atrocities committed by the forces of the Ottoman Empire in subduing the Bulgarian rebellion of 1876; the name was given currency by the British statesman W.E. Gladstone. Publicity given to the atrocities, especially in Gladstone’s pamphlet “The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East” (1876), served to arouse public sympathy in Europe for the Bulgarians and other southern Slavs attempting to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The Bulgarian revolt was part of the eastern crisis of 1875–78. This, in turn, was one of many crises that marked the so-called Eastern Question, the problem of the power vacuum created by the decay of the Ottoman Empire, that occupied European governments through much of the 19th century. After decades of nationalistic ferment, an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 and spread to Bulgaria the following spring. It was cruelly suppressed by the Turks, especially the poorly disciplined irregulars known as bashi-bazouks. About 15,000 persons were said to have been massacred at Philippopoli (now Plovdiv), and many villages and some monasteries were destroyed. Isolated risings in the mountains were crushed with equal severity.
Gladstone, then in opposition and contemplating retirement from the leadership of the Liberal Party, was moved by reports of the atrocities to write his pamphlet and to campaign vigorously against the foreign policy of the Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, which favoured supporting the Ottoman Empire as a counterweight to Russia. Despite widespread public indignation, the European powers did little to alleviate the situation, and the climate of opinion changed after Russia attacked Turkey in 1877. The crisis ended with the Congress of Berlin (see Berlin, Congress of) in 1878, which created a small, autonomous principality of Bulgaria, still under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire and confined to territory north of the Balkan Mountains.
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atrocities committed by the forces of the Ottoman Empire in subduing the Bulgarian rebellion of 1876; the name was given currency by the British statesman W.E. Gladstone. Publicity given to the atrocities, especially in Gladstone’s pamphlet “The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East” (1876), served to arouse public sympathy in Europe for the Bulgarians and other southern Slavs attempting to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The Bulgarian revolt was part of the eastern crisis of 1875–78. This, in turn, was one of many crises that marked the so-called Eastern Question, the problem of the power vacuum created by the decay of the Ottoman Empire, that occupied European governments through much of the 19th century. After decades of nationalistic ferment, an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 and spread to Bulgaria the following spring. It was cruelly suppressed by the Turks, especially the poorly disciplined irregulars known as bashi-bazouks. About 15,000 persons were said to have been massacred at Philippopoli (now Plovdiv), and many villages and some monasteries were destroyed. Isolated risings in the mountains were crushed with equal severity.
Gladstone, then in opposition and contemplating retirement from the leadership of the Liberal Party, was moved by reports of the atrocities to write his pamphlet and to campaign vigorously against the foreign policy of the Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, which favoured supporting the Ottoman Empire as a counterweight to Russia. Despite widespread public indignation, the European powers did little to alleviate the situation, and the climate of opinion changed after Russia attacked Turkey in 1877. The crisis ended with the Congress of Berlin (see Berlin, Congress of) in 1878, which created a...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 and spread to Bulgaria the following spring. It was cruelly suppressed by the Turks, especially the poorly disciplined irregulars known as bashi-bazouks. About 15,000 persons were said to have been massacred at Philippopoli (now Plovdiv), and many villages and some monasteries were destroyed. Isolated risings in the mountains were...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...for centuries by the Mamlūk and Ottoman sultanates, was no longer immune from European influence; it had become an object of the contending policies of France and Britain, a part of the Eastern Question. Napoleon’s savants had little success in interpreting Western culture to the traditionalist ʿulamāʾ of Cairo; their...
The traditionalist 17th-century reforms did, however, produce at least a semblance of revival. By 1681 the Ottoman army seemed so strong that the grand vizier, Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa (served 1676–83), brother-in-law of Ahmed Köprülü, was emboldened to move again into central Europe and besiege Vienna (July–September 1683). His effort quickly overextended...
The Bulgarian revolt was part of the eastern crisis of 1875–78. This, in turn, was one of many crises that marked the so-called Eastern Question, the problem of the power vacuum created by the decay of the Ottoman Empire, that occupied European governments through much of the 19th century. After decades of nationalistic ferment, an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 and...
...and did not see why they should not be as predominant in Spain as the British were in Portugal. Relations, therefore, deteriorated even before there was an open breach in 1839–40 on the Eastern Question (regarding the Ottoman Empire). Palmerston’s mobilization of the powers to isolate France and confine Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha to Egypt gave...
