‘Ideal and Ornamental Endeavours’: The Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response to Britain's Imperial Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Empire, 1878–83

Abstract

Diplomatic correspondence during the period 1878–83 offers a unique insight into the tension between humanitarian and geostrategic considerations in German and British foreign policy in the aftermath of the Congress of Berlin. During this period, Germany followed the lead of Britain in adhering to an Eastern policy that favoured the introduction of reforms in the Ottoman Empire that would alleviate the position of the Armenian minority. The more strident Gladstonian stance towards the Ottoman Empire initiated in the early 1880s, however, led to the perception that the intransigence of British liberals on the Armenian issue was in fact a means by which Britain sought to recalibrate its position in Anatolia, even at the expense of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the concomitant threat of a general European war.