Gladstone Islam and Bulgarian Uprising

Mavi Boncuk |

Gladstone’s Christian identity was no different, but he was also a liberal internationalist who often clashed with the conservative mantra of Empire and nationalism, a mantra embodied by his great political rival Benjamin Disraeli.

Gladstone’s true views about Islam are often misconstrued or impossible to verify. Any malice towards Islam is a product of fraught 19th Century relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire.

In 1876, a Bulgarian revolt[1] against Ottoman rule brought violent reprisals and thousands died.  When news reached Britain, then Prime Minister, Disraeli, downplayed the tragedy in order to keep good relations with the Ottomans and maintain Britain’s own empire, as he feared the growing influence of Russia.[2]

Disraeli’s blasé approach incensed Gladstone and he did his best to highlight their plight with the pamphlet “The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East.” (SEE MEI LINK TO THE BOOK) 

Gladstone was a humanitarian who sought to defend and protect Christian minorities within the Ottoman Empire. The pamphlet proved so popular that it sold 200,000 copies within one month.

Gladstone made clear his hostility focused on the Turkish people, rather than on the Muslim religion. The Turks he said: were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force, as opposed to government by law. For the guide of this life they had a relentless fatalism: for its reward hereafter, a sensual paradise.

 Gladstone rejected Islam as the true path to God but championed the pluralistic notion of freedom of faith. During the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), Gladstone opposed intervention and spoke in defence of faith, as he recognised that Islam is one of the great religions of the world:

 “Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.”

  He went on to argue that God’s love transcended borders and was not limited to “Christian civilization.”

 Nor should we overlook Gladstone’s towering intellect and commitment to scholarly pursuits. During his lifetime, he read around over 20,000 books and owned 30,000 titles. Near the end of his life, he brought a plot of land to build a library upon, with the help of his daughter, and a member of his staff.

 The library’s original name was ‘Monad’ – the first number and symbol of unity. A library intended for all as Gladstone believed that strong academia put you on the path to truth. Of the 15,000 books he personally annotated, we can  include ‘The Life of the Prophet [Muhammad].’ In 2011, Gladstone’s Library opened up an Islamic reading room.

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1874  The Tories won the General Election and Disraeli became Prime Minister. Gladstone resigned.

1875 Gladstone resigned as Leader of the Liberal Party but continued to sit on the Opposition Front Bench.

1876  Gladstone's book The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East was published. In it, Gladstone attacked Disraeli's foreign policy.

.....

1896  In his last public speech, in Liverpool, Gladstone protested against the massacres of Armenians in Turkey.

1898  [19 May] Gladstone died at Hawarden. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

SOURCE: William Ewart Gladstone: A Timeline

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[1] The April Uprising (Bulgarian: Априлско въстание, Aprilsko vǎstanie) was an insurrection organized by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876. The regular Ottoman Army and irregular bashi-bazouk units brutally suppressed the rebels, resulting in a public outcry in Europe, with many famous intellectuals condemning the atrocities—labelled the Bulgarian Horrors or Bulgarian atrocities—by the Ottomans and supporting the oppressed Bulgarian population. This outrage resulted in the re-establishment of Bulgaria in 1878.

The 1876 uprising involved only those parts of the Ottoman territories populated predominantly by Bulgarians. The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re-establishment of the independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1870.

Prominent Europeans, including Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, spoke against the Turkish behavior in Bulgaria. When war with Russia started in 1877, the Turkish Government asked Britain for help, but the British government refused, citing public outrage caused by the Bulgarian massacres as the reason.

 The April uprising was a failure as a revolution, but due to the publicity given to the reprisals that followed, it led directly to European demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire, and the Russo-Turkish War, which ended in Turkish defeat, and the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, followed in July that year by the Treaty of Berlin. It thus ultimately achieved its original purpose, the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

 [2]  News of massacres of Bulgarians reached European embassies in Istanbul in May and June 1876 through Bulgarian students at Robert College, the American college in the city. Faculty members at Robert College wrote to the British Ambassador and to the Istanbul correspondents of The Times and the Daily News.

