British Foreign Policy on the Aegean Islands: : 1912-1914

The book "BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY ON THE AEGEAN ISLANDS: 1912-1914" illustrates the efforts of the Foreign Office and the man in charge, Sir Edward Grey, to kick the Italians out of the Dodecanese Islands. It also details the inception of the neutralization of the Aegean Sea by the British Admiralty in 1912, before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars. The book covers the period from the Conference of the Ambassadors in London in December 1912 up to the first signs of the demise of the Concert of Europe in January 1914, when the Germans refused to coerce Turkey into accepting Greek sovereignty over the NE Aegean Islands.
The author details how the Ottoman's capitulated into ceding all the Islands of the Aegean, including the Dodecanese, in the hands of the Six Powers but, to Grey, who was the mastermind behind the entirety of all negotiations. Grey was sympathetic to the Greek cause as far as British interests in Turkey were not compromised and the fragile balance of power in the Concert of Europe was not entirely shattered. To achieve his goal in persuading the Italians to leave the Dodecanese, he brokered a deal with the Italian foreign minister, the Marquis di San Giuliano, where Greece was to be allotted the Dodecanese Islands if Venizelos could let go of Greek claims in southern Albania.
The outbreak of the Second Balkan War resulted in the Italians canceling the deal while Grey stopped pushing for the return of the Dodecanese to Greece and tried instead to allot them back to Turkey. Venizelos, who was under extreme pressure by the Austrians and the Italians to order the Greek Army to evacuate southern Albania, turned in December 1913 to Grey for help. This resulted in the "British Proposal", which again was Grey's final attempt to make the Italians leave the Dodecanese. Eventually all Grey's effort in the matter failed but a year after the Italians switched sides and became Britain's allies. The British Proposal resulted in the Decision of Six Powers of 13th February 1914, which could not be implemented by the Powers as they could not agree to coerce Turkey into accepting Greek sovereignty over the NE Aegean Islands.
Recently discovered diplomatic documents from the Ottoman Empire prove that Turkey ceded all the Islands in the Aegean under no conditions to the hands of the Powers. The Turkish allegations of today were confronted and answered multiple times by the Entente Powers during 1913. The implication is that there is no direct link between the sovereignty of the Aegean Islands and any demilitarization conditions that have been imposed over the years. No Aegean Island or islet can revert to Turkey today as a successor state to the Ottoman Empire as the issue was permanently settled back in April 1, 1913 when the Sublime Porte capitulated to the terms of the Six Powers, for them to intervene with the Balkan Alliance and ask them to end the advance towards Constantinople and thus put an end to the First Balkan War.
The author, in this work and other publications, strives to demonstrate that the issue of the Aegean Islands was never a bilateral issue between Greece and Turkey but rather was, and most probably still is, a question of global concern due to the Islands proximity to the Straits and their inherent ability to control the traffic between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, if they can be properly militarized by a great Power.
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Professor James Pettifer, St Cross College, University of Oxford

In this clear and well researched account of the diplomacy of the Powers just prior to the First World War, Dimitrios Kondis sets out the mechanisms that determined the future of the islands of this region. All students of the diplomacy - which has had so many long term implications, up to Greek-Turkish tensions today- will learn from it, and the excellent collection of documents provided