“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.

scholarly journals The eastern question in the parliament of the United Kingdom in 1876

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Milos Kovic
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
British Government ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Almost All

This article scrutinizes the attitude of the British political elites towards the Eastern question, in the year of the beginning of the Serbian liberation and unification wars of 1876-1878. It is based on diverse sources, Hansard?s Parliamentary Debates being the most important one. The Eastern question, as geopolitical problem of the future of the Balkan and Levantine lands from which the Ottoman Empire was gradually retreating, has been considered through the confrontation of Great Britain and Russia on the wider Eurasian stage, especially in relation to their conflict in the Central Asia. The article is mainly devoted to the different interpretations, debates and conflicts in the British Parliament and public opinion, provoked by the Serbian uprising in Herzegovina and Bosnia, atrocities in Bulgaria, and the beginning of the Serbian-Turkish Wars. The divisions went mainly through the party lines. Behind almost all events in the East, the Conservatives perceived the hand of Russia and League of the Three Emperors (Dreikaisebund). These ?foreign influences? were attributed mainly to Russia and Serbia, as the alleged Russia?s tool in the Balkans. Thus, according to the Conservatives, the Serbs and Russians were to blame for the sufferings of Bulgarians in the hands of the Turks. Additionally, they were repeating that Turkish crimes were committed in self-defence, and that the numbers of victims were hugely exaggerated by the Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian propaganda and the British liberal press. The Conservatives had similar attitudes towards the atrocities committed by the Turks in the Eastern Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Liberals, on the other hand, were insisting that the main causes of these uprisings and wars were national feelings, economical problems, and the misrule of the Turks. They were directing their moral indignation not only to the Turks, but to the British government as well. According to the Liberals, by despatching of the British fleet in the vicinity of the Ottoman capital, the British government encouraged the Turks and made Great Britain co-responsible for the atrocities committed in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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.

scholarly journals Serbska cerkiew w sułtanacie, meczet w Serbii. Przestrzenie sakralne jako miejsca kłopotliwe

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 281-301
Author(s):  
Marta Chaszczewicz-Rydel
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Architectural Patterns ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Complex Phenomena

Serbian Orthodox Church under the rule of the sultanate, mosques in Serbia. Sacral spaces as troublesome locationsThe territorial overlapping of the Ottoman Empire and the reaches of the Orthodox Church resulted in the emergence of new, complex phenomena and forms that managed to survive till the present times to a varying extent and by different means. These forms have become a part of the problematic and “difficult” tradition. Mosques and orthodox ­churches from the Ottoman times can be found among them. The subsequent reigns realised the ­symbolic impact of these temples on the area of religion, politics and culture. In the Ottoman times, the possibility of construction of new sacral buildings was determined by the then-current relations between the Serbian patriarchy and the caliphate. The fate of these buildings depended on the political situation, dominating imperial projects, cultural politics of the Serbian state and the local religious structure. The connections between temples and the dynamics of the political history of the Balkans is substantial: the temples were torn down and redesigned, the shape and location of orthodox churches relied on decisions by the Ottoman administration and the rules of oriental urbanism. However the mosques bear traces of inspiration with the Byzantine culture. Observing the development of sacral architecture in Niš – at the background of the political and social relations of the Ottoman empire, one is led to believe that orders rooted in external civilisations – the Islamic religion and the Orthodox Church, retained their individuality but at the same time continued to influence each other which is apparent in the wandering architectural patterns.

scholarly journals Serbian Society at the Beginning of the 20th Century. “Militarization of Everyday”

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 28-45
Author(s):  
Ya. V. Vishnyakov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
The Impact

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Eastern question and the search for ways to solve it occupied a central place in the politics of both Russia and European states. With his decision was closely linked the process of formation of the young Balkan countries. Serbia, whose formation of a new statehood typologically coincides with a change in the system of European international relations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, played an important role in the events of the Eastern question, while claiming to be the Yugoslav “Piemont”. However, it was the war by the beginning of the twentieth century. It became, both for Serbia and other countries of the region, not only a means of gaining state sovereignty, but also the main way to resolve its own interstate contradictions, which took place against the background of an external factor - the impact on the political processes of the Balkans of the Great Powers. These factors led to the natural militarization of the everyday life of Serbian society. The presence in the everyday consciousness of the people of the image of a hostile “other” became one of the main ways of internal consolidation of the country, when attitudes towards war, pushing the values of peaceful life to the background, created a special basic consensus in the state development of Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century, and the anthropological role of the military factor was essential influenced the underlying processes that took place in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the conditions of a new stage of destruction of the Balkans along the ethno-political line, the factor of militarization of everyday life again becomes an important element of the historical policy of the Balkan countries and the construction of a “new past”. In this regard, the understanding of many problems and possible scenarios for the development of the current Balkan reality is linked to this phenomenon. Thus, the study of the impact on the political life of Serbia at the beginning of the twentieth century of special "extra-constitutional" institutions is important for a wide range of researchers, including for a systematic analysis of the crisis in the territory of the former SFRY.Author declares the absence of conflict of interests.

