Early Modern Diplomacy Research Articles

Early Modern Diplomatic History

AbstractOver the last two decades, the study of early modern diplomatic history has changed considerably. Once diplomatic historians took a bureaucratic state‐centric focus to the topic and typically produced studies of foreign policy. Now they are more likely to focus on the processes by which international relations were maintained, prioritising the study of individual diplomats and monarchs, personal and information networks, and princely courts. Scholars have reinterpreted the chronology and geography of the introduction of resident ambassadors in Europe and have broadened their field of analysis to include diplomatic gifts, diplomatic ceremonial, diplomatic hospitality, and other aspects of diplomatic culture.

Introduction: Diplomacy and Cultural Translation in the Early Modern World

The essays in this collection explore diplomacy as a form of cultural translation. Out of necessity, Europeans sought new ways of conducting diplomacy in the changing environment of the early modern world, as they grappled with challenges from within their old but crumbling respublica christiana, and also with changing relations with powers and communities beyond it. Reflecting the current vitality of research into early modern diplomacy and practice that has extended the boundaries of what we consider as constituting “diplomacy,” these essays collectively examine how Europeans, on state and sub-state levels, interacted with powers from the Near East, Asia and Africa. In doing so, they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how increasingly globalized diplomatic agents deployed symbolic and rhetorical languages that could be shared amongst different participants.

Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe

Whereas recent scholarship has analysed and theorized the practice of public diplomacy in modern international relations, early modern diplomacy is still often thought of in terms of peer-to-peer interaction and secrecy. This article seeks to show that public diplomacy was a central aspect of early modern international relations as well. While examining how, when, and why early modern diplomats communicated with foreign audiences, it argues that early public diplomacy opened up spaces for public debate and created transnational issues, and is therefore central to the history of news and the development of the public sphere.

The Law of Nations and Declarations of War after the Peace of Utrecht

SUMMARYThe history of the law of nations is generally seen as a synonym for the history of the laws of war. Yet, a strictly bilateral perspective can distort our interpretation of early modern diplomacy. The Peace of Utrecht (11 April 1713) inaugurated an era of relative stability in the European state system, based on balance-of-power politics and anti-hegemonic legal argumentation. Incidental conflicts ought to be interpreted against this background. Declarations of war issued in 1718, 1719 and 1733 during the War of the Quadruple Alliance and the Polish Succession should not be read as doctrinal surrogates for trials between two parties, but as manifestos in a European arena.

The Lost Map of Matteo de’ Pasti: Cartography, Diplomacy, and Espionage in the Renaissance Adriatic

The sculptor Matteo de’ Pasti left Rimini in 1461 bound for Ottoman Sultan Mehmed ii’s court at Constantinople with gifts from Sigismondo Malatesta. When his ship stopped in Crete, Matteo was detained by the island’s Venetian authorities on charges of espionage. Contemporaries report that he carried with him a map, now lost, but assumed to be a strategically valuable one of the Adriatic. Discussions of Matteo’s mission claim that it attempted to supply the sultan with essential intelligence for an invasion of Italy. Yet, this spy story finds little confirmation in historical sources. Indeed, our knowledge of the map’s very existence derives from the reports of Sigismondo’s enemies. I examine this prominent embassy as a means to reconsider attitudes toward the utility of maps in the scholarly imagination and the role of art and artists in early modern diplomacy. Revisiting documentary evidence and the claims scholars have grounded therein, I explore how we have told the tale of this journey in ways that conform to our own shifting expectations, sometimes at the expense of fidelity to the sources at hand. Overwhelming focus on the absent map has obscured both Matteo’s role as envoy and the distinctive place of evidently skillful and delightful visual culture in this attempted exchange.

Introduction The Art of Embassy: Situating Objects and Images in the Early Modern Diplomatic Encounter

This essay makes the case that visual and material approaches may hold the key to the study of early modern diplomatic encounters, which were always undergirded by the exchange of objects and often represented (or imagined) in pictorial form. It calls for a visually and materially intensive approach to diplomacy by privileging objects of exchange, such as gifts, as crucial tools of cross-cultural mediation and communication, while also looking closely at visual representations of encounter in line with relevant textual sources. Building on recent studies that have called for a new diplomatic history, this essay situates ambassadors as envoys with a certain amount of agency and independence, rather than conveyors of fixed state positions, thus calling for a dynamic understanding of early modern embassy, which was comprised of meanings articulated not just by polities, but also by individual human actors and things.

