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.

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.

This book focuses on the Eastern Crisis of 1839-41, closely examining the first instance of coordinated Western intervention in the Middle East during the modern era. Readers can explore topics such as how culture, domestic politics, and ideology shaped diplomacy in this landmark crisis, and the importance role played by religion - including, alongside mainstream Christianity, the Protestant Zionist movement. Highly informative and fully researched, this book suggests that the Eastern Crisis - and its associated diplomatic and military efforts - marked the first of many modern-era attempts to “improve” the region by moulding it in a Western image, providing scholars with a new perspective on this period of history.

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