiers murdered thousands of Armenians in the Sasun mountains. This extreme state violence must be understood as part of a much broader phenomenon: the efforts of the Ottoman Empire to control its upland spaces during the nineteenth century. Ottoman state efforts to conquer and control the mountains throughout the empire were accompanied by its attempt to control legitimate narrative. Making use of a variety of sources, from the accounts of locals (including missionaries) to those of outsiders (such as Ottoman military officers, foreign consuls, and investigative journalists), this article will examine and explain why the violence in Sasun took place, how it happened, as well as how it was remembered.

Foreign Consulates in Odessa Through Documents of the Provisional Governor General (1879-1889)

The article examines a group of historical documents related to history of diplomacy and consular service in Odessa from 1879 till 1889. This group of documents helps to discover biographies some of foreign general consuls, consuls and vice consuls in Odessa. The documents reflect the process of approving candidates for the position of consul, vice-consul by imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Odessa provisional governor general, local administration and police.

Foreign Consuls in the Ukrainian SSR (1919-1922)

The article describes the basic forms and problems of foreign consuls’ activities in Kyiv and «Soviet capital» Kharkiv in February 1919 – December 1922. We surveyed historiography (works by Hisem O.V., Kiladze S., Kupchyk O.V., Danylenko O.V., Netreba Y.B., Sokyrska V.V. etc.) and a wide range of sources concerning activities of foreign missions in Ukraine. The main forms and methods of foreign consulates’ activities in the Ukrainian SSR were surveyed, peculiarities of their functioning were outlined, personnel of the consular institutions and a role of their management in formation of consular relations with the Ukrainian SSR and an influence on building its foreign relations were determined. We characterized the personalities of the foreign consuls who represented Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Persia and other countries in Soviet Ukraine (Dubynskyi V., Mir-Tagiev J., Tsahareli K., Shumun Bit etc.). Indicated on the nationalization of foreign consulates’ buildings by the Soviet authorities. Nature of the activities of Chinese mission, mission of Assyrian National Delegation in the RSFSR and «a Brazilian consul earl Alberto Pirro» was also highlighted. On the basis of archival information we investigated features of the interaction of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR to the foreign missions and actions of the USSR General Political Governance corcerning registration of foreigners. It has been shown that the foreign missions used the services of the Bureau for Foreign Missions Services concerning providing people with food provision and dwelling. We found differences in the organization of the consular corps in the era of the Ukrainian State and the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Soviet regime. Regulations on the status of foreign nationals in the Ukrainian SSR were considered, and the role of the foreign consuls in ensuring contacts of the citizens of their states with the Soviet authorities was highlighted. It was proved that foreign consuls in the Ukrainian SSR were victims of repressive bodies.

Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination: Studies in Honour of Rhoads Murphey Edited by MariosHadjianastasis

The emphasis of the twelve essays in this well-deserved Festschrift in honour of Rhoads Murphey is on the history of Ottoman Greece and Cyprus between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is not only appropriate—Rhoads was a member of the Centre for Byzantine, Modern Greek and Ottoman Studies in the University of Birmingham from 1992 until his retirement—but also very welcome. As the editor points out in the cogent introduction to his own contribution (‘Between the Porte and the Lion: identity politics and opportunism in seventeenth century Cyprus’), it is only recently that historians have begun not simply to question but to abandon the nationalist paradigm which had effectively prevented any intelligent study of the tourkokratia. This volume continues on this pioneering path. The first essay in the volume, by Hasan Çolak, does not discuss the ‘Greek lands’ in particular, but is rather a study of the persistence and transformation of Byzantine titulature in the Ottoman Empire (‘Tekfur, fasilyus and kayser: disdain, negligence and appropriation of Byzantine imperial titulature in the Ottoman world’), whether applied to the Byzantine emperors before 1453 or adopted by the Ottoman sultans themselves after the fall of Constantinople. Still in the early Ottoman period, Konstantinos Moustakas presents a study of Ottoman slave labour (‘Slave labour in the early Ottoman rural economy: regional variations in the Balkans during the 15th century’), largely in the areas of Thessaly and south-eastern Macedonia which saw large-scale Muslim settlement in the immediate post-conquest period. The major sources for this study are the surviving tahrir defters of the region, which unexpectedly reveal the existence—although with an infuriating lack of detail—of slave-holding peasants in the area. The defters also form one of the sources for Ourania Bessi’s investigation of the development of Ottoman Dimetoka, from the time of Murad I (1362–1389) to the sixteenth century (‘The topographic reconstruction of Ottoman Dimetoka: issues of periodization and morphological development’). Dr Bessi takes as her starting point Gilles Veinstein’s description of what he saw as the characteristics of a ‘typical Ottoman town’, showing how Veinstein’s observations apply to Dimetoka, and demonstrates how the Ottomans transformed the Byzantine town with the settlement of the wealthier inhabitants in the area outside the walls (varoş), rather than in the citadel as had been the case in Byzantine times. The study is amply illustrated with maps, historic photographs and tables, extracted from the defters, showing the tax-paying population of each quarter between 1485 and 1570. From the sixteenth century, the articles in the volume covering the tourkokratia skip to the time of the Greek war of independence. Katerina Stathi’s ‘The Carta Incognita of Ottoman Athens’ is an account of the author’s chance discovery of an Ottoman map of Athens in the Hatt-i hümayun collection in the Başbakanlık Archives in Istanbul, and a description and an analysis of the map itself, leading her to the conclusion that it was produced for the use of the Ottoman military during the siege of the Acropolis in 1826-7. Sophia Laiou’s article (‘Entre les insurgés reaya et les indisciplinés ayan: la revolution grecque et la réaction de l’État’) is, as the title suggests, as much about the Ottoman authorities’ reaction to the rebellion of the Samiots and their plundering of the coasts of Anatolia, during the Greek war of independence, as it is about the rebels themselves, showing how it was, in most cases, the protection of their own lands and revenues that guided their actions in the face of insurgency. The last paper with a Greek theme is Michael Ursinus’ ‘Regional reform as an ambition: Charles Blunt Sen., His Majesty’s consul in Salonica, during his early years in the Ottoman Empire (1835–39)’. Describing the consul’s service in Salonica in the years immediately before the announcement of the Tanzimat reforms, the article demonstrates the close involvement of a foreign consul in the affairs of an Ottoman region, and what might be described as the mutually dependent relationship between the consul and the local authorities in effecting administrative improvements. As an example of how the British attempted to establish an ‘informal Empire’, the article is as much of interest to English, as it is to Ottoman, historians.

