Writing Up the Eastern Question in 1835-1836

Abstract

has long been recognized that the immense growth of hostility towards Russia displayed by the British press in the 1830s was largely the result of a deliberate campaign organized by a few ardent Russophobes. Contemporaries singled out David Urquhart as the main, if not the only, instigator, but historians have recognized that others were intimately involved; they have generally included Sir John McNeill and James Baillie Fraser as leading participants. The British ambassador at Constantinople, Viscount Ponsonby; the private secretary to the king, Sir Herbert Taylor; and the foreign secretary, Viscount Palmerston, have all been regarded as having some connection with the campaign, but there has not been agreement about the extent of their involvement.1 Palmerston's role in particular has been a matter of dispute and his most recent biographer, Kenneth Bourne, believes that the extent of the foreign secretary's involvement 'will surely never be known'.2 Bourne accepts Palmerston's own account of his activities without much question and Sir Charles Webster is almost as uncritical. J.H. Gleason and G.H. Bolsover, however, suggest that the foreign secretary was more deeply involved than he was later prepared to admit. With the comparatively recent availability of the private papers of McNeill and of Ponsonby, there seems room to investigate further the extent of the responsibility of all the participants and the motivation for their actions.3