Translation in Early Modern Diplomacy

Introduction: translation in early modern diplomacy

PART I Translation in peace negotiations

1 Translation and papal peace mediation at the congresses of Münster and Nijmegen

2 Interpreters and their multiple roles during the Carlowitz Peace Congress (1698–1699)

3 Diplomacy, languages, and the European balance: negotiations at the Congress of Soissons (1728–1729)

PART II Diplomatic contacts between Christian and non-Christian countries

4 Can I have your word? Foreign terms in seventeenth-century treaties of the Dutch East India Company

5 “I have no one who can translate and understand these letters”: diplomatic communication challenges in Ukraine’s relations with the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century

6 Challenges and innovations in diplomatic translation: the Russian mission in the Ottoman Empire (late seventeenth– early eighteenth centuries)

PART III Policies, Cultures and Institutions

7 Translating diplomacy: the role of translators in the Ambassadorial Chancery in seventeenth-century Russia

8 From apprenticeship to expertise: translator training in Russia (first half of the eighteenth century)

9 Diplomatic affairs, translation processes, and political decision-making at the eighteenth-century Swedish Diet

10 Ragusan subjects as imperial interpreters for Eastern languages under the seventeenth-century Habsburg monarchy

11 Translation and professionalisation: the case of the French Secretariat of State for Foreign Affairs in the eighteenth century

Juliette Deloye

PART IV Family and individual strategies

12 The business of translation: the Graciáns and the monopoly of diplomatic translation services at the Spanish Court

13 Between diplomacy and literature: Pavel Levashev’s translations, career strategies, and the development of Russian diplomatic language

Biography

Vladislav Rjéoutski is a Gerda Henkel Fellow, formerly a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Paris/Max Weber Network Eastern Europe, and principal investigator in a DFG-funded research project on languages in eighteenth-century Russian diplomacy in a European context. He co-authored The French Language in Russia (2018) and co-edited Languages of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World (2026).

Guido Braun is Full Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Upper Alsace (Mulhouse) and Director of the Centre for Research on Economies, Societies, Arts, and Technologies (CRESAT). He co-edited Languages and Diplomacy, 15th to 21st Centuries (2025).

Indravati Félicité is Full Professor and Chair of Early Modern History at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her authored and edited works include Le Saint-Empire face au monde. Contestations et redéfinitions de l’impérialité XVe-XIXe (2024) and Regard critique sur les souverainetés, Moyen Âge – XXIe siècle (forthcoming).

Sophie Holm is a research fellow at the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe in Helsinki. She has authored a chapter on languages and diplomatic culture in Early Modern European Diplomacy: A Handbook (2024). She worked within a DFG-funded research project on languages in eighteenth-century Russian diplomacy in a European context.