The emergence of the Eastern Question is usually dated to the peace treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (1774), which stipulated Russia's right to speak on behalf of the Christian population of particular Ottoman provinces. Russian diplomacy first attempted to reinterpret this right as applying to the entire Orthodox Christian community of the Ottoman Empire in response to the appeal of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem for help in his struggle with Armenians and Catholics for control of the Holy Places during the 1810s. Clashes between Muslims and Christians during the Greek Crisis of the...