Oriental question

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The oriental question is a term used in European diplomacy history to describe the problems arising from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire . These were based on its military decline, the rivalries among European states that tried to take advantage of it, and the emerging national movements.

course

In the 19th century, the formerly mighty Ottoman Empire, which by the media of the time when it became sick man of Europe satirizes was carried rebellions within its European territories ( Rumelia weakened) and becoming the pawn of European powers. In 1804 the Serbs rose up and were given extensive autonomy until 1830. The rule of the Phanariots in the Danube principalities also came to an end in 1826. In the 1820s, the independence movement in Greece, supported by some Europeans, gained momentum. From 1831 to 1841 dominated the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha in addition to Egypt , the Sudan , Arabia and the Levant and Syria .

The oriental question became a constant topic of diplomacy. Russia saw this as an opportunity to exercise its influence more strongly in Europe and, in particular, to gain free access to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea and the Dardanelles and the Balkans . In the Balkans it came into play as the protective power of the Orthodox Christians there . The Russian Tsar had previously tried in vain to win the governments of Austria and Great Britain over to the division of the Ottoman Empire. Austria, Great Britain, and France saw the threat of Russian expansion and so tended to maintain a weak Ottoman Empire. They did not want the key positions to fall into Russian hands and supported the Ottomans in order to maintain the status quo and thus secure their own sovereignty in southeastern Europe on the Ottoman borders. On the oriental question about the to be or not to be of the empire, they were of the opinion that the Ottoman Empire, which at that time was still vastly expanding, had to be preserved. Its collapse would have created a power vacuum. For Great Britain, the most important trading partner of the Ottoman Empire at the time, it was also a matter of controlling the sea ​​route to India and of preventing Russia's hegemony in Asia, because Great Britain and Russia were in conflict over dominance over resource-rich Central Asia , the so called Great Game .

This led to the fact that the alliances were reorganized depending on the situation. When the Egyptian viceroy was able to win another war with the Ottoman Empire in 1839, this led to the oriental crisis of 1839–1841. The great powers Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria signed the Four Power Treaty in London on July 15, 1840 to pacify the Levant and forced France to give up support for Egypt. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire received British military aid against Egypt. In 1841 , Muhammad Ali Pasha was forced to evacuate Syria and Palestine and to restrict his rule to Egypt, which remained under Ottoman suzerainty. But he was granted the right to pass the rule on to his descendants. In the Crimean War (1853-1856), which was triggered by the Russian occupation of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova, Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia fought on the side of the Ottomans. In the Peace of Paris , part of southern Bessarabia, which was won by Russia in 1812 in the area of ​​the mouth of the Danube (about a quarter of the total area) with the districts of Cahul , Bolgrod and Ismail, went back to the Principality of Moldova , which was an autonomous state under the sovereignty of the Sublime Porte , and the Black Sea was demilitarized .

The fact that Russia, after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, forced the Ottoman Empire to cede almost all of its European possessions led to the Balkan crisis . Neither Great Britain nor Austria-Hungary were prepared to accept this violation of their interests. There was a risk that in a military conflict in the Balkans, both Vienna and Petersburg would have expected help from the German Reich. At the Berlin Congress in 1878, the territorial reorganization of the Balkans was revised by negotiation. Participants were Germany, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

literature

  • Roland Banken: The Treaties of Sèvres in 1920 and Lausanne in 1923. An international legal investigation into the end of the First World War and the resolution of the so-called "Oriental Question" through the peace treaties between the Allied powers and Turkey . Lit Verlag, Münster 2014, ISBN 3643125410 .
  • Nicolae Jorga : History of the Ottoman Empire, Volume 5. Until 1912 , Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-8218-5026-4 .
  • Florian Keisinger: Uncivilized Wars in Civilized Europe? The Balkan Wars and Public Opinion in England, Germany and Ireland , Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-76689-2 .
  • Jelena Milojković-Djurić: The Eastern question and the voices of reason. Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Balkan states, 1875–1908 , New York 2002, ISBN 0-88033-490-8 . (East European monographs, 592).
  • Gregor Schöllgen : Imperialism and Balance. Germany, England and the oriental question 1871-1914 , Munich ³2000, ISBN 3-486-52003-2 .