Flattering Alliances: Scandinavia, Diplomacy, and the Austrian–French Balance of Power, 1648–1740, by Peter Lindström and Svante Norrhem, tr. Charlotte Merton

Abstract

Peter Lindström and Svante Norrhem’s new book provides an Anglophone readership with an interesting and accessible window into two realms with which few of those readers will be familiar: the story of early modern Scandinavian diplomacy, and a particularly Scandinavian approach to the study of diplomatic history. While successful in the first of these intentions, by introducing readers to important aspects of the Scandinavian kingdoms’ interactions with the continental Great Powers France and Austria from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, the book’s greatest contribution will, I believe, come from its less intentional ability to expose its audience to the ways in which diplomatic historians in Scandinavia conceptualise and pursue their work. Lindström and Norrhem’s study aims to uncover the strategies pursued by France and Austria, driven by their intense rivalry, to influence the Scandinavian kingdoms and their political and social elites in the century following the Peace of Westphalia, and to measure the success and consequences of these strategies. Great Power efforts to curry favour in Sweden and Denmark assumed three primary forms: financial subsidies (sometimes quite substantial) offered directly to the Scandinavian governments; one-off gifts or short-term payments offered to influential Scandinavian individuals and families in order to influence their actions or encourage them to provide politically useful information; and the establishment of longer-term patron–client relationships, often spanning several generations, between the French or Austrian monarchies and prominent Scandinavian families which earned the Great Powers helpful and sometimes effective support within the Scandinavian power structure in return for longer-term financial assistance, honours and titles, and educational and career prospects for the families’ children (especially their sons).