Stratford Canning

Stratford Canning, born in London in 1786, entered diplomacy through his cousin George Canning. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he accompanied Anthony Merry to Copenhagen in 1807 and Robert Adair to Constantinople in 1808. As acting minister there, he helped mediate the Russo-Turkish peace of 1812. His subsequent Swiss mission included work on the federal settlement and Switzerland's neutrality during the Congress of Vienna. ¹

His Washington mission brought him into prolonged negotiation with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams over suppressing the Atlantic slave trade. In January 1823 Canning proposed cooperation against traders using the French flag and renewed Britain's request for a reciprocal, limited right to search suspected slave ships. Adams favored treating the trade as piracy but resisted foreign searches and mixed tribunals. Canning's April reply defended regulated searches as a practical means of stopping the traffic, with limits on officers' authority and safeguards against abuse. ²

After leaving Washington in 1823, Canning joined William Huskisson in negotiating with American minister Richard Rush in London. Their convention of 13 March 1824 provided for reciprocal searches of suspected slave ships. The United States Senate altered it, including removal of American waters from its operation; Britain rejected the amended agreement. The negotiation therefore produced no treaty in force. ^{2, 3}

Canning's later work included Greek independence negotiations and another long Ottoman embassy, beginning in 1842. During that posting he backed the Ottoman refusal to surrender Hungarian and Polish refugees to Russia and Austria in 1849. In the crisis preceding the Crimean War, he resisted Russian demands for a protectorate over the sultan's Orthodox Christian subjects. During the fighting he worked on medical support and supplies for the British forces. He finally resigned the embassy in 1858. ^{1, 4}

His career also crossed politics and archaeology. He sat in Parliament between diplomatic appointments and financed and secured permission for Austen Henry Layard's excavations in Ottoman territory. In retirement he continued writing and speaking about the Eastern Question. He died in 1880; a collection of his later essays appeared the following year. ¹