Position and diplomatic demarches of Great Britain in connection with the exodus of the Circassians to the Ottoman Empire in 1864

The article, based mainly on documents of British diplomatic correspondence, studies the approaches and moves of the Foreign Office in connection with the problem of the mass exodus of Circassians to the Ottoman Empire in 1863-1864. The main attention is paid to clarifying the facts, motives, nature and results of the relatively active formulation of proposals on this issue by British diplomats in Turkey and Russia during May-June 1864 and their attempts to put it on the international agenda. A conclusion is made about the dual character of the reaction of official London to the Circassian migration crisis and humanitarian catastrophe, conditioned by the general logic of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Ottoman East with its variability of the “hard” and “soft” lines. The reasons for the British Government’s ultimate refusal to both peddle the theme of St. Petersburg’s moral and financial responsibility for the “uncivilized” methods of expansion in the Caucasus and to finance Circassian colonization in Anatolia, as well as to limit itself to sending only moderate humanitarian aid to the refugees in the Ottoman Empire, are revealed. On the other hand, the examined correspondence fully confirms and supplements the data of other sources on the extreme inadequacy of the measures taken by the Russian and Ottoman authorities to organize, respectively, the dispatch and reception of Circassians and the high levels of mortality and human suffering caused by this. Overall, the work contributes to a better understanding of the role of the British factor in the processes of migration and settlement of North Caucasians within the Ottoman borders. 

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