Russian-Ottoman Borderlands

The Eastern Question Reconsidered

Lucien J. Frary, Mara Kozelsky, Lucien J. Frary, Mara Kozelsky

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780299298043
• eBook ISBN: 9780299298036
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

During the nineteenth century—as violence, population dislocations, and rebellions unfolded in the borderlands between the Russian and Ottoman Empires—European and Russian diplomats debated the "Eastern Question," or, "What should be done about the Ottoman Empire?" Russian-Ottoman Borderlands brings together an international group of scholars to show that the Eastern Question was not just one but many questions that varied tremendously from one historical actor and moment to the next. The Eastern Question (or, from the Ottoman perspective, the Western Question) became the predominant subject of international affairs until the end of the First World War. Its legacy continues to resonate in the Balkans, the Black Sea region, and the Caucasus today.
            The contributors address ethnicity, religion, popular attitudes, violence, dislocation and mass migration, economic rivalry, and great-power diplomacy. Through a variety of fresh approaches, they examine the consequences of the Eastern Question in the lives of those peoples it most affected, the millions living in the Russian and Ottoman Empires and the borderlands in between.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Eastern Question Reconsidered - Lucien J. Frary and Mara Kozelsky
• The Russian Protectorate in the Danubian Principalities: Legacies of the Eastern Question in Contemporary Russian-Romanian Relations - Victor Taki
• “Dreadful Scenes of Carnage on Both Sides”: The Strangford Files and the Eastern Crisis of 1821–1822 - Theophilus C. Prousis
• Slaves of the Sultan: Russian Ransoming of Christian Captives during the Greek Revolution, 1821–1830 - Lucien J. Frary
• Russia’s Quest for the Holy Grail: Relics, Liturgics, and Great-Power Politics in the Ottoman Empire - Jack Fairey
• The Crimean War and the Tatar Exodus - Mara Kozelsky
• Russia, Mount Athos, and the Eastern Question, 1878–1914 - Lora Gerd
• “Forty Years of Black Days”? The Russian Administration of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum, 1878–1918 - Candan Badem
• The Idea of an Eastern Federation: An Alternative to the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire - John A. Mazis
• Squabbling over the Spoils: Late Imperial Russia’s Rivalry with France in the Near East - Ronald P. Bobroff
• The Eastern Question in Turkish Republican Textbooks: Settling Old Scores with the European and the Ottoman “Other” - Nazan Çiçek
• Epilogue: Legacies of the Eastern Question - Lucien J. Frary and Mara Kozelsky
• Contributors
• Index