The Theories of Politeness and Compellation as a Prospective Methodological Field for Analysis of the Early-Modern Diplomatic Correspondence

The article examines the theories of politeness and compellation which allow to give wide interpretation to diplomatic sources of early-modern period in our region. As a result, the author offered a new methodological field for future studies of this matter.

Introduction: Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean

This special issue, an exercise in integrated Mediterranean history through the lens of diplomacy, demonstrates that diplomatic genres and practices associated with a European political and cultural tradition, on the one hand, or an Islamic tradition, on the other, were not produced in isolation but attained meaning through the process of mediation and negotiation among intermediaries of different confessional and social backgrounds. Building on the “new diplomatic history,” the essays focus on non-elite (e.g. Christian slaves, renegades, Jewish doctors, Moriscos) and less commonly studied (mid- and high-ranking Muslim officials) intermediaries in Mediterranean cross-confessional diplomacy. The issue argues that the early modern period witnessed a relative balance of power among Muslim- and Christian-ruled polities: negotiations entailed not only principles of reciprocity, parity, and commensurability, but these were actually enforceable in practice. This challenges the notion of European diplomatic supremacy, prompting scholars to fundamentally rethink the narrative about the origins of early modern diplomacy.

Nieuwe diplomatieke geschiedenis van de premoderne tijd

Abstract New Diplomatic History in the Premodern Age. An Introduction The study of medieval and early modern diplomacy has long been considered one of the most conservative subdisciplines in the field of history. During the last three decades, however, diplomatic history has undergone profound changes. This introductory article shows how these changes were triggered by developments in other disciplines and happened under the influence of the cultural turn. Until recently most general histories of diplomacy were based on the conceptions of Donald Queller and, more particularly, of Garrett Mattingly. Scholars working on medieval and early modern history have applied new international relations theories and moved away from analyses that were strictly oriented towards diplomatic relations between sovereign territorial states. The cultural turn gave rise to a range of innovations in diplomatic history, leading historians to focus on the diplomatic process and its cultural dimensions rather than on the results of diplomatic activity. The special issue for which this article serves as an introduction shows that historians working in the Netherlands have also been influenced by these developments.

‘A Memorial and a Pledge of Faith’: Portraiture and Early Modern Diplomatic Culture

Portraits of rulers, medals, and other images of politicians were widely used within early modern diplomatic practice. Historians have long appreciated the role of portrait exchange in early modern royal marriage negotiations. Far less appreciated are the prevalence of portrait exchanges between European monarchs outside of marriage negotiations and the diplomatic uses made of these, and other, royal portraits. Diplomatic art operated within a ceremonial and symbolic system where even small distinctions were imbued with considerable significance and where reciprocity, honour, prestige, magnificence, friendship, and concepts of gift-giving were crucial components in constructing its diplomatic meaning. Rulers’ images played an important role in diplomatic strategy; their display advertised current and past political alliances and suggested the direction of future policy, while portrait gifts and personal interactions with portraits during diplomatic audiences created political intimacies, established confidences, and helped to maintain relations in strained circumstances.

Was ist Diplomatie und wenn ja, wie viele?

It is only very recently that the perspective of gender history has found its way into research on early modern diplomacy. So far, though, studies in this field have focused almost exclusively on the roles of women in early modern diplomacy. Despite the fact that diplomatic activities of men are still the principal subject of research, those are hardly ever approached through the analytical prism of gender. Pointing out the close interlacing of official state diplomacy and supposedly informal court diplomacy, the present article explores gendered contributions to conflict management, competing roles of male courtiers and ministers, and the professionalization of diplomacy as a process of masculinization.

