PUBLICDIPLOMACY · Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Theatrical Entertainments for the State Journeys of English and French Royals into the Low Countries, 1577-1642

Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Theatrical Entertainments for the State Journeys of English and French Royals into the Low Countries, 1577-1642

European governments often rely on social media to manage their international relations. This is what scholars of international relations have called Public Diplomacy (PD): the effort of diplomatic actors to influence foreign affairs by reaching out to international audiences through actor-to-public interaction. Rather than being a modern invention, historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have demonstrated that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries printed media were already widely used for PD. Knowledge of this tradition helps to increase historical awareness about ideas and practices of diplomatic communication and collaboration prior to the foundation of the European Union. However, regularly overlooked in scholarship on the early modern history of PD and diplomacy in general is the important role that the performing arts—much like social media today—played in managing foreign affairs. This research project has sought to redress the balance and expand knowledge about the diplomatic function and reception of the early modern performing arts within the context of the state journeys that the English and French royal crown made into the Low Countries between 1577 and 1642. Never been studied in depth before, the theatrical entertainments given for the voyages, including tableaux vivants, triumphal processions, and mock naval battles, constitute excellent examples of early modern PD. By bringing together the fields of early modern diplomacy and the performing arts, the project boasted a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to the state journeys that is essential to understanding the historical development of PD today. Contributing to such an understanding highlights the importance of arts and culture - what Joseph Nye has termed 'soft power' - for promoting and preserving diplomatic communication and collaboration between states. Key results of the action included a one-day hybrid conference at Leiden University (contributions to which will appear - expanded and reworked - in an open access special journal issue), a public outreach programme at a regional Dutch archive, one major open access journal article, one short overview journal article, three major peer-reviewed book chapters, various contributions to popular media and (online) scholarship platforms, and a first draft of a monograph on the topic, provisionally entitled Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Royal Tours of the Low Countries, 1577-1642. The latter monograph is the first book-length study to analyse how the theatrical entertainments served as both lubricants in negotiations between representatives of the Low Countries, England, and France, and as tools for promoting collaboration between those countries to a European audience of diplomats, nobles, and non-elites.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз