| Uprisings in the Balkans. In July 1876 Christian peasants in Herzegovina and then in Bosnia began a revolt against tax demands, and more broadly against their Muslim landlords and Ottoman rule. The massacres of Muslims, the Muslim retaliations in kind, the influx of arms and volunteers to the rebels from Serbia, Montenegro, and Hungary, and the intervention of the European powers initiated a complicated international crisis that lasted for three years and profoundly altered the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire. Russia and Austria demanded that the Ottomans abolish tax farming in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reduce the tax burden, provide religious freedom, help peasants purchase land, and establish Muslim-Christian councils to supervise the execution of the reforms, with oversight by the European powers (Dec. 30, 1875). The sultan and other European powers accepted the program, but the rebels did not. The Ottomans proceeded to suppress the revolt, setting in motion the flight of thousands of Christian refugees. The European powers renewed their demands for reforms, threatening the use of force and occupation of Ottoman territory (May 13, 1876). An anti-Ottoman revolt in Bulgaria (April–May 1876), suppressed by the sultan using irregular forces that committed massacres of Christians, intensified the crisis (See 1876, April–Aug). | 3 |
