Diplomatic History Research Articles

Eisenhower & Cambodia: Diplomacy, Covert Action and the Origins of the Second Indochina War by William J. Rust

<i>Eisenhower &amp; Cambodia: Diplomacy, Covert Action and the Origins of the Second Indochina War</i> by William J. Rust

Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael J. Hollerich

Reviewed by: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael J. Hollerich Carson Bay Michael J. Hollerich Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021 Pp. xi + 316. HB/E-Book $95.00. This book is a pleasure to read. A prominent Eusebius scholar details an expansive account of Eusebius’s foundational place in the history of Christian-history writing. While selective and diffuse in subject matter, the information distilled herein encapsulates the most important aspects of Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica (HE) and its legacy. Chapter One proffers an expert, up-to-date, expeditious introduction to Eusebiana: a survey of Eusebius’s life and works and his literary predecessors: Hegesippus, Julius Africanus, and Flavius Josephus. Most important here are 1) Hollerich’s four-part framework for defining Eusebius’s “theo-political vision,” the intellectual lifeblood of Eusebian literature, and 2) in-depth introductions to the HE and Chronicle. One problem: Hollerich tacitly affirms Momigliano’s statement (“Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.” in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography [Middltown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 1975]) that Christians invented new historiographies in the fourth century (ecclesiastical history, saint biography) and completely failed to reproduce “ordinary military, political, or diplomatic history in Christian terms” (32). At least one history from the generation after Eusebius directly contradicts this: Pseudo-Hegesippus’s On the Destruction of Jerusalem—a minor issue for a book on Eusebius, however. Chapter Two approaches HE’s Greek reception, first reading its manuscript history as reception, following approaches by Aaron Butts (for Syriac) and Rosamind McKitterick (for Latin). This survey is based on Matthieu Cassin’s recent work. Next Hollerich summarizes Rufinus’s translation-continuation of HE and the fifth-century Greek church historians that followed in Eusebius’s footsteps: Philostorgius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius Scholasticus. Hollerich’s treatment of this Eusebian historiographical “canon” is excellent, lightly reflecting on the reception of Eusebius’s “theo-political vision” and relying much on Peter Van Nuffelen, then Annick Martin, then Michael Whitby. This chapter clarifies this book as that of a historian: historical contents and contexts—as opposed to literature, philology, or theory—remain the clear object of inquiry. Hollerich dedicates Chapter Three to the HE’s reception in the “Non-Greek East”—a sign of the times, in which the study of Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian traditions is trending upwards. Hollerich provides a readable, thorough, illuminating romp exploring Eusebius’s influence on these three regional/linguistic Christian historiographical traditions. Relying again upon various experts, he shows how Eusebius’ Chronicle and HE supported a Syriac church history tradition that gave way around the sixth century to chronicling, and how West Syrian writers revived ecclesiastical history modeled on Eusebius’s HE. A special case is Eusebius’s Abgar legend (HE 1.13, 2.1.6–7), transformed into the Doctrina Addai, a purported correspondence between Jesus and the king of Edessa resulting in the [End Page 111] evangelization of that city by the apostle Thomas’s envoy Thaddeus (=Addai). Hollerich next summarizes how Armenian “church histories,” epitomized by the History of Armenia atttributed to Movsēs Xorenac’I, cribbed off the Chronicle and HE, along with Syriac traditions, in producing a more nationalistic Christian historiography (for example, an embellished Doctrina Addai connecting Armenia itself to Jesus via Thomas’s evangelist). Finally, Hollerich frames Eusebius’s work within the intricate Coptic church history tradition, working backwards from the Arabic History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria to the fragmentary “Coptic church history” embedded in the former, which is rendered in problematic Coptic Books 1–7 of Eusebius’s HE. The fourth- and fifth-century doctrinal disputes that alienated the Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic ecclesial traditions from Constantinople and the West left pockmarks on each of these traditions. Chapter Four deals with Eusebius’s afterlife within Latin Christendom. Rufinus translated and emended the HE, and Jerome translated and extended (part of) the Chronicle. Also in play are Bede and the regional, national, and/or contemporary Christian historiographies that sourced Eusebius. Hollerich mentions Cassiodorus’s importance in cementing Eusebius’s authority within his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning. There Eusebius...

