No. 415.
Mr. Marsh
to Mr. Evarts.
Rome, April 17, 1880. (Received May 6.)
Sir: Although, as I stated in my dispatch No. 874, the clouds which obscured the political horizon of Europe and seemed specially to threaten a disturbance of the friendly relations between Italy and Austria have been, for the present at least, dispelled, there are, in the relations between the Mediterranean states and those of Central and Northern Europe, several circumstances, the bearing of which upon the international policy of these commonwealths does not seem to have been very generally appreciated, but which is now forcing itself on the attention of European statesmen in the shape of questions which, if not immediately, may at no distant day give rise to grave and hitherto unforeseen complications. The first of these is the overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty.
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The downfall of the empire has emancipated the Latin states, allowed them to recover their ancient independence, to reassume the direction of their own domestic and external affairs, and it may be hoped that time enough for the consolidation of that independence may elapse before the hegemony of the European world shall be assumed by another Caesar. Of course, the action of the Mediterranean states towards each other and towards the non-Christian people which border upon the same sea will no longer be subservient to imperial interests and imperial aim, but will be determined by the views of the different states as to the policy most likely to be conducive to the special interests of their own industry, commerce, and political position.
[Page 650]In close connection with this great fact is the vast importance which the African continent seems destined to assume as a field for European enterprise and colonization. The researches of recent travelers and scientific inquirers have greatly modified the opinions formerly entertained in Europe in regard to the hopeless sterility of Central and Northern Africa, and it has now been ascertained that even the Sahara is not the desolate sand-waste which geographers have depicted it, but is interspersed with inhabited and productive oases, once well wooded and watered, which formerly sustained a large population, but have been reduced in dimensions, deprived of their water courses, and involved by sand drifts in consequence of human improvidence. Both theory and experiment show that it is practicable in many cases to restore the ancient physical condition of the soil, not only by means of artesian wells, but often by simpler processes, and hence that, not to speak of remoter regions which have never lost their primitive luxuriance of vegetable production, even the dreaded desert may become a habitable and self-sustaining province. There is doubtless much that is chimerical in the boldest of these speculations; but these views have long been cherished by far-seeing statesmen in France, and they have now been diffused among the masses, and many popular treatises on scientific subjects speak of the Great Desert as capable of becoming to France what the Great West is to the United States. Of course the annexation of Tunis, Tripoli, and the Empire of Morocco, parts of which, though now scarcely cultivated, are of a fertility probably unexampled elsewhere, enters into all these schemes, and the jealousy of Italy has long been excited by movements of France looking towards a speedy annexation of the beylik of Tunis. I suppose England is more likely than France to aspire to the possession of Barca (Cyrene), which the ancients considered the richest spot on earth, but which is now virtually abandoned.
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Although, therefore, Italy may be neither willing nor able to prevent the construction of a railway through the heart of the Sahara from Algeria to Timbuctoo, a route for which is now actually under survey by a strong party of French engineers with a sufficient military escort, yet it is certain that the Napoleonic scheme of making the Mediterranean a “French lake” will not be submitted to without resistance on the part of Italy and the other States bordering on that sea. * * * *
I have, &c.,