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171-653: The Convention ended the long dispute over Persia between the two parties. Great Britain promised to stay out of northern Persia, and Russia recognized southern Persia as part of the British sphere of influence. Russia also promised to stay out of Tibet and Afghanistan. In exchange, London extended loans and some political support. The convention brought shaky British–Russian relations to the forefront by solidifying boundaries that identified respective control in Persia , Afghanistan , and Tibet . This agreement would eventually form

342-665: A military alliance with Japan in 1902, as well as an agreement with Russia in 1907 that resolved their major disputes. After Russia was defeated by Japan in 1905, those two countries work together on friendly terms to divide up Manchuria . Thus by 1910 the situation among the great powers in the Far East was generally peaceful with no troubles in sight. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Britain, Russia, Japan and China all declared war on Germany, and cooperated in defeating and dividing up its Imperial holdings. At

513-559: A "holy war" against British imperialism at a rally in Baku . Following the withdrawal of British troops from Russia, negotiations for trade began, and on 16 March 1921, the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was concluded between the two countries. Lenin's New Economic Policy downplayed socialism and emphasised business dealings with capitalist countries, in an effort to restart the sluggish Russian economy . Britain

684-699: A calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna . The alliance of the Holy League pressed home

855-482: A combination of European and monarchist activities. The Persian government quickly came to realise that an Anglo-Russian alliance posed a larger threat to Iranian sovereignty than the two powers being hostile. Consequently, in 1907, Britain and Russia signed an agreement to regulate their economic and political interests. The Anglo-Russian Convention formalized the spheres of influence of the Russian Empire and

1026-473: A component of the Triple Entente . During the last third of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire 's advances into Central Asia and the consolidation of Great Britain's domination of South Asia led to intense rivalry between the two European powers. The conflicting interests centered on Afghanistan, Iran, and Tibet, three states that constituted buffers between the two powers. The emergence of

1197-594: A confrontation occurred between HMS  Defender and the Russian Armed Forces in the 2021 Black Sea incident . Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , relations between the two nuclear powers collapsed entirely; the United Kingdom imposed economic sanctions on Russian outlets, seized the assets of Russian oligarchs , recalled its citizens and severed all business ties with Russia. Russia retaliated with its own sanctions against

1368-500: A coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as

1539-605: A deal with Russia. In the leadup to the convention, there were discussions on the Straits question . Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey thought entente with Russia a good idea. On 20 October 1905, during the election, he said: ...if Russia accepts, cordially and whole-heartedly, our intention to preserve the peaceable possession of our Asiatic possessions, then I am quite sure that in this country no government will make it its business to thwart or obstruct Russia's policy in Europe. On

1710-629: A diplomatic break in 1927. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed at the end of May 1927 after a police raid on the All Russian Co-operative Society whereafter Conservative British prime minister Stanley Baldwin presented the House of Commons with deciphered Soviet telegrams that proved Soviet espionage activities. The fallout from this incident contributed to the Soviet war scare of 1927 , as it led to

1881-559: A domestic Soviet fear of an invasion, although the fear is generally considered by historians to have been created by Stalin to use against his opponents in the Left Opposition . After the 1929 general election , the incoming Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald successfully established permanent diplomatic relations. In 1938, Britain and France negotiated the Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany . Stalin opposed

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2052-496: A fairly modern conscripted army , banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law, and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan Abdülmecid , who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with

2223-549: A figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. Author Norman Stone suggests that the Arabic alphabet, in which Turkish was written until 1928 , was ill-suited to reflect the sounds of Turkish (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed further difficulty on Turkish children. In turn, Christians' higher educational levels allowed them to play

2394-640: A gradual deterioration in Anglo-Russian relations. Popular sentiment in Britain turned increasingly hostile to Russia, with a high degree of anxiety for the safety of British rule in India . The result was a long-standing rivalry in Central Asia . In addition, there was a growing concern that Russia would destabilise Eastern Europe by its attacks on the faltering Ottoman Empire . This fear was known as

2565-508: A larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks. In many cases, Christians and Jews gained protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts. The Crimean War (1853–1856)

2736-687: A major center for its trade, contributing to its continued prosperity throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray , commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow . The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at

2907-553: A position to prevent Britain and Russia from implementing the agreement, the Persian government refused to recognize the accord's legitimacy since it threatened the country's national integrity. Iranian nationalists, in particular, were infuriated by Britain's signing of the treaty, a country that they had considered as a beacon of democracy during the Constitutional Revolution. Subsequently, an important legacy of

