Sick man of Europe

"Sick man of Europe" is a nickname that has been used to describe a European country experiencing a time of economic difficulty and/or impoverishment. The term was first used in the mid-19th century to describe the Ottoman Empire, but has since been applied at one time or another to nearly every other mid-to-large-sized country in Europe.

Origin

Caricature from Punch magazine, dated November 28, 1896. It shows Sultan Abdul Hamid II in front of a poster which announces the reorganisation of the Ottoman Empire. The empire's value is estimated at 5 million pounds. Russia, France and England are listed as the directors of the reorganisation. The Sultan says: "BISMILLAH! [For God's sake!] Make me into a limited company? M'M - AH - S'pose [I suppose] they'll allow me to join the board after allotment." The caricature refers to the weakness of the Ottoman Empire at the time.

The phrase "sick man of Europe" is commonly attributed to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, referring to the Ottoman Empire, because it was increasingly falling under the financial control of the European powers and had lost territory in a series of disastrous wars. However, it is not clear that he ever said the precise phrase. Letters from Sir George Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador to St. Petersburg, to Lord John Russell, in 1853, in the run up to the Crimean War, quote Nicholas I of Russia as saying that the Ottoman Empire was "a sick man—a very sick man," a "man" who "has fallen into a state of decrepitude", or a "sick man ... gravely ill".

It is not easy to determine the actual source of the quotation. The articles cited above refer to documents held or communicated personally. The most reliable, publicly available source appears to be a book by Harold Temperley, published in 1936. Temperley gives the date for the first conversation as 9 January 1853, like Goldfrank. According to Temperley, Seymour in a private conversation had to push the Tsar to be more specific about the Ottoman Empire. Eventually, the Tsar stated, "Turkey seems to be falling to pieces, the fall will be a great misfortune. It is very important that England and Russia should come to a perfectly good understanding... and that neither should take any decisive step of which the other is not apprized." And then, closer to the attributed phrase: “We have a sick man on our hands, a man gravely ill, it will be a great misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made.”

It is important to add that the British Ambassador G. H. Seymour agreed with Tsar Nicholas's diagnosis, but he very deferentially disagreed with the Tsar's recommended treatment of the patient; he responded, "Your Majesty is so gracious that you will allow me to make one further observation. Your Majesty says the man is sick; it is very true; but your Majesty will deign to excuse me if I remark, that it is the part of the generous and strong man to treat with gentleness the sick and feeble man."

Temperley then asserts, “The ‘sickliness’ of Turkey obsessed Nicholas during his whole reign. What he really said was omitted in the Blue Book from a mistaken sense of decorum. He said not the ‘sick man’ but the ‘bear dies…the bear is dying… you may give him musk but even musk will not long keep him alive.’”

Neither Nicholas nor Seymour completed the phrase with the clause "of Europe," which appears to have been added later and may very well have been journalistic misquotation. Take, for example, the first appearance of the phrase "sick man of Europe" in the New York Times (12 May 1860): "The condition of Austria at the present moment is not less threatening in itself, though less alarming for the peace of the world, than was the condition of Turkey when the Tsar Nicholas invited England to draw up with him the last will and testament of the 'sick man of Europe.' It is, indeed, hardly within the range of probability that another twelvemonth should pass over the House of Habsburg without bringing upon the Austrian Empire a catastrophe unmatched in modern history since the downfall of Poland." One should note not only that this is not what Nicholas was trying to do or what he said, but that the author of this article was using the term to point to a second "sick man," this one more generally accepted as a European empire, the Habsburg Monarchy.

Later, this view led the Allies in World War I to underestimate the Ottoman Empire, leading in part to the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign. However, the "sick man" eventually collapsed under numerous British attacks in the Middle East.

Modern use

United Kingdom

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes known as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and poor economic performance compared to other European countries, culminating with the Winter of Discontent of 1978–1979.

On the 29th of October 2009 Britain was named the "sick man of Europe" on BBC Question Time because it has not yet come out of recession, whereas France, Germany and other countries had.

Ireland

The Republic of Ireland was also known by this epithet during a long period of poverty, before the beginning of a prolonged period of economic growth in the 1990s (see Celtic Tiger).

Portugal

The term was also used in describing Portugal before the Portuguese economy staged a recovery in the 1990s.

In April 2007, The Economist described Portugal as "a new sick man of Europe".

Greece

In the early 1990s The Economist labelled Greece as the "sick man of Europe" in one of its articles, due to the country's then decade-old poor economic performance, and political instability.

In July 2009, the nickname was given to Greece due to the 2008 Greek riots, rising unemployment and political corruption, bureaucracy and inefficiency.

Russia

During the 1990s, Russia and many fellow Eastern European countries were called "sick men of Europe" due to the severe economic hardships of the time, as well as the soaring rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and AIDS that led to a negative population growth and falling life expectancies.

The term was applied to Russia more recently in the book Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, and by Mark Steyn in his 2006 book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

Italy

In May 2005, The Economist attributed this title to Italy, described as"The real sick man of Europe". This refers to Italy's structural and political difficulties thought to inhibit economic reforms to relaunch economic growth.

In 2008 the nickname was given to Italy by The Daily Telegraph.

Other countries

In the late 1990s the press labeled Germany with this term because of its economic problems, especially due to the costs of German reunification after 1990, which are estimated to amount to over €1.5 trillion (statement of Freie Universität Berlin).

In 2007, a report by Morgan Stanley referred to France as the "new sick man of Europe".

Cultural references

On the 2009 Cheap Trick album "The Latest" there is the song "Sick Man of Europe". It was also the name of an early line-up of the band.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• PIGS (economics)
• Sick man of Asia