Mourning a Murder: The Death of John Pierce, Local Politics, and British-American Relations

This essay examines how localities shaped federal policy and influenced foreign affairs in the early nineteenth century. By examining the local, national, and international response to the accidental killing of John Pierce on the Leander by British warships off the coast of New York in 1806, this piece argues for the importance of studying national issues, like national sovereignty, in local contexts. Building off of recent political and diplomatic histories that have recentered individuals and cultural politics in the study of foreign affairs, this essay traces how the local response to Pierce's death created a national outcry, directly affected on-going negotiations with the British empire, and laid the groundwork for future protests regarding national sovereignty. By expanding more traditional ideas of diplomacy to include local political leaders and the cultural politics of people in the street, this essay seeks to reinvigorate the diplomatic history of the early republic. The aftermath of the Leander affair demonstrates how diplomatic negotiations happened on a local, state, national, and international level between formal and informal political actors and how local issues helped define national priorities, create a national identity, and shape understandings of national sovereignty.

The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson

Reviewed by: The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson Michelle Martindale Kristin L. Hoganson, The Heartland: An American History. New York: Penguin Press, 2019. xxvi, 399 pp. $18.00 (paper). In her new book, The Heartland: An American History, Kristin L. Hoganson continues to examine the American empire, this time focusing on the American Midwest. While the area surrounding Champaign, Illinois, sits at the center of the book, The Heartland travels to the edges of the United States and across the Atlantic to break apart the mythologies of mid-western exceptionalism. Hoganson approaches ideas of the heartland both geographically and metaphorically, revealing a space that was not insulated from nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalization. Rather, it emblematized Americans' quests to integrate themselves into new global markets. To prove that the Midwest was more complex than the insular, exceptional, isolationist, or provincial traits often ascribed to it, Hoganson takes on well-worn midwestern topics such as farming and livestock industries, birding, and hunting. Fans of Hoganson's previous works on gender and race will [End Page 195] not be disappointed as she extends race and gender to midwestern preferences for northern border regions as well as to the unlikely casting of racial stereotypes onto livestock. Foremost, Hoganson attacks the notion of an insular Midwest that somehow protected quintessential American values. By concentrating on agricultural markets in chapters two through five, Hoganson thoroughly details the ways in which Midwesterners concerned themselves with national and global politics. From the transfer of German tiling technology that drained midwestern marshes to the competition of midwestern pork in British markets, Hoganson argues that Midwesterners were anything but static or insular. This point shines brightest in diplomatic histories of chapter four. She deploys trade journals, letters, and government publications to link populist movement agricultural politics to European imperialism. Using the University of Illinois in Urbana, Hoganson reveals the ground-level experiences of students and faculty who found themselves entangled in imperial webs. The faculty, hoping to cultivate imperial relationships to grow the global importance of Illinois agriculture, pulled agricultural knowledge from European colonial experiments. Meanwhile, British colonial subjects attending the university carved out a place of acceptance in an otherwise culturally narrow-minded community in order to gain a world-class agricultural education. In chapters two and three, Hoganson contributes to borderlands history and racial studies through her examination of cattle and Berkshire hog markets. While examining the economic ties of commodities to the British empire, she also reveals the deeply entrenched racism held by many who participated in the American hog and cattle markets. The Heartland reveals how Americans attached racial and gender stereotypes to both cattle and hogs, often seeing the imports from the South with "Mexican" and "African" heritage as inferior, while praising livestock originating from Canada as superior. Because Midwesterners perpetuated and profited from these ideas, Hoganson casts "the Midwest as a place where borderlands converged" (75). Hoganson begins and ends the book with the ideas of settlement and displacement. The Heartland moves beyond popular notions that Europeans pushed Native American groups, specifically the Kickapoo, from the area in order to domesticate, cultivate, and settle the land. Rather, chapter one posits that while settlements formed and White encroachers did push the Kickapoo out of Illinois, the new Champaign population continued to be quite mobile. Throughout the book, Hoganson traces the Kickapoo [End Page 196] through multiple removals by the U.S. government and encroaching newcomers. In her last chapter, we find the Kickapoo in their most recent forced relocation, situated on the U.S.-Mexican border. Here they battled for access to basic human rights, including the ability to move freely across their territory that straddles the Rio Grande River. With these bookends, Hoganson underscores two major currents of imperialism: invasion of a foreign land and the injustices imposed on its inhabitants. With these twin threads, she simultaneously dispels ideas that midwestern "settlers" earned their right to the land through settlement and that the largest threat to American ideals came from foreigners. While the analytical framework of the book is strong, chapter five lacks the tight structure of preceding chapters. Seeking to address popular theoretical analyses of the environment through meteorology...