3078-524: A public opinion campaign. Pitt won the vote so narrowly that he gave up and Vorontsov secured a renewal of the commercial treaty between Britain and Russia. The outbreak of the French Revolution and its attendant wars temporarily united constitutionalist Britain and autocratic Russia in an ideological alliance against French republicanism . Britain and Russia attempted to halt the French but

3249-521: A sense of Turkish nationalism. In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to

3420-679: A threat to India, Britain came close to threatening war but both sides backed down and the matter was settled by diplomacy. The effect was to stop further Russian expansion in Asia, except for the Pamir Mountains , and to define the north-western border of Afghanistan. However, Russia's foreign minister Nikolay Girs and her ambassador to London Baron de Staal in 1887 set up a buffer zone in Central Asia. Russian diplomacy thereby won grudging British acceptance of its expansionism. Persia

3591-595: A transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By the start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states , which over time were either absorbed into

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3762-459: A victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle

3933-490: Is the method which... will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble.... A clean sweep will be made." The U.S. and Britain each approached Moscow in its own way; there was little coordination. Churchill wanted specific, pragmatic deals, typified by the percentage arrangement. Roosevelt's highest priority was to have the Soviets eagerly and energetically participate in

4104-639: The Anatolian Beyliks . One of these, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along

4275-525: The Arab Revolt . During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians , Assyrians , and Greeks . In the aftermath of World War I , the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France . The successful Turkish War of Independence , led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against

4446-465: The Battle of Molodi . The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids , and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before

4617-728: The Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur , founder of the Timurid Empire , invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as

4788-589: The British Empire in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. The agreement recognized the country's sovereignty but also divided it into three separate zones. The agreement designated all of northern Iran, which bordered Russia's possessions in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, as an exclusive sphere of influence for Russian interests. The northern zone was defined as beginning at Qasr-e Shirin in the west, on

4959-665: The Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages , failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defense of Constantinople's strategic position on

5130-759: The Cambridge Five spy ring, which was operating in England until 1963. The Soviet spy agency, the KGB , was suspected of the murder of Georgi Markov in London in 1978. A High ranking KGB official, Oleg Gordievsky , defected to London in 1985. Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called the Turkish Empire , was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe , West Asia , and North Africa from

5301-599: The Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Despite the growing European presence in the Indian Ocean, Ottoman trade with the east continued to flourish. Cairo, in particular, benefitted from the rise of Yemeni coffee as a popular consumer commodity. As coffeehouses appeared in cities and towns across the empire, Cairo developed into

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5472-545: The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system ( electoral law ) under the Ottoman parliament . The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform

5643-787: The Eastern Question . Russia was especially interested in getting a warm water port that would enable its navy. Getting access out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean was a goal, which meant access through the Straits controlled by the Ottomans. Both intervened in the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829), eventually forcing the London peace treaty on the belligerents. The events heightened British Russophobia . In 1851

5814-577: The Emir of Afghanistan felt humiliated and outraged when he read the terms of the Convention, partly because the United Kingdom had not bothered to notify him about the negotiations or their conclusions. Like the terms relating to Persia, the agreement resulted in the growth of anti-British sentiments in Afghanistan. The Anglo-Russian Convention acknowledged the "Chinese suzerainty" over Tibet, and

5985-536: The Entente Cordiale between Great Britain and France signed in 1904. Russia and France already had a mutual defense agreement that said France was obliged to threaten Britain with an attack if Britain declared war on Russia, while Russia was to concentrate more than 300,000 troops on the Afghan border for an incursion into India in the event that Britain attacked France. The solution was to bring Russia into

6156-700: The First Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Russia increasingly became a protector of China against Japanese intentions. The Open Door policy promoted by the United States and Britain was designed to allow all nations on an equal footing to trade with China and was accepted by Russia. All the major powers collaborated in the Eight-Nation Alliance defending their diplomats during the Boxer Rebellion . The British signed

6327-605: The German Empire as a world power and the defeat in 1905 of Russia by a nascent Asian power, the Empire of Japan , in the Russo-Japanese War , helped to persuade some British and Russian officials of a need to resolve their respective differences in Asia. There was talk of an entente during the 1880s and 1890s, especially after Britain's occupation of Egypt in 1882. However, there was stiff resistance in Britain to

6498-582: The Grand Embassy of Peter I the Russian tsar visited England for three months. He improved relations and learned the best new technology especially regarding ships and navigation. The Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922) had increasingly important ties with the Russian Empire (1721–1917), after Tsar Peter I brought Russia into European affairs and declared himself an emperor. From

6669-543: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in London's Crystal Palace , including over 100,000 exhibits from forty nations. It was the world's first international exposition. Russia took the opportunity to dispel Russophobia in Britain by refuting stereotypes of Russia as a backward, militaristic repressive tyranny. Its sumptuous exhibits of luxury products and large 'objets d'art' with little in

