Disraeli and the Eastern Question

Disraeli and the Eastern Question
Author: Milos Kovic
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2010-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 019957460X

Benjamin Disraeli is primarily remembered as a two-time Prime Minister, founder of modern British Conservatism, and popular novelist. However, in the course of a few fateful years, he had a decisive influence on the history of the countries of the Balkan peninsula.Like all British Prime Ministers in this period, Disraeli was forced to confront the Eastern Question: what to do about the political future of the Balkans and the Levant, as the Ottoman Empire began to implode. During the 'Eastern Crisis' of 1875 to 1878, Disraeli played a key role, in the end imposing his will on the rest of Europe at the Congress of Berlin.It is a commonplace in biographies of Disraeli that his attitude to the East and the Eastern Question is essential for understanding his complex persona and the most crucial period of his career, yet until now this topic has not been researched in detail. Disraeli and the Eastern Question now fills this gap, providing the first complete reconstruction of Disraeli's attitudes towards the East and the Eastern Question as a whole, from his early youth onwards, and using a wide range ofprimary sources, from Disraeli's private papers, correspondence, and novels, the manuscript collections of Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister's closest associates, to the minutes of Parliamentary debates and the official correspondence of the Foreign Office, as well as Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, andAlbanian documents. Blending a biographical approach with the history of ideas, Milos Kovic analyses Disraeli's role in the Eastern Crisis, at the Congress of Berlin, and after, to provide a full intellectual biography of his attitudes to the Eastern Question and how these affected the history of international relations in the late nineteenth century.

The Letters of Richard Cobden

The Letters of Richard Cobden
Author: Anthony Howe
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2007-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191568724

The first of four volumes, this book provides a unique insight into the career of one of Britain's leading nineteenth-century politicians. Richard Cobden (1804-1865) moved rapidly from business success in Manchester into the worlds of local, national and international politics, providing a case study in social mobility in the Industrial Revolution. He travelled extensively, visiting the United States, the Near East, and the continent writing influential pamphlets, before undertaking the campaign against the British Corn Laws for which he remains best known. Drawing on material from Britain, Europe, and the United States, the letters are accompanied by notes and an introduction by Anthony Howe, explaining the unusual history of the letters and re-assessing Cobden's importance in their light. But the letters reveal not only Cobden the anti-corn law crusader, but provide us with a greater understanding of wider aspects of middle class politics and culture in their formative period in Britain and Europe. Together, these four volumes provide a unique source on British liberalism in its European and international contexts, throwing new light on issues such as the repeal of the Corn Laws, the British radical movements, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, and the American Civil War.

Eastern Questions in the Nineteenth Century

Eastern Questions in the Nineteenth Century
Author: Allan Cunningham
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780714634531

The 1830s saw a transformation in British attitudes towards the Ottoman Empire. This book focuses on the British concept of "improvement", which they claimed in return for supporting the Ottoman's, and reinterprets the career of the British ambassador, Lord Stratford de Radcliffe.

Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Eastern Question

Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Eastern Question
Author: Robert William Seton-Watson
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 610
Release: 1971
Genre: Diplomacy
ISBN: 0714615137

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain

The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain
Author: Leslie Rogne Schumacher
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2023-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 3031365143

This book examines mid-Victorian discourse on the expansion of the British Empire’s role in the Middle East. It investigates how British political leaders, journalists and the general public responded to events in the Ottoman Empire, which many, if not most, people in Britain came to see as trudging towards inevitable chaos and destruction. Although this ‘Eastern Question’ on a post-Ottoman future was ostensibly a matter of international politics and sometimes conflict, this study argues that the ideas underpinning it were conceived, shaped, and enforced according to domestic British attitudes. In this way, this book presents the Eastern Question as as much a British question as one related in any way to the Ottoman Empire. Particularly in the crucial decade of the 1870s, debates in Victorian society on the Eastern Question served as proxies for other pressing issues of the day, including electoral reform, changing religious attitudes, public education, and the costs of maintaining Britain’s empire. This book offers new perspectives on the Eastern Question’s relationship to these trends in Victorian society, culture, and politics, highlighting its significance in understanding Britain’s imperial programme more widely in the second half of the nineteenth century.