Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c. 1410-1800. Tracey A. Sowerby and Jan Hennings, eds. Routledge Research in Early Modern History. London: Routledge, 2017. xiv + 306 pp. $149.95.
Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c. 1410-1800. Tracey A. Sowerby and Jan Hennings, eds. Routledge Research in Early Modern History. London: Routledge, 2017. xiv + 306 pp. $149.95.
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近代早期世界的外交实践 c．
DOI：
10.1086/699066
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
0.6
通讯作者：
Scott H
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Scott H
在过去的二十年里，对早期现代外交的研究发生了转变。到目前为止，通过被认为是变化无常的官僚机构的君主制国家的镜头来看待，它关注的是基于这些相同政体档案中的通信的国家外交政策。从这个角度来看，它的许多批评者的嘲讽似乎是完全合理的，大意是“一个店员对另一个店员说的话的记录”(在GM Young的著名判决中)。然而，在过去的二十年里，这个主题被一种更具文化性的方式复兴了。正如编辑们在导言中指出的那样，《新外交史》“建立在社会文化实践构成政治关系的前提之上”，完全是它们的“基础”(2)。这本书的准确标题是，这本及时的书聚焦于谈判的实践，更多地关注过程而不是结果，并提供了对现在指导研究人员的方法的有价值的介绍。与旧外交史的欧洲中心性形成鲜明对比的是，这一新的学术研究是全球性的，也表明了一种受欢迎的意愿，即将研究的行为者范围扩大到过去人们关注的短视集中的君主制革命之外。这两个目标在弗兰克·比肯霍尔茨令人印象深刻的研究中都很明显，他研究了礼物交换在VOC-荷兰东印度公司-分别与波斯和印度次大陆强大的萨法维帝国和莫卧儿帝国建立联系的方式中所扮演的角色。他的方法的核心是，VOC--与英国的VOC完全一样--是一个“公司国家”，在荷兰在远东的商业和政治权力中心巴达维亚有自己的外交节点。Guido van Meersbergen对早期VOC与莫卧儿皇帝Aurangzeb接触的学术和广泛研究也走了同样的路，并证实了荷兰人
The study of early modern diplomacy has been transformed during the past two decades. Hitherto viewed through the lens of monarchical states assumed to be protean bureaucracies, it focused upon national foreign policies based upon the correspondence in the archives of these same polities. In this perspective the sneers of its many detractors, to the effect that it was “the record of what one clerk said to another”(in GM Young’s famous verdict), appeared fully justified. During the past two decades, however, the subject has been revived by a more cultural approach. The “New Diplomatic History,” as it is now known,“builds on the premise that sociocultural practices constituted political relationships” and were nothing less than their “basis”(2), as the editors note in their introduction. Precisely titled, this timely volume focuses on the practices of negotiation, on process more than outcome, and provides a valuable introduction to the approaches that now guide researchers. This new scholarship is global in scope, in contrast to the Eurocentricity of the older diplomatic history, and also demonstrates a welcome willingness to extend the range of actors studied beyond the monarchical régimes upon which attention had been myopically concentrated. Both aims are evident in Frank Birkenholz’s impressive study of the role of gift exchange in the way the VOC—the Dutch East India Company—established contacts with the powerful Safavid and Mughal empires in, respectively, Persia and the Indian subcontinent. Central to his approach is the notion that the VOC—exactly like its English counterpart—was a “company-state,” with its own diplomatic node in Batavia, the center of Dutch commercial and political power in the Far East. Guido van Meersbergen’s scholarly and wide-ranging examination of early VOC contacts with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb traverses the same ground and confirms that Dutch