The Ambassadors’ Conference of Constantinople, the Cretan Crisis, and the Plans for an International Condominium over the Ottoman Empire 1896‒1898
The Ambassadors’ Conference of Constantinople, the Cretan Crisis, and the Plans for an International Condominium over the Ottoman Empire 1896‒1898

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on the activities of the Ambassadors’ Conference of Constantinople as a semi-independent international body tasked with conflict prevention and mediation in the context during the Cretan Crisis of 1896‒1898. Historical research has – until now – largely neglected the phenomenon of the influence of international bodies of semi-independent experts, who acting worked in a system of international politics otherwise dominated by cabinet diplomacy. Concentrating on the dynamics within the diplomatic agencies of three Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Germany) and their representatives, my aim is to show how the Ambassadors’ Conference could act and functioned under within these conditions. Using the diplomatic collections of the Austrian Haus-, Hof und Staatsarchiv and the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the British National Archives in London (Kew) and the German Archiv des Auswartigen Amtes in Berlin, I examine the degree to which the ambassadors acted independently or in concert with their governments. In addition, I seek to identify the factors influencing their work, and determine whether they were in turn able to influence other actors or even affect the system of the so-called “European Concert of Powers” itself.

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