6840-856: The Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. After the Austro-Turkish War , the Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire

7011-430: The Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833) , during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha , defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia , reaching

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7182-476: The Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese , which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth , became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the Deylik of Algiers . The campaign that took 21 days, resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before

7353-399: The Hamidian massacres . In 1897 the population was 19   million, of whom 14   million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20   million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As

7524-434: The Iberian Union . The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean , where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise,

7695-489: The Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine , with the strongholds of Khotyn , and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period of renewed assertiveness came to

7866-434: The Napoleonic Wars . The United Kingdom gave financial and material support to Russia during the French invasion in 1812, following which both countries pledged to keep 150,000 men in the field until Napoleon had been totally defeated. They both played major cooperative roles at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 establishing a twenty-year alliance to guarantee European peace. From 1820 to 1907, geopolitical disputes led to

8037-451: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 . Muhammad Ali had close relations with France , and the prospect of him becoming the Sultan of Egypt was widely viewed as putting the entire Levant into the French sphere of influence. As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating Muhammad Ali, the British Empire and Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and

8208-407: The Ottoman Empire and had few colonial aspirations in the region. In 1905, revolutionary activity spread throughout Tehran , forcing the shah to accept a constitution , allow the formation of a majles (parliamentary assembly), and hold elections. Major figures in the revolution had secular goals, which then created rifts in the clergy to the advantage of the monarchy. Neither the British nor

8379-406: The Pacific Ocean to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy , mistakenly engaged a number of British fishing vessels in the North Sea fog. The Russians thought they were Japanese torpedo boats, and sank one, killing three fishermen. The British public was angry but Russia apologised and damages were levied through arbitration. Diplomacy became delicate in the early 20th century. Russia was troubled by

8550-404: The Russian Revolution of 1917 strained relations. The two countries again became enemies during the Cold War (1947–1989). Russia's business tycoons developed strong ties with London financial institutions in the 1990s after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , relations became very tense after the United Kingdom imposed sanctions against Russia. It

8721-472: The Sakarya River . A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbors, due to the lack of sources surviving. The Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam , but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In

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8892-429: The Second Inter-Allied Meeting in London in September. The USSR thereafter became one of the "Big Three" Allies of World War II along with Britain and, from December, the United States, fighting against the Axis Powers . A twenty-year mutual assistance agreement, the Anglo-Soviet Treaty was signed in May 1942, reasserting the military alliance until the end of the war and formalizing a political alliance between

9063-407: The Soviet Union and the British Empire for 20 years. In August 1942, Winston Churchill , accompanied by American W. Averell Harriman , went to Moscow and met Stalin for the first time. The British were nervous that Stalin and Hitler might make separate peace terms; Stalin insisted that would not happen. Churchill explained how Arctic convoys bringing munitions to Russia had been intercepted by

9234-477: The Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast ; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea . France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by

9405-418: The Third Coalition . Following the heavy Russian defeat at Friedland , Russia was obliged to enter Napoleon's continental system , barring all trade with Britain. Subsequently, both countries entered into a state of limited war, the Anglo-Russian War (1807–12) , although neither side actively prosecuted operations against each other. In 1812 Britain and Russia once again became allies against Napoleon in

9576-506: The Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s, and the British were expanding their large-scale commercial activities in China using Hong Kong , and the treaty ports of China. Russia sought a year-round port south of its main base in Vladivostok . The key ingredient was that both nations were more fearful of Japanese plans than they were of each other; they both saw the need to collaborate. They cooperated with each other (and France) in forcing Japan to disgorge some of its gains after it won

9747-454: The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha , which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of Safavid Iran . The treaty ending the Cretan War cost Venice much of Dalmatia , its Aegean island possessions, and Crete . (Losses from the war totalled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.) During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from

9918-434: The United Kingdom pledged not to deal with Tibet unilaterally without the approval of the Chinese government. The United Kingdom thought that this convention would put a stop to Russia's expansionist efforts, which were threatening India, and with the development of Anglo-Russian ties in the early 1900s, both the United Kingdom and Russia acknowledged Tibet's role as a buffer in the Anglo-Russian Convention that also recognized

10089-464: The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, relations became strained. In the early years of David Cameron as UK prime minister, there was a brief uptick in relations, up until 2014. Since 2014, relations have grown increasingly unfriendly due to the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present) and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018. In the wake of the poisoning, 28 countries expelled suspected Russian spies acting as diplomats. In June 2021,

10260-446: The 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe , between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik , or principality , founded in northwestern Anatolia in c.  1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I . His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into