Comisia Europeană a Dunării și consulatele străine din Galați (1919- 1940) / The European Comission of the Danube and Foreign Consulates of Braila and Galati (1919-1940)

This study aims at synthesizing the multitude of political, economic and juridical relationships that gravitated around the maritime Danube between 1919 and 1940. The question of the foreign consulates from the area of the Lower Danube has been treated insufficiently in the Romanian historiography. The mouths of the Danube became Romanian territory in 1878 and this was a great advantage for Romania, but also a serious threat for its national sovereignty.

Bibliografia puțin cunoscută a lui Jack Corbu, un vice-consul britanic la Brăila (1880-1938) / The little-known biography of Jack the Crow, a british vice-counsul to Braila (1880-1938)

This study is based on some documents stored in the diplomatic archives of the Diplomatic Corps in Braila and Galati. In 1925, Jack the Crow C, a Jewish entrepreneur in Romania, became vice consul of Great Britain in Braila. The interest shown by the British political and economic circles for the trade and navigation at the Lower Danube represented a constant of the Romanian -British relationship in interwar period. The question of the foreign consulates from the area of the Lower Danube has been treated insufficiently in the Romanian historiography. In this line, the author presents the influence of the Jack the Crow's family in international trade at the Lower Danube..

Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan by Pär Kristoffer Cassel (review)

