England & Russia being a Fifth Edition of England, France, Russia, & Turkey.

£750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

The Foreign Office Library copy of this key work on Anglo-Russian diplomacy and the Eastern Question. David Urquhart (1805-1877), Scottish diplomat and writer, travelled extensively in the Near East and Black Sea environs, and developed an intimate understanding of Turkish culture and affairs. After a period of freelance war correspondence in which he petitioned the British government through the press, he was recruited as an aide to Stratford Canning on a mission to negotiate the Greek frontier with Turkey. In Constantinople in 1832, Urquhart was accused of “going native”, adopting local dress and customs, and moving out of the embassy quarters. He returned to the East in 1834, “embarking upon a yacht tour around the Black Sea, visiting the Circassian tribes who were fighting the Russian attempts to incorporate them within the empire” (ODNB). In 1834 Urquhart made an attempt, known as the Vixen Affair, to break the Russian trade embargo on the east coast of the Black Sea, and force British involvement. Palmerston accused Urquhart of causing diplomatic embarrassment, and ended his official commission. The present text was first published in England, anonymously, that same year. This fifth edition, which came to press in the following year, includes an extensive 23pp additional introduction entitles “Impossibility of Dislodging Russia from the Dardanelles”, and two further pages of critical commentary which would suggest that the first edition came to press in December of 1834

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