V. British Policy in the Balkans, 1908-9

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Special Position ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
British Military ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Public Reaction

Britain acted as a principal arbitrator of the Eastern Question throughout the nineteenth century. During the 1890's, however, Britain lost this position owing to diplomatic isolation, the hostility of the Sultan of Turkey—who had found a new ally in Germany—and an equal hostility to the Sultan in Britain, where he was regarded as a brutal oriental despot presiding over an empire in the last stages of decay. The immediate cause of Britain's loss of status in Turkey was her failure to provide vigorous support to Sultan Abdul Hamid in the critical period following the Congress of Berlin. Turkey was bankrupt, but the Sultan's appeal for a loan met with no response in Britain; Turkey's European provinces were on the verge of slipping out of the Sultan's control but Britain refused to extend the terms of the Cyprus Convention (which guaranteed the Sultan's dominions in Asia Minor) to cover the more turbulent Balkans. The Convention itself had an alienating effect, since the guarantee was dependent upon the introduction of administrative reforms in Asia Minor under the direction of British military consuls. Britain's insistence on the application of this provision aroused the suspicion that she was actually seeking political control over this area. Turkey's loss of confidence in Britain, however, had deeper roots. ‘Many Muslims believed that Britain had deserted Turkey in the hour of need, that her protection of Islam was disproved by her war with Afghanistan, that her desire for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was shown to be a pretence by the occupation of Cyprus, and that her power to rule provinces properly was doubtful after her failures in Egypt.’ In fact as early as 1879 Britain had lost the special position which she had held in Turkey for nearly half a century; and thereafter her prestige diminished rapidly, especially after the strong public reaction to the Armenian massacres of 1894-95.

Russia and the Eastern Question

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bitis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Military ◽  
European Diplomacy

This book covers one of the most important and persistent problems in nineteenth-century European diplomacy, the Eastern Question. The Eastern Question was essentially shorthand for comprehending the international consequences caused by the gradual and apparently terminal decline of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. This volume examines the military and diplomatic policies of Russia as it struggled with the Ottoman Empire for influence in the Balkans and the Caucasus. The book is based on extensive use of Russian archive sources and it makes a contribution to our understanding of issues such as the development of Russian military thought, the origins and conduct of the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War, the origins and conduct of the 1826–1828 Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Adrianople. The book also considers issues such as the Russian army's use of Balkan irregulars, the reform of the Danubian Principalities (1829 –1834), the ideas of the ‘Russian Party’ and Russian public opinion toward the Eastern Question.

Everyday Forms of Compliance: Subaltern Commentaries on Ottoman Reform, 1864–1868

2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 730-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milen V. Petrov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Vicious Circle ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Political Project

The Tanzimat—a series of legal and administrative reforms implemented in the Ottoman empire between 1839 and 1876—has been described by Roderic Davison as a modernization campaign whose momentum came “from the top down and from the outside in.” There can be little doubt about the basic historical veracity of this characterization. Ottoman reform was indeed the brainchild of a small, albeit influential, portion of the imperial bureaucratic elite and its direction and timing were undeniably influenced by foreign diplomatic pressure (in the context of the so-called “Eastern Question”). But by characterizing, correctly, the Tanzimat as a state-led, elitist project, Davison's argument enters an interpretive vicious circle which seems to be more a reflection of twentieth-century political sensibilities than of nineteenth-century realities. A “top-down” political project, according to this argument, is by definition less likely to succeed than a project that has “vigorous popular support.” And, since we know that the project in question ultimately failed to stop the breakup of the empire, it must indeed have lacked such support.

Calendars of Exopraxis

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-332
Author(s):  
Aude Aylin de Tapia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Ritual Practices

In the nineteenth-century Ottoman empire, Cappadocia, in the heart of Anatolia, was one of the last regions where Rum Orthodox Christians cohabited with Muslims in rural areas. Among the main aspects of everyday coexistence were the beliefs and ritual practices that, shared by Muslim and Christian individuals, blurred religious belonging as it is traditionally defined. Anthropologists and ethnologists have studied exopraxis broadly, while historians have neglected the topic until recently. In the case of anthropologists, studies have mostly focused on the spatiality of sharing that is characteristic of exopraxis. This article, based largely on testimonies collected in the Oral Tradition Archives of the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, analyzes the temporality of exopraxis and inquires into the different but shared calendars that ordered the ritual life of Muslims and Orthodox Christians in Cappadocia. These testimonies, taken from Orthodox Christians who lived in Turkey prior to the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece in 1923, help us to understand how the sharing of religious calendars resulted in feelings of belonging to a single collectivity.

