French Revolutionary Transformations of Diplomatic Practice: The Case of Franco–Ottoman Relations, 1792–17971

Abstract

This article focuses on questions of rupture and continuity in European international relations around 1800, taking French revolutionary diplomatic practice in the Ottoman Empire as a case in point. Historians who have studied the conduct of French revolutionary diplomacy tend to emphasize the ruptures in revolutionary diplomatic practice. The analysis of Franco-Ottoman alliance negotiations (1792–1797) does not fully match with this assessment. Although it is certainly true that the Revolution led to great alterations in French diplomatic culture, French diplomats were often far from discarding all diplomatic conventions. The article gives a short overview over the diplomatic agents working for the French embassy and their reactions to the Revolution in France. It then presents the Ottoman reaction to the regime change in France, in particular with regards to the transition from monarchy to republic. The main focus is on the question of innovation and continuity in diplomatic practice and on the self-representation of the new French state.     

阿马尔那泥板书信中所见的古代近东大国外交方式

阿马尔那时代是近东历史上的和平外交时代，五大国支配着外交的走向和国际关系的格局。在大国外交中，存在3种外交方式，礼物交换、王室联姻和信息沟通，这3种外交方式构成了当时外交的主要形式，促进了和平外交的持续发展。     

Diplomacy in a Global Early Modernity: The Ambiguity of Sovereignty

Abstract

This is a concluding comment on the chapters of this special issue. After a discussion of the articles, we will take a closer look at the new view of European diplomacy and foreign relations. The historiographical change regarding early modern foreign relations has fundamentally altered the way we interpret the roles, the agencies and the loyalties of early modern envoys. Taking the conclusions of this research into account, we ask if diplomatic actors of the ancient regime differed distinctly from their Asian counterparts at all. Then, as a final point, we examine how fundamental changes in the Sattelzeit–particularly in Europe, but also in the context of global power relations–affected intercultural diplomacy.     

Arnau de Vilanova at the summit of Oloron (1287): a major inflection point in the life of a medieval physician

In July 1287, during mediation by Edward I for the release of Charles, prince of Salerno, the kings of England and Aragon met with Charles' representatives at a large assembly at Oloron in Béarn, on the edge of the Pyrenees west of Bayonne. An English document deriving from this meeting reveals the presence there of the famous physician Arnau de Vilanova, a member of the Aragonese party, and recipient of a gift from the king of England. This article demonstrates how this document and other recent discoveries, properly contextualised, can illuminate an obscure period in Arnau's life in which he turned towards a new pattern of existence.     

The “tribal spirit” in modern Britain: evolution,nationality, and race in the anthropology of Sir Arthur Keith

ABSTRACT

This article re-examines the anthropological scholarship of Sir Arthur Keith (1866–1955), who served as the president of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1914–1917), the Royal Anatomical Society (1918), and the British Association of the Advancement of Science (1927), who wrote prolifically on anatomy, evolution, and the idea of race. While most commonly associated with the Piltdown man hoax, Keith's contributions to the discipline were far greater and more complex. This essay specifically considers how Keith sought to problematize the concept of the nation, considering the nation-state as an evolutionary unit. The first half of this essay examines Keith's theories on the mechanism of evolution (hormonal instincts) and how this informed his ideas of races and nations as evolutionary units. The second half of the essay considers how Keith deployed his ideas about evolutionary instincts, with the goal of advising Britons about how an evolutionary perspective would help understand, if not resolve, modern political challenges, both international and domestic, that faced the British Empire around the time of the First World War.     

From Batticaloa via Basel to Berlin. Transimperial Science in Ceylon and Beyond around 1900

ABSTRACT

Recent historiographies of ‘Science and Empire’ have successfully critiqued older euro-centric narratives. They highlighted how science was ‘co-produced’ through interactions between knowledgeable European and non-European actors in colonial ‘contact zones’, and how this ‘pidginised knowledge’ circulated through networks across various sites within the British Empire. This article shares and expands this approach. By focussing on continental European scholars in Ceylon around 1900, it argues that scientific networks were never confined to a particular empire. Science among Europeans was, rather, multi-lingual, mostly cross-disciplinary and always transimperial. Applying such an approach to the history of science in late colonial Ceylon allows us to uncover entanglements between historical processes that have for too long remained subject matters of disconnected historiographies: the emergence of Buddhist revivalism, evolutionary theories about human origins, the transformation from ‘liberal race science’ to Nazi eugenics in Germany, and the surfacing of British cultural anthropology.