Stratford Canning, Viscount Stratford (of Redcliffe)

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1786 - 1880

The most influential European diplomat in the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century.

While still an undergraduate at Cambridge, Stratford Canning (Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe) joined the British Foreign Office then headed by his cousin, George Canning. His first posting to Constantinople (now Istanbul) as secretary to the British mission occurred in 1808 in the midst of the Napoleonic wars. Upon his superior's departure, Stratford Canning became the acting chief. Despite his inexperience and with even less than the usual guidance from home, he secured the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812. By ending the war between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires, this treaty freed the Russians to repel the invasion of Napoléon Bonaparte. He then left for other assignments, but from 1825 to 1827, Canning returned to Constantinople to confront two problems: the Greek revolt and the deprivatization of the British consular service in the Levant (countries of the eastern Mediterranean).

Despite Canning's best efforts, he failed to mediate an end to the Greek conflict. As for the second, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, British affairs in the Ottoman Empire - commercial, consular, and diplomatic - had been managed by the Levant Company, which had been granted a monopoly to trade with the eastern Mediterranean by British royal charter in 1581. The transformation of British interests in the East, particularly the growth of political and military concerns as a result of the Napoleonic wars, undermined the old arrangement. The British government took over direct responsibility for the embassy in 1804 and the consular posts in 1825; Canning's skill in overseeing this transition helped established Britain's diplomatic preeminence.

After his Ottoman tour had ended, Canning embarked upon an unremarkable parliamentary career, which quickly revealed that his skills were far greater as a diplomat than as a politician. Consequently, in 1831 and 1832 he returned to Constantinople on a successful mission to fix a more favorable frontier for the Kingdom of Greece, which was newly independent of Ottoman rule.

His last period of service in Constantinople was the most important and the longest, from 1842 to 1858, occasionally interrupted by efforts to resign. Canning played a key role in the major events of the era: Russian intervention in the region culminating in the Crimean War and the Tanzimat reforms - most notably the Islahat Fermani (Reform Decree) of 1856. He also succeeded in removing from the Ottoman realm to the British Museum such archaeological discoveries as the Bodrum frieze and the winged lions of Nineveh.

Although Canning began his career by promoting peace with Russia, he spent much of it as the Romanov Empire's implacable foe. Ottoman weakness in the face of the Russian threat forced ever greater dependence on Britain's diplomatic and military support, which Canning offered at a price - a program of internal reform that insisted upon the equality of the empire's Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. Canning's experience and personality backed by Britain's dominant position enabled him to secure Ottoman assent, at least on paper, to the effective annulment of Islamic law on this question.

Although he maintained close personal ties with the then-reigning sultan, Abdülmecit I, his deepest sympathies were reserved for the Christian subjects of the empire, whose improved status, he hoped, would maintain Ottoman integrity in the face of Russian ambition. Later in his life, when that hope proved false, he welcomed the end of Ottoman control in the Balkans.

Bibliography

Lane-Poole, Stanley. The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. 2 vols. 1888. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1976.

Temperley, Harold. England and the Near East: The Crimea. 1936. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964.

— BENJAMIN BRAUDE