Athos” Course of Lord Bulwer-Lytton

The article discusses the goals and objectives of the British diplomats on the “Athos” track in the context of the diplomatic confrontation between Great Britain and Russia which relied extensively on the Church contacts in their Balkan politics. It explores such a little-studied aspect of the Athos problem as the role of Russian and British diplomats in addressing the issue of the Athos monasteries’ properties sequestrated by Alexandru Cuza, prince of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, through the lens of the activities of Sir George Bulwer-Lytton, ambassador to Constantinople, in the 1860s. It uses Lord Bulwer's participation in the work of European commissions and conferences, to illustrate the methods and practices of British diplomats aimed at forcing Russia out of the Balkan region (and even out of the Middle East): such as erosion of the credibility of the Russian Empire, defamation of its representatives in Greek communities and their displacement from principle foreign-policy objectives, and indoctrination into endless conflicts in the multinational environment of Orthodox monasticism on the Holy Mount. It shows that from the mid-19th century one of the primary instruments of British politics not only on Mount Athos, but also in the Orthodox East, as a whole, was the right of British subjects (Ionian Greeks in the case of Athos) to official support and protection of British diplomats, while Russian Athonites were deprived of that right due to the lack of official Russian patronage over Russian subjects in the Ottoman Empire. The confrontation between Great Britain and Russia in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean played a prominent role in the development of Russian-Greek relations and the occurrence of such a phenomenon as “Russian Athos”

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