In the age of colonialism, the concept of civilization was the primary marker of difference in the international system. The so-called civilized had attained a certain level of development and regarded themselves as more humane than others. The British campaign to end slavery in the nineteenth century was a strategy to create an international moral sentiment with which Empire was fought against and fought for at the same time. Equally in the Ottoman Empire, slavery became an object of debate through the political and moral interventions of the British. Although the issue of slavery never became dominant in the Ottoman public discourse, it opened up a discussion that could be useful to chart a conceptual history of human rights in the Ottoman Empire. In this regard, my purpose is to think about Ottoman subjectivity through the conceptual prism of care, compassion and cruelty. The fight against slavery was about saving slaves and the Empire simultaneously, both for the British and the Ottomans, albeit with different motivations and goals. By utilizing various sources (memoirs, travelogues, school textbooks, popular writing), I propose we use critical readings of concepts such as humane and humanitarian to understand the sense of belonging existing as the Ottoman Empire was coming to an end.