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Updated: June 10, 2025
The international doctrines of the new Russian régime were expressed in the phrase "no forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, the free development of all peoples."
The Osmanlis, had they possessed themselves of it, might well have let the latter be for a long time to come. Instead, they had to battle, with the help now of one section of the Balkan peoples, now of another, till forced to make an end of all their feuds and treacheries by annexations after the victories of Kosovo in 1389 and Nikopolis in 1396. Nor was this all.
It has ever been ready to seize a province or pick a quarrel. The late war with France was as much the fault of Prussia as of the government of Napoleon. The great idea of Prussia is military aggrandizement; it is no longer a small kingdom, but a great empire, more powerful than either Austria or France. It believes in new annexations, until all Germany shall be united under a Prussian Kaiser.
This misunderstanding led to an acrid international newspaper controversy, to which Gompers finally replied: "I uttered no sentence or word which by the wildest imagination could be interpreted as advocating the formula 'no annexations, and no indemnities. On the contrary, I have declared, both in the United States and in conferences and public meetings while abroad, that the German forces must be driven back from the invaded territory before even peace terms could be discussed, that Alsace-Lorraine should be returned to France, that the 'Irredente' should be returned to Italy, and that the imperialistic militarist machine which has so outraged the conscience of the world must be made to feel the indignation and righteous wrath of all liberty and peace loving peoples."
Those years were filled with wars and rumours of wars. The Afghan disasters and triumphs, the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs, Lord Dalhousie's annexations, threw law reform into the background, and produced a state of mind not very favourable to it.
In many cases, it is true, the claims of certain races are as yet incapable of being expressed in practical state-forms; but where nationalities have long been well-defined, there can be no question whatsoever that a properly articulated autonomy must be secured in such a way as to preclude the possibility of annexations.
Men's minds also were dominated then, as they are now notwithstanding the intervening experience of nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered as a tradition by the founders of the republic who deprecated annexations of territory abroad.
He had already been made chairman of the committee on territories, and thus placed in the very midst of the fight touching the annexations. The great Webster was here. He had opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, and was the spokesman of the Whig party. He had split metaphysical hairs with Calhoun, also here.
Prince Bismarck suggested that the three chief topics for consideration were the freedom of navigation and of trade in the Congo area; freedom of navigation on the River Niger; the formalities to be thenceforth observed in lawful and valid annexations of territories in Africa. An Anglo-French Commission was afterwards appointed to supervise the navigation of the Niger.
Then he had the weakness, in spite of his minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, to consent to the annexations which Prussia wished to bring about in northern Germany.
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