The conference concluding the DFG-funded project "Entangled Objects? The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Transcultural Processes of Negotiation in the 18th Century" gathered an international circle of scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss new approaches to the history of intercultural diplomacy in the early modern period through the lens of material culture studies. In their introduction HARRIET RUDOLPH and VOLKER DEPKAT (both Regensburg) defined material culture as a combination of complex object worlds shaped by single objects, object ensembles and material settings, on the one hand, and of highly diverse diplomatic object cultures comprised of object-related practices and object-related semantics, on the other. They suggested that the use of artifacts may have been even more important in transcultural contexts than in interactions of societies with a largely similar cultural background. From an analytical point of view, one should put objects center to gain new insights into the logics of diplomatic interaction.

Drawing on the concept of object biographies, the first panel dealt with the significance of objects still preserved in today’s museums and collections. In a series of case studies ranging from the encounters of Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in sixteenth-century Mexico to the Hawaiian kings’ Liholiho Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III dealings with representatives of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, VIOLA KÖNIG (Berlin) investigated the multiple uses indigenous elites made of precious objects in their diplomatic interaction with European powers. König argued that indigenous elites used objects such as feather helmets or cloaks to defend their traditional privileges or protect their country’s independence against European colonial claims. In her analysis of the album amicorum (1616-1632) of Wolf Leuthkauff, who served for more than two decades as a courier in Habsburg-Ottoman diplomacy, HARRIET RUDOLPH discussed the transcultural materiality of a paper-object and its complex social biography creating a “third space”, where Habsburg diplomats, Ottoman officials and European travelers mingled across times and regions. Remarkable for its illuminated Ottoman and Persian Poetry, the album offers the rare case of an actor from the third row pursuing a genuine interest in Ottoman culture. As an Ego-object paving paths into the sensual and emotional history of early modern diplomacy, this artifact illustrates various forms of diplomatic self-fashioning but also emotional reassurance that were crucial in foreign places marked by cultural difference and imperial rivalry.

Object-centered practices at the periphery of empires were discussed by JEAN-FRANÇOIS LOZIER (Ottawa) and HALEF CEVRIOĞLU (Izmir) in the second panel. Lozier addressed the question of how materiality can be of relevance in the study of treaty-making between French settlers and the Haudonosaunee confederacy from the first political alliances to the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701. Among the objects, images, and written documents that played a vital role for the intercultural relations between autochthonous peoples and colonial societies, wampum belts made of white and purple shells figure prominently. Having multilayered meanings and different functions, wampum belts were used by the colonists to conduct political negotiation and trade with the indigenous communities. Lozier also emphasized the material dimension of peace treaties, which the political leaders of the different indigenous groups signed with pictograms. Looking at the mission of the Habsburg ambassador Johann Ludwig von Kuefstein after the Peace of Szőnyi in 1628, Cevrioğlu argued that diplomatic interaction at the Ottoman imperial periphery, which often took place in lavish tents, was supposed to mirror diplomatic ceremonial at the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. At their own receptions, local governors attempted to impose grand vizierial procedures, for example, by arranging seating furniture and curtains in a way meant to degrade the Habsburg ambassador. This object-centered practice, however, was not accepted by Kuefstein, who requested that the diplomatic space be outfitted in a way that paid tribute to the newly established parity between the Habsburgs and Ottomans.

The third panel addressed the question of how material settings created diplomatic spaces in imperial centers. GAMZE ILASLAN-KOÇ (Regensburg) chose a comparative approach to examine the significance of the different objects used to represent the resident Habsburg diplomats in Constantinople as well as the Ottoman envoys in Vienna in their respective reception halls. The rich material equipment, such as life-size portraits of the emperor and canopies on the Habsburg side and sultanic monograms (tughras), and items of weaponry on that of the Ottomans served the purpose of legitimizing the diplomats and demonstrating the authority and military power of their rulers. Using the example of seating furniture, Ilaslan-Koç qualified the conventional narrative about the supposed decline of the Ottomans' power after the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 by stressing that while the Ottoman diplomats exported their equipment abroad, Habsburg envoys to the Ottoman Empire were not allowed to bring their own chairs with them. BARBARA LASIC (London) concentrated on the politics of display at the Royal Garde-Meuble in Paris from its foundation in 1680 to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Originally intended for the storage and maintenance of the exquisite furniture made by the Royal Manufacture and used for courtly spectacles, the Garde-Meuble soon became a space of diplomatic interaction. Increasingly, foreign diplomats were taken on systematic tours through the building with its rich collections to inspire awe for the eminent history of France, to demonstrate the aesthetic achievement of France’s luxury production, and to wet consumer appetites inside and outside of Europe, with the Siamese mission to France in 1686 serving as a case in point.

