The Role of Robert Sutton in Convening and Functioning of the 1718 Passarowitz Peace Conference

Abstract

Mediation of Robert Sutton during the Passarowitz Peace Conference in 1718 has confirmed the Britain’s new role in international relations. At the same time France approached Britain, confirming a new course of its foreign policy. However, such approaching threatened to spoil relations between Britain and Austria. From the last decades of the seventeenth century, British alliance with Austria was highly significant, and therefore as the mediator in peace talks between Austria and Turkey was elected Robert Sutton, already experienced as British Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. Britain expected that both sides will take into account his diplomatic experience and political credibility. His role turned out to become additionally significant within highly complicated international circumstances. Particularly concerned with the Russian military involvement in the area of Mecklenburg and the strengthening of Russia in the Baltic, as well as with renewed ambitions of Spain in Italy, British government sought to simultaneously control and speed up the Passarowitz peace negotiations.

Sutton’s reports to the British government confirmed that during the 1718 negotiations in Passarowitz the same diplomatic protocol was applied as during the previous 1699 conference in Karlowitz (Sremski Karlovci).  The Ottoman Porte, on the other hand, was ultimately forced to apply practices of modern European diplomacy with compliance to the general bilateral principle in peace process, including the protocol. British mediation also revealed its future interests in the eastern Mediterranean, which included the withdrawal of Venice from the important spheres of politics and business in the Ottoman Empire. The Passarowitz peace agreement from 1718 officially reduced Venice to a second-rate power ranking, and the British traders were enabled to take over important pieces of Venetian eastern markets.