The Gift of Rubens: Rethinking the Concept of Gift-Giving in Early Modern Diplomacy

This article investigates Peter Paul Rubens’s diplomatic mission to the court of Charles I of England by order of Philip IV of Spain. Bringing together arguments from diplomatic history, anthropology and art theory, it revises the traditional view of Rubens as a heroic figure who brought peace to England and Spain, and honour to himself. Rubens’s mission to London should be considered instead as a gift sent by Philip IV to Charles I. The diplomatic culture of the early seventeenth century, which underscored the importance of painting as a means of communication and in which reciprocity was regarded as a fundamental mechanism, profoundly influenced the favourable outcomes of both Rubens’s and the Spanish court’s diplomatic strategies. It was not just Rubens’s personality and genius that brought about political change. Rather, it was the symbolic action of the gift and its subsequent materialization in a painting that Rubens donated to Charles I.

The Piacevoli Notti of Giambattista Casali: diplomats and fairy tales in early modern Italy

Published at Venice between 1551 and 1553, Giovanfrancesco Straparola's collection of fairy tales, novelle, riddles and madrigals, Le piacevoli notti, proved a European best‐seller. In the collection's loose framing narrative, set during carnival in 1530s Venice, the first tale of the final night is recounted by English ambassador to Venice, Giambattista Casali (c.1494/95–1536). Straparola's frametale has been read chiefly to illuminate the fairy tales; this article employs it to trace a set of elite Venetian social institutions and networks into which Casali successfully interpolated himself over the course of his 1526–35 embassy. Casali's initially unlikely inclusion in the Piacevoli notti demonstrates the immense practical significance of those networks to his diplomatic credibility and efficacy. Crucial to Casali's diplomatic career was his building up of political credit through informal sociability and through brokering cultural patronage between Venice, his native cities of Bologna and Rome, and the courts of Mantua, England, or Hungary. In highlighting the value of informal sociability for Renaissance diplomats such as Casali, the article contributes to calls for a broader conception of politics in the historiography of early modern diplomacy.

The Conquistador and the Phoenix: the Franco-Spanish Precedence Dispute (1564–1610) as a Battle of Kingship

The hierarchical ordering of diplomats, and of the princes they represented, was a hallmark of early-modern diplomacy and caused endless conflicts. France and Spain in particular argued continuously over precedence, both claiming to outrank the other. Rather than reconstructing specific squabbles over ceremonial or offering general explanations for precedence issues in early-modern diplomacy, this article focuses on the reasons why both the French and Spanish monarchs felt they were the worthiest king in Christendom by reconstructing the debate between their publicists between 1564 and 1610. The focus on the characteristics of each prince or kingdom that - according to them, at least - entitled them to a position of honor, will allow us to analyze the nature of the international hierarchy under construction. This debate shows that the arguments employed were closely connected to ideas on kingship in both monarchies, so that one can say precedence was fought as much between states and dynasties as between concepts of kingship.

Intercepted Love-Letters: Reporting the 1535 Apostolic Nunciature to Hungary

Although interception has long been recognized as having played a disruptive role in Renaissance diplomatic communications, little systematic attention has been paid to its mechanisms or consequences for the interpretation of early modern letters or diplomatic papers. This article examines the interception of a set of letters sent by nuncio Girolamo Rorario (1485-1551) to his curial colleagues as well as to his mistress during his 1535 nunciature to Hungary. The letters’ interception enables them to be read for not only their memorialist qualities but also for the rhetorical strategies which diplomats such as Rorario employed to transmit information or maintain personal ties, as well as to negotiate complicated, even contradictory commissions, loyalties, and patronage relations. In cautioning historians against reading diplomatic reports as unembroidered reporting of factual events, the Rorario letters also suggest the value of intercepted correspondence for a broader conception of early modern diplomacy,...

Diplomacy and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox

Early modern diplomatic history has begun to emerge from the shadow of Garrett Mattingly’s seminal Renaissance Diplomacy. Several collections of essays and special editions of journals have begun to question a once-familiar chronological framework and to bring the insights of cultural historians to a field that was once conceived of as high political history (see, for example, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, xxxviii/1 [2008], Journal of Early Modern History, xiv/6 [2010], D. Frigo, ed., Diplomacy and Politics in Early Modern Italy: The Structure of Diplomatic Practice, 1450–1700 [2000]). This present volume, edited by Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox, which professes to be part of this reassessment, arises from a conference held at the University of Kent in 2008. Anyone who picks it up expecting a collection of essays exploring the role of diplomats as art agents and cultural consumers, or a discussion of the significance and complexity of diplomatic ceremonies, or the role of diplomacy in mediating cultural conceptions, will be disappointed. Few of the essays in this volume deal with such issues: in many, culture is more textual, rooted in correspondence, treatises, ciphers, and news, while the thread holding them together is intelligence—whether conceived of as news gathering, news networks, or espionage, albeit sometimes in diplomatic contexts. Consequently, the volume contains several valuable contributions which further our knowledge of an underexplored area, but it also neglects important fields that are essential for a cultural understanding of early modern diplomacy.

