The capitular regime in the contemporary age and its abolition

The regime of capitulations was a complex system of international agreements that regulated the status of the subjects of the Christian powers living in Ottoman country with recognition of rights, privileges and guarantees by the Sultan. It originates from the exemptions and trade freedoms recognized to some Italian coastal cities in the Byzantine era. These prerogatives were then extended in a new form and with a wider and more detailed content to the nascent European states. The capitulations over the centuries have been the subject of numerous changes connected to the political, economic and social events of the Ottoman Empire. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the inadequacy of these privileges with respect to the changed situation of the Ottoman Empire and the most modern agreements concluded between States, in line with the nascent international right, was clearly manifested. In this period, the Ottoman government became the promoter of a campaign aimed at obtaining an agreement for the abolition of the regime of capitulations.