As the first in a larger series of publications which preserve and make accessible primary sources from various archives and other materials related to the history of Circassia, this volume contains the relevant dispatches of A. A. Challaye, the Consul of France in Odessa for the years 1836 to 1840. It offers a rare glimpse into the way French diplomacy was making sense of events in and around the North Caucasus and the eastern shore of the Black Sea at the time of increased tensions between Russia and Great Britain over the Circassian question – the political status of nations which inhabited the western part of the North Caucasus and of the North Caucasus in general.