The Establishment of the Eastern Agency in Istanbul as a Center for Polish Exile Missions in the 1830s–1840s Ottoman Balkans
Aleksandar Zlatanov
Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences / Department of History, Vytautas Magnus University
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 221-247 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.221
This article analyses the ideological development and political evolution of the Balkan policy pursued by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski’s Hôtel Lambert, one of the exiled political camps of the Polish Great Emigration associated with conservative-liberal and monarchist ideas. It argues that the geopolitical transformations in Eurasia of the late 1830s onwards and especially the growing strategic importance of the Ottoman Empire within the framework of the Eastern Question prompted Czartoryski and his circle in Paris to revise their earlier political assumptions and formulate a more active and systematic policy toward the Ottoman Balkans. The clearest expression of this new strategy was the establishment of the permanent Eastern Agency in Istanbul under the direction of the agent Michał Czajkowski. The article examines the circumstances of the agency’s creation, the ideological premises of its activity, and its role in implementing Hôtel Lambert’s wider political designs in the Ottoman Balkans. It further demonstrates that the agency functioned not just as an informal diplomatic outpost, but as a key center for coordinating Polish émigré missions, gathering intelligence and maintaining contacts with the primary strategic European policymakers and local political actors. At the same time, it attempted to adapt the Polish national cause to the realities of international diplomacy and revolutionary movements. The study thus situates Hôtel Lambert’s Eastern Agency existence within the broader framework of transnational exile politics and the imperial rivalry among the Great Powers in the Ottoman Balkans. It also highlights the extent to which Polish political exiles were drawn into wider diplomatic and strategic calculations, particularly in the context of anti-Russian activity and the shifting balance of power after the Second Ottoman–Egyptian Crisis.
Keywords: Hôtel Lambert, Eastern Agency, Balkan policy, Ottoman Balkans, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Michał Czajkowski, Polish emigration, exile diplomacy