"...we now know in detail that there have been perpetrated, under the
immediate authority of a Government, to which all the time we have been
giving the strongest moral, and for part of the time even material,
support, crimes and outrages, so vast in scale as to exceed all modern
example, and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character, that it
passes the power of heart to conceive, and of tongue and pen adequately
to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors; and the question is,
what can and should be done, either to punish, or to brand, or to
prevent?"
--W.E. Gladstone, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East
The Great Eastern Crisis began in 1875 when the Balkan provinces Serbia
and Montenegro rose up against the Ottoman Empire. In Britain, the
Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli initially did not appear
concerned about this crisis. However, this changed when the London
newspaper The Daily News publicized the atrocities committed by the
Ottomans against the Christians in Bulgaria, and especially when the
former Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone published his pamphlet
Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (1876). In this
fascinating publication, which sold 200,000 copies, Gladstone expressed
his sympathies for the Balkan Christians and called for independence of
the Balkan states.
