MEDMAPS

Carte der europaeischen Türkey nebst einem Theile von Kleinasien in XXI Blattern

Engraved map by Franz von Weiss.
In 21 sheets (sheets 11 and 12 exhibited)
300 x 196 cm.

Scale: ca. 1:576,000.

The phrase ‘European Turkey’, that part of the Ottoman Empire on the European side of the Bosphorus, refers in essence to the Balkan peninsula. In 1829 the Balkans were in a state of ferment. This map was published two years after the Battle of Navarino, which brought to a virtual end the Greek war of independence, and one year after the end of the Russo-Turkish war of 1827-1828. For the first time in Ottoman history, large land masses that had been part of the Empire for centuries were lost. Greece would become independent, and the Caucasus would fall into Russian hands. The struggle between Russia and Turkey would continue throughout the 19th century. Weiss, an officer in the Austrian army, constructed this map for the Austrian Quarter Master General. An English edition of the map, edited by Thomas Best Jervis, was published in 1854, on the outbreak of the Crimean War. According to the English title, Weiss’s map was constructed on the basis of Russian materials.

The political and ethnological problems in the Balkans today all stem in great part from historical developments in ‘European Turkey’ that came to a head in the 19th century. These include the Greek war of independence in 1821, the Russo-Turkish war of 1827-28, the Crimean War, 1854-1856, the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, the decisions of the Congress and Treaty of Berlin, 1878, and the Bulgarian massacres of the 1880s. The sheets exhibited here depict northern Greece and eastern Thrace. Today, only eastern Thrace remains of what once constituted ‘European Turkey’.

Vienna: Quarter Master General of the Austrian Army, 1829.

1829

From the collection of the Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies (Athens), GT 237.34.