The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

The later acquisitions of the House of Austria were made in the character of Hungarian kings, but they did not lead to any enlargement of the Hungarian kingdom. Thus the claim to the Austrian acquisitions made at the first and third partitions of Poland, rested solely on the two Hungarian occupations of Red Russia. ♦Galicia and Lodomeria.♦ Under the softened forms of Galicia and Lodomeria, the Red Russian lands of Halicz and Vladimir, together with part of Poland itself, became a new kingdom of the House of Habsburg, as the greater part of the territory thus won still remains. ♦Acquisition of Bukovina. 1776-1786.♦ Between the two partitions the new kingdom was increased by the addition of Bukovina, the north-western corner of Moldavia, which was claimed as an ancient part of the Transsilvanian principality. It was again only in its Hungarian character that the House of Habsburg could make any claim to Dalmatia. ♦Dalmatia.♦ Certainly no Austrian duke had ever reigned over Dalmatia, Red Russia, or the Rouman principalities. Yet in the present dual arrangement of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy the so-called triple kingdom of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia, is divided between the rule of Pest and the rule of Vienna. Galicia also counts to the Austrian, and not to the Hungarian, division of the monarchy. All this is perhaps in harmony with the generally anomalous character of the power of which they form part. ♦Spizza. 1878.♦ The port of Spizza has been added to the Dalmatian kingdom. ♦Bosnia and Herzegovina.♦ It is hard to say in which of his many characters the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke holds the lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which the Treaty of Berlin confers on him, not the sovereignty, but the administration. They might have been claimed by the Hungarian king in his ancient character of King of Rama. But the formal aspect of the transaction would seem rather to be that he has, like his predecessors in the sixteenth century, become the man of the Turk.

♦Later history of Roumania.♦

After the restoration of the Lesser Wallachia to the Turk and the addition of Bukovina to Galicia, the geographical history of the Rouman principalities parts off wholly from that of Hungary, and will be more fittingly treated in another section.

§ 8. The Ottoman Power.

♦The Ottoman Turks.♦

Last among the powers which among them supplanted the Eastern Empire, comes the greatest and most terrible of all, that which overthrew the Empire itself and most of the states which arose out of its ruins, and which stands distinguished from all the rest by its abiding possession of the Imperial city. This is the power of the Ottoman Turks. ♦Their special character as Mahometans.♦ They stand distinguished from all the other invaders of the European mainland of the Empire by being Mahometan invaders. The examples of Bulgaria and Hungary show that Turanian invaders, as such, are not incapable of being received into European fellowship. This could not be in the case of a Mahometan power, bound by its religion to keep its Christian subjects in the condition of bondmen. The Ottomans could not, like the Bulgarians, be lost in the greater mass of those whom they conquered. ♦Preservation of the subject nations.♦ But this very necessity helped in some measure to preserve the national being of the subject nations. Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, have under Ottoman rule remained Greeks, Servians, and Bulgarians, ready to begin their national career afresh whenever the time for independence should come. ♦Comparison with the Saracen power in Spain.♦ The dominion of the Turk in Eastern Europe answers, as a Mahometan dominion, to the dominion of the Saracen in Western Europe. But in everything, save the mere reckoning of years, it has been far more abiding. The Mahometan dominion in southern Spain did indeed last two hundred years longer than Mahometan dominion has yet lasted in any part of Eastern Europe. But the Saracen power in the West began to fall back as soon as it was established, and its last two hundred years were a mere survival. The Ottomans underwent no considerable loss of territory till more than four centuries and a half after their first appearance in Asia, till more than three centuries after their passage into Europe. Constantinople has been Ottoman sixty years longer than Toledo was Saracen.

♦Extent of the Ottoman dominion compared with the Eastern Empire.♦

The Ottoman, possessor of the Eastern Rome, does in a rough way represent the Eastern Roman in the extent of his dominion. The dominions and dependencies of the Sultans at the height of their power took in, in Eastern Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, nearly all that had formed part of the Empire of Justinian, with a large territory, both in Europe and Asia, which Justinian had not held. Justinian held nothing north of the Danube; Suleiman held, as sovereign or as overlord, a vast dominion from Buda to Azof. On the other hand, no part of the dominions of Justinian in Western Europe, save one city for one moment, ever came under Ottoman rule. The Eastern Empire in the year 800 was smaller than even the present reduced dominion of the Turk. The Eastern Empire, at its height in the eleventh century, held in Europe a dominion far smaller than the dominion of the Turk in the sixteenth century, far larger than his dominion now. But in the essential feature of Byzantine geography, the possession of Constantinople and of the lands on each side of the Bosporos and Hellespont, the Ottoman Sultan took the place of the Eastern Emperor, and as yet he keeps it.

♦Effects of the Mongolian advance.♦