The “Eastern Question”

Abstract

The “Eastern Question” lends general meaning to a complex web of nineteenth-century European Great Power relationships that dealt with the balance of power established at the Congress of Vienna among Britain, France, Russia, and the Habsburg Empire. The congress accorded that each was free to pursue its own essential interests so long as the others’ were not threatened. Generally, Britain, supported by France, upheld the balance system while Russia and the Habsburgs threatened its stability, but circumstances in any given situation often determined on which side a particular Great Power stood. Ottoman destabilization, the rise of Romantic nationalism among that empire’s non-Muslim subjects, and the possible specter of total Ottoman demise focused the issue of Great Power balance on the eastern Mediterranean and the strategically important Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits. Because of the Balkan Peninsula’s geographic location relative to the eastern Mediterranean in general and the Straits in particular, its control became a crucial issue in the Great Powers’ imperial interests, and any major event in the region became a matter of their concern.