1991년 북한의 대미, 대일 관계개선 시도와 한국의 대응

During the post-Cold War period, North Korea(NK) found an exit from severe diplomatic isolation by improving its relationship with the U.S. and Japan. NK and the U.S. started dialogues as the level of councilor in Beijing in 1988, and they had five meetings in 1991. Both countries maintained continuity of talks at that time. Meanwhile, South Korea(SK) endeavored to ensure that NK-U.S. relationship should not overshadow the SK-NK relationship. In that same year, NK also initiated formal discussions with Japan for the normalization of relations. SK outwardly supported the normalization of NK-Japan. However, SK actually wanted to manage the improvement of the NKJapan relationship through prior consultations with Japan. Normalization of talks between NK-Japan started in January 1991. However, it was recognized that it would be difficult to succeed without the solution to the North Korean nuclear issue. Furthermore, issue, such as NK's abduction of the Japanese, emerged as important dialogue topics. Hence, both states had to be satisfied with the initiation of talks for normalizing the relationship. Eventually, despite its efforts to improve its relationship with U.S. and Japan, NK did not achieve its goals in 1991. In contrast, SK obtained results on the SK-NK relationship and diplomatic competitions of UN during the same period. This study shows two facts of the diplomatic history: first, SK and U.S. fiercely argued about the direction of the North Korea policy under the table in 1991. Second, with regard to the Normalization Talks of NK-Japan in 1991, SK used to SK-USSR economic cooperation as diplomatic means so that Japanese Reparation Policy did not disturb the SK-NK economic cooperation.

The Diplomatic Relations of the Soviet Union during Cold War

This paper focus on the diplomatic relations of the Soviet Union during Cold War, and using Prague Spring which is a reform movement devoted to political democratization and market liberalization of Czechoslovakia as a insertion point to reveal the fundamental logic of the Soviet Union’s government’s foreign policies. With her study, the author’s endeavor is to ascertain the deepest reasons that influence the diplomatic relations of the Soviet Union after World War II. With the previous research, the author intends to outline the framework of the changing of the USSR’s foreign polices due to the country under distinct political leaders. The emphasis of this study lies in use three approaches( Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism) to analyze the Soviet Union’s foreign policies. Method of literature review is applied in this research. Detailed information has been acquired by the author about the USSR’s diplomatic policies, and the research has recorded valuable information about the diplomatic histories of Soviet Union. From the study, the author came to realize that ideologies of the USSR was changing over time, and it also strongly influenced by the internal affairs. This research paper demonstrates that the diplomatic policies of the USSR was changing from Neo-realism to Neo-liberalism due to the democratization and liberalization of Soviet Union’s interiors. Ideologically,the leadership position of socialism was abolishedandpolitically the legal status of the ruling party of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was abolished and the one-party system was replaced with a muti-party system. Economically, he abolished the economic structure with state ownership as the major part of the Soviet Union’s economy. This reform movement shows the Neo-liberalism replaced the main position of Neo-realism in ideology of the Soviet Union.

Sustaining the Confederacy: Informal Diplomacy, Anglo-Confederate Relations, and Blockade-Running in the Bahamas

