Displaying the Prince’s Identity: Textile Accessories and Fineries in Seventeenth-Century Diplomatic Gift-Giving

Abstract

The language of gifts is plural and part of age-old strategies of soft power, i.e. the indirect representation of and negotiation between sovereigns. Studies by Christian Windler, Harriet Rudolph and Gregor M. Metzig underlined the significance of material culture in diplomacy and its importance for starting economic and cultural exchanges and transfers. This article offers to observe both the official and the parallel gift-exchanges in various diplomatic contexts. It analyses the Spanish mission of the Duke of Grammont in 1659 and the importance given to gloves, lozenges and perfumes before showing how gift-giving is in turn gender-neutral and genderoriented with a close analysis of gifts given outside official diplomatic events and aimed particularly at women. A closer study of the material environment of the widely discussed 1623 negotiations of the Spanish Match between Spain and England will show what the material language meant in the case of a doomed negotiation. The structure of exchanges may not change a lot, but the meaning of a gift and how it was received varies according to the territory, time, the stakeholders’ identity, and the political situation. This means that the study of material details – textiles, cuts, patterns, decorations, qualities, values – or the process of exchanges alone does not suffice to understand the meaning(s) princes gave such gifts. They need to be contextualised geographically, historically, economically, sociologically, and strategically. Such need is made particularly in the final case studies of the article dedicated to the role of portrait medallions and finery in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French and Spanish diplomacy.