Reviewed by: Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan by Pär Kristoffer Cassel Marie Seong-Hak Kim Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan by Pär Kristoffer Cassel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xi + 260. $39.95. Grounds of Judgment departs from previous scholarship in that it approaches extraterritoriality from the Chinese and the Japanese perspectives instead of those of foreign actors in the treaty ports. In Pär Cassel’s narrative, China and Japan emerge as the main players in the encounter with the West, not the hapless victims of unequal treaties. This well-researched work sets forth how the establishment and the execution of consular jurisdiction were shaped and influenced by the traditional Chinese and Japanese legal orders and by their subsequent changes over the nineteenth century. Extraterritoriality is a legal regime through which a state exercises [End Page 382] exclusive jurisdiction over its nationals in another state’s territory. After it suffered defeat in the Opium Wars in 1842 and 1860, Qing China was forced to conclude treaties with Western powers and to give up the right to try the citizens of those powers in the treaty ports. Trials of Chinese or foreigners without treaty rights in the concession areas were to be conducted by a mixed court of Chinese judges and foreign assessors. The signing of similar treaties in Tokugawa Japan, starting in 1858, precipitated the ignominy of extraterritoriality that continued until the Meiji government succeeded in abolishing it in 1899. For China it was not until 1943, in the midst of World War II, that the foreign powers relinquished their consular-jurisdiction privileges, which had aggrieved their wartime ally. The Western powers justified extraterritoriality on the grounds that East Asian law and legal systems were not advanced enough to guarantee impartiality in the treatment and trials of foreign nationals. Meiji leaders accepted early on that legal reforms were essential in order to abolish extraterritoriality and to achieve international parity with Western nations. Qing authorities, in contrast, remained largely oblivious to the need to revise the treaties. For most of the nineteenth century, states Cassel, there is little evidence that the Qing government made a concerted effort to abolish extraterritoriality. Whenever an “extraterritoriality incident” occurred, that is, whenever Westerners who committed crimes in the concession areas evaded Chinese courts due to extraterritoriality, Qing officials “shied away from mobilizing public opinion, and instead they did their utmost to secure the best possible outcome within the confines of the existing legal order” (p. 163). Why this debilitating indifference and costly complacency? After all, Cassel argues—this is one of the main arguments in the book— that “extraterritoriality was not necessarily incompatible with a Chinese legal sensibility” (p. 39). Cassel is keen to dismiss the standard narrative that the Chinese and Japanese vigorously but unsuccessfully opposed the Western demand for extraterritoriality. Far from the common belief that the Qing government resisted the imposition of extraterritoriality, Cassel finds that “some of the privileges that were later decried as imperialist impositions on China were actually offered to the Western powers by Qing officials voluntarily” (p. 47). He embraces John King Fairbank’s insight that the treaty system was “a Ch’ing device for accommodating [End Page 383] the West and giving it a place within the Chinese world.”1 Historians have shown that a distinct East Asian interstate system existed in the borderlands in the premodern period and that the multi-ethnic Manchu empire pursued a flexible legal policy toward the peoples in the outer regions, such as the Miao, Yao, Muslims, and Mongols. Cassel stresses that extraterritoriality was not a foreign concept suddenly thrust on China in the nineteenth century. He shows, in particular, how the Qing institution of judicial subprefects served as a precedent to extraterritoriality and the mixed courts in Shanghai. Judicial subprefects adjudicated “mixed cases,” such as disputes between Manchu bannermen and Chinese civilians, in a joint trial with local officials. When Qing officials agreed to set up mixed courts that included foreign consuls, they were drawing on their experience of managing interethnic disputes (p. 67). Continuing the traditional policy of not...

Helpless Representatives of the Great Powers? Western Consuls in Jeddah, 1830s to 1914

This article investigates the roles of European consuls in the Ottoman port city of Jeddah which served as an important centre for trade and as the main entry point for pilgrims en route for Mecca during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article argues that the relative power and local influence of European consuls, found elsewhere in the struggling Ottoman Empire in reflection of the international balance of power, could not be easily established in Jeddah. This was due to the special role of Jeddah for the Islamic legitimation of the empire, as well as the local awareness of its location in the vicinity of the holiest city of Islam, both of which in turn prevented the settlement of significant Christian communities. While Muslims formally under the protection of different European empires lived in Jeddah, they did not serve as a constituency on which the consuls would and could rely. The political scene in Jeddah was further complicated by the rivalries between the local rulers (sharifs) and the governors sent from Istanbul, while the situation of the foreign consuls was aggravated by their distance from European centres of power. In providing a case study of how Muslim solidarity, both real and imagined, between rulers, local and foreign residents could counteract European imperial influence, the article critically reflects upon the notion of the Ottoman Empire's power, or lack thereof, in relation to its European competitors, and makes a case for a more differentiated perspective on ‘Ottoman decline’.

The Protestant Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, Englishwomen, and a Land Transaction in Late Ottoman Palestine

In 1894 the Garden Tomb Association concluded the purchase of a small property outside of the Old City of Jerusalem. The site in question was known as 'Skull Hill' or 'Gordon's Calvary' and was reputed to be the real site of the burial place of Jesus. This case study of a land transaction in Ottoman Jerusalem reveals several important themes from the period. The purchase by foreigners of sites in Palestine was a circuitous process that sometimes involved the intervention of foreign consuls and it sheds light on the Ottoman land laws. The Garden Tomb, a unique property, was part of a larger process of the development of new holy places in Palestine by Europeans. Lastly, the association that purchased the site was primarily funded, initiated and run by notable English women, illustrating their increasing involvement in 19th century religious and activist movements.

