Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/167

 CxVPlTULATIONS AND FOREIGNERS. I49 in Turkey is the one under which they have always resided there. As no writer with whom I am acquainted lias called attention to this fact, I may be excused for sketching briefly the history of the capitulations. The first treaty granting the right of exterritoriality which I have been able to find was made with the Warings, a people who have left IS ory. ^i^^j^, name in England, and of whom I shall have more to say later on. In 905 and 945, when these treaties were made, the Warings were more usually called Kussians, though one has only to read in Leo the Deacon and other Greek authors the accounts of their appearance, to recognize them as relations. From that date we have an unbroken series of capitulations down to the time of the Moslem con- quest in 1453. The Venetians obtained such concessions early in the eleventh centmy. The Amalfians followed in 1056. The Genoese were not far behind, and obtained the rights of exterritoriality in 1098.' The Pisans, if they had not pre- viously had such rights, gained them in 1110. Henceforward capitulations became so general, and granted so many exclu- sive rights to territory, that during the last quarter of the twelfth century the long shore of Constantinople on the Golden Horn was so occupied by foreigners that the Greeks complained that there were no wharves left to them. For our purpose we may pass at a bound to the Moslem conquest in 1453, when the Genoese had obtained capitulations which al- lowed them to occupy the fortified town of Galata, and thus enabled them to become a dangerous ally of the invader. On the conquest the capitulations of the Genoese were confirmed by Mahomet the Conqueror. During the next century the Venetians succeeded in obtaining perhaps the clearest defini- tion which had yet been made of the privileges and exterritori- ality granted by capitulations. These expressly included the ' I have serious doubts whether the right of exterritoriality was re- garded at this time as a privilege. The impression I have gathered from reading many of the earlier treaties with tlic Italian states is that their rulers were quite content to submit questions in dispute to the imperial courts. See, for example, the treaties in Sauli's "Colonia di Genovesc," and Gatteschi's "3Iauuale di Diritto Publico et Private Ottomano."