SLS i Helsingfors, Riddaregatan 5, Helsingfors
Symposium: Diplomacy and beyond
DIPLOMACY AND BEYOND – MAKING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS IN EARLY MODERN TIMES
Within several historical disciplines, the recent years have seen an increasing interest towards border-crossing political phenomena in the early modern era on the one hand and a re-appreciation of diplomatic sources from the same period on the other. Both tendencies are present in the so-called new diplomatic history and cultural approach to diplomatic history, which aim at combining social and cultural history with studies on diplomacy. Early-modern envoys performed several tasks which would not today be conceived as part of international politics and which have shown to be fruitful for studies combining diplomatic and cultural history. Other research has focused on networks and patronage within early-modern diplomacy both including and excluding formal envoys.
But what is international politics, if it is not diplomacy? How did actors cross borders in their policy-making? Which agents and groups can be highlighted when looking at diplomacy seen as a whole and not as confined to formal diplomats? This symposium addresses these questions through presentations of ongoing research projects with a broad take on diplomacy and diplomatic sources.
Professor Hillard von Thiessen has written several articles on the possibilities of a social and cultural as well as actor-centered history of foreign relations, and he has edited anthologies taking this approach into case studies, including e.g. gender perspectives on early-modern diplomacy.
The symposium is open and free of charge. Please register here.
Please register by September 26th.
10.15 Opening words
10.30 Professor Hillard von Thiessen (University of Rostock), Early modern diplomacy and cultural history - historiographic developments, topics and debates
11.30 Charlotta Wolff, docent (University of Helsinki), Opera and Diplomacy in Eighteenth-Century Paris
12.00 Lunch break
13.30 Miriam Rönnqvist, PhD candidate (Åbo Akademi), Neighborhood Trouble. Popular Unrest and Expressions of Dissatisfaction in Diplomatic Cross-Border Reporting between Denmark and Sweden, 1622–1624
14.00 Sophie Holm, PhD candidate (University of Helsinki), The Languages of Diplomacy in 18th Century Sweden
14.30 Coffee
15.00 Emil Kaukonen, PhD candidate (Åbo Akademi), Swedish-Moroccan Diplomacy in the 18th and 19th Centuries
15.30 My Hellsing, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Uppsala University), A Diplomatic Career in the Age of Revolution. Pierre-Jean-François de Gaussen in Berlin, Stockholm and France 1772–1827
16.00 Conclusion