10431-522: The 1720s Peter invited British engineers to Saint Petersburg, leading to the establishment of a small but commercially influential Anglo-Russian expatriate merchant community from 1730 to 1921. During the series of general European wars of the 18th century, the two empires found themselves as sometime allies and sometime enemies. The two states fought on the same side during War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), but on opposite sides during Seven Years' War (1756–63), although did not at any time engage in

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10602-410: The 1990s whereby British spies such as Sergei Skripal acting within the Russian intelligence establishment passed on extensive details of their intelligence agents operating throughout Europe. Since the 19th century, England has been a popular destination for Russian political exiles , refugees , and wealthy fugitives from the Russian-speaking world. In the early-21st century, especially following

10773-406: The Arabic name ʿUthmān ( عثمان ). In Ottoman Turkish , the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عليه عثمانیه ), lit.   ' Sublime Ottoman State ' , or simply Devlet-i ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عثمانيه‎ ), lit.   ' Ottoman State ' . The Turkish word for "Ottoman" ( Osmanlı ) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in

10944-486: The Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin , and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for

11115-445: The Balkans . Osman's son, Orhan , captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis for

11286-403: The British interpreted as a long-term threat to the British Empire in India. There was strong hostility among British government officials to the repeated Russian threats to the Ottoman Empire with the goal of controlling the Dardanelles connecting the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea . Beginning from the early 19th century, depictions of Russia in the British media, largely drawing on

11457-474: The British war effort and campaigned for what the party called a 'people's peace', i.e. a negotiated settlement with Hitler. Britain, along with France, declared war on Germany, but not the USSR. The British people were sympathetic to Finland in its Winter War against the USSR . The USSR furthermore supplied oil to the Germans which Hitler's Luftwaffe needed in its Blitz against Britain in 1940. In June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa , attacking

11628-452: The British, and soon the Americans, would step up bombing of German cities and railways . Furthermore, there would be " Operation Torch " in November. It would be a major Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, which would set the stage for an invasion of Italy and perhaps open the Mediterranean for munitions shipments to Russia through the Black Sea . The talks started out on a very sour note but after many hours of informal conversations,

11799-432: The British-French alliance. The Anglo-Russian Entente and the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 made both countries part of the Triple Entente . The Convention was a formal treaty demarcating British and Russian spheres of influence in Central Asia. It enabled Britain to focus on the growing threat from Germany at sea and in central Europe. The Convention ended the long-standing rivalry in central Asia, and then enabled

11970-453: The CUP became increasingly radicalized and nationalistic, leading a coup d'état in 1913 that established a one-party regime. The CUP allied with the German Empire hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation that had contributed to its recent territorial losses; it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers . While the empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially

12141-446: The Conqueror , reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople , ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance

12312-617: The Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî . The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total,

12483-582: The Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy. With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin , the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. While the Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman

12654-535: The French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of Greater Syria and Crete , which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down

12825-658: The German Empire in return for peace. The Allies felt betrayed by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk signed on 3 March 1918. Towards the end of World War I , Britain began to send troops to Russia to participate in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War which lasted up to 1925, aiming to topple the newly-formed socialist government the Bolsheviks had created. As late as 1920, Grigory Zinoviev called for

12996-454: The Germans; there was a delay now so that future convoys would be better protected. He apologetically explained there would be no second front this year—no British-American invasion of France—which Stalin had been urgently requesting for months. The will was there, said Churchill, but there was not enough American troops, not enough tanks, not enough shipping, not enough air superiority. Instead

13167-801: The Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the Far East . In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. During the 1600s, the world conflict between

13338-864: The Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy . In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha , the Grand Mufti , and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from

13509-524: The Janissary revolted . Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II , who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826. The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question . In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by

13680-520: The Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take

13851-459: The Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in

14022-541: The Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both were at similar population , technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire , despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher Jean Bodin . In the second half of

14193-651: The Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9   million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea , Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace . After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by

14364-573: The Ottoman admirals Hayreddin Barbarossa and Dragut . France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death,

14535-488: The Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman bashi-bazouks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply: Bulgaria

14706-555: The Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km ), extending over three continents. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea . The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under

14877-584: The Russian Free Press Fund, along with a journal, Free Russia, to generate support for reforms to, and abolition of, Russian autocracy. They were supported by liberal, nonconformist and left-wing Britons in the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. There was also considerable support for victims of the Russian famine of 1891-2 and the Jewish and Christian victims of Tsarist persecution. There

15048-436: The Russian governments approved of the new political arrangement, which was both liberal and unstable, and preferred a stable puppet government , which allowed foreign concessions and supported their designs in the region. To facilitate their goals in Persia, the British and the Russian governments discussed splitting it into three zones. The agreement stipulated that it would "allocate the north, including Isfahan , to Russia;

