SUMMARY:

This article follows Ottoman, French, and Russian diplomacy in mid-eighteenth-century Poland to argue that the concept of liberty was central for it and played a decisive role in the Ottoman declaration of war on Russia in 1768. Reconstructing mid-eighteenth-century Ottoman communication networks centered on Poland, the article explores the many uses of the concept of liberty by Poland’s neighbors, especially the Ottoman Empire. Liberty was a polysemantic concept central for the political and cultural sphere of the Enlightenment. By focusing on Ottoman–Russian rivalry over Poland where all parties referred to the value of liberty, the article demonstrates how diplomacy was shaped conceptually.