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.

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.

The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant

1960 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Traian Stoianovich
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Aegean Islands ◽  
Merchant Class ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Business Concentration

The origins of a Balkan Orthodox merchant class or classes may be traced back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not until the eighteenth century, however, did it become sufficiently strong in wealth and number to capture the trade of Hungary, South Russia, and the eastern Mediterranean. The eighteenth century was a time of expansion of French, German, English, and Russian trade in the Balkans. It was also a time of growth of the trade of Moslem Albanian and Bosnian merchants. But, in terms of its significance to the cultural, political, and general historical evolution of the Balkan peoples, most important of all was the expansion of the Balkan Orthodox merchant: the Greek trader of Constantinople, Salonika, and Smyrna, the Greek and Orthodox Albanian merchant, sailor, and shipper of the smaller Aegean islands, the Greek, Vlach, and Macedo-Slav muleteer and forwarding agent of Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia, the Serbian pig-merchant of Šumadija, the “Illyrian” muleteer and forwarding agent of Herzegovina and Dalmatia, who set up business in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) or Trieste, the “Rascian” of Pannonia, and the Greek or Bulgarian of the eastern Rhodope. The Balkan Orthodox merchants were Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian subjects, but their principal business was to bring goods into or out of the Ottoman Empire. The area of their primary business concentration stretched north and west of the political limits of the Ottoman Empire to Nezhin in South Russia, Leipzig in Germany, Vienna in Austria, and Livorno and Naples in Italy. In western Europe, they succeeded in creating an area of secondary commercial penetration.

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.

Catholic Opinion on the Eastern Question, 1876–1878

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
Major Portion ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Political World ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
Eastern Question

In the middle 1870s British society experienced the greatest debate over foreign policy since the early days of the French Revolution: the dispute known as the Eastern question. For two years the British political world was divided by this issue as the country took sides between the Ottoman Empire, the oppressor of the Christian Slavic peoples of the Balkans, and Czarist Russia, the Slavs' protectors. What began as a diplomatic dispute became through its religious dimension a moral, even ideological, issue. Responsibility for this transformation belonged to a strange coalition made up of English radicals, a major portion of the Nonconformist community, and a considerable number of High Church Anglicans. They were joined later by the greatest Victorian exponent of moral force in politics, William Ewart Gladstone. Inexorably the Catholic community in Britain was drawn into this dispute.

Gladstone and the nonconformists: a religious affinity in politics

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 369-382
Author(s):  
D. W. Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political Skills ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Contagious Diseases ◽  
Political Relationship ◽  
The Times

Nonconformists had an attitude of veneration for Gladstone. They admired his political skills; they were grateful for the legislative benefits he had brought them like the abolition of compulsory church rates and the opening of higher degrees at the ancient universities; and they were roused by his displays of oratorical power. Yet their respect for Gladstone went far beyond what was due to the able leader of a political party. There was amongst nonconformists by 1890 what a correspondent of The Times called a ‘fascination, amounting to fetishism, of the great name and personality of Mr Gladstone.’ This was not primarily a result of sympathy in political policy, despite a general concurrence of nonconformists with Gladstone in the principles of peace, retrenchment and reform. In many other areas of policy there was disagreement. The overriding aim of political dissent, the aim of religious equality, was not shared by Gladstone; he was usually absent from parliamentary debates on the contagious diseases acts against which nonconformist feeling was high; and as temperance political pressure gathered momentum among nonconformists in the later years of his life, Gladstone stood aside. Nonconformists were always more wholeheartedly behind Gladstone in opposition, when he was denouncing the wrongs of conservative administrations, than behind Gladstone in office, when he was ignoring the wishes of nonconformist electors. Yet, despite policy differences, from at least 1868 until Gladstone’s death thirty years later nonconformists as a whole were enthusiastic Gladstonians, supporters of the man. The explanation lies in the fact that undergirding the political relationship was a religious affinity. At a meeting of ten leading nonconformist ministers in 1889, according to the diary of the baptist John Clifford, when the prospects of the liberal party were under discussion, ‘the conversation turned chiefly on the religious fibre of the prospective leaders. Suppose Gladstone gone, what have we to look to? The outlook was thought to be very unpromising.’ It was the ‘religious fibre’ of Gladstone that brought him esteem. It was primarily religion that bound the nonconformists in personal loyalty to Gladstone.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document