15219-608: The Russian intervention, Sultan Mahmud II could have faced the risk of being overthrown and Muhammad Ali could have even become the new Sultan. These events marked the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of foreign powers to protect itself. In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto autonomous, but de jure still Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt , but its forces were initially defeated, which led to

15390-563: The Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of Prussia . Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University . In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but

15561-626: The Safavids. The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice , whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During

15732-494: The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II amounted to 'an iron curtain has descended across the continent.' Relations were generally tense during the ensuing Cold War , typified by spying and other covert activities. The British and American Venona Project was established in 1942 for cryptanalysis of messages sent by Soviet intelligence . Soviet spies were later discovered in Britain, such as Kim Philby and

15903-603: The Straits without going into the Black Sea" together with some talk of "Russia's occupying the Bosphorus and England the Dardanelles, after which the Straits might be opened to other warships as well." In the event nothing came of the discussions at the time. On May 20, 1882, Germany entered into the Triple Alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary , complementing its industrial and socio-political ascendance in

16074-579: The Terrible ruled Russia. He returned to England and was sent back to Russia in 1555, the same year the Muscovy Company was established. The Muscovy Company held a monopoly over trade between England and Russia until 1698. Tsar Alexei was outraged by the Execution of Charles I of England in 1649, and expelled all English traders and residents from Russia in retaliation. In 1697–1698 during

16245-521: The Turks, but was again defeated at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the Black Death from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to

16416-718: The UK and accused it of involvement in attacks against Sevastopol Naval Base , the Nord Stream gas pipeline and the Crimean Bridge . The UK is one of the largest donors of financial and military aid to Ukraine and was the first country in Europe to donate lethal military aid. The Kingdom of England and Tsardom of Russia established relations in 1553 when English navigator Richard Chancellor arrived in Arkhangelsk  – at which time Mary I ruled England and Ivan

16587-780: The USSR. Britain and the USSR agreed an alliance the following month with the Anglo-Soviet Agreement . The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August overthrew Reza Shah and secured the oil fields in Iran from falling into Axis hands. The Arctic convoys transported supplies between Britain and the USSR during the war. Britain was quick to provide limited materiel aid to the Soviet Union – including tanks and aircraft – via these convoys in order to try to keep her new ally in

16758-651: The West. They deplored the liberal revolutions of 1830 in France , Belgium , central Europe; worst of all was the anti-Russian revolt that had to be crushed in Poland. New strategic and economic competition heightened tensions in the late 1850s, as the British moved into Asian markets. Russia's suppression of tribal revolts in the Caucasian region released troops for campaigns to expand Russian influence in central Asia, which

16929-537: The advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697. Aside from

17100-494: The agreement was the growth of anti-British sentiments and other anti-Western attitudes as strong components of Iranian nationalism . The agreement did not eliminate all competition between the two powers with respect to their policies in Iran, but after 1907, broad co-operation was fostered, particularly when Anglo-Russian interests were threatened. In particular, Britain and Russia intervened in Iran's domestic politics, supporting

17271-578: The al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala , the vali (governor) of the Eyalet of Egypt , tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830. In 1821,

17442-489: The autonomous Deylik of Algiers . The Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran ; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian Haidamakas , pursuing Polish confederates, entered Balta , an Ottoman-controlled town on

17613-577: The bilateral relations between Russia and the United Kingdom . Formal ties between the nations started in 1553. Russia and Britain became allies against Napoleon in the early-19th century. They were enemies in the Crimean War of the 1850s, and rivals in the Great Game for control of central Asia in the latter half of the 19th century. They allied again in World Wars I and II , although

17784-657: The border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 . The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in

17955-471: The border with the Ottoman Empire, and running through Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd to the eastern border, where the frontiers of Afghanistan, Iran, and Russia intersected. A smaller zone in southeastern Iran, which bordered British India , was recognized as an exclusive sphere for Britain. The British zone extended west as far as Kerman in the south central and Bandar Abbas in the south. The area separating these two spheres, including part of central Iran and

18126-642: The boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union) and the Oder-Neisse line would become the new boundary between Germany and Poland. The proposed changes angered the Polish government in exile in London, which did not want to lose control over its minorities. Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national borders. As he told Parliament on 15 December 1944, "Expulsion

18297-642: The century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans . The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars , waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by Ottoman expansion into

18468-448: The city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi , the Russians sent the expeditionary force which deterred Ibrahim Pasha from marching any further towards Constantinople. Under