The D&T report

The D&T report

La Junta de Dependencias de Extranjeros (1714-1800): Trasfondo socio-político de una historia institucional

This paper sets out to analyze the Junta de Dependencia de Extranjeros, an institution that was created within the framework of the government reforms that characterized the reign of Phillip V after the war of Spanish succession in order to monitor and control the activity of foreign merchants settled in numerous Spanish cities. During its operative period this institution developed a strong links and effective lines of communication with foreign merchant communities resident in Spain. This study is based on primary sources such as the documentation generated by the Junta, which included requests and complaints lodged by merchants and merchant communities as well as reports on the appointment of foreign consuls. These sources are preserved in the State sections of the Archivo Historico Nacional de Madrid and the Archivo General de Simancas. The correspondence of the representatives of merchant communities in Spain has also been used, as well as affidavits and population censuses preserved in the Provincial Archives of Madrid, Cadiz and Murcia. These sources have been interrogated in order to establish the stances and discourses adopted by both the Spanish government and the foreign merchants settled in those cities that sent representatives to the offices of Spain’s central government. The requests and complaints filed by foreign merchants and consuls in this context demonstrate the strength of their communities, which had been granted substantial privileges during the second half of the seventeenth century, and to which the Junta responded with a high degree of understanding. The Junta’s conciliatory stance was linked not only to pressure exerted by foreign ambassadors, but also to limitations established by the peace treaties signed by Spain. The Junta de Dependencia de Extranjeros clearly adopted a radically different position to that of Charles II’s fiercely protectionist government, and generally responded favourably to requests from foreign merchants relating to tax exemptions and the defence of commercial practices. These foreign communities can be regarded as autonomous entities that were detached from their respective countries of origin and enjoyed a great deal of influence at the royal court and within its lobbies.

Consul-General Hanmer Warrington and the Old Protestant Cemetery in Tripoli, Libya

AbstractThe charismatic Consul-General Hanmer Warrington held his post in Tripoli for thirty-two years, during which time he cultivated a good, if tempestuous, working relationship with the Bashaw and the other foreign consuls. The large Warrington family was raised there. When they outgrew the Consulate building, which dated from 1774, the Consul designed a country house, and had it built two miles outside the town. It was near this house, and by the sea, that in 1830 he and the other consuls founded a walled Protestant Cemetery for the burial mainly of Europeans. This cemetery was rediscovered and studied by Abdulhakeem Amer Tweel of Tripoli, who is in the process of publishing a book on the subject.

Kiev 2004

KIEV INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – "MOLODIST" 2004 The oldest independent film festival in Eastern Europe, the "Molodist" (Youth) festival in Kyiv (Kiev) was founded back in 1970 by Andriy (Andrei) Khalpakhtchi, an enterprising cineaste and film historian who felt that amateur filmmakers deserved as much a chance to show their homemade productions in Budynok Kino (House of Cinema) as the film professionals at the Alexander Dovzhenko Studios. Over the years the "Molodist" festival has grown by leaps and bounds, thanks in great part to the generous support offered by foreign consulates and cultural centres based in the city. One glance at the 200-page catalogue for the 34th Kiev International Film Festival (23-31 October 2004) confirms that this rule-of-thumb still applies today: among the festival's 25 listed partners are traditional "film friends" from France, Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and, of course, Russia. Indeed, more than half...

The 1912–13 Balkan Wars and the Siege of Edirne

Depending on the angle of view, the first and second Balkan1 wars of 1912–13 have been considered either as the culmination of a freedom struggle2 for the Christian nations of south-eastern Europe ...

Litigants and Neighbors: The Communal Topography of Ottoman Damascus

Litigants and Neighbors: The Communal Topography of Ottoman Damascus

The Origins of the European Atlantic

After a lecture I once gave in Boston on Spaniards' treatment of the indigenous peoples of their empire, the mayor rose from the audience to ask me whether I thought English behaviour towards the Irish was not worse. The strength of the Irish legacy in Boston is one of the many signs that make you feel, wherever you go in New England, that you are on the shore of a pond and that the same cultures that you left behind on one side of it have spread to the other with remarkably little change, and remarkably little loss of identity, along the way. In Providence, Rhode Island, the only resident foreign consul is Portuguese; you can buy sweet bread for breakfast or pasteis de Tentúgaltor tea. A parking lot a few blocks from Brown University is marked with the sign, ‘Do Not Park Here Unless You Are Portuguese’. Ancestral homes, ancestral grievances are easily recalled. There are similar patches of Irishness and Portuguese identity dotted here and there all along this coast, mirroring home and looking back across the ocean. They are surrounded with other peoples’ transatlantic reminiscences and continuities. New England is a seaboard civilization, a narrow, sea-soaked coast with a culture shaped by maritime outreach; but, more than that, it is part of a civilization of two seaboards which face each other.

II. Unrecognised States and Liability for Income Tax

The object of this short note is to draw attention to a decision of the Special Commissioners of Inland Revenue (the Commissioners) which deals with the liability for income tax of officials of an unrecognised State.1 Section 321 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 (the Taxes Act) provides exemption from liability for income tax for foreign consuls in the United Kingdom and for “an official agent in the United Kingdom for any foreign state, not being … a Commonwealth citizen”. An “official agent” is a person, other than a consul, “who is employed on the staff of any consulate, official department or agency of a foreign state”.