ABSTRACT
Already in the eighteenth century there was a common assumption that the Ottoman Empire was a declining power. Certainly she was retracting in terms of political geography. From 1830 to 1880 the Turks were being pushed out of Europe by the resurgent Balkan nationalists, who were patronized by one or other of the great Christian powers. The dynamic element in the nineteenth-century history of south-east Europe is provided by the emergence of the self-conscious nationalities. In 1880 Macedonians and some Bulgars were still under Turkish rule, but some nationalities had already secured complete independence. Greece was already independent in 1830, and Serbia and Rumania were independent by 1878. Bulgaria was still nominally under Turkish sovereignty in 1880, but autonomous. Whether they had secured absolute independence, virtual independence, or were still, in fact as in law, under foreign rule, it was these nations who were to be the successors of the Ottoman Empire.