“Dui Fratelli. . . Con Dui Principi”: Family and Fidelity on a Failed Diplomatic Mission

AbstractCaptured on a failed 1535 diplomatic mission to Hungary, English ambassador Giambattista Casali revealed in his confession the central roles played by diplomatic families in facilitating, managing, and prosecuting early modern diplomacy. This article explores how Casali and his brothers, by strategically positioning family members in the service of multiple patrons, drew on these flexible and overlapping networks of kinship and patronage to promote familial interests as well as those of their princely patrons. Focusing on the Casali family’s engagement in Hungarian diplomacy between 1529 and 1535, the article illustrates how the Casali solicited appointments, managed multiple loyalties, and negotiated the conflicts of interest resulting from their colorful and active diplomacy between England, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Hungary at the zenith of English and Hungarian relations with the papal curia.

Sublime Diplomacy: Byzantine, Early Modern, Contemporary

There are three main periods when the sublime has been theorised: antiquity, the eighteenth century, and the present. Using exemplary texts from each period as a baseline, the article investigates to what extent we may say that diplomacy is sublime by the lights of its own contemporary standards. The first main part reads Byzantine diplomacy as sublime in the sense discussed by Longinus in Peri hupsous. The key was to sublimate barbarian envoys to the glory of the Empire and, ultimately, God by stimulating and if possible overwhelming all their senses. The second part reads early modern diplomacy against Edmund Burke's On the Sublime and Beautiful. This diplomacy was sublime in that it kept imminent terror away. The third part draws on Jean-François Lyotard's work to argue that contemporary diplomacy is not sublime in the narrow sense given by Lyotard, which is that it may produce something qualitatively new, but that it is sublime in the weaker sense that its task emerges as seemingly infinite. I conclude that different epistemes produce compatible theories of the sublime and diplomatic practices, and that contemporary diplomacy's claim to being sublime is increased by its lingering ability to produce sublime effects in the Byzantine and Burkean senses.

DIPLOMACY AS A MEANS OF CULTURAL TRANSFER IN EARLY MODERN TIMES

This paper offers an introduction to the following papers, which represent the results of a round table at the Nordiska Historikermöte 2004 in Stockholm. It discusses the renewed interest in the study of diplomacy and international politics. This revival during the past few decades is sometimes not more than a reinvention of the old diplomatic history. However, it is also influenced by the history of ideas, as elaborated by Anglo‐American historians, and modern cultural sociology. The history of diplomacy seen from the perspective of cultural transfer offers new insights into early modern diplomacy based on a new reading of well‐known material.

SEMIOTICS OF BEHAVIOR IN EARLY MODERN DIPLOMACY: POLISH EMBASSIES IN ISTANBUL AND BAHÇESARAY

AbstractCeremonial has always played a great role among European and Middle Eastern societies, reflecting the value systems cherished by their elites. Embassy instructions and envoys' reports provide valuable material concerning codes of behavior in early modern diplomacy. What was considered "proper," and how was an envoy expected to behave in order to stress his sovereign's dignity and power? Oriental courts in Istanbul and Bahçesaray developed elaborate ceremonials for foreign envoys. Forced into a deep prostration before the Muslim ruler, sometimes even threatened with physical violence, Polish envoys deeply resented their humiliation. Some of them sought comfort in alcohol, others produced fabulous reports of their imaginary altercations with Ottoman and Crimean dignitaries, and others found pleasure and revenge in contemptuous descriptions of their hosts' "barbarous" habits. Until recently, such diplomatic reports have been used in Polish historiography almost uncritically. Yet such reports often tell us more about their authors' mentalities than about the world they pretend to describe.