Peter Tolstoi in Constantinople and Russian-Ottoman Entanglements in the Age of Peter the Great

Peter A. Tolstoi was Russia’s first resident ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He spent more than a decade in Constantinople, charged with the tasks of maintaining the peace that the tsar and the sultan had concluded in 1700, advancing Russian trade interests in the Black Sea region, and gathering information about the Ottomans. The dispatch of a permanent diplomatic representative to the sultan’s court formed part of Tsar Peter I’s move towards establishing resident embassies across Europe and beyond. The talk explores the transition from irregular exchanges of ad hoc missions to residence diplomacy and asks how a specific type of an early modern institution – the permanent ambassador – emerged in imperial contexts.

Registration is free but essential, via Zoom.