A Dutch Dartmouth: Ernst van Eeghen’s Private Campaign to Defuse the Euromissiles Crisis

Abstract

This article offers a case study that addresses two themes central to the notion of a New Diplomatic History. The first concerns the wish to expand the spatial dimensions of diplomatic history, in the sense of expanding the range of those whom we can arguably identify, in terms of their behavior, motivations, and interactions, as ‘diplomats’. The second concerns the practice of diplomatic history itself, which in the Netherlands has largely been dominated by orthodox representations of the profession marked off by strict boundaries. From this perspective, ‘high politics’ is not a domain for the uninitiated, and this attitude was long perpetuated by both the academic and diplomatic professions themselves. The subject of this article, Ernst van Eeghen, due to his unique contacts and level of expertise, was able to challenge these boundaries and for a period of five years was able to place himself near the centre of negotiations on East-West security relations. He did so out of a combination of motivations: religious, commercial, and personal.