Addressing the Public Abroad: Strategies of Cultural and Public Diplomacy in the Early Modern Habsburg World (1550-1750).

habsburgculturaldiplomacy

Brussels (Belgium), December 6-7, 2018

Conference organized by the History Department of Ghent University, in collaboration with the Institut für Neuzeit- und Zeitgeschichtsforschung (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften), the Arenberg Foundation, and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Brussels

Historians are increasingly aware that early modern diplomacy encompassed far more than formally appointed ambassadors and their official negotiations. Rather, numerous actors engaged in international relations, and they did so in an astonishingly wide array of formal and informal positions. They also had a variety of diverse tools at their disposal for lobbying and achieving their various missions. This conference aims to examine a field that a number of historians and art historians have analyzed in the last two decades, but which has seldom been explicitly delineated or discussed in a comparative fashion: strategies of cultural and public diplomacy in the early modern Habsburg world (1550-1750). As such, this conference focuses on the different tactics employed by the representatives of foreign nations and groups – both official and unofficial – in influencing public opinion abroad and, in doing so, furthering diplomatic engagements.

Keynote Speakers
Ellen Welch (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Arno Strohmeyer (Universität Salzburg/Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
Bernardo José García García (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Scientific Committee
René Vermeir (Universiteit Gent)
Werner Thomas (KU Leuven)
Violet Soen (KU Leuven)
Griet Vermeesch (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Dries Raeymakers (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
Klaas Van Gelder (Universiteit Gent)