Sustaining the Confederacy: Informal Diplomacy, Anglo-Confederate Relations, and Blockade-Running in the Bahamas Beau Cleland (bio) In early 1862, the acting governor of the Bahamas welcomed the arrival of “numerous strangers from the neighbouring continent,” as Confederates and their supporters flowed into Nassau to open a critical and lucrative trade with the nearby Confederate coast. Their friendly reception in Nassau was not simply an accident of geography.1 In an unlikely triumph of informal Confederate diplomacy, merchants, planters, and ship captains on both sides created ties of trade, self-interest, and genuine sympathy and sustained them against pressure from both the U.S. federal and British imperial governments. It was a diplomacy of personal acquaintance, business relationships, and shipping routes rather than one of formal envoys, and these informal networks gave the Confederacy a rare success in international affairs. By using British colonial partners, the Confederacy’s ad hoc collection of minor officials, merchants, and shipowners pressed claims on the British government, and, through the British, on the Union, in ways that formal diplomats could not. In doing so, this Confederate commercial-diplomatic network formed and protected the blockade-running enterprise that sustained much of the Confederate war effort and created the means [End Page 61] for expatriates and foreign allies to materially aid the rebellion. This Confederate web extended across British America, from Toronto and Halifax to British Honduras and numerous places in between, but it had its greatest success in Nassau. This reassessment of who mattered and what constituted “success” in Confederate diplomacy is important for bringing scholarship on Civil War diplomacy in line with the broader deinstitutionalization of diplomatic history.2 It is also an opportunity to reconsider how and why individuals and subnational groups shaped the course of the war and international relations in the nineteenth century—and to push back against the paradigm of the state as the most important actor, a perspective that underlies even the “new” diplomatic history of the Civil War.3 Whatever the relative claims over state capacity in this era, it was still a time of comparative bureaucratic weakness and agonizingly slow and unreliable communication. We must embrace the trend in histories of empire and sovereignty that deemphasizes the role of the state by decentering the diplomatic history of the war from the State Department or Foreign Office and placing focus on the people who personally shaped the transformation of state policy into action and, perhaps more frequently, vice versa.4 This approach allows us to ask different questions about things like blockade-running. Rather than just assessing how much it helped the Confederacy in material terms, or what it meant for formal diplomacy, we have the opportunity to reassess the actual importance of formal state power, both in blockade-running as well as in the “international” Civil War. The merchants, supercargoes, and minor officials who [End Page 62] conducted the informal diplomacy that enabled blockade-running were but one aspect of a broader universe of filibusters, ad hoc militias, settler colonists, and others who mobilized private resources and violence in behalf of (or in resistance to) empire building in mid-nineteenth-century North America.5 While they have often escaped the notice of historians, these grassroots foreign policy actors deeply affected the course of the Civil War and the shaping of sovereignty and empire. The United States government certainly took notice of the Confederacy’s friends in the Bahamas. Secretary of State William H. Seward noted, “Among those British subjects who were the first to institute a contraband trade with the insurgents, in violation of our laws, and in contempt of the Queen’s proclamation [of neutrality], is a house established in Nassau and Liverpool, under the name of Adderly & Co.” Seward, with undisguised anger, referred to the head of that firm, Henry Adderley, as “a person who is so vicious as to dishonor his own country and send desolation abroad through mine upon the motive of commercial gain.” As Seward informed a British diplomat, “I desire that the British nation may understand that . . . we do not confound the just and the good with the unjust and depraved.”6 Henry Adderley, whom blockade-runners dubbed “King...

Thomas A. Schwartz. Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography.

Ninety-nine years of age and more than forty years into his retirement from government, Henry Kissinger remains one of the most controversial figures in American (and international) society. His jowly face is instantly recognizable, his gravelly voice easily identified, and his name stirs immediate responses of awe or revulsion. Some remember Kissinger as a figure who increased American power and prestige in the world; others condemn him as a defender of war, dictatorship, and violent abuses of human rights, particularly in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa. Historians have long debated Kissinger’s record, and the continual release of new materials on his career, including Kissinger’s personal papers, will keep this debate going well into the future. A distinguished diplomatic historian, Thomas Schwartz has devoted many years of study to Kissinger’s career and the larger context around it. His deeply researched book, Henry Kissinger and American Power, is a detailed study of how Kissinger came to dominate American policymaking in the 1970s. A refugee, veteran, academic, and public intellectual before he entered the Nixon White House, Kissinger quickly placed himself at the center of most major US foreign policy decisions, often replacing the president, as Schwartz shows, during the months when Richard Nixon faced the most intensive Watergate investigations. At times Kissinger was the “president for foreign policy,” and Schwartz illustrates that he contemplated taking over the full job, if the constitutional limit on foreign-born citizens could be changed.

The Austrian Vice-Consulate in Rousse and the Hungarian Revolution (1848 – 1849)

The present study reveals the activities of the Austrian vice-consulate in Rousse along the Danubian coastline in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution (1848 – 1849). The Austrian vice-consul in the city, Emmanuel von Rössler, developed diligent intelligence and public service activities in Rousse, Vidin and Shumen, with which he privileged Habsburg loyalists and hindered the activity of separatist defectors in the Ottoman Empire. In the spirit of “new” diplomatic history, the contribution pays particular attention to the relationship between the vice-consul and the many disaffected soldiers and emigrants who relied on his instructions and resources in the tense political situation after the revolutionary 1848. Also, the article rethinks the place of consular institutions in the world of international relations through the lens of transnational history, emphasizing their relative independence and presenting a more accurate picture of the active interactions between different consular missions and units. Last but not least, the study uses the methodology of “entangled” history to rethink the role of local events in the Ottoman lands between Stara Planina and the Danube in the context of the global Age of Revolutions, analyzing the processes in this region as an integral part of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary dynamics in the middle of the “long” XIX century.

