British Consular Reports from the Ottoman Levant in an Age of Upheaval, 1815-1830

On the front line of the British efforts to contain Russia in the nineteenth century were the series of consuls resident across the Ottoman Empire. The consuls were empowered by the capitulations, by which European citizens in the Ottoman Empire were granted extraterritorial privileges. In this work, Theophilus Prousis surveys the state of the British diplomatic presence in the Levant between 1815 and 1830. He frames his study around the correspondence from various stations and the Foreign Office in London. Prousis first considers the consul in Prevesa, in modern Greece, who was witness to the Greek War of Independence. Second, comes the correspondence from Istanbul, which is of course of special importance for being the Ottoman capital. Third, he looks at the Izmir consulate, where concerns of trade, piracy and Russian influence were primary. Finally, the book takes up the representatives in the major eastern Mediterranean cities, Alexandria, Cairo and Aleppo. Prousis has made with this work a major contribution to the history of the Eastern Question.