Reading between the lines

• Department of History

The EUI Methods in Early Modern History Working Group hosts a workshop revisiting familiar diplomatic and political sources and considering new ones.

Early modern European political communication as the transmission of information between rulers, or between rulers and their subjects, has undergone a significant renewal in the past decades. Whereas New Diplomatic History had helped consider the role of diplomats as individuals and shed light on public diplomacy as a way of associating society at large with international relations, recent research on political communication has complicated our understanding of how decisions are made, what the power dynamics are, and how interactive political communication actually is.

In this spirit, this workshop intends to revisit familiar diplomatic and political sources and consider new ones in order to see these issues in a different light and consider how rulers, diplomats, and the public at large interacted and shaped international relations. This raises questions about the variable reception of sources depending on the reader, from secret codes and innuendos to ensure information remains in a closed circle, to publications and pageants designed to include as wide an audience as possible. 

Please register to take a seat or the ZOOM link