Dividing the Northern World: The Arctic and the Alaska Purchase

“Probably this treaty stands alone in the history of diplomacy, as an important treaty conceived, initiated, prosecuted and completed, without being preceded or attended by protocols or despatches,” declared U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward after he arranged the purchase of Russian America (Alaska).1 The treaty had indeed been negotiated in a highly unconventional manner. Seward and the Russian minister in Washington, Eduard Stoeckl, worked out the terms swiftly and almost alone.2 Stoeckl’s written instructions from his government were only a few pages long. Seward, who received no formal directive at all, merely consulted briefly with U.S. President Andrew Johnson before going ahead.3 No detailed records were kept by either side. Despite this lack of primary source material on the negotiation itself, historians have been able to analyze most of the issues involved, particularly the two key questions: why Russian Tsar Alexander II and his advisers wanted to dispose of the territory and why the United States decided to acquire it.4 The broad consensus is that the Russians were increasingly anxious to be rid of their only overseas colony, seeing it as more of a geopolitical and economic liability than an asset, while Seward viewed acquisition as a way to strengthen his country’s position on the Pacific coast. Both sides wanted to discomfit their mutual adversary, the United Kingdom, by placing the colony of British Columbia between two large stretches of U.S. soil. Seward, who was bent on further expansion, hoped that the purchase would induce the colonists to join the United States.5

Contributors

Journal Article Contributors Get access Diplomatic History, Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages i1–i3, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhac082 Published: 17 January 2023

Od prisluškivanja činovnika do istraživanja međunarodnog društva

The paper analyses historical developments in the discipline of the history of international relations, from its origins in the nineteenth century until present day. It provides an overview of numerous approaches and topics that have driven its development over the previous two centuries. The article focuses on the evolution of the history of international relations in its American and Western European variations. In the first part, the origin and the activity of diplomatic history are examined in the context of the emergence of professional historiography. At that time, diplomatic history narrowly focused on studying the political and diplomatic relations between states and was the most prominent topic in political and intellectual discourse. Its significance further intensified following the First World War, when the topic of war guilt emerged as one of the major interwar political issues. In the second part, the study discusses the evolution of diplomatic history into a broader international history, emphasizing social, economic and ideological aspects. The shift happened as a result of the rising interest in social and economic history following World War II and manifested itself throughout specific discussions in various countries. It was also marked by increased uneasiness and self-criticism that historians of international affairs have become prone to. Following that, the paper explores the impact of new theoretical approaches and thematic concerns, that emerged as a result of the cultural turn, on the practice and the shape of international history. It now includes not only interstate relations, but also a diverse set of actors such as international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations and networks of researchers, scientists and experts, all of which have been studied through the lenses of ideas, ideology, gender, beliefs, language, memory, value and perceptions.

Canada and Ireland: A Political and Diplomatic History by Philip J. Currie (review)

Canada and Ireland: A Political and Diplomatic History by Philip J. Currie (review)

A “New Diplomatic History” in Western-Russian Relations (Diplomacy and Diplomats: from the History of International Relations between Western Countries and Russia / ed. T.L. Labutinа. Saint-Petersburg, 2022

A “New Diplomatic History” in Western-Russian Relations (Diplomacy and Diplomats: from the History of International Relations between Western Countries and Russia / ed. T.L. Labutinа. Saint-Petersburg, 2022

Diplomatic Ceremonial for the Reception of British Envoy’s Sister at the Court of Catherine II

Referring to relevant approaches of New Diplomatic History, this article looks into a ceremonial reception for the British envoy’s sister by a Russian court. Although the procedure for introducing diplomatic spouses to European monarchs in the eighteenth century has been studied in depth, the issue of resolving ceremonial disputes remains unanswered. The case of arrival of James Harris together with his wife and sister in Russia in 1777 invites us to re-examine women’s participation in diplomatic ceremonies at the Russian Imperial Court. Miss Harris, not being de juro an official member of the diplomatic corps (that is, neither wife nor daughter of a designated male), de facto was an agent of diplomatic action. She was presented to the Russian court, thought accepted rules did not allow unmarried women to attend court functions. This article draws on a set of archival unpublished diaries of Katherine Harris which are devoted to court presentations and rituals as well as miss Harris’s assessment of courtiers and Russian noble society. The article concludes that, contrary to popular opinion, diplomatic protocol at Catherinian court was flexible. So, despite the prohibition for unmarried women to enter the palace, the imperial court greeted Katherine Harris as an ambassadress. Meanwhile, Catherine II perceived some rituals as an indispensable prerequisite (for example, the kissing of the sovereign’s hands).

