Who crafted the Convention of Kütahya? What did they seek to achieve by this treaty?

by Popegai

The wiki articles on the First Egyptian–Ottoman War and the Convention of Kütahya that ended it are somewhat short. It seems the treaty tried to appease both the Ottoman Empire and Egypt by ceding lands to the latter but keeping it under the domination of the former.

While it seems to be somewhat satisfactory to the great powers implicated (France, Russia, the United-Kingdom), I fail to see how anyone could believe it could have bring lasting peace in the region as the Ottoman Empire was weakened by the loss of territory yet Egypt was to be kept as a vassal state. Weren't there predictions that the Ottoman Empire would try to reclaim full control of Egypt and its provinces? Or that Egypt would again try its luck to claim its independance and/or more ottoman land?

Is it simply a result of hindsight and was there a sincere belief that the settlement would last? Were the real aims of negociators lasting peace? And who were they, as it seems Russia, France and the United-Kingdom were implied in its crafting yet it was a treaty between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire?

khowaga

The treaty was really intended to end the fighting as quickly as possible; it was understood that there were more issues to work out.

We need to zoom out just a bit to get a better understanding of what the issue between Egypt and the Ottomans was, and why the Europeans were so insistent on pushing them to settle their differences.

Mehmet (Muhammad) Ali came to power in Egypt in 1805, having cultivated relationships among the Egyptian intellectual elite, the ulama. Egypt had been since the 13th century under the rule of the Mamluk dynasties -- even though it had been conquered by the Ottomans in 1517, the Mamluks remained the ruling class under the Ottomans, reporting to a governor who cycled in and out every couple of years (this being standard practice). Mehmet Ali saw Egypt as a potential economic powerhouse and spent the early part of his rule butting heads against the mamluks, who remained the major landowners and a political obstacle -- he had them liquidated (literally) in 1811.

By the 1820s, the Egyptian military and economy were being rapidly developed and, with the removal of the mamluks, the authority and power of the central state was growing, arguable to a level not seen in centuries if not millennia. Mehmet Ali firmly believed that he could also benefit from control over Syria, also bringing the province out of what he saw as unproductive rule by a long-lived landed aristocracy. (Mind you, Mehmet Ali was not a pragmatist--he and his family were invested in all of these new ventures and growing wealthy off of them; it just so happened that raising the standard of living in Egypt made this goal possible).

In doing so, however, Mehmet Ali paid very little attention to the Ottoman government of which he was allegedly an employee. He opened Egyptian ports to direct European trade (previously it had been through Anatolia); he negotiated agreements as though he was a head of state; he raised an army for his own purposes; and he made no secret of his intention to keep the governorship within his own family, if not break Egypt off as an independent entity.

With the Greek war of independence, the Egyptian military was asked by the Porte to intervene in Greece, where they had substantial success (it was the intervention of European powers on the side of Greece that turned them back). The Egyptians then went after the Hijaz and Syria -- and this brings us to the other major issue that concerned the Europeans, which was maintaining the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.

Greek independence--and Serbian independence shortly thereafter--had raised the alarm in certain European circles about what would happen if the Ottoman Empire were to disintegrate -- specifically, the concern was about curbing Russian ambitions as the proxy power and ally of newly independent Orthodox Christian countries. An Ottoman Empire at war with itself (as it was with its Egyptian province) would not be able to withstand Russian expansionism, nor to prevent other parts of its territory from breaking off. (This became known as the "Ottoman question" over the course of the 19th century).

Hence, when the Egyptian army intervened into Anatolia and attacked Konya, the Europeans became extremely concerned about the possibility of the Ottoman state collapsing altogether--especially since the Ottomans had asked the Russians to help stop the Egyptian advance--which is when they intervened and forced the parties to come to an agreement at Kütahya.

The long story short is that the purpose of the treaty was to stop the bleeding--so to speak--and get everyone back into their corner (and send the Russians home) so that negotiations between the Ottomans and Egyptians could take place off the battlefield. The eruption of the Second Ottoman-Egyptian war a few years later shows how well that went...