18639-634: The city. In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the siege of Güns . Transylvania , Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia , became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf . In 1555, the Caucasus became partitioned for

18810-689: The civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the Ottoman censuses was performed in 1914 . Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army , the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in

18981-399: The contrary, it is urgently desirable that Russia's position and influence be re-established in the councils of Europe. and later, writing to his ambassador to Russia Sir Arthur Nicolson : It is not for us to propose changes with regard to the treaty conditions of the Dardanelles. I think some change in the direction desired by Russia would be admissible and we should be prepared to discuss

19152-655: The eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran , in the Battle of Chaldiran . Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea . After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region. Suleiman

19323-514: The empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them " Committee of Union and Progress ", and " Freedom and Accord Party " were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included Poale Zion , Al-Fatat , and Armenian national movement organised under Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Profiting from

19494-422: The end of the Caucasian Wars , 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and

19665-418: The end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–1923, when

19836-440: The entire southwest, was designated a neutral zone in which both countries and their respective private citizens could compete for influence and commercial privileges. For Britain and Russia, the agreement was important in establishing a diplomatic alignment that endured until the First World War . The Persian government , however, had not been consulted about the agreement but was informed after it had been signed. Although not in

20007-697: The failure of their joint invasion of the Netherlands in 1799 precipitated a change in attitudes. Britain created Malta Protectorate in 1800, while the emperor Paul I of Russia was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller . That led to the never-executed Indian March of Paul , which was a secret project of a planned allied Russo-French expedition against the British possessions in India. In 1805 both countries again attempted to combine operations with British expeditions to North Germany and Southern Italy in concert with Russian expeditionary corps were intended to create diversions in favour of Austria. However, several spectacular French victories in central Europe ended

20178-654: The far-off conflict. Public opinion in Britain, especially among Whigs , supported Polish revolutionaries who were resisting Russian rule in Poland , after the November Uprising of 1830. The British government watched nervously as Saint Petersburg suppressed the subsequent Polish revolts in the early 1860s, yet refused to intervene. London hosted the first Russian-language censorship-free periodicals — Polyarnaya Zvezda  [ ru ] , Golosa iz Rossii, and Kolokol ("The Bell") — were published by Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogaryov in 1855–1865, which were of exceptional influence on Russian liberal intellectuals in

20349-426: The field. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger was alarmed at Russian expansion in Crimea in the 1780s at the expense of his Ottoman ally. He tried to get Parliamentary support for reversing it. In peace talks with the Ottomans, Russia refused to return the key Ochakov fortress . Pitt wanted to threaten military retaliation. However, Russia's ambassador Semyon Vorontsov organised Pitt's enemies and launched

20520-448: The first several years of publication. The periodicals were published by the Free Russian Press set up by Herzen in 1853, on the eve of the Crimean War, financed by the funds Herzen had managed to expatriate from Russia with the help of his bankers, the Paris branch of the Rothschild family . Russia's defeat in the Crimean War had been widely perceived by Russians as a humiliation and sharpened their desire for revenge. Tensions between

20691-433: The first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that remained until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) . By this partitioning as signed in the Peace of Amasya , Western Armenia , western Kurdistan , and Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern Dagestan , Eastern Armenia , Eastern Georgia , and Azerbaijan remained Persian. In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged

20862-486: The formation of the Triple Entente . Both countries were then part of the subsequent alliance against the Central Powers in World War I . In the summer of 1914, Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia , Russia promised to help Serbia, Germany promised to help Austria, and war broke out between Russia and Germany. France supported Russia. Under Foreign Minister Sir Edward Gray Britain felt its national interest would be badly hurt if Germany conquered Belgium and France. It

21033-404: The fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" ( Türk ) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period , an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of

21204-406: The governments of Russia and Britain grew during the mid-century period. Since 1815 there had been an ideological cold war between reactionary Russia and liberal Britain. The Russians helped Austria brutally suppress the liberal Hungarian revolt during the Revolutions of 1848-49 to the dismay of the British. Russian leaders felt their nation's leniency in the 1820s allowed liberalism to spread in

21375-438: The independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration , a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of

21546-409: The last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won

21717-491: The late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in

21888-435: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige . This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat ; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged. Beginning in

22059-412: The late 19th century, various Ottoman intellectuals sought to further liberalize society and politics along European lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars ,

22230-423: The loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion , however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of

22401-459: The military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk , but rather as a Rūmī ( رومى ), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at

22572-439: The need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters ( Sekban ) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to brigandage in the Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in

22743-403: The new United Nations , and he also wanted them to enter the war against Japan . In October 1944, Churchill and foreign minister Anthony Eden met Stalin and his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow. They discussed who would control what in the rest of postwar Eastern Europe. The Americans were not present, were not given shares, and were not fully informed. After lengthy bargaining

