A richly sourced account of diplomatic practice in the British mission to Istanbul from 1661 to 1807. The British Embassy in Istanbul was unique among other diplomatic missions in the long eighteenth century in being financed by a private commercial monopoly, the Levant Company. In this detailed study, Michael Talbot shows how theintimate relation between commercial interest and diplomatic practice played out across the period, from the arrival of an ambassador from the restored British crown in 1661 to the sudden evacuation of his successor and the outbreak of the first Ottoman War in 1807. Using a rich variety of sources in English, Ottoman Turkish and Italian, some of them never before examined, including legal documents, financial ledgers and first-hand accounts from participants, he reconstructs the detail of diplomatic practice in rituals of gift-giving and hospitality within the Ottoman court; examines the at times very different meanings that they held for the British and Ottoman participants; andtraces the ways in which the declining fortunes of the Levant company directly affected the ability of the embassy to perform effectively within Ottoman conventions, at a time when rising levels of British violence in and around the Ottoman realm marked the journey towards British imperialism in the region. MICHAEL TALBOT is Lecturer in History at the University of Greenwich.

[An] outstanding study...essential reading for anyone (including undergraduates) interested in this subject. * HISTORY *
Talbot's book is a valuable contribution to the current efforts in research to de-exoticize the history of Euro-Ottoman relations and to contextualize these relations within the framework of the development of the early modern state system. . . . [I]t is a well-written and concise book, solidly based on the recent methodological trends in the history of foreign relations. * JOURNAL OF EARLY MODERN HISTORY *
Talbot's detailed study provides a decidedly more nuanced picture than we have had to date of British-Ottoman relations in the long eighteenth century. -- Palmira Brummett * Journal of British Studies *