Still less is it a system, as it is often said to be, of magnanimous concessions made by far-sighted sultans of Turkey in order to encourage foreigners to trade with and reside in the empire. The capitulations were neither badges of inferiority imposed on foreigners, as they have often been described, nor proofs of exceptional wisdom peculiar to the sultans. As a fact, foreigners have never held so important a position in the capital under Ottoman rule as under that of the Christian emperors, and especially at the close of the twelfth century. AVhile the native population has probably remained stationary during the last six centuries, the foreign population was probably never so large as at that period.
I now propose to point out what were the principal colonies of foreigners which existed in Constantinople, and in other of the important cities of the empire, at the time immediately preceding the Latin conquest.
The Warings.
Among the foreigners who had been longest established in Constantinople in 1201: were the Warings, or Varangians.
They were kinsmen of our own, and on this account latcdto Eug- may be allowed a fuller description than the immediate object in hand would justify. Tacitus speaks of “Angli et Varini,”1 the English and the Warings. Loth were, in his time, the inhabitants of the country south of the Baltic, or, as it came to be called at a later period, the Waring Sea. When the great movement began which caused the English to emigrate to Britain, some of the Warings took part in it. With them also were others whom Bede speaks of as Rugians or Russians.
Warwick or Waeringwick
At a later period the name Waring and Russian appears to have been applied indifferently to the same people, the truth possibly being, as the Russian monk Nestor says, that some of the Warings were called Russians. Many traces of Waring emigration into England exist, of which the names of Warwick or Waeringwick, Warn- ford, and Warington are examples. The record of their history shows them to be closely akin to the English, though whether through the Teutonic or the Norse element of our people may be open to doubt. Their appearance was like that of Englishmen or Danes. Their language was virtually the same. Their exploits at sea, their legends, their habits, their very names, all convey the irresistible impression that we are reading of the kinsmen of our ancestors.
Bulgaria 