Narratives on the Beginning of the 1875-1878 Uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the British Public Discourse

Abstract

: In his noteworthy book Against Massacre, Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815-1914 (2012), Davide Rodogno states that even prior to the Eastern Crisis (1875-1878), the Ottoman Empire and Turks had been excluded from civilised states and nations for several reasons (despotism, Islam, polygamy, slavery, impossibility of reformation). Thereby, the Europeans have secured the position of being the only ones determining the standards of civilisation: they decide how, where and when a nonEuropean country will access the family of civilised people. As a supplementary part of orientalism, balkanism and ottomanism, as well as a justification to the implementation of the “western” double standard, it was stereotypical to construct a negative image of Turks that also included Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the period of crisis, such was the 1875-1878 Eastern Crisis, the British and other European public and political elite, including Russia, had developed considerable anti-Turkish sentiments. In this paper, I analysed and synthesised discourses about Bosnia and Herzegovina in the British public space, from the beginning of the uprising in 1875, to the anti-Turkish campaign following the Turkish crimes in Bulgaria in May 1876. The discourse on the uprising of the British Consulate in Bosnia and the anti-Ottoman discourse of the British press in relation to the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina appeared as especially important. The last one appeared through several narratives: oppression as a way of rule, oppression as the cause of the uprising, oppression and the Turkish crimes over Christians as an argument for a humanitarian intervention and western (Austrian) occupational right.