Information and confusion: Russian resident diplomacy and peter A. tolstoi’s arrival in the ottoman empire (1702-1703)

Jan Hennings*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This article explores the arrival of the first Russian resident ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in a period when Russian diplomacy underwent major transformations. It focuses on Peter A. Tolstoi’s network and the management of information gathered during the first year of his appointment in Adrianople (1702-03). The article revisits the notion of resident ambassador, not as a hallmark of ‘modern European diplomacy’ with an overemphasis on the diplomat as a state-representative and office-holder, on the states system, or on institutional reform, but to suggest that a resident embassy in the early modern period was more than a formal, self-contained, and sovereign institution located in a particular place. The transformation from ad-hoc to resident diplomacy in Russian-Ottoman relations did not originate from the adoption of European diplomatic norms alone: It created new or relied on the existing trans-imperial networks of the ambassador rather than on bilateral inter-state relations. The example of Russian-Ottoman relations demonstrates that while the new diplomacy introduced by Peter I was driven by Europeanization and reform, the transformations emerged from the adaptation to circumstances in different locations and depended on the development of contacts embedded in the geo-cultural and religious entanglements of the region.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1003-1019
Number of pages17
JournalInternational History Review
Volume41
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Sep 2019

Keywords

  • Peter A. Tolstoi
  • Resident ambassador
  • Russian diplomacy
  • Russian-Ottoman relations

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