Eastern Question - Background

Background

The Eastern Question emerged as the power of the Ottoman Empire began to decline during the 16th century. The Ottomans were at the height of their power in 1683, when they lost the Battle of Vienna to the combined forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria, under the command of John III Sobieski. Peace was made much later, in 1699, with the Treaty of Karlowitz, which forced the Ottoman Empire to cede many of its Central European possessions, including Hungary. Its westward expansion arrested, the Ottoman Empire never again posed a serious threat to Austria, which became the dominant power in its region of Europe.

The Eastern Question did not truly develop until the Russo-Turkish Wars of the 18th century. The first of the wars, which began in 1768, ended in 1774 with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji. The treaty was interpreted as permitting Russia to act as the protector of Orthodox Christians under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Sultan, and established Russia as a major Black Sea power. Another Russo-Turkish conflict began in 1787. The Empress of Russia, Catherine II, entered into an alliance with the Austrian ruler, the Emperor Joseph II; the two agreed to partition the Ottoman Empire between their respective nations, thereby alarming many European powers, especially the United Kingdom, France, and Prussia. Austria was forced to withdraw from the war in 1791. In the ensuing Treaty of Jassy (1792), Russia's dominance of the Black Sea grew.

During the early 19th century, the positions of the Great Powers on the Ottoman Empire became clear. Russia was the power most directly concerned with the Eastern Question. She was primarily concerned with control of the Black Sea and access to the Mediterranean (especially by acquiring the important port of Constantinople). Russia was especially eager to secure navigation rights for her merchant vessels and warships while denying similar privileges to other European powers. Another more or less important Russian interest was the protection of the many Orthodox Christians in the territories of the Ottoman Empire, given that Russia was the foremost Orthodox world power. Constantinople's status as the home of the most important patriarchate in Orthodoxy added to the Russian desire to possess it.

Austria was most directly opposed to the Russian designs on the Ottoman Empire. Though the Austrian House of Habsburg was the foremost opponent of the Ottomans in prior centuries, Austria deemed the Ottoman threat to be much less serious than a Russian advance along the Danube River. Austria also feared that the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire into several nation states would foster the sentiment of nationalism among the many ethnic groups in her own Empire. Thus, Austria made it one of her primary goals to maintain the unity of the Ottoman Empire.

Similarly, Britain saw the containment of the Russian Empire as vital to the security of British colonial possessions in India (seen also in the prosecution of the Great Game in Afghanistan). It was also concerned that Russian control of the Bosporus could impede British domination of the eastern Mediterranean, including the Suez Canal. The UK was also concerned with the preservation of the traditional global balance of power, which would have been upset by the fall of the Ottoman Empire.