European and Russian Diplomatic Reports on a Changing Russia. Diplomatic Languages and Concepts as Indicators and Factors of Change and Knowledge Accumulation (c. 1680-1730.)
Final Report Abstract
The project "Western and Russian envoys report on the "changed" Russia: Diplomatic (language) practices as indicators and factors of change and knowledge accumulation (ca. 1680-1730)" aimed under its unwieldy title, in a praxeological, multilingualism and communicative situations of the ambassadors at the Russian court, to make a contribution to a history of diplomacy based on cultural history in the early 18th century. It complements a project, which is also funded by the DFG in Mainz. The researcher in the project has prepared two essays related to the project and will present a monograph in three parts in the second half of 2023: 1. Firstly, he discusses the diplomatic communication among the absentees and the foreign policy, institutional and personal conditions of reporting by individual courts; 2. Secondly, he analyzes the diplomatic communication among those present at the Russian court as a means of creating information networks; 3. Thirdly, he discusses the language of the reports and the diplomatic discourses in order to show the possibilities and limits of what could be said and experienced in the political arena of the 1720s. The monograph will do this on the basis of archival material, whereby the materials viewed and secured in Moscow in particular will no longer be usable for a long time against the background of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. Overall, the work is part of the more recent research, which can show to what extent the Russian court was also internationally intertwined in diplomacy in the early modern period.
