ABSTRACT
The Eastern Question referred to the potential future of the Ottoman Empire, once a Great Power extending from south-eastern Europe across North Africa into the Middle East, but since the eighteenth century in steady decline. The relationships between the Ottoman Empire and the Great and not-so-great Powers of nineteenth-century Europe were complex, probably the most complex of any relations between the European and extra-European world. One way to look at this relationship is to consider the three great extra-European realms: the Ottoman, Persian and Chinese Empires. The Crimean War was the first in a series of changes that heralded an end to this period of post-1850 conservative domination in continental Europe. Between 1856 and 1858, liberal governments came back to power in Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Another signpost was the 1857 recession, a blow to reaction era governments and their plans for political quiescence through economic development.
