The March 1878 treaty, signed in a village outside Constantinople, whose terms the congress was called to undo (1878)
The Treaty of San Stefano, which created a Greater Bulgaria stretching to the Aegean.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Congress of Berlin
13 June – 13 July 1878
The great-power revision of the Balkan settlement after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78
Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1877–78 produced the Treaty of San Stefano, which created a large Bulgaria under Russian influence and alarmed Britain and Austria-Hungary enough to bring Europe close to war. Bismarck convened a congress in Berlin, presenting himself as an "honest broker", and for a month the powers redrew the map of south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria was cut to a third of its San Stefano size, with an autonomous Eastern Rumelia south of the Balkan range and Macedonia returned to the Sultan; Romania, Serbia and Montenegro were recognised as independent; Austria-Hungary was authorised to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Britain, by a separate convention, took Cyprus. Disraeli came home claiming "peace with honour", but the settlement left Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks and Russians all aggrieved and is often taken as one of the origins of the Balkan wars and of 1914.
How to spot them
- ▸A month-long congress at the Radziwill Palace in the summer of 1878, chaired by a chancellor calling himself an honest broker
- ▸A treaty of March 1878 torn up within four months
- ▸A big Bulgaria cut into three, with an autonomous province south of the Balkan mountains
- ▸An occupation mandate over two Ottoman provinces that would be annexed thirty years later
- ▸A Mediterranean island handed to Britain by a separate convention
What happened
Bismarck's description of his own role, a phrase quoted ever since (1878)
The "honest broker" (ehrlicher Makler), from his Reichstag speech of February 1878.
Disraeli's claim on returning to Downing Street, echoed by a later prime minister in 1938 (1878)
"Peace with honour"; Neville Chamberlain used the phrase after Munich.
The secret convention of June 1878 giving Britain an island base in return for guaranteeing Ottoman Asia (1878)
The Cyprus Convention; Britain administered Cyprus from 1878 and annexed it in 1914.
The mandate to occupy and administer two Ottoman provinces, formally annexed in 1908 (1878)
Austria-Hungary in Bosnia and Herzegovina, under Article 25 of the resulting treaty.
The autonomous Ottoman province south of the Balkan range, which merged with its northern neighbour in 1885 (1878)
Eastern Rumelia, united with Bulgaria by a coup in Plovdiv in September 1885.
Anton von Werner's 1881 group portrait of the delegates, Bismarck shaking hands at the centre (1881)
The painting Congress of Berlin, showing Bismarck with Count Shuvalov and Andrássy.
Quick-fire facts
- •The congress ran from 13 June to 13 July 1878 and ended in the Treaty of Berlin
- •Bismarck presided; Britain was represented by Disraeli, by then Earl of Beaconsfield, and Lord Salisbury, Russia by Prince Gorchakov and Count Shuvalov, and Austria-Hungary by Count Andrássy
- •Bulgaria was reduced to a tributary principality north of the Balkan range, about a third of the territory allotted at San Stefano
- •Romania, Serbia and Montenegro were recognised as fully independent states
- •Romania ceded southern Bessarabia to Russia and received Northern Dobruja in exchange
- •Russia kept Kars, Ardahan and Batum in the Caucasus
- •Greece received no territory at the congress, but a recommendation led to the cession of Thessaly and part of Epirus in 1881
- •Disraeli was the first British prime minister to attend such a congress in person, and the proceedings were conducted in French
- •The Treaty of Berlin was superseded in the Balkans by the wars of 1912–13 and formally by the settlements after the First World War
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Sources
- M. S. Anderson — The Eastern Question 1774–1923
- Jonathan Steinberg — Bismarck: A Life