The Olive and the Horse: The Eighteenth-Century Culture of Diplomacy

The diplomats who gathered in the picturesque town of Utrecht to end the wars fought in Europe as well as overseas acted on a public parquet. Their intrigues, maneuvers, negotiations, quarrels, and social activities, sometimes including sexual liaisons, were part of the public performance of peace. These representatives could not but be conscious of their role in this performative culture and be adept at its manipulation. The sociability of this international elite so integral to theancien régimefacilitated the deliberations. In the eighteenth century those who served abroad, whom Napoleon would later derisively dub ‘the brilliant butterflies of the