Diplomatic Dispatches about Circassia from the Consulate of France in Odessa, 1836–1840

This book, the first volume of the series Circassia and Europe, presents dispatches of André Adolphe Challaye, the Consul of France in Odessa for the years 1836 to 1840. It offers a rare glimpse into the way French diplomacy was making sense of events in and around the North Caucasus and the eastern shore of the Black Sea at a time of increased tensions between Russia and Great Britain over the Circassian question, that is the political status of nations which inhabited the western part of the North Caucasus and of the North Caucasus in general.

The multi-volume series Circassia and Europe is edited by Azamat Kumykov, Khatuna Gvaradze and Hubertus Jahn. It makes available heretofore unpublished manuscript sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that relate to the North Caucasus. Most of the material is devoted to the Circassians. However, since at the time the name was frequently used in Europe to refer to all the inhabitants of the North Caucasus, many of the sources also deal with other peoples of this ethnically diverse part of the world. In addition to diplomatic dispatches, the sources will include military, political, commercial, ethnographic, and personal documents from government, university, and private archives in a multitude of countries. All the materials are published in the original language as well as in English and Russian translations.