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.