 But let me tell you what we saw at Batak ... The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be ... It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odour, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them ... The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odour, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible. — Eyewitness account of J. A. MacGahan on Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, in a letter to the London Daily News of August 22, 1876

 An article about the massacres in the Daily News on 23 June provoked a question in Parliament about Britain's support for Turkey, and demands for an investigation. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli promised to conduct an investigation about what had really happened.

 In July, the British Embassy in Istanbul sent a second secretary, Walter Baring, to Bulgaria to investigate the stories of atrocities. Baring did not speak Bulgarian (although he did speak Turkish) and British policy was officially pro-Turkish, so the Bulgarian community in Istanbul feared he would not report the complete story. They asked the American Consul in Istanbul, Eugene Schuyler, to conduct his own investigation.

 Schuyler set off for Bulgaria on 23 July, four days after Baring. He was accompanied by a well-known American war correspondent, Januarius MacGahan, by a German correspondent, and by a Russian diplomat, Prince Aleksei Tseretelev.

 Schuyler's group spent three weeks visiting Batak and other villages where massacres had taken place. Schuyler's official report, published in November 1876, said that fifty-eight villages in Bulgaria had been destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand people in all massacred. The report was reprinted as a booklet and widely circulated in Europe.

 Baring's report to the British government about the massacres was similar, but put the number of victims at about twelve thousand.

 MacGahan's vivid articles from Bulgaria moved British public opinion against Turkey. He described in particular what he had seen in the town of Batak, where five thousand of a total of seven thousand residents had been slaughtered, beheaded or burned alive by Turkish irregulars, and their bodies left in piles around the town square and the church.

THE MEDITEBRANEAN FLEET—BESIKA BAY[*].—QUESTION. SOURCE

HC Deb 06 July 1877 vol 235 cc886-7886

§SIR WLLFRID LAWSON 

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he has any objection to inform the House with what object Her Majesty's Government have ordered the Fleet to Besika Bay?

§MR. GOURLEY 

said, he had a Question to put on the same subject—namely, to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If he will be good enough to inform the House the number and names of the vessels belonging to the Mediterranean Squadron ordered from the Piræus to Besika Bay; and, why they have been sent there in place of the Suez Canal? He wished to add, that if the Answer was not satisfactory, he would bring the Question forward on the Motion for going into Committee on the Navy Estimates.

§THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER 

Sir, the object with which the Fleet has been sent to Besika Bay is that it should be at a convenient station. The position of Besika Bay is a central one, which enables the Admiralty to communicate with rapidity, if necessary, with Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople, and with the British Government, and it is thought, therefore, to be a most convenient position for the Fleet. The hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Gourley) asks for the number and names of the vessels which have been sent there. Of course, there can be no objection, if he likes to move for a Return, to give him any particulars regarding them; but I may say generally that there are eight vessels, of which seven are iron-clads and one an unarmored frigate. The iron-clads are the Alexandra, the Swiftsure, the Pallas, the Sultan, the Devastation, the Rupert, and the Hotspur, and the unarmored frigate is the Raleigh. The hon. Gentleman asks why they have been sent there in place of the Suez Canal. The answer is, that Besika Bay is a convenient and central station, and that the Suez Canal is not equally central. Moreover, there is no particular reason why any vessel should be sent to the Suez Canal beyond 887the one already stationed there, which I believe is the Research, which has taken the place of the Hotspur.

[*] BES′IKA BAY. An inlet of the Ægean Sea, of marine strategic importance, on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, a little south of the entrance to the Dardanelles (Map: Turkey in Asia, B 3). The island of Tenedos lies at the mouth of the bay. The English fleet was stationed there during the crisis of the Russo-Turkish War in 1853-54, and again in 1877-78.