Özet:

Abstract enThis paper analyzes the changing role of Danubian principalities within the Habsburg politics in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By giving special emphasis on the rising economic importance of Lower Danube as a critical section of trade route between the Black Sea and Central Europe for Donaumonarchie, this study aims to reveal how the Habsburg expansion strategy in the East came to be shaped by the interplay between imperial aspirations and mercantile interests of the state when the Ottoman center gradually lost its grip over the Danubian Delta and key Danubian ports, namely Galatz and Braila. It thus revolves around two interrelated problématiques: a) to what extent the rising political rivalry of Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires over the control of Lower Danube transformed the diplomacy and perceptions over the Eastern Europe and Principalities; b) how the permeability between imperial and commercial domains set the contours of Habsburg policies in Lower Danube during the age of steam

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