FOR A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN DIPLOMACY

This paper compares the role of mercantile reporting in French and Swedish emissarial correspondence during the first half of the 17th century. The comparison suggests that accounts of a uniform ‘society of princes’ or a homogenous European elite culture requires modification, and proposes a style in which historians of diplomacy and political culture can incorporate and yet go beyond current semiotic and linguistic historical concerns. Commercial information occupied a prominent position in Swedish embassy practice and correspondence; in France, the reporting of prices, the activities of merchants and the movements of goods was almost entirely absent from the correspondence of diplomats. Explaining these differences requires not only scrutiny of economic structure, fiscal and diplomatic institutions, and the available political languages, but also consideration of the role of contingency and the historical factors that constrain and enable the deployment of language.