The sovereign Porte: Anglo-Ottoman diplomacy and the defensive recognition of the Armenian Protestant millet: 1846–1850

The recognition of the Armenian Protestant millet by the Ottoman Empire has usually been explained either as a success of missionary activity or as an outcome of British diplomatic pressure, and in both readings the Ottoman state appears as a passive actor. Drawing on Ottoman and British archival sources, this study re-examines the diplomatic process of 1846–1850 and proposes a different interpretation. Recognition was also the product of a policy that the Sublime Porte (Bâbıâli) actively pursued in order to limit foreign intervention and to preserve its jurisdiction over its non-Muslim subjects. While Britain regarded the Protestant subjects as a means of extending its influence within the empire, the Porte granted recognition in a gradual and controlled manner. The study therefore reads the Tanzimat period not merely as reform conducted under European pressure but as an era in which the Ottoman state made effective use of the instruments of international diplomacy, positioning the Porte as an active agent rather than a passive party.