Sick man of Europe

As a sick man of Europe in the 19th century, the weakened Ottoman Empire, should emerge from the later Turkey, satirized by many media of that time.

In the 19th century, the formerly powerful Ottoman Empire was weakened by rebellions in its European territories ( Rumelia ) and was increasingly at the mercy of the European powers. In Egypt, the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha crack gradually the power. 1804 brought the Serbs and were given considerable autonomy until 1830. The Phanariotenherrschaft in the Danubian Principalities in 1826 found its end. In the 1820s, supported by some Europeans independence movement in Greece gained momentum.

The Russian Tsar Nicholas I coined the saying from the sick man for the first time in 1852 in a conversation with the British Ambassador. Accordingly, the Eastern Question, about the survival of the Ottoman Empire, before long could one be solved once and for all, when Russia and Britain had agreed.

"We have a sick man on the poor. It would be a misfortune if it should be us one day be eliminated. "

The Russian Tsar was referring to Sultan Abdülmecid I, but the term came into the proverbial name for the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Helmuth von Moltke, who was from 1836 to 1839 as an instructor of Turkish troops in the Ottoman Empire, put it:

" It has been the task of Western armies long, the Ottoman power to set limits. Today it seems to be the concern of European policy, to eke out their existence. "

The Eastern Question was a constant topic of diplomacy. Russia saw it as an opportunity to make its power influence in Europe stronger claims. Austria and Great Britain and France saw the danger of Russian expansion, for example, in the Crimean War, and therefore tended rather to maintain a weak Ottoman Empire. In the Eastern Question about to be or not of the empire they were of the opinion that the Ottoman Empire, which still had a tremendous expansion in those days, must be preserved.

Derived therefrom uses of words

The keyword is Sick man or was in the political parlance refers to a loaded with internal problems state, whose "cure" allegedly reforms are urgently needed. So sick man of Asia was ( Sick man of Asia ) used for the Chinese Empire or the Republic of China following.

More recently, analogous terms such as Sick Man of Africa were occasionally depending on the political ideology designed for different states (for example, for the DR Congo ).