TANJA BÜHRER (München) opened the fourth panel on gift exchanges by looking at the diplomatic interactions between local rulers, British envoys, and the representatives of the East India Company at the court of the Nizam in Hyderabad from 1770 to 1820. Among the many gifts exchanged, mechanical clocks made in Great Britain were of particularly high value to the Indian elites. They were not only considered amusing “curiosities”, but had the power to influence political negotiations and turn British diplomatic missions into a success. However, in the wake of the British anti-corruption campaign all kinds of gifts became suspicious and were subjected to an administrative procedure of monetary estimation, which became a threat to diplomatic relations. The attempt to establish reciprocal gifts of portraits as a diplomatic practice to counteract the suspicion of bribery failed too. MARK HÄBERLEIN (Bamberg) studied the little-known Moroccan mission to the imperial court in Vienna in 1783, which served the overall aim of strengthening economic ties between the North African state and the Austrian Hereditary Lands. Häberlein identified four material dimensions of the diplomatic encounter between the Moroccan embassy and the Habsburg court: First the mutual hospitality and supply with local foods and drinks, second the exchange of gifts such as horses, silk cloth, porcelain dishes or pocket watches demonstrating the princely generosity of both sides, third the marketing of the Moroccan mission by Austrian businessmen such as the engraver and publisher Hieronymus Löschenkohl, and fourth the commemoration of the embassy leaving material imprints in the cityscape of Vienna, for instance, regarding street names.

The fifth panel explored the politics of food and hospitality in colonial North America. MARKUS DIEPOLD (Regensburg) focused on corn and liquor as key resources for the Anglo-Haudenosaunee relations in the late eighteenth century, stressing their differences and similarities. In contrast to Indian corn, which lost significance as diplomatic tool for the English colonies after the Seven Years’ War and the liberalization of trade, liquor remained important as both a commercial good and a site of moral battles over indigenous misbehavior and its reasons. JONATHAN QUINT (Ann Arbor) focused on two different kinds of objects in intercultural diplomacy in the borderlands of the Great Lakes from 1783 to 1820, namely crescent-shaped gorgets made of silver or brass by gold smiths in Philadelphia or Montreal, and baskets made by indigenous people from birch bark for the transport and storing of maple sugar (makakoons). With the colonial authorities indiscriminately distributing too many of the gorgets to indigenous leaders to signify political recognition and honor, this practice of gift-giving eventually led to a destabilization of social structures within the local communities. The makakoons filled with maple syrup, in contrast, helped stabilize settler societies in that they provided a rich nourishment at the fringes of empire.

Panel six started with ALESSIA CECCARELLI’s (Rome) analysis of objects used by members of the Lazagna family serving as Genovese diplomats at the Holy See in the mid-seventeenth century. Among them was a precious key belonging to a group of seven keys that locked the cabinet holding the sacred relic of the Image of Edessa in the Church of St Bartholomew of the Armenians in Genoa. Together with a whole set of other objects such as family documents, military banners, and holy relics, it served to legitimize the Lazagnas’ status as a political actor at the papal court in public rituals. SHOUNAK GOSH (Nashville) explored the gift-giving between Abbas the Great of Persia and the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the first Quarter of the seventeenth century. The objects exchanged despite conflicts over imperial hegemony in the region, were mainly rubies engraved with the names of ancestors of the Safavid dynasty. They were held in the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad and considered Shiite relics. Ghosh interpreted the unusual removal of rubies from a Shiite shrine to use them as a gift for a Sunni ruler, which was considered sacrilege by the Shiite clergy, as a calculated demonstration of the Shah's power. By disposing of these objects, he attempted to disseminate the dynastic ideology of the Safavid empire.

The final panel dealt with material objects used in intercultural diplomacy as carriers of knowledge and sites of memory. RUBEN GONZÁLEZ CUERVA (Madrid) elaborated on the question of why there were so few objects left from the several embassies that the Spanish monarch received from Muslim countries such as Persia, the Ottoman Empire and Morocco throughout the seventeenth century. In contrast to other foreign embassies to the Spanish court of that period, such as the Japanese Keicho Embassy or the Russian mission headed by Pyotr Potemkin, the Muslim missions have hardly left any material traces. Cuerva argued that the obliteration of material objects from Muslim territories that were not war trophies but diplomatic gifts, was a political strategy pursued by the Spanish monarchy to bolster its imperial self-image as a nation of crusaders.

