The eastern crisis (1875-1878)‎ : historical study in international relations

Abstract EN

In 1875 represented the peak of the liberation movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when a massive peasant uprising took place in the province and caused a global crisis that continued to 1878, was known as the Eastern Crisis, that reopened the hard Eastern Question which had been relatively quiet at the Paris Conference of 1856.

At the time when the nationalist and liberal forces were crumbling into the Ottoman state from within, the bloc that included the western countries in the Crimean War was cracked.

Austria and France were busy defending their property as a result of the goals of Germany and Italy to complete their territorial integrity.

Only Britain remains able to provide effective protection for the Ottoman Empire, but it is now isolated.

British public opinion is no longer inclined to repeat the Crimean adventure.

Moreover, after the completion of its unity and its transformation into a major power, Germany worked to find a new international balance, embodied in the Dreikaiserbund, between it and the conservative empires of Russia and Austria in 1872.

The survival of the Ottoman Empire was not a European necessity for them, On the contrary, its dissolution has become unavoidable, and its division was a necessity for maintaining peace in Europe.

The realization of an understanding between Russia and Austria was a real disaster for the Ottoman Empire.

Until then, the two countries had represented the best guarantee of the security and safety of their property in Europe.

Thus, the Ottoman Empire at the outbreak of the Revolution in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875 was in almost complete international isolation, as well as the suffering of its chronic weakness.

Thus the ambitions and interests of the major European countries, and the aspirations of the emerging Balkan states in the Ottoman state, have turned the uprising into a global crisis which was an internal affair that the Ottomans could control.