Article of the Month - October 2021
 “Muslim Missions to Early Modern France, c. 1610-c.1780:
Notes for a Social History of Cross Cultural Diplomacy”
(Mathieu Grenet: Institut National Universitaire Jean-François Champollion)

Mathieu Grenet, "Muslim Missions to Early Modern France, c. 1610-c.1780:
Notes for a Social History of Cross Cultural Diplomacy,"
Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2015): 223-244.

Nomination Statement:
This article offers a salutary reminder that Mediterranean diplomacy in the early modern period was not solely a matter of courtly performances of gift or linguistic exchange, but the result of sustained physical and social engagement between subjects and representatives of Christian and Islamic Mediterranean powers in a wide range of rural and urban settings. By insisting on the duration and extension of diplomatic missions–through a focus on emissaries from Ottoman, Persian, and Moroccan courts who traveled slowly across France to Paris– Grenet expands our understandings of the range of actors and activities which made up the mechanisms of cross-cultural diplomacy. This article thus advances broader conversations across Mediterranean studies about regionalism, mobility, materiality, and the fluidity of distinctions among cultural categories (in the past and in the present). Grenet’s article is representative of a group of excellent articles collected in a special issue of the Journal of Early Modern History and edited by Tjiana Krstić and Maartje van Gelder, Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean.

Publisher’s Abstract:
This essay challenges traditional views on cross-cultural diplomacy by making the case for a social history of “Muslim” missions to early modern France. Calling for both a deeper understanding of the historical phenomenon and a broad reassessment of the research strategies at stake, it points to some hitherto unexplored issues, such as the lengthy duration of these missions, the many social interactions between Muslim envoys and French people, and the rather unspectacular nature of the “Oriental” presence even in inland regions of Europe distant from royal courts and capital cities. The essay stresses the necessity of taking a longer view of the presence and reception of foreign envoys, while also arguing against traditional court-centric perspectives in order to challenge the monolithic picture of cross-cultural exchanges as happening between two discrete cultural entities. Finally, advocating for a more fluid approach to these contacts and relations, it calls for a better understanding of the role of French royal interpreters in articulating figures and motifs of otherness.

Author’s Comment:
This article is an attempt to make sense of a paradox that struck me when, as a historian of migrations and minorities by training, I started being interested in cross-cultural diplomacy and exchanges. Namely, the fact that we can approach with such a level of sophistication and detail some aspects of the diplomatic protocol (ritual, ceremonial, etiquette), while other, no less important question remain largely unknown to us. For instance, I remember not being able to find an (even rough) estimate of the number of Ottoman, Maghribi, and Persian embassies sent to France during the Ancien Régime. But above all, I have often wondered what ambassadors and their suites (often made of several dozen people) did when they were not attending an audience with the king or his ministers – that is, 99% of the time they spent abroad! Forays into local and provincial archives soon made me realize the importance and quality of the various sources documenting the passage of these ambassadors almost everywhere in France, including the smallest villages in the most remote countryside. I first wrote this article, therefore, as a methodological exploration of how resorting to different material help us reconsider historical objects from a new perspective. In this case, I felt the highly regulated world of diplomatic rituals was becoming both more informal and more complex. More human, in a word.

Keywords: Cross-cultural diplomacy — Ottoman empire — Morocco — Algiers — Tunis — Tripoli — Persia — France — embassies — interpreters — "Oriental languages" — linguistic brokerage — otherness

Read the article here.

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