Housing the Nation Abroad. The Material Representation of Belgian Diplomacy, 1831-1914

In 1900, the Kebedgy Hôtel in Istanbul was acquired to house the Belgian diplomatic and consular services. This landmark event, funded by the state, marked the first time the Belgian government had purchased a diplomatic building abroad. The Belgian acquisition and building projects in this pioneering period (1831-1914) have to be understood in relation to two phenomena that characterised the nineteenth century: (1) national governments started acquiring and constructing buildings abroad to accommodate their diplomatic service, a system that was initiated at the start of the nineteenth century by the Great Powers who invested in such lavish city palaces in each other capitals; and (2) new nation-states were established, who would undergo a process of nation-building, constructing a national identity and partaking in an international network of diplomatic representation. This would lead to a significant shift as a new world order was in the making at the turn of the century: newly formed nation-states would adopt these strategies of material representation and start investing in diplomatic buildings. This shift, however, remains a blind spot in academic research, where diplomatic architecture has been a relatively new research focus. Most attention went out to purpose-built embassies in the postwar period, resulting in a threefold gap: (1) a thematical gap that prioritised purpose-built embassies over buildings that were acquired and renovated and those that served as a legation or consulate; (2) a chronological focus on the post-WWII period, (3) as well as a geographical gap, of both the sending country, as the lion's share of the studies focussed on Great Powers instead of the secondary and neutral powers of the long nineteenth century; as well as the host country, because the non-European cities targeted as sites for investments for material representation, informed by dynamics of globalisation and imperialism, remain understudied. Housing the Nation Abroad, the Material Representation of Belgian diplomacy, 1831-1914 not only broadens the knowledge of Belgian diplomatic buildings by focusing on the pioneering phase of 1831-1914 but also shifts the attention to the specificity of how secondary powers used diplomatic buildings as a tool of material representation to signal their status as a sovereign nation and as an (emerging) industrial and even colonial power, furthering their geopolitical ambitions and neo-imperial agenda. The research thus questions: