Author:
Frederico Benvinda, MA
PhD Student in Contemporary History at
the Lisbon School of Arts and Humanities (FLUL)
Resarcher at the Centre for History
of the University of Lisbon (CH-UL)
Fig.1 - Thomas Nast (1840-1902), “Bismarck’s «after-dinner» Speech.” in Harper & Brothers, Haper’s Weekly, A Journal of Civilization, Vol. XXIL, No.1127, August 3, Harper & Brothers, 1878, p.617. Satirical depiction of the Congress of Berlin (1878). In the cartoon, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), standing over a tray of picked bones reading “Turkey”, slyly tells the off-frame holders of the plates that read, in clockwise order from the top-left corner, “France”, “Italy”, “England”, “Greece”, “Austria” and “Russia”: “Gentleman, there is really no more Turkey.”
All the positions we are going to touch on this series of posts must be contextualized within the larger array of imperial and national aspirations that were present in the Balkans during the chronological limits we wish to explore. The Eastern Question, meaning, the evanescent authority of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the response of the great powers to this reality are, hence, of vital concern to us.
While Great Britain sought to implement a policy of containment, predicated upon maintaining the sultan’s authority while disallowing the Russian Black Sea Fleet from crossing the Straits, the Russian Empire had the objective of breaking the Ottoman Empire apart, in order to expand its influence to the straits and to Orthodox Christian nations within it. Austria-Hungary saw the Balkans as a buffer between it and Russia, as well as a possible area for imperial expansion. Balkan nations, for their part, sought independence and, once autonomous, expansion.
A weak crop year in 1875 lead to revolts in Bosnia that spread to Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire repressed the uprisings aggressively. Serbia declared independence and invaded the Ottoman empire on June 30, 1876, but was quickly pushed back. Using her argued role as protector of Orthodox Christians within the empire, and having guaranteed German and Austro-Hungarian neutrality, Russia invaded in the 24th of April, 1877. Russian forces reached Andrinople by January 20 but the threat of British intervention forced them to stop their advance in San Stefano. The homonymous treaty was signed on March 3.
However, its provisions never became a reality. The Congress of Berlin (1878), headed by Otto Von Bismarck disallowed Balkan nations from accessing the territorial increase they expected from the Treaty of San Stefano. Instead, it granted Serbia and Montenegro independence, divided Bulgaria into two principalities, placed Macedonia under Ottoman rule and allowed Austria-Hungary occupy Novi Pazar and be granted the possibility of, under certain conditions, occupying Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moreover, it denied Serbia most of its territorial claims.
Sources and Bibliography
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CRAMPTON, R. J., A Concise History of Bulgaria, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
GERD, Lora, Russian Policy in the Orthodox East – The Patriarchate of Constantinople (1878-1914), Berlin, De Gruyter, 2015.
GLENNY, Misha, The Balkans – Nationalism, War and the Great Powers (1804-2012), Toronto, House of Anansi Press, 2012.
HALL, The Balkan Wars 1912-1913 – Prelude to the First World War, London, Routledge, 2000.
HOWARD, Douglas A., A History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
JONASSOHN, Kurt, BJÖRNSON, Karin Solveig, Genocide and Gross Human rights Violations in Comparative Perspective, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1999.
LIEVEN, Dominic (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia – Volume II Imperial Russia 1689-1917, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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RODOGNO, Davide, Against Massacre – Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815-1914, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012.