Consular Jurisdiction

This article will challenge the currently accepted notions of weak British consular presence, influence and activity in the southern Mediterranean during the period 1795–1832 through a case study of the careers of three successive consuls in the Regency of Tripoli: Simon Lucas, William Wass Langford and Hanmer Warrington. Utilising the official correspondence of these agents, the extent of the consular bridgehead in the capital, Tripoli, will be investigated, and how, through these consular and diplomatic agents, it served to define imperial interests and activity at the frontiers of empire. Moreover, the overlapping personal and professional networks within which the consuls embedded themselves, the role of enterprising missions and the development of an intelligence-gathering network will be of central significance in understanding the consequent ruptures in the social and political fabric of the Regency of Tripoli. British imperial interest in North Africa during and immediately post the Napoleonic era remains under-studied and misunderstood within both British diplomatic and imperial history. This article challenges the existing literature that underestimates the diplomatic as well as consular power exercised by the British consuls to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, as well as the importance of these three Barbary regencies to wider strategic interests in the Mediterranean.

The treaty that never was and the treaty that almost never became: Sino–Swedish-Norwegian relations 1847–1908 (in Swedish).

On March 20, 1847, the Swedish envoy and businessman Carl Fredrik Liljevalch and the Manchu nobleman Qiying concluded a ”Treaty of Peace, Amity and Commerce” between the United Kingdom of Sweden-Norway and the Qing Empire. Without any threat of force, the treaty granted the small Scandinavian kingdom most of the privileges Britain, France and the United States had gained in the preceding five year period. However, while Sweden-Norway’s King Oscar I promptly ratified the treaty, the Qing Empire did not, which put the legal status of the treaty in jeopardy and cast a cloud of ambiguity over the relationship between China and Sweden-Norway. Despite uncertainties and occasional conflicts between the two polities over the interpretation of the treaty, the treaty nevertheless governed the relationship between Sweden- Norway and China for 60 years, until a new treaty was concluded in 1908. This article argues that the vague status of the treaty demonstrates that many treaty port institutions, such as extraterritoriality, were not based only on the treaty texts themselves but also on what might be called treaty port ”customary law.” The article also uses the treaty to discuss the position of Sweden- Norway as an imperialist treaty power in China. Even though Swedish and Norwegian representatives identified with the larger treaty powers, they were painfully aware of the fact that they could only exercise their privileges with the permission of the Qing government.

À partir d’une perspective générale sur l’évolution de la fonction consulaire au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, cet article aborde différents aspects du fonctionnement de la chancellerie consulaire française à Ancône et dans les vice-consulats satellites. À travers la reconstruction de l’activité de chancellerie de son début, dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, jusqu’à la période révolutionnaire et impériale, on analysera le milieu social et les parcours de recrutement des chanceliers et autres employés subalternes. L’étude des pratiques chancelières permettra, en outre, d’envisager l’organisation et la division de tâches dans la production et l’enregistrement des actes et des dépêches, et de découvrir des exemples de formulaires et autres instruments de travail que les consulats pouvaient s’échanger. Cette analyse contribuera aussi à retracer une évolution de la typologie des actes et des usagers de l’Ancien Régime aux guerres napoléoniennes.

In a broader prospective on the evolution of the consular function between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, this article discusses various aspects of the functioning of the French consular chancery in Ancona and in the subordinate vice-consulates. Through the reconstruction of the chancery activity from its beginning, in the first half of the eighteenth century, until the revolutionary and imperial period, it will be possible to show social origins et recruitment paths of chancellors and other subordinate employees. The study of chancery practices will further consider the organization and division of tasks in the production and recording of acts and dispatches, and show examples of formularies and other working instruments exchanged between consulates. The analysis will also contribute to trace an evolution of the typology of acts and users from the ancien régime to the Napoleonic wars.

Objavljuje se grčki epitaf s ranokršćanskog sarkofaga pronađenog u crkvi sv. Ilije na Lopudu. Autori donose opis spomenika, čitanje i dataciju epitafa, epigrafičku, antroponimijsku i povijesnu analizu, uz arheološko-topografski kontekst nalaza. Identificiraju pokojnikovo ime (Izak) i pori-jeklo (sjeverna Sirija ili Mala Azija) te ustanovljuju dataciju (17. listopad 452.). Posebno analiziraju spomen zapadnorimskog konzula u formuli datacije te utvrđuju da je riječ o prvoj pouzdanoj epigrafskoj potvrdi pri-padnosti Dalmacije zapadnom dijelu Rimskoga Carstva u 5. stoljeću.

Already from the 17th century, consular networks, with the most widespread being that of France, had developed throughout the area of the Aegean and Ionian Seas. In the case of France, the 16th and 17th centuries were also crucial in the formation of the consular institution, as the consuls had gradually turned from merchant to royal agents. The fact that the French network is old and the most dense in the area makes it the best case-study for observing the development of this institution. Historiography, however, has not, until now, focused its attention on the function of the consular institution on the shores and islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas, which could allow for detecting issues that cannot be assessed when focusing on the large ports of the eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa. Among these issues are: a) the assignment of consuls by the Ambassador in Constantinople already since the 17th century; b) the assignment of vice-consuls by the subleasers of the consulates between the years 1685 and 1689, when the Compagnie de la Mediterranée has leased all the consulates of the Levant and the Barbary coast; c) the jurisdiction of the ambassador in Constantinople in certain areas under Venetian control as well; d) the existence of consulates with jurisdiction in areas under opposite control (Ottoman and Venetian). The differences in the way consulates worked in the Archipelago revealed the plasticity of this institution, which adapted to the geographical, geopolitical and cultural particularities of each area, also harmonizing with the economic conditions of each period of time.

The archive of the Consulate of Tuscany in Alexandria of Egypt (1828-1860) is currently being reorganized and described in an inventory. The archival organization and the indexing allow a preliminary photograph of the Tuscan community in Alexandria, one of the most important foreign colonies in the town during the years before the unification of Italy.  The papers, preserved in the Archivio storico diplomatico of the Italian Foreign Ministry, carry the reader along a journey in the daily life of the town and in the commercial affairs of the Tuscan community. //

L’intervento di ordinamento e inventariazione dell’archivio del Consolato del Granducato di Toscana ad Alessandria d’Egitto (1828-1860), ancora in corso, consente una prima ‘fotografia’ della comunità toscana della città, una delle più numerose e importanti nel periodo che precede l’Unità d’Italia. Le carte, conservate  presso l’Archivio storico diplomatico del Ministero degli affari esteri,  accompagnano il lettore in un viaggio nella vita quotidiana della città,  nei commerci e negli affari dei sudditi toscani.