Lifesaving, Sovereignty, and the Place of the Late Ottoman Empire in the European International Order

This article analyzes the status of the late Ottoman Empire in the European international order through an actor of both local and global historical dimensions, the Black Sea Lifesaving Service. This service was established by European powers in 1866 to provide assistance in the event of shipwrecks at the entrance to the Bosporus and was administered by an international organization from 1881 on. The article argues that this form of inter-imperial intervention by an international organization into local Ottoman lifesaving structures can be seen as an instance of Western interference in the sovereign affairs of the Ottoman Empire, justified on humanitarian grounds. Western actors interpreted the Ottoman Empire’s inability or unwillingness to provide adequate lifesaving services as evidence of its inferior ‘civilizational’ status and the need for intervention and modernization, a logic understood and acted upon by Ottoman authorities.