CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Mörsdorf, Sven |
|---|---|
| Title | Consular Affairs: Exploring the Practices of Austro-Hungarian Consular Diplomacy in the Ottoman Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean around 1900 |
| Summary | The long nineteenth century gave rise to a new type of diplomacy. Consuls, or lower-ranking diplomats posted to places far away from dynastic courts and capitals, led the way in a global transformation of diplomatic practice. As the scope of diplomacy broadened to include social and economic policies, consuls’ tasks multiplied, transforming these officials from mere commercial agents to very active political representatives . Austria-Hu ngary participated in this process as a major diplomatic player, but its consular service has received little scholarly attention. My thesis argues against prevailing simplistic notions on consuls and consular diplomacy, aiming to integrate consulship into a broader understanding of the Dual Monarchy’s foreign policy and the bureaucracy that sustained it. Viewing consular diplomacy through a sociocultural prism, I trace Habsburg consuls’ diplomatic agency with an analysis of the social, bureaucratic-institutional, and diplomatic practices in which they took part. I examine, among others, the role of patronage in consular careers and a consul’s ability to act autonomously, thereby engaging in a dialogue with newly emerging scholarship in diplomatic history from a south-east European perspective. My thesis presents two case studies that are centred around diplomatic scandals or ‘affairs’ that emanated from Smyrna (İzmir) in 1880 and from Kosovo in 1912, respectively. The first case examines the career of Count Victor Crenneville, an aristocrat in the predominantly bourgeois consular service; the second case investigates Oskar Prochaska, a consul who found himself cut off from communications during the First Balkan War. Investigating their examples, I seek to explore consular activity in the institutional context of the Austro-Hungarian foreign service and, by placing it on the microlevel, to contribute to the bigger picture of the historical development in diplomatic history and foreign relations. |
| Supervisor | Hennings, Jan; Radway, Robyn Dora |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/morsdorf_sven.pdf |
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