Although the basic drive behind the reforms in the Ottoman Empire was real, sometimes the proclamations were used tactically to prevent intervention on the part of the great powers. Having followed the Eastern Question for a long time on behalf of different magazines Edward A. Freeman writes in 1877:
' The pretended reforms of the Turk were in their own nature good-for-nothing. Two and twenty years ago, I drew that inference from the general current of Mahometan history; and I think that the two and twenty years of Mahometan history which have passed since then, have more than borne out what I then said.' (Freeman, ix.)
His statement expresses the predominant opinion of the reading public in Britain.
The adversaries of this argument sought an explanation for the unsuccessful reform efforts of Turkey in the conduct of the Europeans themselves. The editor of The People of Turkey: Twenty Years' Residence among Bulgarians, Greek, Turks, and Armenians (1878), Stanley Lane Poole, was struck by ' the wide difference of opinion held on things which ought to be matter of certainty -- on which two opinions ought to be impossible' (Craik, 256.). Davison argues that the constant interference of Europe often hampered reform and quotes Fuad Pasha' s bitter answer to a western diplomat from around 1839, which can also be applied to the period of Tanzimat:
' Our state is the strongest state. For you are trying to cause its collapse from outside, and we from inside, but still it does not collapse.' (Davison, 9.)
Foreign diplomatic pressure was highly significant for the Ottoman Empire. On several occasions it led to the territorial diminution of the state. ' Hitherto' , writes Henry Craik, ' a great part of the Eastern Question has been the gauging of the ambitions that found in the East and its disturbances a field for their own satisfaction: it suggests a collision of aims, mutual suspicion, rival claims to undertake the task of reform' (Craik, 256.). He accuses the western powers of short-sightedness for ' the causes of ill government are mixed, and […] it is not by scotching one that we can put an end to the misgovernment of Turkey.' The reviewer of the Quarterly Review adds another aspect to the discussion: the reform process meets with obstacles because of Turkey' s ' mingled and yet confused population, each separate element preserving its own distinctive angularities.' (Craik, 256.)
Politically engaged people and historians at the time of the reform attempts were aware of the complexity of the Eastern Question. Some, like Thomas E. Holland, proposed a scientific approach to it.
The action of the Great Powers in the Eastern Question deserves, I think, to be studied as a whole, and to be studied textually in the documents which are its official record. (Holland, v.)
He published a collection of texts, which -- according to him -- ' determine[d] the character of the Eastern Question at the present day' .(Holland, v.) Having in mind the variety of opinions on the subject as well as the diversity of voices in the selected documents, he called his book: TheEuropean Concert in the Eastern Question, a metaphor which successfully depicts the polyphony of standpoints throughout the nineteenthcentury.
Craik, Henry, "The People of Turkey: Twenty Years' Residence among Bulgarians, Greek, Turks, and Armenians", Art. IX, in: Quarterly Review 146 (1878), pp. 256-88.
Davison, Roderick H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856-76 (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1963).
Freeman, Edward A., The Ottoman Power in Europe. Its Nature, Its Growth, and Its Decline (London: Macmillan, 1877).
Holland, T. E., The European Concert in the Eastern Question (Oxford: Clarendon, 1885).
Last modified 2001