Развитие торгового проекта и его роль в русскофранцузских отношениях начала 1680-х гг.

Introduction. The article considers the problems of Russian-French negotiations on the organization of trade between Russia and France in the first half of the 1680s.Materials and methods. The uniqueness of the study is facilitated by the use of materials from both Russian (Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents) and French archives (Archives du ministère des affaires étrangères), which have not previously been widely used in research. Thanks to the comprehensive use of documents from both sides, the study clarifies the details of the events that took place in the embassies and the specifics of their perception by the Russian and French courtiers. The analysis of the negotiations, their preparation and their procurement is conducted in the context of the methodology of new diplomatic history in order to establish the role of the trade question in the development of diplomatic relations between Russia and France.Results. The results of the study show the essential role of the Russian-French trade project in establishing direct connections between Russia and France, independent of changes in both countries policies towards the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. In the context of Russian court politics of the early 1680s, it is shown that both supporters of confrontation with Sweden and their adversaries, focusing on Russian participation in the anti-Ottoman coalition, were interested in rapprochement with France. At the same time, the preparation of the trade project led to analytical work in both countries that broadened their perceptions of each other, intensified contacts between representatives of both states, and led to the emergence of conjugate foreign policy projects.Conclusion. The work supplements the established in historiography conceptions of the organization of Russian diplomatic missions to France, the information about the role of the management of the Ambassador's office in this process, as well as the envoys and interpreters sent to France and their own perceptions of their place in this process.

Vera Olivová: Historian and Time

The author of the article investigates the main stages of scientific activity of the famous Czech professor of history at Charles University in Prague Vera Olivová (1926–2015). This paper is based on the analysis of her publications. In the 1950s and 1960s Vera Olivová published a fundamental monograph on Czechoslovak-Soviet relations from 1918 to 1922 with a large appendix of documents, as well as a series of articles on the relations of the Czechoslovak Republic with neighbouring countries — Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Despite the fact that they were written in line with the Marxist-Leninist methodology that prevailed at that time in the historiography of socialist countries, it is due to the wealth of archival material being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, and to the diversity and depth of research, these works by Olivová were an important contribution to the study of the history of the foreign policy of the Czechoslovak Republic and international relations in Central Europe. During the Prague Spring of 1968, she highlighted the key problems of the political and diplomatic history of Czechoslovakia from a new perspective, which was reflected in the book Czechoslovakia in a disrupted Europe, as well as various articles and reports presented at scientific conferences. After being dismissed from Charles University in 1970 and banned from teaching and conducting scientific work, Vera Olivová published several books on the history of sports and games, which brought her worldwide fame. After the “Velvet Revolution”, she returned to Charles University to teach and to continue her research on the history of Czechoslovakia. In 1991, she was elected chairman of the Edward Beneš Society and launched avid scholarly, organisational and publishing activities. The works of Vera Olivová are deeply imbued with loyalty to the democratic ideals of the founders of the Czechoslovak Republic — Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edward Beneš.

Дружина консула – авторка роману про українських дипломатів

The article outlines the main stages of the fate of the Ukrainian writer, translator and public figure Valeria O’Connor-Vilinska and the path of her novel „In Emigration” to the reader. The research on the Consul General’s wife as the author of a novel about Ukrainian diplomats is a part of the Women’s Face of Ukrainian Diplomacy project. It was initiated by the Scientific Society for the History of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2021 to mark the 30th anniversary of the restoration of state independence of Ukraine. Being published 75 years after the author’s death the literary work drew readers’ attention to little-known events in diplomatic history. At the same time the work contained consonant assessments of the painful problems of young diplomacy expressed in the memoirs of contemporaries. It is noted that the peculiarity of the novel is that it was based on the true history of the Ukrainian Consulate General in Zurich, her own life experience of the Consul General’s wife as a direct participant in the events.

Anna Eva Budura. Șaptezeci de Primăveri și Toamne cu China

Anna Eva Budura. <i>Șaptezeci de Primăveri și Toamne cu China</i>

Balázs Ablonczy. Ismeretlen Trianon: Az összeomlás és a békeszerződés történetei, 1918–1921 [Unknown Trianon: histories of the collapse and the peace treaty, 1918–21

Balázs Ablonczy. <i>Ismeretlen Trianon: Az összeomlás és a békeszerződés történetei, 1918–1921</i> [Unknown Trianon: histories of the collapse and the peace treaty, 1918–21