scholarly journals The First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813) and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Eastern Question

Slavic Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence P. Meriage
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Near East ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
International Issue

Throughout the nineteenth century a major international issue facing the Great Powers of Europe was the volatile “Eastern Question.” As the Ottoman Empire grew steadily weaker, the question of the future disposition of its extensive territories (some 238,000 square miles in Europe alone in 1800) provoked an intense and prolonged rivalry among those European states with vested political and economic interests in the Near East. With its military power in decline and its frontiers menaced by powerful neighbors, the Ottoman Empire seemed on the verge of collapse at the beginning of the nineteenth century despite its imposing imperial edifice.

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?

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.”

An Aspiring Buffer State: Anglo-Persian Relations in the Third Coalition, 1804–1807

1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Near East ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Weak States ◽  
The Third ◽  
British Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Weak states can control strong states, provided the weak can persuade the strong to admit, that they are vitally interested in their integrity and independence. In the late nineteentli century everybody understood the influence of the Ottoman Empire upon British policy, and the influence of Austria-Hungary upon Imperial German policy in the near east. In the heyday of the Great Powers of Europe it was not expected tliat orientals should aspire to similar influence: their futures would be decided by Europeans. Until the work of Robinson and Gallagher revealed the extent to which the khedive of Egypt controlled Lord Cromer, the history of late nineteenth century imperialism was written from this assumption.

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 Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ozan Ozavci
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Self ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

The Introductory chapter discusses the overarching question of the book: how did it all begin? Since when did the self-defined Great Powers of the nineteenth century––Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia––come to assume responsibility for providing security in the Levant. Why? The Introduction traces the answer of these questions to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and maintains that Great Power interventions in the nineteenth-century Levant need to be considered not only in reference to their immediate causes, theatres, and implications. It is essential to take into account the continuity that European and Levantine actors saw in regional affairs from the late eighteenth century through until at least the mid-nineteenth. There is a need to foreground the persistent patterns or cultures of security within which violence was generated and sustained, and how the quest for security acted as an organizing principle of international relations. It also discusses the importance of considering these interventions in the fabric of the Eastern Question. It invites the readers to view the latter not only as a European question, as the existing literature has us believe, but also as an Ottoman question, whereby the agency of the Ottoman ministers and other local actors was more central than has been documented.

Crete in the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Michael Llewellyn-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Great Idea ◽  
Eastern Question ◽  
Mixed Populations ◽  
The 19Th Century

Venizelos was born and brought up in Crete under Ottoman rule, and the island shaped his early career. The author gives an account of Ottoman government of Crete in the 19th century, and how Greek independence attracted the Cretans. Crete's mixed populations of Christians and Muslims developed at different speeds. Uprisings by Christians in 1821, 1866 and later aimed at securing Crete's union (enosis) with Greece. The Great Powers, especially Britain, France, and Russia, had helped secure Greek independence, while delaying Cretan union, so as to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman empire. This was the Cretan Question, part of the wider Eastern Question. The 19th century saw the development of the Great Idea (megali idea) of incorporating in the Greek kingdom as many Greek communities from outside as possible. Civil society was developing in Crete in the second half of the19th century, and as the Cretan Christians increased in wealth and population, the Muslims were largely left behind.

II. Great Britain and the Beginnings of the Ottoman Public Debt, 1854–55

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olive Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Public Debt ◽  
Near East ◽  
Financial Control ◽  
Foreign Loan ◽  
Foreign Control

In 1929 the historian of European financial control in the Ottoman Empire—that most significant factor in the affairs of the Near East at the turn of the nineteenth century—found ‘the seed of the idea’ of European control in the second Turkish foreign loan, raised in 1855. Nevertheless, he added virtually nothing to the brief and rather inaccurate account of this transaction given in 1903 by that able retired official of the Ottoman Bank, A. du Velay. It may therefore be worth while to discuss, from the profusion of evidence now available, the circumstances in which this loan and its predecessor of the year before were raised, and the extent and significance of the foreign control which these transactions introduced into Turkey.

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.

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