Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World

One of the prominent themes of the political history of the 16th and 17th centuries is the waxing influence officials in the exercise of state power, particularly in international relations, as it became impossible for monarchs to stay on top of the increasingly complex demands of ruling. Encompassing a variety of cultural and institutional settings, these essays examine how state secretaries, prime ministers and favourites managed diplomatic personnel and the information flows they generated. They explore how these officials balanced domestic matters with external concerns, and service to the monarch and state with personal ambition. By opening various perspectives on policy-making at the level just below the monarch, this volume offers up rich opportunities for comparative history and a new take on the diplomatic history of the period.

Paul Dover is Associate Professor of History at Kennesaw State University. He has published widely on the political, diplomatic and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe.

About the Contributors 1. Introduction: the Age of Secretaries Paul M. Dover 2. Records, Politics and Diplomacy: Secretaries and Chanceries in Renaissance Italy (1350-1520 ca.) Isabella Lazzarini 3. Mercurino di Gattinara (1465-1530): Imperial Chancellor, Strategist of Empire Rebecca Ard Boone 4. 'This continuous writing': the Paper Chancellery of Berhard Cles, Megan K. Williams 5. Parables and Dark Sentences: the Correspondence of Sir William Cecil and William Maitland, 1559-1573 Rayne Allinson 5. Axel Oxenstierna and Swedish Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century Erik Thomson 6. Statecraft and the Role of the Diplomat in Ducal Savoy: the Career of Alessandro Scaglia (1592-1641) Toby Osborne 7. Richelieu, Mazarin and Italy, 1635-1659: Statesmanship in Context David Parrott 8. The Learned Ideal of the Mughal Wazir: the Life and Intellectual World of Prime Minister Afzal Khan Shirazi (d. 1639) Raveev Kinra 9. Reconsidering State and Constituency in Seventeenth-Century Safavid Iran: the Wax and Wane of the Munshi Colin Mitchell 10. Choreographers of Power: Grigorii Kotoshikhin, State Secretaries, and the Muscovite Royal Wedding Ritual Russell E. Martin 11. Eberhard von Danckelman and Brandenburg's Foreign Policy, 1699-1697 Daniel Riches 12. Chancellor of State: Prince Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, the Habsburg Foreign Office and Foreign Policy in the Era of Enlightened Absolutism Franz A.J. Szabo Index