A Multiethnic Crimean Cosmopolis NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division
	A Tatar Wagon NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division
	The Palace at Bakhchisaray NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division
	Russians on the Chinese Border NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

The events of the last decade of the 18th century and the first three decades of the 19th forced monarchs and statesmen into a series of acts that by 1830 closed the cycle that had opened in 1453. The French Revolution and the subsequent whirlwind of wars forced the British and Russian empires to forge an alliance in order to defeat Napoleon. In the course of this long and laborious process, the Ottoman Empire was alternately courted or threatened by all the major players.

The annals of strange bedfellows grew to include the hitherto unimaginable sight of a Russian war fleet sailing through the straits past Constantinople and entering the Mediterranean in order to undertake maneuvers in unison with the Turkish fleet. Alexander I (r. 1801–25) of Russia, for various reasons, intended to protect the Ottoman Empire from partition by other European powers. As one instrument in that effort, he initiated the establishment in September 1815 of a conservative "Holy Alliance" with Austria and Prussia. That action reflected no respect or favor toward West Asia, merely a move in the power politics of Europe.

Neither Alexander I nor Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1808) nor their successors could possibly have grasped the complexity of changes rapidly evolving among their subjects. Nationalism, coupled with Romantic throwbacks to the past greatness of their civilizations, gripped the region and were soon translated into increasingly combative movements of resurgence. All of Greece was still part of the Ottoman Empire and witnessed the earliest explosion of a struggle for liberation, which concluded in 1830 with the recognition of the country’s independence. But it was in Great Britain’s interest to guarantee an undivided Islamic Turkey.

Likewise, the successes of the Russian armies in the Caucasus against the Persians were closely watched by the British, who made no secret of their readiness to intervene if the Russians pursued their advantage too far into Persia or Afghanistan and thus came too close to Britain’s crown jewel, India. The centuries-long Russian dream of expanding south in the name of Orthodoxy and recapturing Constantinople had been stymied by 1830 and was never to be realized.

Organized Russian diplomacy greatly increased during the early 19th century. Previously, much poorly digested information about the outside world accumulated in ministry files from the frequent missions sent by the tsars to the surrounding West Asian countries. Active trade conducted mainly by Asian foreigners in the empire's border towns such as Astrakhan, at the north end of the Caspian Sea, also exposed Russia to flows of observations and gossip about other lands, but generated few insights for St. Petersburg regarding their political, economic, or military relevance. However, in 1819 Alexander I created an "Asiatic Department" within his Ministry of Foreign Affairs specifically to deal with West Asia and other lands on the continent. In 1820, he established a small "Asiatic Committee" of high officials, including himself, especially focused upon Russian-West Asian relations. Alexander I did not originate Russian diplomacy with West Asia, but he put it upon a permanent basis within the government.

During Alexander’s reign, relations with China were far less critical than those with the states to the west. Trade continued to funnel through trading cities on the Chinese-Russian frontier.