The concluding discussion, opened by pointed statements of the two conveners, highlighted some of the strands and results of the conference’s debates, with the reach and limits of intercultural understanding regarding the logics of object use emerging as a key issue. While some of the papers presented suggested that the actors involved in intercultural diplomatic encounters knew exactly what they were doing, when they were using objects to realize their diplomatic goals, other presentations rather suggested the opposite. In the light of their findings, the logics in intercultural diplomacy were shaped by highly ambivalent practices of object use. As a result, the actors were constantly navigating between certainty and uncertainty. In this context, the questions emerged to what extent the process of intercultural diplomacy was in and of itself culturally productive and what extent there was a mutual understanding of the value that certain objects used in diplomatic negotiations had in their respective cultures of origin.

Regarding its title, the conference has shown that the power of objects, object-related practices and semantics becomes particularly obvious when political actors argue over the forms of object use in times of peace, or when they use objects in times of conflict to moderate these conflicts, to disguise them, to accept difference without starting to fight. The contributions to the conference convincingly demonstrated that practices of object use were entangled in multiple ways, which shed light on various processes of transfer relating to political ideas and diplomatic practices. As such, the systematic analysis of object-use demonstrated the heuristic value of applying material culture approaches to the study of early modern intercultural diplomacy. In addition, investigating the material worlds that diplomatic actors created allowed to grasp these people as individuals with distinctive emotions, ambitions, and world views that considerably shaped diplomatic interactions. Future research should move beyond the idea of objects as mere symbols and analyze even more intensively their specific material qualities, the sensual sensations they were able to create and the ways in which material artifacts hindered or promoted diplomatic agreements in early modern times.

Conference overview:

Volker Depkat / Harriet Rudolph (Regensburg): Welcome and Opening Remarks

Section 1: Where are the Objects? Intercultural Diplomacy, Objects and Museal Collections
Chair: Anne Mariss (Regensburg)

Viola König (Berlin): Exotic Gifts. On the Lobbying of Indigenous Elites to Influence European Colonial Policy. Examples from Mexico, Hawai’i, Brazil, Cameroon, and Other Countries in European Museums

Harriet Rudolph (Regensburg): Entangled Objects and Trans-imperial Subjects. A Museal Object, its Historical Context, and the Challenges of Researching the Material Culture of Diplomacy

Section 2: Frontier Objects? The Material Culture of Diplomacy on Imperial Peripheries
Chair: Christian Windler (Bern)

Jean-Francois Lozier (Ottawa): Making Another Great Peace: Considering the Materiality of the Franco-Haudenosaunee Treaties of 1665-1667

M. Halef Cevrioğlu (Izmir): The Curtain, the Stool and the Robes of Honor: Material Behavior of Diplomacy in Ottoman Hungary in the 17th Century

Section 3: Creating Diplomatic Spaces. The Display of Material Objects in Rooms of Diplomatic Acts
Chair: Suraiya Faroqhi (Istanbul)

Gamze İlaslan-Koç (Regensburg): The Politics of Space: Reconstructing the Residences of Incoming Diplomats in Early Eighteenth-Century Constantinople

Barbara Lasic (London): Luxury and Diplomacy: Politics of Display at the Garde-Meuble Royal de la Couronne, 1680-1789

Section 4: Giving & Receiving. The Transcultural Diplomacy of Gift Exchanges
Chair: Suraiya Faroqhi

Tanja Bührer (München): Contested Objects of Gift Exchange between the British East India Company and Hyderabad, c. 1770-1820

Mark Häberlein (Bamberg): Gift Exchange, Marketing and Memory: The Material Cultural of the Moroccan Embassy to Vienna in 1783

Section 5: Intercultural Conviventia? The Politics of Food and Hospitality
Chair: Jon-Wyatt Matlack (Regensburg)

Markus Diepold (Regensburg): English Liquor & Indian Corn: Food, Diplomacy and Conflict in 18th Century Anglo-Haudenosaunee Relations

Jonathan Quint (Ann Arbor): Intercultural Diplomacy and Indigenous-Imperial Borderlands in the Western Great Lakes, 1783-1820

Section 6: Sacred Objects and Political Lineages in Diplomatic Encounters
Chair: Christine Vogel (Vechta)

Alessia Ceccarelli (Rom): The Diplomat’s Briefcase: Objects, Memories and Private Documents in the Negotiating Activity of Genoese Diplomacy (17th century)

Shounak Ghosh (Nashville): Objects between Courts and Shrines: Diplomatic Practices and Material Cultures in the Islamic East

Section 7: Incorporating Diplomacy. Objects of Knowledge and Remembrance
Chair: Christine Vogel

Rubén González Cuerva (Madrid): Immaterial Diplomacy: Dissimulating Muslim Embassies in Habsburg Spain

Olga Nefedova (Taschkent): The Ambassador, the Artist and the Map: Prince Kutuzov’s Diplomatic Mission to Istanbul in 1793-1794

Volker Depkat / Harriet Rudolph: Closing Remarks