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Kōnstantinos Stamatēs Letters to Panagiōtēs Kodrikas
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Held at: Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Kōnstantinos Stamatēs (1764-1817) was a Greek patriot, diplomat, journalist, and secret agent who worked covertly for the French foreign ministry and for the Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, Michael Soutzo, during the French Revolution. Originally from Argos, Stamatēs left Istanbul in 1787 to study medicine in Paris and eventually gained French citizenship. Abandoning his studies around 1790 to participate in political causes, Stamatēs became actively involved with French efforts to generate an uprising in the western provinces of the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 18th century. He served as general counsel for France in the Danube and Altona and undertook secret missions to procure arms to support the Greek independence movement.
The collection consists of one hundred and ninety-eight autograph letters sent between 1788 and 1794 by Greek patriot and French secret agent Kōnstantinos Stamatēs to Panagiōtēs Kodrikas (1762-1827), then the secretary to Michael Soutzo (1729-1803), the Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, who was the final recipient of the letters. Addressed from Paris (November 25, 1788 - 11 September 1793), Rouen (September 17, 1793), Le Havre-de-Grâce (September 30, 1793), Hamburg (October 15, 1793 - February 22, 1794), and Altona (March 1 - December 27, 1794), the letters comprise 842 pages bound into three volumes in chronological order. While the vast majority of letters are in Greek, a few are in French, including two in a different hand.
In 1872, French Hellenistic scholar Émile Legrand (1841-1903) published a small sample of ten of Stamatēs's letters as Lettres de Constantin Stamaty à Panagiotis Kodrikas sur la Révolution française, janvier 1793 and announced his intention to print the Stamatēs-Kodrikas letters from Paris in their entirety. However, the proposed complete edition was never published.
Letters are arranged chronologically within three bound volumes.
Transcriptions of ten of Kōnstantinos Stamatēs's 1793 letters to Panagiōtēs Kodrikas were published by Émile Legrand in 1872. These are available in digital format through HathiTrust.
Purchased in 2016, with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund (AM 2017-27).
For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.
This collection was processed by Kelly Bolding in August 2016. Finding aid written by Kelly Bolding in August 2016.
No materials were separated during 2016 processing.
People
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Manuscripts Division
- Finding Aid Author
- Kelly Bolding
- Finding Aid Date
- 2016
- Access Restrictions
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Open for research.
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Collection Inventory
1 folder
Bound letters in this volume are from 1793. Two loose letters in French in another hand that were tucked into the volume are dated February 27 and March 7, 1792.
Physical Description1 folder
1 folder