Britain and the Struggle for the Integrity of the Ottoman Empire is Ali Ihsan Bagis’s revised version of his doctoral thesis. Bagis tells how the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Britain changed between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At first a ‘diplomatic backwater’, British interest in the Ottoman Empire increased in parallel with the perception of a Russian threat to British interests. Bagis identifies ambassador Sir Robert Ainslie as having transformed the Constantinople mission into one of the most important in the British Empire. Bagis’s work closely follows Ainslie’s term as ambassador from its beginning in 1776 to its end in 1793. Bagis describes how Britain came to see the integrity of the Ottoman Empire as vital to British interests. This work makes an important contribution to our understanding of the development of British-Ottoman relations as it traces the career of an unknown British diplomat.

• CONTENTS (page 5)
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (page 7)
• PREFACE (page 9)
• CHAPTER I (page 13)
• CHAPTER II (page 35)
• CHAPTER III (page 65)
• CHAPTER IV (page 99)
• CHAPTER V (page 109)
• CHAPTER VI (page 127)
• CONCLUSION (page 147)
• APPENDIX I (page 153)
• APPENDIX II (page 155)
• APPENDIX III (page 159)
• GLOSSARY (page 161)
• BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 163)
• ABBREVIATIONS (page 177)
• NAME INDEX (page 179)