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The Danube River has been a trade waterway for centuries, but with the rise of international borders and the jealousies of national states, commerce and shipping has often been hampered for narrow reasons. In addition, natural features of the river, most notably the sanding of the delta, has often hampered international trade. For these reasons, diplomats over the decades have worked to internationalize the Danube River in an attempt to allow commerce to flow as smoothly as possible.〔George L. Garrigues, ''The European Commission of the Danube: An Historical Survey,'' Division of Social Sciences, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Riverside, 1957〕 Rivalry among the great powers — particularly Great Britain and Russia — hindered such cooperation, but in 1856, at the end of the Crimean War, and it was finally decided to establish an international organization where they all could work together on behalf of the Danube.〔 ==British and Russian rivalry== In 1616 an Austro-Turkish treaty was signed in Belgrade wherein the Austrians were granted the right to navigate the middle and lower Danube, at that time under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Under the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, ending a war between Russia and Turkey, Russia was allowed to use the lower Danube.〔("Danube River." ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 26 June 2009 )〕 The Treaty of Adrianople, ending the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29), and signed on September 14, 1829, between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, provided a legal basis for excluding all foreign ships from the river delta. It gave Russia the right to establish quarantine stations on the Sulina Channel (the only one really navigable), and seven years later she made use of it. British trade began in 1834, on February 7, 1836, Russia published a decree that all Danube-bound vessels would be stopped and taken to the Russian port of Odessa for quarantine inspection.〔"The Reopening of the Danube," ''Dublin University Magazine.'' XLIV (November 1854), p. 632, and Edward D. Krehbiel, "European Commission of the Danube: An Experiment of International Administration", ''Political Science Quarterly'', XXXIII (March 1918)〕 By 1836, things had got to the point where the House of Commons debated the subject. P. Stewart told his fellows on April 20: British enterprise has found its way to these () provinces; and already the jealous power of Russia has assailed to obstruct its success. . . . In 1836 there will be 5,000 tons (trade ) and upwards, if Russia is pleased to permit our subjects to exercise their just and lawful right. But . . . she has already interfered, and the matter must now and immediately be brought to an issue. . . . Russia has dared to offer insult to England by laying hands upon British shipping, and demanding tribute at the mouth of the Danube. . . . there cannot be a doubt but that Russia's determination is to close up the Danube entirely, and thus to stop out growing trade with the principalities.〔 In 1840, Russia agreed in a treaty signed with Austria at St. Petersburg to keep the Sulina Channel open; for this purpose it would be allowed to tax vessels entering the river.〔 The Russians brought in two dredging machines. One English account said they were "worked by manual labour for one day and then laid aside forever."〔"Occupation of Sulina by Russia," ''New Monthly Magazine'', IX (February 1851)〕 Another account, written about the same time, had another version: The author claimed that the Turks (friendly to England at this time)〔 had kept the channel clear by the simple expedient of requiring every vessel leaving to draw after her an iron rake; this was sufficient to stir the mud, and the current of the great river took it away. Muscovite artifice rejected this method as only worthy of Turkish barbarism, and went through the form of occasionally using a steam dredging machine.〔 By 1851, Russians had changed their tactics. They set up quarantine stations in the delta itself and promulgated a new set of stringent regulations, which had as a purpose the frightening of shipping from the Danube to Odessa. For example, they declared that vessels visiting lower Danubian ports had to be held in a fourteen-day quarantine, while at Black Sea ports of Russia itself the quarantine was only four days.〔〔"Russia and the Danube," ''New Monthly Magazine,'' IXC (1851), p. 364〕 In the same year, an English writer called the Russian inspectors "crude, barbarous and political."〔 Another Englishman wrote in 1854 that the fertility of Moldavia and Wallachia was "not a mere geographical fact, but a subject fraught with the utmost importance; for the size of our () labourer's loaves varies with the depth of the water on the bar of the Danube."〔"Etchings from the Euxine, II, The Danube and the Crimea," ''Fraser's Magazine,'' L (September 1854, p. 296)〕 There is, perhaps, no instance in which the seemingly tortuous, yet ever steadily aggressive and grasping character of Russian policy can be better marked than in her conduct at the Sulina mouth of the Danube.〔 In 1856, the mouths of the Danube River were wild passages, littered with wrecks of sailing ships and hazarded with hidden sandbars. The banks of the river were sometimes indicated only by clusters of wretched hovels built on piles, and by narrow patches of sand, skirted by tall weeds.〔(An 1873 paper by chief engineer Charles Hartley of the Danube River Commission, quoted in Henry Trotter, "Danube," ''Encyclopædia Britannica,'' 11th edition, VII (1911). p. 821 )〕 Edward D. Krehbiel, writing in 1918, observed that Russia had probably been "aggravating the already bad conditions for the purpose of hindering commerce on the Danube and increasing that of Odessa."〔 Meanwhile, Russia continued to levy its taxes (it was estimated that the total tax burden amounted to 50 percent of the produce〔"The Reopening of the Danube," p. 632〕), and the channel remained clogged. Even the Austrians were upset with this, and the Treaty of St. Petersburg was renewed only once before they allowed it to lapse. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Internationalization of the Danube River」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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