April Uprising of 1876 in the context of "Herzegovina uprising (1875–1877)"

The history of Ottoman Bulgaria spans nearly 500 years, beginning in the late 14th century, with the Ottoman conquest of smaller kingdoms from the disintegrating Second Bulgarian Empire. In the late 19th century, Bulgaria was liberated from the Ottoman Empire, and by the early 20th century it was declared independent.

The brutal suppression of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 and the public outcry it caused across Europe led to the Constantinople Conference, where the Great Powers tabled a joint proposal for the creation of two autonomous Bulgarian vilayets, largely corresponding to the ethnic boundaries drawn a decade earlier with the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate.

Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev (Russian: Никола́й Па́влович Игна́тьев; 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1832 – 3 July [O.S. 20 June] 1908) was a Russian statesman and diplomat who is best known for his policy of aggressive expansionism as the Russian ambassador to China and the Ottoman Empire. He was also the minister of the interior from 1881 to 1882, where he promoted ultraconservative and Slavic-nationalist policies.

In dealing with China, he secured a large slice of Chinese territory by the multi-lateral Treaty of Peking in 1860. As the Russian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1864 to 1877, he worked to stir up pan-Slavic feeling and nationalism against the Ottomans, and had some responsibility for the Bulgarian rebellion of April 1876. He encouraged his government to declare war on Turkey in 1877, and after the decisive Russian victory, he negotiated the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878. It heralded greatly strengthened Russian influence in the Balkans. However, Britain and Austria-Hungary intervened and forced the retraction of the treaty.