Diplomacy is a performance. The stage is set on the streets and palaces that centre upon the spaces of political power. The audience is made up of the prince and the court, the pope and the curia, the emperor and the diet, the doge and the senate, the sultan and his viziers. The cast is composed of the diplomats, each grasping for attention, each vying to out-do the other. They follow a plot formed of ceremony and etiquette that defines the spheres of interaction and elevates the smallest issues in precedence and protocol to the status of grave insults and greater rivalries. As this conference will explore, diplomacy as ‘spectacle’ is no mere metaphor for political interaction, but an elevation of how it was practiced as performance. No other activity in the early modern world allowed for such a cultural exchange to flow, artistic endeavour to be patronised, or expense to be lavished on the aggrandisement of events, entertainments, and festivities. Indeed, these efforts were orchestrated: the ambassadors themselves were both impresarii and lead actors. Ceremonial entries, banquets, masquerade balls, commissions of music or dramatic pieces, naumachie, and festivities of all kinds provided diplomats with the means to display their own value and merit, influence others, and to obtain prestige and standing as a mode to succeed in their negotiations and missions. Comprehending the ambassador as a cultural mediator is more than just conceiving of the diplomatic agent as a conduit of exchange: it is instead the recognition of the power of diplomatic activity to transform culture through the process of mediation, and more, the appreciation of the sphere of diplomatic mediation as a most fertile ground for cultural invention and innovation, the legacies of which are still felt today.

Within these manifold interactions wedding ceremonies formed a substantial part in creating new political interactions. An exemplary case in European history was the wedding of the designated Emperor Friedrich III (r. 1452–1493) in 1452 with Leonor, sister of King Afonso V of Portugal, embodied in such highly significant interactions as the coronation of both to Emperor and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire through Pope Nicolas V in Rome. Theatre itself played a significant role in the Ottoman-European context of diplomacy from the early sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries. The earliest performances of European theatre in Konstantiniyye were organized in 1524 by the Venetian and Florentine communities and diplomatic representatives.
Likewise, throughout the eighteenth century, Ottoman diplomats sent on mission to European capitals were keenly interested in the theatrical performances they were invited to, which they described in detail in their embassy reports (sefâretnâmes).

This conference aims to study the substantial changes in early modern political and diplomatic landscapes from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries by exploring various scenarios for cultural interaction, new definitions of social hierarchies. Throughout, the question of critical importance remains to understand the extent to which the “performance” of diplomacy influenced and impacted upon broader political and cultural interactions beyond the analysis of structural power, thus sustaining the autopoiesis of early modern diplomacy. Within the ambit of Europe and the Mediterranean in the early modern era, and using the broadest possible interpretation of theatre – musical, operatic, dramatic performance – we warmly invite papers that approach the topic of the “Performance of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World”, particularly papers that address one or more of the following points:

- The role of the ambassador, as an actor and an impresario: the power of theatre to frame and influence foreign policy;
- Cultural origins of ceremonial settings;
- Theatrical works as a means of political/diplomatic communication;
- Theatres as diplomatic spaces;
- The interaction between court ceremonies and theatrical performances: political power as a performative act;
- Diplomacy as public event: festive entries, carnival, public festivities;
- Stage performers as diplomatic agents, spies, and informants;
- Narrative elements of embassy reports and other diplomatic writing (including the use/symbolism of faked documents in diplomacy);
- Diplomatic and theatrical performances as a conduit of cultural exchange, innovation, and transformation.