Special Issue:
Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Early Modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (XVII century)

Special Issue Editor: Dr. PhD Dorota Gregorowicz (University of Silesia – Poland)

Deadlines: 31 October 2020 (abstracts. Max: 250 words)/ 31 March 2021 (full text. Max: 35,000 characters, including spaces and notes)

Languages: English, Italian.

E-mail for Submission: eehreview@unitus.it

 

This Special Issue of EEHR will deal with the history of diplomacy and of its executors – diplomats (ambassadors, legates, nuntios, internuntios, agents and others) in a geographically covering a wide territorial area situated between the Baltic and the Black Sea. The seventeenth century’s Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a state conglomerate culturally and politically closely connected to Western Europe, has created, in the field of diplomatic practice, institutions, principles and ceremonies unique in the European context, strongly related to the specific political form of a ‘noble republic’. It is in the intentions of the authors to focus on how, the sovereignty of the ‘noble nation’, as well as a relatively weak position of the Polish-Lithuanian monarch, had such a considerable impact on the issue of foreign policy prerogatives and practices development in this part of Europe.

The important focus of the volume will be the historiographic stream of the new history of diplomacy. This does not mean, however, that it will withdraw from classic political approaches, which still remain an important field of research in the matter. We hope, conversely, that the realisation of the volume will constitute an international opportunity to reassess the concept of diplomatic incidents in old and new diplomatic history writing. Proposals for papers to be included in the volume could deal with (but are not limited to):

 

• specificity of diplomatic practice and, more generally, foreign policy framework in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the background of seventeenth-century Europe;
• communication circles of diplomats in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their relationships with the nobility, the noble perception of their presence;
• diplomatic discourse – terms and ideas characteristic for Poland-Lithuania and their interpretation in the diplomatic correspondence;
• Poland-Lithuania’s explanation in the West: diplomatic medium – understanding and perception;
• diplomatic challenge of interculturality and interreligiosity in the Polish-Lithuanian mosaic;
• diplomats in the Polish-Lithuanian court context;
• performances, ceremonies and gestures in the diplomatic practice;
• diplomacy as politics in practice;
• structural questions and diplomatic personnel.