David Urquhart

David Urquhart (1 July 1805 – 16 May 1877) was a Scottish diplomat, writer and politician, serving as a Member of Parliament from 1847 to 1852.

Born at Braelangwell, Cromarty, Scotland, Urquhart was educated, under the supervision of his widowed mother, in France, Switzerland, and Spain. He returned to Britain in 1821 and spent a gap year learning farming and working at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich before attending St John's College, Oxford. He never completed his classics degree as his mother's finances failed.

In 1854 Urquhart married Harriet Angelina Fortescue, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, and the couple had three sons (one of whom, William, died aged only thirteen months; Francis Fortescue Urquhart was another), and two daughters. She wrote numerous articles in the Diplomatic Review under the signature of Caritas, and died in 1889.

In 1827, Urquhart joined the nationalist cause in the Greek War of Independence. Seriously injured, he spent the next few years championing the Greek cause in letters to the British government, a self-promotion that entailed his appointment in 1831 to Sir Stratford Canning's mission to Istanbul to settle the border between Greece and Turkey.

Urquhart's principal role was to nurture the support of Koca Mustafa Reşid Pasha, intimate advisor to the Sultan Mahmud II. He found himself increasingly attracted towards Turkish civilisation and culture, becoming alarmed at the threat of Russian intervention in the region. Urquhart's campaigning, including publication of Turkey and its Resources, culminated in his appointment on a trade mission to the region in 1833. He struck such an intimate relationship with the government in Istanbul that he became outspoken in his calls for British intervention on behalf of the Sultan against Muhammad Ali of Egypt in opposition to the policy of Canning. He was recalled by Palmerston just as he published his anti-Moscow pamphlet England, France, Russia and Turkey which brought him into conflict with Richard Cobden.

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