By the early 1820s, British policy in the Eastern Mediterranean was at a crossroads. Historically shaped by the rivalry with France, the course of Britain's future role in the region was increasingly affected by concern about the future of the Ottoman Empire and fears over Russia's ambitions in the Balkans and the Middle East. The Regency of Tripoli was at this time establishing a new era in foreign and commercial relations with Europe and the United States. Among the most important of these relationships was that with Britain. Using the National Archive records of correspondence of the British consuls and diplomats from 1795 to 1832, and within the context of the wider Eastern Question, this book reconstructs the the Anglo-Tripolitanian relationship and argues that the Regency played a vital role in Britain's imperial strategy during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Including the perspective of Tripolitanian notables and British diplomats, it contends that the activities of British consuls in Tripoli, and the networks they fostered around themselves, reshaped the nature and extent of British imperial activity in the region.

As World War II sweeps over Europe, nine-year-old Danielle (“Dani”) Loesseps escapes from Latvia under the protection of the Dutch consul. Her Jewish mother, the consul’s secretary, is tragically left behind at the end of a momentous year which sees a heroic scheme to save refugees from the Nazis, the blossoming of a secret love, and an unhappy woman’s revenge. The consul’s young daughter Berta Vandercam also grows up in the shadow of the war and strives to understand why her father never speaks about their time in Riga. Memories of the Riga consulate and questions about what happened there haunt the survivors as they remake their lives in the postwar world.