Experts of Diplomacy. The English Embassy Secretaries in Early Modern Istanbul

• Applicant: Dr. Florian Kühnel
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 320970041

Although early modern diplomacy structurally relied on officials beneath the rank of an ambassador, these 'subaltern actors' have very rarely been the subject of historical research. To do justice to the collective character of early modern diplomacy, the project, by contrast, decidedly examines the complex cooperation of noble ambassadors and their subordinates within the daily routine. To this end, the project analyses embassy secretaries as actors, who operated at the intersection of diplomacy and administration. Embassy secretaries needed an extensive knowledge of diplomacy's everyday practices and management as their noble supervisors were only seldom trained as bureaucrats. These secretaries can therefore be characterized as 'experts of diplomacy'.Everyday administrational practices of diplomacy, it is assumed, can be studied particularly well in an intercultural context. Diplomacy depended especially on the knowledge of experts when it was practiced outside the European society of princes, where the familiar courtly rules were not applicable. Besides specialized administrational knowledge, embassy secretaries here also had to possess cultural knowledge, or rather had to serve as brokers of cultural knowledge. Furthermore, the intercultural situation lowered the barriers for discussing issues and thus promoted the production of sources.The project's starting point is Thomas Coke, who at the end of the 17th century was secretary of the English embassy at Istanbul for over 20 years. The case's extraordinary rich source material allows retracing the often poorly documented diplomatic acting of subaltern office-holders. By bringing together the history of diplomacy and that of administration and analysing both through a praxeological perspective the project has three objectives: 1. to reconstruct Thomas Coke's historically specific role as an embassy secretary within the English diplomacy in Istanbul at the end of the 17th century; 2. to examine on the basis of this 'biographical probe' the general relevance of embassy secretaries in Istanbul as 'experts of diplomacy' (mainly by integrating additional contextualising examples); 3. to use the situation in Istanbul to discuss the general transformation process of the diplomatic culture in the 17th century and to ask whether one can speak of an increasing professionalisation of diplomacy in that time.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Peter Burschel