THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, THE BALKANS AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
The Congress of Vienna, the Balkans and the Mediterranean

Summary/Abstract: The future of the Ottoman Empire was never officially dealt with by the representatives of the Great Powers assembled in Vienna 1814/15 although its problems – uprisings in Serbia and Greece, a deep dissatisfaction with the rule, political practices and the treatment of orthodox religion – in vast parts of the Balkans were obvious. The Sublime Porte was only represented by a diplomat of very low rank in Vienna, but the ministers and princes had no problems of getting information about things developing there: by Greek members of the Russian delegation, by the correspondence of the Secretary of the Congress, Friedrich Gentz, and the Hospodar of Valachia, by a Serbian delegation, by the reports of the respective diplomats in Constantinople, by the press and by pamphlets. The Viennese delegations discussed in more or less private circles quite a number of the Ottoman Empire’s problems, but in the end the attempts of Austria and Britain to convince the Sublime Port to ask for a formal guarantee of its sovereignty and inviolability by the European Powers led to nothing and would, certainly, have been thwarted by the Russians.

• Details
• Contents