Black Bey

Edouard Blacque, recorded in Turkish rosters as Black or Blak Bey, was born in Istanbul in 1824 into a French family associated with the Ottoman press. Educated at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris, he returned to Istanbul as a translator and later edited the Courrier de Constantinople, published in French. His diplomatic career took him to Paris and Naples before he became the Ottoman Empire’s first resident minister in Washington in 1867. ^{1, 2}

One issue at his new post was Robert College on the Bosporus, which had American backing. In his history of the college, George Washburn recalled that Secretary of State William Seward pressed Blacque to help secure permission for its building project. Blacque warned Constantinople that leaving the question unresolved could damage relations. Washburn placed this intervention alongside other American approaches that preceded the Ottoman charter of 1868. ³

The technical business of international shipping also passed through his legation. In 1873 Washington disputed whether it had received an adequate invitation to the international commission on ship tonnage and Suez Canal charges. American minister George Boker reported that Blacque had been instructed to approach the United States and questioned whether he had conveyed the invitation in its intended form. ⁴

After Washington, Blacque served in the Ottoman press administration and Council of State, then directed Istanbul’s Sixth Municipal District, centered on Beyoğlu, from 1878. A later appointment to Bucharest was followed by a return to municipal work. He died on Büyükada in 1895. ¹