Diplomacy as an engagement with different political cultures. Envoys of monarchs in the Swiss cantons c. 1500-1700

Diplomatic representatives of European princes perceived the Swiss cantons and their alliances within the Swiss Confederation as alien components of a system of power relations dominated by monarchs. To negotiate with the cantons required a considerable degree of intercultural competence. This essay highlights not only specific gaps in Swiss historiography, but proposes also a new social and cultural framework for the study of external relations in early modern Europe. Future research should acknowledge both the domestic conditioning of foreign policy decisions and the manifold ways in which external relations affected everyday life. Thanks to particularly rich archival evidence, diplomatic contacts can shed much light on how people interacted within a plurality of cultural contexts, each governed by a distinctive act of norms and values. Reprinted by permission of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht