Edition of the French Correspondence of the Peace Congress of Westphalia (May to October 1648)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Maissen
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470172388

This project aims to produce a historical-critical edition of the French correspondence of the Peace Congress of Münster and Osnabrück for the period from 21 May to 25 October 1648. In this final phase of the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia, all participants had to decide whether it would finally be possible to achieve overall peace after many years of war. From the French perspective, this period had to determine whether their own political interests and goals could be safeguarded or implemented in a peace treaty whilst also taking into account how France’s wars against the Emperor and Spain could be concluded. The planned edition closes a significant gap in available sources that still exists to this day, due to the fact that the historical-critical publication of imperial and Swedish correspondence on the Peace of Westphalia is complete, but the last volume of the French congress correspondence is not. For this edition, extensive preliminary work is already accessible. It will not only provide a new and important cornerstone for the study of the Peace of Westphalia, but the documents, many of which will be published for the first time, will also allow valuable source material to be more widely available for international and interdisciplinary research on the history of modern foreign relations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants