Relying on examination of relevant studies and documents housed in the archives in Vienna and Berlin, this paper analyzes the attitude of one of the most important personalities of the 19th century, Austrian Chancellor Metternich, towards the Levant. Attention is particularly paid to diplomacy, economy, religion and Ottoman reforms.
The main goal of the paper is to explain the complicated religious situation existing within the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 19th century and draw attention to the fact that the widespread opinion of a calculated religious oppression of Christians on the part of Moslems in fact did not exist. On the contrary, at the period under research the Ottoman Christians were in pacticular threatened by other Christians residing in the empire, as it was proved by the Armenian Catholics’ affair of 1828 when the main oppressor of Armenian Catholics in Constantinople was not a sultan and his advisers but an Armenian Orthodox patriarch and his retinue.
The purpose of this essay is to analyse the attitude of one of the most important personalities of the 19th century, Austrian Chancellor Metternich, towards the French adventure in North Africa in the year 1830. Based almost solely on research into unpublished documents housed in the archives in Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin and Munich, the paper claims that Metternich´s attitude towards the French intervention in Algeria had been based, since the very beginning, on the principles that guided his diplomacy in the Near East in general i.e. maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and the sultan´s sovereignty and his rights. In conclusion, the paper argues that the French expedition in Algeria is not only a textbook example of Mettermich´s realism and pragmatism, but also of his extraordinary forsight.
The goal of this paper is to explain the mutual relations of Moslems, Christians and Jews living in Syria in the 19th century and prove, that the co-existence of these ethnics was far from being cordial. The situation was rather complicated and the reasons for cold or even hostile behaviour of various groups of inhabitants could be found either in religious prejudice, which particularly held for the christians’ conduct towards jews, or in political and economic ambitions, which particularly determined the Moslems’ attitude towards the members of other religions, but primarily the Christians and not the Jews during the period under research.
The purpose of this essay is to analyse the reform efforts of Ottoman Sultan Mahmut II, who reigned in the first half of the 19th century and tried to halt the decay of his empire. Particular attention is paid to those factors which resulted in the mostly unsuccessful attempts of the sultan to regenerate his decaying empire.