Thesis
Conflict in print: British public discourses on the Eastern Question, c.1854-1878
- Abstract:
-
The decline of the Ottoman Empire throughout the nineteenth century, commonly called the Eastern Question, preoccupied the minds of European diplomats and politicians throughout the era. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Eastern Question impacted the balance of power in Europe, and the Great Powers sought on numerous occasions to either maintain the Ottoman Empire or hasten its decline. The major flash points of Britain’s version of the Eastern Question in the Victorian era were the Crimean War (1853-1856), and the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878), events where Britain played a major role in preserving the Ottoman Empire against Russian aggression. While Britain’s Eastern Question has been well surveyed by diplomatic and political historians, there is a distinct lack of examination of the views of those outside diplomatic or political circles.
This thesis considers the sources produced by travellers to the East and their evaluations of the Ottoman Empire and its people. These travellers were relatively common people, consisting of soldiers, medical professionals, journalists, and others, who all wrote of their travels to the Ottoman Empire in the 1850s and 1870s using letters, journals, and memoirs about their time there. These works were not solely about the conflicts that they were there to participate in or to witness, but instead often focused on the sights, sounds, people, and places of the Ottoman Empire, and were filled with not only descriptions of these things but also detailed evaluations of them as well. Crimean War travellers examined the Ottoman government and its subjects and found them both to be completely irredeemable and not worthy of Britain’s support, while Great Eastern Crisis travellers instead found a corrupt government oppressing an otherwise kind-hearted people deserving of the British Empire’s protection. Through these evaluations, these travellers sought to solve Britain’s Eastern Question once and for all.
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Authors
Contributors
+ Zaman, F
- Institution:
- University of Oxford
- Division:
- HUMS
- Department:
- History
- Role:
- Supervisor
- ORCID:
- 0000-0002-9205-6452
- DOI:
- Type of award:
- MLitt
- Level of award:
- Masters
- Awarding institution:
- University of Oxford
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- Deposit date:
-
2025-09-08
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Andrew Walsh
- Copyright date:
- 2025
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