22914-421: The new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of

23085-404: The newly established Ankara -based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. As the Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as

23256-408: The occupying Allies, led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy in 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I , the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of

23427-508: The pact and refused to recognise the German annexation of the Czechoslovak Sudetenland . The USSR and Germany signed the Non-aggression Pact in late August 1939, which promised the Soviets control of about half of Eastern Europe, and removed the risk to Germany of a two-front war . Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, and the Soviets followed sixteen days later. Many members of the Communist Party in Britain and sympathisers were outraged and quit. Those who remained strove to undermine

23598-406: The plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodize conquest of the Balkans into the akıncı phase , which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterized by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire. The son of Murad II, Mehmed

23769-433: The question if Russia introduces it. In early 1907, Alexander Izvolsky , the Russian ambassador at Paris, raised the question and talks were carried on in London with Russian Ambassador Count Alexander Benckendorff . Little is known but the "suggestion appears to have been made that Russia should have free egress from the Black Sea through the Straits, while other powers should have the right to send their vessels of war into

23940-444: The reports of British travel writers and newspaper correspondents, frequently presented a "distorted picture" of the country; scholar Iwona Sawkowicz argues that this was due to the "brief visits" of these writers and correspondents, many of whom did not speak Russian and were "looking mostly for cultural differences." These depictions had the effect of increasing Russophobia in Britain despite growing economic and political ties between

24111-411: The restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant . By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the " sick man of Europe ". Three suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia , Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to

24282-494: The royalists in their struggle with the constitutionalists. The agreement lapsed in 1918, after it was renounced by the new revolutionary Soviet Russia . With the Anglo-Russian Convention Russia acknowledged that Afghanistan was in the British sphere of influence as long as the United Kingdom did not attack the country, and in exchange, the United Kingdom gave Russia's right to equal commerce and direct communication with Afghan officials on non-political topics. Habibullah Khan ,

24453-405: The same time, Russophilia flourished in Britain, founded on the popularity of Russian novelists such as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky , and sympathetic views of Russian peasants. Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, exiles from the radical Narodnaya Volya party and other opponents of Tsarism found their way to Britain. Sergei Stepniak and Felix Volkhovsky set up

24624-467: The sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to

24795-444: The so-called " Great Game " of the late 19th century. Russia desired warm-water ports on the Indian Ocean while Britain wanted to prevent Russian troops from gaining a potential invasion route to India . In 1885 Russia annexed part of Afghanistan in the Panjdeh incident , which caused a war scare. After nearly completing the Russian conquest of Central Asia ( Russian Turkestan ) the Russians captured an Afghan border fort. Seeing

24966-427: The soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule. Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5   million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5   million. The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908—1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era , a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution . It restored

25137-433: The south-east, especially Kerman , Sistan , and Baluchistan to Britain; and demarcate the remaining land between the two powers as a neutral zone". The division of Persia would reinforce the control of Britain and Russia over their respective territorial and economic interests in the country as well as allowed for continued interference in Persia's political system. With foreign help, the revolutionaries became outflanked by

25308-562: The sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna , although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack

25479-559: The suzerainty of China over Tibet, although China did not accept the term " suzerainty " and instead used the term " sovereignty " to describe its status in Tibet since 1905. The conclusion of the Anglo-Russian Convention followed the British expedition to Tibet of 1903-1904, the Convention of Lhasa of 1904, and the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906 which essentially reestablished China's role as Tibet's controlling power. Russia%E2%80%93United Kingdom relations Russia–United Kingdom relations , also Anglo-Russian relations , are

25650-403: The terms of the Convention of Kütahya , signed on 5 May 1833, Muhammad Ali agreed to abandon his campaign against the Sultan, in exchange for which he was made the vali (governor) of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete , Aleppo , Tripoli , Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon ), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana . Had it not been for

25821-511: The two countries to outflank the Germans, who were threatening to connect Berlin to Baghdad with a new railroad that would probably align the Turkish Empire with Germany. The Convention ended the long dispute over Persia . Britain promised to stay out of the northern half, while Russia recognised southern Persia as part of the British sphere of influence. Russia also promised to stay out of Tibet and Afghanistan. In exchange London extended loans and some political support. The Convention led to

25992-406: The two countries. In 1874, tension lessened as Queen Victoria 's second son Prince Alfred married Tsar Alexander II 's only daughter Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna , followed by a cordial state visit by the tsar. The goodwill lasted no more than three years, when structural forces again pushed the two nations to the verge of war. Anglo-Russian rivalries grew steadily over Central Asia during

