Congress of Berlin (1878): Bismarck Redraws the Balkans

The Congress of Berlin was a meeting of the European great powers and the Ottoman Empire, held from 13 June to 13 July 1878 under the chairmanship of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. It revised the Treaty of San Stefano that Russia had imposed after defeating the Ottomans, shrinking the new Bulgaria and redrawing the map of the Balkans. Its settlement kept the peace among the powers for a time but left grievances that fed later Balkan conflicts.

Background: the Eastern Question and the war of 1877-1878

Throughout the 19th century the decline of Ottoman power in south-eastern Europe, known as the Eastern Question, worried the great powers. Russia saw itself as protector of the Orthodox Christians of the Balkans and wanted access through the Turkish Straits; Britain and Austria-Hungary feared Russian expansion. These tensions had already led to the Crimean War of 1853-1856.

In 1875 an uprising broke out in Herzegovina and spread to Bosnia, followed in 1876 by an uprising in Bulgaria that Ottoman irregular forces suppressed with massacres, the “Bulgarian Horrors” that outraged public opinion in Britain. Serbia and Montenegro went to war with the Ottomans in 1876. In April 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and after the long siege of Plevna its armies advanced close to Constantinople.

The Treaty of San Stefano

On 3 March 1878 Russia dictated the Treaty of San Stefano. Its centrepiece was a large autonomous Bulgaria stretching from the Danube to the Aegean and including most of Macedonia. Most observers expected this “Greater Bulgaria” to be a Russian client state.

Britain and Austria-Hungary objected strongly. Britain sent a fleet to the Sea of Marmara and prepared for war, while Austria-Hungary believed it had been promised Bosnia and Herzegovina in earlier secret agreements with Russia. Facing the risk of a wider war it could not afford, Russia agreed to submit the treaty to a European congress. Before the meeting, several deals were made in private: Britain and Russia agreed on the reduction of Bulgaria, and on 4 June Britain signed the secret Cyprus Convention with the Ottoman Empire.

The Congress meets

The delegates met in the Reich Chancellery, the former Radziwill Palace on Wilhelmstrasse. Bismarck chaired the sessions, having told the Reichstag in February that Germany would act as an “honest broker” with no interests of its own in the Balkans. In reality his main concern was to stop a war between Russia and Austria-Hungary, Germany’s two partners in the League of the Three Emperors.

Britain was represented by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, and the Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury. Russia sent the elderly chancellor Alexander Gorchakov and the ambassador to London, Pyotr Shuvalov; Austria-Hungary sent its foreign minister Gyula Andrássy. France, Italy and the Ottoman Empire also took part. The Balkan states themselves, including Serbia, Romania, Greece and Montenegro, were allowed only to present their views and did not take part in the decisions.

What the Treaty of Berlin decided

The Treaty of Berlin was signed on 13 July 1878. Its main terms were:

Austria-Hungary was also allowed to keep garrisons in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a strip of land separating Serbia from Montenegro. Britain, under the separate Cyprus Convention, took over the administration of Cyprus.

The treaty also contained clauses on religious freedom and minorities. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were required to grant equal civil rights regardless of religion, a condition aimed in part at the treatment of Jews in Romania. Article 61 obliged the Ottoman government to carry out reforms in the provinces inhabited by Armenians and to report to the powers on them, a promise that was never effectively enforced.

Reactions

Disraeli returned to London claiming that he had brought back “peace with honour”, and the settlement was widely seen as a diplomatic success for Britain and Austria-Hungary. In Russia it was felt as a humiliation: the country had won the war and borne its costs, only to see its gains reduced at a conference table chaired by Germany.

The Balkan nations were also dissatisfied. Bulgarians resented the division of their territory, Serbia had hoped for Bosnia, and Greece felt its claims had been neglected. Many Ottoman Muslims were forced to leave or fled from territories that passed to new states, while Christian minorities remained under Ottoman rule in Macedonia.

Consequences

Russian anger at the outcome strained relations with Germany. In 1879 Bismarck concluded the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, a defensive treaty that became a fixed feature of European diplomacy until 1918. Although Bismarck later revived the League of the Three Emperors, Russia drifted towards France, and the Franco-Russian alliance followed in the 1890s.

The territorial settlement proved fragile. In 1885 Bulgaria united with Eastern Rumelia, in defiance of the treaty, and survived a war with Serbia. In 1908 Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, causing a serious European crisis. The unresolved question of Macedonia and rival national ambitions led to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, and Serbian nationalism directed against Austrian rule in Bosnia lay behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.

Legacy

The Congress of Berlin is often seen as the high point of the “Concert of Europe”, in which the great powers settled disputes by negotiation rather than war, and as a showcase for Bismarck’s diplomacy after the unification of Germany. It also reflected the attitudes of its time: the fate of Balkan peoples was decided largely by outside powers in their own strategic interests.

Historians stress both sides. The settlement did prevent an immediate war between Russia and Britain or Austria-Hungary, and no general European war followed for 36 years. Yet it created new states with unfulfilled ambitions and left the region a focus of great-power rivalry, a pattern later summed up in the description of the Balkans as the “powder keg of Europe”.

Timeline

• 1875, July: Uprising begins in Herzegovina against Ottoman rule.
• 1876, April-May: Bulgarian April Uprising and its violent suppression.
• 1877, 24 April: Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
• 1877, 10 December: Ottoman fortress of Plevna falls to Russian and Romanian forces.
• 1878, 3 March: Treaty of San Stefano creates a large Bulgaria.
• 1878, 4 June: Secret Cyprus Convention between Britain and the Ottoman Empire.
• 1878, 13 June: The Congress of Berlin opens.
• 1878, 13 July: The Treaty of Berlin is signed.
• 1879, 7 October: Germany and Austria-Hungary sign the Dual Alliance.

Why it matters

The Congress of Berlin shaped the modern map of south-eastern Europe, confirming the independence of Serbia, Romania and Montenegro and the rise of Bulgaria. By disappointing Russia and the Balkan nations and drawing Austria-Hungary into Bosnia, it also set up many of the tensions that would explode in the Balkan Wars and the First World War.