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1st Edition

Objects in Conflict The Material Culture of Intercultural Diplomacy, 1600–1830

Edited By Volker Depkat, Harriet Rudolph Copyright 2027

354 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

Description

This book presents case studies that analyse the diplomatic uses and functions of robes, furniture, weapons, tools, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, books, food, and other material objects in early modern inter-cultural diplomatic encounters in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific world. Readers will gain insights into the material dimensions of early modern diplomacy and the cultural... Read more

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Volker Depkat and Harriet Rudolph

I. Where are the Objects?: Tracing the Material Culture of Intercultural Diplomacy in European Collections

2. Exotic Gifts – On the Lobbying of Indigenous Elites to Influence European Colonial Policy: Selected Examples from Around the World in European Museums
Viola König

3. Crafting Diplomacy: Extraordinary Embassies and the Programmatic Display of French Luxury Goods, 1662–1789
Barbara Lasic

4. Immaterial Diplomacy: Dissimulating Muslim Embassies in Habsburg Spain
Rubén González Cuerva

II. Beyond Official Procedures: Individual Material Practices of Diplomatic Actors in a Transcultural Setting

5. Materialities, Spaces, Emotions: The Leuthkauff album amicorum as an Entangled Object and the Challenges of Researching the Material Culture of Diplomacy
Harriet Rudolph

6. Diplomatic Homes Abroad: Exploring Ottoman and Habsburg Relations through Furniture and Decoration in the Early Modern Period
Gamze İlaslan Koç

7. Material Culture and Practices of Friendship in Intercultural Diplomacy: A Case Study from Late Seventeenth-Century Istanbul
Christine Vogel

III. Material Procedures of Cross-cultural Diplomacy in Imperial and Local Centers of Power

8. Gift Exchange, Marketing, and Memory: The Material Culture of the Moroccan Embassy to Vienna in 1783
Mark Häberlein

9. The Stool, the Curtain, and the Robes of Honour: A Ludic and Material Reading of the Diplomatic Space at Baron Kuefstein’s Reception in Ottoman Hungary (1628)
M. Halef Cevrioğlu

10. Mere Container or Object of Intrinsic Value?: A Leather Wallet on Diplomatic Mission in the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars
Suraiya Faroqhi

IV. Frontier Objects: The Material Culture of Diplomacy on Imperial Peripheries

11. Textile Diplomacy: Tahitian Bark Cloth in the Age of Early Pacific Encounter
Anne Mariss

12. English Liquor, Indian Corn: Food Diplomacy and Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Haudenosaunee Relations
Markus J. Diepold

13. Objects, Power, and Anishinaabeg-British Diplomacy at Fort St. Joseph, 1796–1810
Jonathan Quint

Editor(s)

Biography

Volker Depkat is Professor of American Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany. His recent publications include American Exceptionalism (2021), A New American Confederation: How German Federalism Inspired the US-Constitution (2024; co-authored), and Representations and Uses of the American Revolution in Past and Present (2025; co-edited).

Harriet Rudolph is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Her publications include Material Culture in Modern Diplomacy from the 15th to the 20th Century (2016; co-edited) and “Istanbul as a Collection Site: Cross-Cultural Networks of Knowledge in the Alba Amicorum of Ernst Brinck and Wolfgang Leuthkauff” in WissensWelten – Worlds of Knowledge (2026).

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