How can adversaries be brought to convene at a negotiating table rather than continue to clash on the battlefield? A long historiographic tradition tries to provide answers to this question. With his published dissertation, Laufs contributes to this strand of scholarship on how peace can be achieved by looking at peace mediation. He specifically investigates how Dutch and Papal diplomats mediated during two large-scale premodern peace conferences: Munster (1643–1649) and Nijmegen (1676–1679).

Following recent research in “new diplomatic history”, Laufs pays attention to the different actors and their practices. He devotes rather lengthy sections to defining his concepts (chapter 2). When it comes to practices of peace mediation, he clarifies that he wants to move beyond the individual and is thus looking for some degree of standardized and conscious action which can also include speaking and writing. It is a crucial part of his work as he pays a lot of attention to the processes of translation but also to commenting and editing as practices of the mediators. Laufs divides these practices into three main categories (p. 68; p. 101): "regulative practices", "translative practices" and "discursive practices". Each category is examined in detail respectively in chapters 6, 7 and 8. To trace these standardized and conscious actions, Laufs argues it is necessary to undertake a systematic comparative approach. Thus, he compares the conferences of Munster and Nijmegen with a focus on Papal mediation between France and the Emperor and Dutch mediation between France and Spain.

Laufs seems to be acutely aware that comparing the role of Dutch and Papal envoys at these peace conferences is one that not many scholars would undertake. Such a comparison requires not only mastery of different historiographies but dealing with very different states, religious beliefs as well as the objectives of the two parties during the two peace conferences. The papacy had a long tradition of mediating conflicts, but in post-Reformation Europe, it no longer had the authority to act on behalf of all Christian princes. The Dutch Republic only emerged as a new Calvinist state in the early seventeenth century. Yet, as Laufs demonstrates, this imbalance makes them interesting to compare. They both had something to gain: the papacy affirmed its traditional role as mediator (padre commune) and the Dutch Republic as a newcomer on the international stage needed to confirm itself as a sovereign power and a political player to be taken seriously.

The rich source base is one of the key strengths of his work. For Munster a lot of archival material has been edited and published; it is clear that without the availability of so much published material, it would have been impossible to undertake this comparison in the first place. For the peace negotiations of Nijmegen, Laufs has worked with a lot of new material. His work shows how much Dutch source material has been neglected. Just like their Papal and Venetian counterparts, Dutch ambassadors had to submit a final diplomatic report at the end of their mission. An entire series of these verbalen are kept in the Dutch national archives but have never been studied as sources in their own right. Laufs shows how they can fruitfully be used.

One of the most interesting results of Laufs’ comparative work is the commonalities and differences in the practices of both Papal and Dutch negotiators. The most important task of the mediators was (and still is) to establish or restore trust between opponents. To achieve trust, the mediators had to prevent themselves from being perceived as being partial. He carefully shows that mediators were not impartial but that they strove to achieve equality in dealing with the different negotiators. It may explain why Papal representatives mostly dealt with procedural and ceremonial matters rather than with the actual content of the negotiations. For the papacy, compared to the Dutch Republic, the stakes were simply too high when its representative was seen as biased. The papacy above all wanted to be seen and respected on the international scene as an arbiter.

Laufs convincingly argues that mediators had an active role in shaping the normative framework of peace conferences. Flexibility remains the order of the day in premodern peace mediation. Envoys received a set of instructions, but these often remained rather general, and left room for manoeuvre. During the peace negotiations in Munster, the mediating role of the Dutch envoy was not planned but developed haphazardly. Following their 1635 alliance with France, the Dutch needed French approval to conclude a peace agreement with Spain. This treaty then compelled them to start taking the role of mediators between France and Spain.

Apart from systematic research, Laufs pleads for in-depth analysis and that is certainly what he is offering in his monograph. For instance, he examines the terms these ambassadors used to understand how they saw their roles and the discussions surrounding the trustworthiness of the spoken compared to the written word in negotiations. Throughout the book, one can find nuggets of information which may be of interest to early modern historians working on other topics, such as archival practices (pp. 322–333). I was particularly struck that the papal envoy in Nijmegen relied heavily on Vittorio Siri’s contemporary history to find information about his predecessor in Munster (pp. 149–153).

The book is not a page-turner. As a reader, you must wade through an introduction of fifty-six pages (and extensive footnotes with a lot of additional information), followed by a whole set of chapters describing traditions of peace mediation (chapter 3), biographical information on the mediators (chapter 4) and context of the peace negotiations (chapter 5), before the investigation of these practices starts (p. 181). The text would have benefitted from streamlining the argument as Laufs offers some important contributions which are at times easy to miss. To give just one concrete example: the state of research on the mediating role of the papacy, and the specific role of the papal nuncio Chigi at Munster, could have been presented more succinctly to highlight that Laufs is offering an important corrective to the narrative of a declining role for the papacy during these peace negotiations. When it comes to Dutch diplomacy, the Dutch Republic has been a much-neglected region in new diplomatic history, certainly in comparison to papal diplomacy. It demonstrates the need for more work on the development of Dutch diplomacy.

Laufs’ work is ambitious, and thus it is logical to limit the scope of analysis, however, from the perspective of mediation, it is a little odd that the mediations by Venice who acted jointly with the papacy at Munster and the papal mediation between France and Spain are not included in the analysis. This is important as in Munster, France and Spain did not make peace. The two powers only concluded peace in 1659 at a conference without mediators. It left me wondering about the role of mediators, especially given Laufs’ emphasis throughout his work on the importance of gaining trust by mediators. This was reinforced by the last chapter in which Laufs briefly examines the evolution of mediation at eighteenth-century peace conferences. By choosing conferences where mediators were active, we tend to lose track of those without and how those develop and reach results. It would equally be instructive to investigate how conferences without intermediaries worked: how did these different parties deal with conflicts about precedence without mediators to diffuse the situation?

Laufs work, then, raises several questions which can be taken as lines for further research on the topic. His comparative approach is a fruitful one, and his focus on practices rather than on the outcomes of negotiations can serve as a model to study early modern peace negotiations with and without mediators.