British Goverments and the Armenian question 1880-1895

The "Eastern Question" phenomenon, which came to the agenda as an issue for European states since the first quarter of the 19th century, differed for England during the Victorian Period. The approach of the two powerful parties in the British parliamentary system to the Eastern Question determined the Eastern policy of the British Governments. In this respect, in this study, the analysis of the eastern policy of England was made by taking the determination of the perspectives of the established governments to the fore. After the 1856 Crimean War, it was observed that England made some changes in its eastern policy. The reason for this is the inadequacy of the Ottoman Empire in the expansionism of Russia. Even though the Russians were defeated in the Crimean War, it has been noted that the British suffered considerable losses when the losses were taken into account. It is seen that with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the 1877-1878 Ottoman-Russian War, England gave up on the idea of supporting the Ottoman Empire against the Russians, and Great Britain itself began to produce policies against the expansionism of the Russians. For this reason, England first annexed Cyprus in 1878 and Egypt in 1882. Later, they adopted their goal as the idea of supporting the Ottoman Armenians by themselves. Gladstone, one of the actors of the British eastern policy, has made this idea one of the party policies as an indispensable element of the British Liberal Party. Gladstone's political rival, Salisbury, on the other hand, did not support the idea of supporting the Armenian revolutionaries entirely, and thought that the Armenian Question, which is a component of the Eastern Question, should not be solved by England by taking responsibility alone. In the study, the reflection of this British internal political rivalry to the east, that is, to the Ottoman Empire, through the Armenian Question is emphasized.