In the time of the 'Great Powers', Stratford Canning served as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during several long missions throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Drafted into diplomacy by his older cousin and mentor, the statesman George Canning, Stratford arrived in the Ottoman capital at the age of 22 in January 1809, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. He concluded his final mission there in October 1858, more than two years after the end of the Crimean War. His name became synonymous across Europe with the so-called Eastern Question, the imperial contest between the Powers for leverage in the Levant.