22 - The Anti-Western Rebellion on the Eve of the Belle Époque

Summary

This chapter reviews three incidents of urban violence in the late Ottoman port cities: the 1876 St. George's Day intercommunal riots resulting in the lynching of the French and German consuls of Thessaloniki; the 1881 intercommunal riots in Alexandria, resulting in the British Navy shelling the city and occupying the country; and the 1903 bomb attacks in Thessaloniki by Macedonian separatists. It comes to the conclusion that incidents of violence that targeted European foreigners and non-Muslims indiscriminately most often did not succeed. Therefore, in the particular sociocultural climate of the nineteenth-century Eastern Mediterranean, agents often resorted to discrediting communities separately, as this held higher chances success, even against Western parties.