“I do not propose to defend our Government, for no one is more aware of its faults and deficiencies than myself. It is of the nation I wish to speak.” (p.14).
A scarce riposte to Gladstone’s widely-read pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London, 1876), which outlined atrocities committed by Turkish forces during the April Uprising of 1876, and argued that Britain should abandon its support of the Ottoman Empire as a result.
Effendi recognises the “crimes committed in the suppression of the Bulgarian rebellion” (p.7), describing “their ghastly reality … [as] beyond doubt” (p.25) and agrees with criticisms directed at the Ottoman authorities, but challenges Gladstone’s negative portrayals of the Turkish people and regards his desire to break political ties as a calamitous invitation to Russian advances.
While it is possible the pamphlet was written pseudonymously by a British adversary of Gladstone, the passages on Turkish education and culture suggest the author was Turkish, or resident in the Ottoman Empire.
Scarce. LibraryHub locates five copies, at the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, Oxford, Trinity College Dublin and the University of London (Senate House). OCLC adds just two more, at Cambridge and the New York Public Library (the only holding we can find in North America).
