Twenty sittings in Bismarck’s palace redrew the Balkans — and kept the great powers from war over them for thirty-six years

0313 June – 13 July 1878

Twenty sittings in thirty-one days — and eleven of them crammed into the last thirteen

Every plenary sitting, 13 June – 13 July 1878: one mark per sitting, one column per day

04Werner’s painting, 1881

The famous picture shows a handshake — not the men who fought hardest

The city of Berlin commissioned Anton von Werner to paint the final sitting of 13 July 1878 and approved 60,000 marks for it. He presented the canvas, 6.15 m wide, on 22 March 1881, the Kaiser’s 84th birthday. At its centre Bismarck shakes hands not with Gorchakov, Russia’s chancellor, but with his deputy Shuvalov — the man who had agreed in London to cut Bulgaria down. Gorchakov resented Shuvalov’s good relations with Bismarck, GHDI notes; Werner seats him at the edge. The picture, Geiss wrote, is a stylised record of the signature. Tap the numbers.

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Each power sent three plenipotentiaries, Italy two: 20 men, named in the treaty’s preamble. France came with no claim in the Balkans, but asked on the margins for compensation for Cyprus. It got it three years later, when it made Tunis a protectorate.

The plenipotentiaries who signed, power by power, as the treaty lists them

05The Treaty of Berlin, 13 July 1878

Bulgaria filled the first twenty-two of the treaty’s sixty-four articles

The quarrel was Bulgaria, so the treaty began there. Article I made it “an autonomous and tributary Principality under the suzerainty” of the Sultan, north of the Balkan range. Article XIII formed a province south of the range, Eastern Roumelia, under the Sultan’s direct authority with a Christian governor-general. The rest of San Stefano’s Bulgaria, in Macedonia, went back to the Sultan.

The 64 articles in order, by subject

Single articles: XXII Russian occupation of both · XXIII Crete and Turkey in Europe · XXIV Greece’s frontier · XXV Bosnia-Herzegovina, Novi Pazar · LXII Religious liberty in Turkey.

Art. XXV

Austria-Hungary: Bosnia and Herzegovina, without a war of its own

Article XXV: the provinces “shall be occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary”, with garrisons in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. The Congress overrode every protest from the people of the two provinces. Austria-Hungary needed almost 200,000 men to force the occupation through.

Source: Treaty of Berlin (Fordham Sourcebook) · Geiss, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (bpb, 1978)

Art. XLIII, XLIV, XLV, XLVI

Romania: independent, on conditions — and short of Bessarabia

Articles XLIII–XLVI: Romania’s independence was recognised on condition that no one be excluded from civil or political rights because of their religion. The clause was meant for Romania’s Jews, and the government evaded it after the Congress. Romania gave back to Russia the strip of Bessarabia that Russia had lost in 1856, and received the Danube delta and the Dobruja.

Source: Treaty of Berlin (Fordham Sourcebook) · Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty IV (1891) · Geiss, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (bpb, 1978)

Art. LVIII

Russia: Ardahan, Kars and Batum

Article LVIII: the Sultan ceded Ardahan, Kars and Batum to Russia in Asia. Russia promised to make Batum a free port. With Bessarabia back, these were what Russia kept of San Stefano.

Source: Treaty of Berlin (Fordham Sourcebook)

Convention of 4 June 1878

Britain: Cyprus, outside the treaty

Cyprus appears nowhere in the treaty. A secret convention of 4 June 1878 let Britain occupy and govern the island, which stayed Ottoman in name. Britain annexed it formally in 1914, at the start of the First World War.

Source: Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty IV (1891) · Geiss, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (bpb, 1978)