Eastern Question. This was the problem created by the slow collapse of the Ottoman (Turkish) empire, which seemed likely to leave a power vacuum in the Balkans and lead to a general European war. Turkey's weakness became apparent in a series of wars with Russia in the late 18th cent. In 1783 Russia obtained the Crimea. Greece gained her independence, in an agreement brokered by Britain, France, and Russia, after an armed struggle (1821–30). European opinion was divided by anxiety for the balance of power, if Turkey ceased to be a great power, and sympathy for the Christian subjects of a Muslim and decayed empire, reinforced in the case of Greece by memories of her classical glories. The British feared that, if the Turkish empire broke up, Russian power would be enhanced and would become an increasing threat to the British empire in India. Russia gained some territory by the treaty of Adrianople at the end of the Russo-Turkish war of 1828–9 but Russian policy was thereafter governed by the conviction that an intact Turkish empire provided a buffer state which would be preferable to a partition. The Crimean War of 1854–6, in which Britain, France, and Turkey fought Russia, was the result of miscalculations, arising from France and Russia's over-vigorous championing of the rights of Turkey's catholic and orthodox Christians respectively, and Britain's misplaced fears that Russia wished to partition the empire and seize Constantinople (Istanbul). Nationalist feelings in the Balkans grew and the problem flared up again in the 1870s. The Bosnians rose in 1875, followed by the Bulgarians in 1876. The Bulgarians were repressed with particular brutality (the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’). Russia declared war on Turkey but the other powers thought the peace treaty (treaty of San Stefano, 1877) too favourable to Russia and amended it at the Congress of Berlin (1878). European opinion wavered over the next 30 years between the comparative stability provided by the Ottoman empire and the volatility of the emerging Balkan states. The situation was complicated by the rival ambitions of the latter. Serbia and Bulgaria, for example, fought each other in 1885. It was also feared that the emergence of Slav states in the Balkans would destabilize the Austrian empire. It can plausibly be argued that the Eastern Question caused the First World War. Austria angered Serbia by annexing Bosnia in 1908. Russia helped to organize the Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece, which went to war with Turkey in 1912. Militarily they were successful but they then fought between themselves over the spoils. The situation was still unstable when the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in 1914. The Austrians blamed the Serbs. Russia, which had been unable to aid the Serbs in 1908, now backed them. Ultimatums, mobilizations, and war followed within weeks.

Muriel Evelyn Chamberlain