Abstract
Reviewed by: Paul Keenan, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
This impressive debut monograph by Jan Hennings examines Russia’s position and activity in the European diplomatic sphere between the Peace of Westphalia and the death of Peter I. As explained in the introduction, the analytical approach to diplomacy is fundamentally cultural and comparative in nature. Hennings draws extensively on a very extensive, international range of scholarship, with particular attention paid to the interdisciplinary work on early modern ritual and symbolic communication and the cultural approaches emphasized by ‘new diplomatic history’ of the last two decades. The main body of the monograph is organized into five chapters. Hennings begins, logically, with the broad question of where Russia was located in relation to the European states-system in his first chapter, in order to address the normative and therefore limited approach adopted by both contemporaries and subsequent historians. Chapter 2 then turns to the institutional organization of Russian diplomatic affairs by examining the Ambassadorial Chancellery (Posol’skii prikaz), the status and activities of its personnel – including a discussion of their ceremonial function in comparison with similar offices in France and Britain, and the importance of the accounts submitted by Russian diplomats to the chancellery at the end of an embassy as a source of information on foreign ceremonial and ritual precedent. The remaining three chapters then explore in detail the specifics of Russia’s relationship with three important contemporaries – England, the Holy Roman Empire and France. Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations are considered in both Chapters 3 and 5, with the former concentrating on the English embassies undertaken during the upheaval of the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration, while the latter examines in detail the repercussions of the assault and arrest of Peter I’s diplomat, Andrei A. Matveev, in 1708. Chapter 4 discusses the significance of two major diplomatic visits conducted by Peter I and his entourage – to the Imperial court in Vienna during the so-called Grand Embassy in 1698 and to Paris in 1717. Both visits were complicated by virtue of the tsar’s insistence on ‘incognito’ status, but Hennings provides a convincing argument about the diplomatic and ceremonial context for this decision, which does not resort to the oft-cited eccentricity of the reformer-tsar. As also noted in Chapter 5, while Peter I may have disliked the formality of diplomatic protocol and ceremonial, the evidence presented by Hennings suggests that he both understood and utilized it in a manner similar to both his predecessors and his contemporary European rulers.
Hennings provides a major contribution to two major strands of the scholarship: firstly, the international history of the early modern period, in particular Russia’s place within it; and secondly the impact of Peter I’s reign on Russia’s development. In the former case, Hennings argues convincingly that, despite the persistence of the influential narrative of Russia as ‘barbarous’ (via Herberstein, Olearius and others), the tsar was recognized as a Christian monarch in the European order in contemporary diplomatic scholarship and accorded the commensurate status and therefore ceremonial prestige in practice. As a result, Russia played an active (rather than passive) role in its diplomatic engagements of this period, largely informed by its own well-developed, if strongly formalized administrative and ceremonial system. There were misunderstandings and controversies between Russia and its European neighbours, although they did not derive from ignorance – Chapter 2 makes clear how much information was gathered by the Posol’skii prikaz, who could call on interpreters and translators for 33 languages. Rather, they point to the differing understandings (some minor, some major) of a common symbolic sphere – akin to accents in a common language. To this end, Hennings rightly points out that such occurrences were hardly unusual, even between the mainstays of the European states-system, as each of the actors on the diplomatic stage vied for top billing. Hennings provides also an important and welcome addition to the now well-established reconsideration of the ‘Petrine divide’ from an international and comparative perspective. The changes for Russia’s diplomatic conduct and international prestige are unarguably affected by Peter I’s reign – the exigencies of war for much of his reign gave added impetus to the prioritization of diplomacy – but, as with many other areas of reform, they represent a considerable degree of continuity. The innovations of the period were the establishment of resident embassies (at 15 courts by 1725), the assiduous gathering of information about international legal and diplomatic practices, and an increased responsiveness to shifts in diplomatic practice on the ground, particularly derived from customs at other courts, which stood in contrast to the slower, retrospectively-inclined norms of preceding centuries. The degree of continuity across this period is encapsulated in the adoption of the title of imperator by Peter I in 1721, traditionally heralded as a statement of Russia’s new-found international ambitions. Hennings highlights that, while the title took a new form it derived from a longstanding claim to such a title under Ivan III and, where accepted by contemporaries, it was interpreted simply in those terms – as a title, not a status – and was reflected in the unchanged ceremonial status of its diplomats.
Overall, the range and depth of the research involved in this monograph – which draws upon an impressive range of archival, printed and visual materials in four languages – is exemplary. It will be a stimulating and informative work for any scholar who has an interest in early modern history, whether of Europe or Russia, or in diplomacy more generally. On a technical level, the publisher is to be commended for providing high-quality reproductions of images and archival texts, which provide useful illustrations to support the argument. If, as suggested in his conclusion, the next project for Hennings will be to shift his analytical lens to another key, and relatively understudied, aspect of Russia’s diplomatic affairs – namely, its relations with its Eurasian neighbours – I await it with great anticipation.