Early Modern Diplomacy3 Tremml-Werner: Multiple Actors and Pluralistic Practices: Non-European Perspectives on Early Modern Diplomatic Relations (1/10)
We continue our introduction of the content of the #emdiplomacy handbook:
Welcome with us, Birgit Tremml-Werner who is researcher at Stockholm university.
She is specialized in global diplomatic history and one of the founders of the Global Diplomacy Network:
https://www.su.se/english/research/research-groups/global-diplomacy-network
As a global historian it is not surprising that she worked and travelled all over the world, e.g. Tokyo, Vienna, Zurich. https://www.su.se/english/profiles/bitr0401-1.635173
(2/10)
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For the #emdiplomacy handbook she brings in the global perspective and focuses on the principles of intercultural foreign relations and their management in Afro-Eurasia and the Atlantic world showing us that the question who is/was a diplomat is even more complicated when we leave the European context.
Missionaries, interpreters, merchants, ship captains etc. could all engage in diplomatic negotiations. Tremml-Werner warns us, that a narrow definition of diplomatic actors could reproduce stereotypical views.
Moreover, it contributes to an Othering of diplomatic practices which would severely hamper our understanding of any diplomatic practice in its own right. (3/10)
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In her article Tremml-Werner identifies core elements of intercultural and transcontinental #diplomacy such as misunderstandings which could occur on all sides of negotiations, originating from either ignorance or a belief in the superiority of one’s own way of thinking and acting, including religious beliefs, or the importance of power bargaining and different legal regimes in polycentric macro-regions such as the Atlantic world, the Indian Ocean or the Sinosphere. (4/10)
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However, traditionally, empires and indigenous communities outside Europe had been excluded from state-centred diplomatic history, so it was left to scholarship in post-World War II area studies, anthropology and the social sciences to thoroughly investigate diplomatic exchange outside European spheres of influence. (5/10)
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A popular way of comparing intercultural diplomatic actors beyond Europe is to focus on #courts and their performative roles, especially in (Eur)Asia. Compared to #earlymodern Eurasia, it is far more difficult to apply actor-based approaches in the Mesoamerican frontier and the Pacific, due to different recording styles and differences in how official receptions were prepared, as well as the absence of direct correspondences between delegation members and their patrons, which was usually carried out by indigenous intermediaries. (6/10)
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With the expansion of long-distance trade, beneficial commercial relations turned into the prime subject of foreign relations in certain areas. Policies in dealing with foreigners would often develop organically in port cities with large foreign communities. On certain occasions, this would include the official exchange of #envoys with the representatives from the country of origin of merchant communities. In other geographical settings, such as in the East Asian polities described above, boundaries between foreign relations and foreign trade were blurred for centuries. (7/10)
#emdiplomacy #NewDiplomaticHistory #earlymodern #history #histodons
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Moreover, Tremml-Werner highlights selected practices of intercultural and transcontintenal #diplomacy such as diplomatic ceremony and tribute-systems, compact or patronage. In many parts of the world, written documents have a long tradition of creating formality and trust, which led them to become the preferred tool of governance and administration. They also became a “symbolic image” of power relations. Given the aesthetic elements of letters, they can be regarded as elements of material diplomacy and – in certain circumstances – an integrated part of employing cultural exchange through gift-giving, in particular when interwoven with gold leaf, as was the case with several official letters sent from Asia to Europe. Other examples of diplomatic letters with a strong aesthetic and material component are to be found in Sumatra and in Islamic Africa. (8/10)
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Appearing in various places around the globe, treaties are not only concluded between polities who share a similar idea of sovereignty or territorial rights, which does not disqualify them as instruments of #diplomacy The issue about intercultural treaties leads to the question of whether these agreements had an equal or unequal character. Clearly, different forms of unequal treaties existed from the seventeenth century onwards – colonial treaties and the unequal imperialist treaties implemented with Asian empires such as China, Japan or the Ottomans. In Canada, for example, the British crown concluded dozens of treaties with the indigenous populations with regard to settlements and land rights. Indigenous agency within these processes has often been overlooked in the study of these treaty negotiations. (9/10)
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Tremml-Werner demands more exchange between studies of European diplomatic history and that of other world regions and academic traditions to integrate native and indigenous sources and voices more balanced and to understand the rise of diplomacy as a result of global processes. (10/10)
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