Invitation to the “Splendid Encounters 9: Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period”

Conference rescheduled.
The new dates: 30th–31st October 2020.

We would like to invite you to another Splendid Encounters Conference, co-organized by the Institute of History PAS.

Splendid Encounters 9: Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period is going to take place in Dubrovnik, Croatia on 30th–31th October 2020. The other organisers are Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and The Institute for Historical Sciences in Dubrovnik.

Splendid Encounters is a series of international and interdisciplinary conferences that aims to bring together scholars from the broadest possible range of perspectives to consider diplomacy and diplomatic activities in the early modern era. After successful meetings in, among others, Warsaw, Bath, Florence, Budapest, and Lisbon we invite you to join us for another event, this time hosted by The Institute for Historical Sciences in Dubrovnik, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The venue is Centre for Advanced Academic Studies (CAAS) in Dubrovnik (http://www.caas.unizg.hr/index.html).

We charge no conference fee. The coffee/tea and conference packaged will be covered by the organisers.

 

Programme

Day 1

8:30–9:30
keynote lecture by Gábor Kármán (Budapest)

 

PANEL 1
9:45–11:30
Theory and representation of the small statehood

Julien Le Mauff (Paris), State, Territorial Extension and Sovereignty in the Italy of City-States (14th–16th c.)

Blythe Alice Raviola (Milan), From Theory to Practice. Giovanni Botero and the Small States of Europe during His Time

Eloise Davies (Cambridge), A Cause of All Princes in Common’: Anti-papal Polemic and the Sovereignty of Small States

Joris Oddens (Padua), Visualizing Diplomatic Representation in Republican States: The Political Iconography of Ambassadors’ Portraits in Genoa, Venice, and the United Provinces during the ‘long’ seventeenth century

11:30–12:00 Coffee & tea

 

PANEL 2
12:00–13:30
Early modern microstates

Luciano Piffanelli (Tours), A Peculiar “Small State”: The Crucial Diplomatic Role of Piombino in Early Modern Europe

Lovro Kunčević (Dubrovnik), “Like Small Animals to Whom God Has Given Nothing but a Strong Voice”: Ragusan Republic and Its Many Patrons

Vesna Miović (Dubrovnik), From Tears to Poison: Ragusan Dealings with the Enemies from the Ottoman Neighborhood

13:30–15:00 Lunch

 

PANEL 3
15:00–16:45
Middle-sized states and the struggle for sovereignty

Clare Jackson (Cambridge), A Struggle to Become Sovereign: James VI of Scotland’s Dynastic Diplomacy 1595–1603

Castellano Garcia (Barcelona), Trying to be a Small State: The Struggle of Catalan Diplomacy for Achieving the Independence in the Europe of the Peace of Utrecht

Mark Edward Hay (Rotterdam), The Netherlands, Nassau and the House of Orange in the Era of the Reconstruction of the European International Order, 1780–1815: Lesser Powers, Strategies of Conflict Resolution, Dynastic Networks

16:45–17:15 Coffee & tea

 

PANEL 4
17:15–19:00
Eastern European context(s)

Martyna Mirecka (independent scholar), Does the Size Matter? Small Great Poland-Lithuania in the Seventeenth Century

Tetiana Grygorieva (Kyiv), Between the Quest for Patronage and the Struggle for Sovereignty: Diplomatic Relations of the Cossack Ukraine and the Ottoman Empire

Tatyana Zhukova (York), The Baltic Conundrum: The Duchy of Courland and Semigalia in the Seventeenth Century

Linda S. Frey and Marsha L. Frey (Missoula, Manhattan), Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Brandenburg-Prussia and the Great Northern War

 

Day 2

PANEL 5
9:00–10:30
The Italian context(s)

Brian Brege (Syracuse), Small Power Aggression and the Moral Hazard of Alliances: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s Mediterranean Adventurism, 1599–1612

Ubaldo Morozzi (Swansea), The Tuscan Contest. Trade and Diplomacy between England and Tuscany (1696–1704)

David Quiles Albero (Madrid), The Strength of a Republic: the Venetian Diplomacy during the War of Candia (1645–1669)

John Condren (Oxford) “È cosa certa … che ama gli italiani”: Louis XIV and the Small Italian States, 1659–1715

10:30–11:00 Coffee & tea

 

PANEL 6
11:00–13:30
The Western Mediterranean context(s): Small States of Barbary under Spanish Protection: Adapting Patterns of Negotiation for the Mediterranean Defense (1500–1550)
Chair: Bunes Ibarra

Jose Miguel Escribano-Páez (Seville), Fragmented Negotiations: Agents, Practices, and Objects between Tlemcen and the Spanish Monarchy at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century

Francesco Caprioli (Madrid, Milano), Pitiless Corsairs or State Representatives? An Overview of the Spanish Diplomacy with Algiers at the Beginning of the 16th Century

Rubén González-Cuerva (Madrid), An Uncommon Protectorate: Hafsid Tunis and Spanish Diplomacy (1535–1574)

13:30–15:00 Lunch

 

PANEL 7
15:00–16:45
Personal networks and mediation of small states

Alexandru Balasz (Cortland), Wallachian and Moldovan Phanariot Diplomats Negotiating their Autonomy between the Ottoman-Russian-Habsburg Empires

Zsuzsanna Cziráki (Szeged), Disputed Loyalties: Subjects of Seventeenth century Small States as Habsburg Interpreters for Oriental Languages

Jonathan Spangler (Manchester), The Personal Touch: Using Personal and Kinship Networks to Ensure Survival in a Small State, the Duchy of Lorraine under Duke Léopold (1698–1729)

Markus Laufs (Bonn), One Mission, Many Competitors. The Role of Peace Mediation as Desired Instrument of Being Part of the Concert of Great Powers

16:45–17:15 Coffee & tea

 

PANEL 8
17:15–18:45
Specific cases: Rome and the non-European states

Dorota Gregorowicz (Katowice), The State of the Church – Great Diplomacy of a Small State

David Veevers (London), ‘It Would in Soe Great a Measure lessen their Soveraignty’: Strategies of Survival for the Small States of the West Coast of Sumatra, 1680 to 1720

Samantha R. Billing (State College), Indigenous Kings and the Miskitu Nation: Diplomacy and State Building in Colonial Central America

 

18:45–19:15 GENERAL DISCUSSION

20:00 Conference dinner at the restaurant Kopun