Dr. Aneliya Stoyanova
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
https://doi.org/10.53656/his2024-4-3-ear
Abstract. Austrian Habsburg resident in Constantinople Michael Starzer (1610 – 1622) and trans-imperial agent, future Ottoman diplomat and Prince of Moldavia Caspar Gratiani met in the Ottoman capital in the early 1610s. Based on the analysis of the Habsburg diplomat’s correspondence, the current article focuses on the interaction and cooperation between these two men from the spring of 1611 (i.e. when Michael Starzer first mentioned Gratiani in his letters to the Habsburg court) to the appointment of Gratiani as part of the Ottoman diplomatic mission to Linz in the summer of 1614. The main research questions concern the factors that contributed to the good relationship between them and its impact on the development of the Habsburg-Ottoman diplomacy during the first decade after the end of the Long Turkish War.
Keywords: Early modern diplomacy, Habsburg-Ottoman relations, trans-imperial agents, Caspar Gratiani, Michael Starzer