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In European history, The "Eastern Question" encompasses the diplomatic and political problems posed by the "Sick man of Europe" (the Ottoman Empire), as it steadily weakened decade after decade. This gave rise to national aspirations (especially in Greece, Serbia and the rest of the Balkans), and the goal of the Russians to dominate the Balkans. The expression does not apply to any one particular problem, but instead includes a variety of issues raised during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, including instability in the European territories of the Ottoman Empire.
The Eastern Question is normally dated to 1774, when the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) ended in defeat for the Ottomans. As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was believed to be imminent, the European powers engaged in a power struggle to safeguard their military, strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. Imperial Russia stood to benefit from the decline of the Ottoman Empire; on the other hand, Austria-Hungary and Great Britain deemed the preservation of the Empire to be in their best interests. The Eastern Question was put to rest after World War I, one of whose outcomes was the collapse and division of the Ottoman holdings among the victors.
Mavi Boncuk |
"...Constantinople having surrendered by capitulation, as in like manner has the greater portion of European Turkey, the Christians there enjoy the privilege of living as rayahs, under the Turkish Government. This privilege they have exclusively by virtue of their agreeing to accept the Mussulman protection. It is, therefore, owing to this circumstance alone, that the Christians submit to be governed by the Mussulmans according to Mussulman law, that the patriarch of Constantinople, their spiritual chief, is at the same time their political representative and their Chief Justice. Wherever, in the Ottoman Empire, we find an agglomeration of Greek rayahs; the Archbishops and Bishops are by law members of the Municipal Councils, and, under the direction of the patriarch, [watch] over the repartition of the taxes imposed upon the Greeks. The patriarch is responsible to the Porte as to the conduct of his co-religionists. Invested with the right of judging the rayahs of his Church, he delegates this right to the metropolitans and bishops, in the limits of their dioceses, their sentences being obligatory for the executive officers, kadis, etc., of the Porte to carry out." Karl Marx in New-York Herald Tribune 1854
"..Revolutions are infectious. The revolutions of 1848, 1917, 1989, and 2011 all went global. Russia’s 1905 Revolution was no exception. It set off a wave of revolutions, notably in Persia (1906), Turkey (1908), Mexico (1910), and China (1911). That in Turkey in 1908 began a process which would transform the Middle East over the next two decades...For this, the people of the former Ottoman Empire would pay a terrible price, as their leaders led them into the inferno of a modern industrialized world war. ." By Neil Faulkner
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