Strangford, Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, Viscount, 1780-1855

Lord Strangford was the British ambassador at Constantinople from August 1820 to October 1824. The recipient of his diplomatic reports, the Marquis of Londonderry (1778-1854), was the British ambassador at Vienna from 1814-1822. The first of the Strangford's missives deals with the centerpiece of the internal reforms implemented under Sultan Mahmud II, the modernization of the army along Western lines, which brought the Sultan into conflict with the Janissaries, the elite corps of the Turkish army. Strangford's report describes the Sultan's severe crack-down on those Janissary corps, which had terrorized Constantinople through their violent excesses. The other reports deal with questions of diplomatic protocol and with the Turkish evacuation of the Danubian principalities, which is also the subject of the official note, of which we have a French copy. Strangford reported on the Porte's assurances regarding the evacuation of the principalities at the Verona Congress in the fall of 1822 and they were in fact subsequently evacuated before Strangford left his post in 1824. Strangford was probably the most important diplomat at Constantinople during this time.

From the description of Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe Strangford papers, 1815-1822. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122553088

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