“Bulgarian Horrors” Revisited: the Many-Layered Manifestations of the Orientalist Discourse in Victorian Political Construction of the External, Intimate and Internal Other

Belleten ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (291) ◽  
pp. 525-568
Author(s):  
Nazan Çi̇çek
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Cognitive Map ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Many

This study largely drawing upon the established conceptual framework of Orientalism in Saidian terms shall analyse the British perceptions and representations of the Bulgarian Crisis of 1876, a salient feature of the Eastern Question, as they appeared in British parliamentary debates. It will also make occasional yet instructive references to the coverage of the Crisis as well as the image of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans which were organic parts of the Crisis, in some influential periodicals of the era such as the Times and the Contemporary Review in order to better contextualize the debates in the parliament. The main point this article shall make is that the Bulgarian Crisis worked as a catalyst in reinforcing the hegemony of the Orientalist discourse in the political construction of the Ottoman Empire as an absolute external Other in Britain at the time. It shall also delve into the construction of the Balkans as an "intimate other" whose Oriental and European features were alternately accentuated during the Crisis with a view to enlist the British public in either supporting or denouncing the Bulgarian uprising. All in all, it will suggest that the Orientalist rhetoric was embedded at the very core of the Victorian British elites' cognitive map, and was also unsparingly employed in negating the domestic political opponents swamping them with negative Orientalist stereotypes.

7. World war and dissolution

2017 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Martyn Rady
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
World War ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
First World

International politics in the later 19th and early 20th centuries was dominated by the ‘Eastern Question’: the legacy of the failing Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. ‘World war and dissolution: 20th century’ considers issues that led to the First World War, including the murder of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, June 1914. To withstand the Russians, the Habsburg armies increasingly depended on German reinforcements. By passing strategic command of its forces to Wilhelm II in 1916, the Habsburg Empire’s fate was sealed. Franz Joseph’s nephew Karl was to be the last emperor. A final section gives a historical overview, asking whether the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire was inevitable.

scholarly journals Between deosmanization and balkanization: refugee’s steps of bosniak history

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-74
Author(s):  
Safet Bandžović ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

The past and the present are inseparable, one interprets the other. Many "long-lasting" processes go beyond local frameworks and regional borders. This also applies to the complex "Eastern question", as well as the problem of the deosmanization of the Balkans, whose political geography in the 19th and 20th centuries was exposed to radical overlaps. Wars and persecutions are important factors in the history of Balkan Muslims. In the seventies of the XIX century, they constituted half of the population in the Ottoman part of the Balkans. With war devastation, a considerable part was killed or expelled to Anadolia between 1870 and 1890. The emergent "Turkish islands" in the Balkans after 1878 were increasingly narrowed, or disappeared due to the displacement of Muslims. Multiethnic and religious color of the Balkans disturbed accounts with simple categorizations. The term "balkanization" signified, after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, "not only the fragmentation of large and powerful political units, but became synonymous with returning tribal, backward, primitive, and barbaric." The Balkanization of "Ottoman Europe" and the violent changes in its ethnic-religious structure led to discontinuity, the erosion of history, as well as fragmentation of the minds of the remaining Muslims and their afflicted communities, the lack of knowledge of the interconnectedness of their fates. The emigration of Bosniaks and other Muslims of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds from the Balkans to various parts of the Ottoman Empire, and then to Turkey, during the XIX and XX centuries, had a number of consequences.

scholarly journals Crossing the Mediterranean

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Ozan Ozavci
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
The Will ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter discusses that the French invasion of Egypt in 1798 epitomized a discursive practice in the Levant. European Great Powers of the time looked to supply security beyond their imperial territories by military expeditions, allegedly for the benefit of the locals even if against the will of the regional sovereigns—in this case, the Ottoman imperial rulers. The architects of the 1798 occupation, Bonaparte and Talleyrand, portrayed their expedition as a ‘service’ the Ottoman Empire. But, in reality, the 1798 expedition was the outcome of decades long debates in France. It ultimately resulted from a diverse set of geostrategic, political, economic and financial determinants that defined the Eastern Question in the late eighteenth century. What exactly did the Eastern Question pertain to before the nineteenth century then? And how did 1798 relate to it?

The International Context of Nineteenth-Century Humanitarian Interventions

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Rodogno
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
International Context ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
Geopolitical Context

This chapter examines the international context of humanitarian interventions during the nineteenth century in order to understand why humanitarian intervention emerged as an international practice in the Ottoman Empire. It also sets the geopolitical context of humanitarian intervention, when Ottoman Christians were victims of massacre, atrocities, and extermination. The chapter begins with a discussion of the concept and practice of intervention in nineteenth-century international relations, explaining the term “intervention.” It then provides a brief overview of the history of the Eastern Question—the question of the survival or the death of the “sick Man of Europe”—before contextualizing the meaning of “massacre,” “atrocity,” and “extermination.” It also distinguishes between the Capitulations and intervention and concludes with an analysis of the extent to which military interventions against massacre built on the Capitulations.

Britain, the International Spectrum, and the Eastern Question, 1827-1841

1992 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 15-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderic H. Davison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Near East ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Eastern Question

We commemorated in 1988 the sesquicentennial of the Convention of Balta Limani, the ground-breaking Ottoman-British commercial agreement that set a pattern for Ottoman agreements with other powers in the years immediately following. The Convention sprang from British interests and from Ottoman needs during the 1830s in the Near East. My function is to sketch the general international background for the Convention, to look at the situation of the Ottoman Empire, at British foreign policy in the early nineteenth century, and in particular at the development of British policy in the Near East in the years from 1827 to 1841. A subtitle indicating the desirable breadth of view might read “From Navarino (1827) to Nezib (1839), and from Hercules’ Pillars to Hormuz and Herat.”

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