The Invention of the Eastern Question

A diplomatic and contrapuntal history of the emergence of Robert Liston, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century and the emergence of the ''Eastern Question''. The ''Eastern Question'' became of central importance to relations between the Ottoman Empire and the other Great Powers in the latter half of the 19th century, but how did events at the beginning of the century give rise to it, and how did the Ottomans themselves understand the term?In this book, Ozan Ozavci traces the emergence of the ''Eastern Question'' by exploring the life and career of Robert Liston, British Ambassador at Istanbul over two embassies in 1790''s and 1810''s. Using previously unexplored Ottoman, Russian, French, and British archival sources, including Liston''s private papers and his wife Henrietta''s Istanbul diaries, the book portrays Pera, the ambassadorial district of Istanbul, as a contact zone of interaction between European and Asian diplomats and Ottoman statesmen, and offers a micro-global, emotional and cultural history of diplomacy in the period. It shines new light upon the ''Eastern Question'' at its inception at the turn of the nineteenth century, revealing the economic factors which gave rise to it as exemplified by the tension between Liston''s sympathy with modernising Ottoman officials and loyalty to his paymasters at the Levant Company, whose exploitative practices drained resources away from the Sublime Porte. Importantly, the book also takes a contrapuntal approach, which considers not only how European agents sought to deal with the politics of the East, but also how the Ottoman elites received and responded to such efforts with the aid of arguably the only European diplomat they truly trusted: Robert Liston. Providing a new analysis of European-Ottoman relations at a crucial historical juncture, the book will be of great interest to scholars of Ottoman, Diplomatic and Middle Eastern History.>

Auteur

Ozan Ozavci is Assistant Professor of Modern History at Utrecht University, Netherlands, and Associate Member of CETOBAC, College de France in Paris, France. He is the author of Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798- 1864 (2021) and Intellectual Origins of the Republic: Ahmet Agaoglu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey (2015).

Résumé
The Invention of the Eastern Question recounts the gripping and dramatic history of how the Russian Empire's invasion of Ottoman Crimea reshaped global politics at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Through the lives of Scottish diplomat Sir Robert Liston and his wife Henrietta (née Marchand) Liston, the book follows the emergence of the Eastern Question the most dangerous, enduring and complex international relations issue of the century that would claim millions of lives until the 1920s. Drawing on the Listons' official and private letters, personal diaries and a trove of Austrian, British, Dutch, French, Ottoman, and Russian archives, Ozan Ozavci reveals the importance of the art of negotiation in the age of revolutions, showing how the choices of a few people shaped empires, stirred tensions, and left a legacy that would haunt global imperial relations long after the Listons left the world stage. Providing a new analysis of Euro-Ottoman relations at a crucial historical juncture, the book will be of great interest to scholars of history and International Relations.

Contenu

List of Illustrations Note on Transliteration List of Abbreviations PROLOGUE 1. PHILOSOPHE AND DIPLOMAT 2. 'NOW EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED' 3. FORBIDDING OBSTACLES 4. THE SPIRIT OF TREATIES 5. INTERMISSION 6. A PEACE WORSE THAN WAR? 7. EITHER WAR OR PLAGUE 8. THE VIENNA MOMENT 9. THE PHANTOM OF PERA SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY