Information and Confusion: Russian Resident Diplomacy and Peter A. Tolstoi’s Arrival in the Ottoman Empire (1702–1703)

Abstract

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.