26163-409: The two men understood each other and knew they could cooperate smoothly. Stalin was adamant about British support for new boundaries for Poland, and Britain went along. They agreed that after victory Poland's boundaries would be moved westward, so that the USSR took over lands in the east while Poland gained lands in the west that had been under German control. They agreed on the " Curzon Line " as

26334-455: The two sides settled on a long-term plan for the division of the region , the plan was to give 90% of the influence in Greece to Britain and 90% in Romania to Russia. Russia gained an 80%/20% division in Bulgaria and Hungary . There was a 50/50 division in Yugoslavia . Following the end of the Second World War , relations between the Soviet and the Western Bloc deteriorated quickly. Former British prime minister Churchill claimed that

26505-404: The war against Germany and her allies. One major conduit for supplies was through Iran. The two nations agreed on a joint occupation of Iran, to neutralise German influence. After the war, there were disputes about the Soviet delayed departure from Iran, and speculation that it planned to set up a puppet state along its border. That problem was resolved completely in 1946. The Soviet Union joined

26676-466: The wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. Selim III (1789–1807) made the first major attempts to modernise the army , but his reforms were hampered by the religious leadership and the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change,

26847-418: The way of advanced technology, however, did little to change its reputation. Britain considered its navy too weak to worry about, but saw its large army as a major threat. The Russian pressures on the Ottoman Empire continued, leaving Britain and France to ally with the Ottomans and push back against Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856). Russophobia was an element in generating popular support in Britain for

27018-499: The world arena. Furthermore, Germany dramatically increased its military output from the early 1900s up to the outbreak of the First World War. Under the unified German state, Otto von Bismarck worked to increase the nation's global influence and reach what was then the zenith of German power. While Britain and Russia were hostile to German designs in the region, members of the Triple Alliance were in turn opposed to Anglo-Russian influence in Asia. Thus, military and territorial expansion

27189-410: The years leading up to World War I , including the 31 March Incident and two further coups in 1912 and 1913 . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined German-Ottoman surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack,

27360-448: Was Germany's key to making itself a major player in the international arena of power. Germany's interest in the Middle East took a secondary position, one subordinate to Germany's primary policy toward Europe, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While of secondary importance, it was a tool that was used to manipulate the Middle Eastern attempt to play off the Western powers against each other. Berlin peacefully made inroads into

27531-400: Was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion . The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans . It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded

27702-433: Was also an arena of tension, but without warfare. Although Britain had serious disagreements with Russia regarding Russia's threat to the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps even to India, tensions were much lower in the Far East . London tried to maintain friendly relations in the 1860-1917 period and did reach a number of accommodations with Russia in northeastern Asia . Both nations were expanding in that direction. Russia built

27873-436: Was cooperation in Asia, however, as Britain and Russia joined many others to protect their interests in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901). Britain was an ally of Japan after 1902, but remained strictly neutral and did not participate in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. However, there was a brief war scare in the Dogger Bank incident in October 1905 when the Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet , headed to

28044-414: Was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Romania achieved full independence; and Serbia and Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar . British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on

28215-484: Was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defenses. The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created

28386-483: Was in effect a surrender with massive loss of territory. Russia ended all diplomatic and trade relations with Britain, and repudiated all debts to London and Paris. The British supported the anti-Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War , but they lost, and Britain restored trade relations in 1921. In 1918, with the German Army advancing toward Moscow in Operation Faustschlag , the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic under Lenin made many concessions to

28557-399: Was neutral until Germany suddenly invaded Belgium and France. Britain declared war becoming an ally of France and Russia against Germany and Austria. The alliance lasted when the February 1917 Revolution in Russia overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian monarchy . However When the Bolsheviks under Lenin took power in November, they made peace with Germany—the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

28728-409: Was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern Bosnia , Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the Banat of Temeswar ; but the Empire lost the port of Azov , north of the Crimean Peninsula, to

28899-423: Was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5   million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854. The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars , about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward

29070-401: Was subsequently added to Russia's list of "unfriendly countries" . The two countries share a history of intense espionage activity against each other, with the Soviet Union succeeding in penetration of top echelons of the British intelligence and security establishment in the 1930s–1950s while concurrently, the British co-opted top Russian intelligence officers throughout the period including

29241-508: Was the first country to accept Lenin's offer of a trade agreement. It ended the British blockade, and Russian ports were opened to British ships. Both sides agreed to refrain from hostile propaganda. It amounted to de facto diplomatic recognition and opened a period of extensive trade. Britain formally recognised the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union, 1922–1991) on 1 February 1924. However, Anglo-Soviet relations were still marked by distrust and contention, culminating in

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