From treaty to peace: The French diplomatic correspondence on the Peace of Westphalia (26 October 1648-23 February 1649)

• Applicant: Dr. Albert Schirrmeister
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565901000

With the signing of the Peace of Westphalia on 24 October 1648 in Münster and Osnabrück, the Thirty Years' War, which had raged in many parts of Europe, came to a temporary end. The negotiations between France, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, the Emperor and the Imperial Estates had lasted more than four years. However, another four months passed before ratification was exchanged between the Emperor, the Empire, Sweden and France on 18 February 1649. During this time, the diplomats continued their negotiations, not least because France was still at war with Spain. This project focusses on this precarious period between the signing and ratification of the treaties. It addresses the highly topical questions of how an agreed peace can become effective, what forms of action and strategies are used and what effects a peace agreement has on other ongoing conflicts. The subject of the project is the diplomatic correspondence between the French diplomats from Münster and Osnabrück and the Parisian court. The project combines two work objectives: On the one hand, the main aim is to produce a historical-critical edition of the French letters, which fills a sensitive gap in the monumental edition project of the Acta Pacis Westphalicae (APW). This has so far been published in 48 printed volumes in three series; in the correspondence series, the French letters are the only unfinished section. Accompanying this, and this is the second aim, are two practice-orientated articles on diplomatic correspondence. These focus on the temporal qualities of the letters, the writing techniques and the extent to which the actors were able to use the letters as a means of pursuing their own - possibly conflicting - strategies. The independent research work serves to open up the corpus for further access and to position it in international research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants