Abstract
The annexation by Russia of the Crimean Peninsula – officially confirmed on gth January 1 784 – sent shock- waves through the European chancelleries. The prospect of Russia’s growing control over the B lack Sea the Mediterranean trade, at the expense mainly of the English and the Dutch, marked a watershed in Great Britain’ s until then rather unobtrusive diplomatic involvement in the „Eastem Question”. The Russo-Austrian-Turkish war of 1 787 prompted Britain into diplomatic action: at the Congress of Shishtov in 1 790, British, Dutch and Prussian envoys mediated between the belligerent powers. The British representative was Sir Robert Murray Keith, a career diplomat, then ambassador in Vienna. The following fragments, however, do not concern the convoluted international situation and great power rivalries of the late 1 81h c. They show a lighter side of Murray Keith who, on his way from Vienna to Shishtov (north-east Bulgaria), found time to write down his impressions of the new places and people he encountered. This is the first translation into Romanian of Sir Robert Murray Keith’s letters relating hisimpressions of the Romanians and their lands in the 1 790s.s