SMALLST · The Diplomacy of Small States in Early Modern South-eastern Europe

This project aims at producing a synoptic analysis of the foreign policy of small states in early modern South-eastern Europe. For centuries, the rulers of the Crimea, Moldavia and Wallachia, Ragusa, Transylvania, and Cossack Ukraine had to cope with their difficult geo-political situation of being at the borderlands between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The project will be the first attempt for writing a comparative history on the following questions. 1, What kind of strategies these small states followed in order to overcome their vulnerability and survive on the frontier not only of empires but also of civilisations? 2, What was the impact of being placed at cultural borderlands upon their diplomatic practices? 3, How did they try to overcome the problem of having to communicate and present themselves in two radically different political languages (i.e. of their powerful Muslim and Christian neighbours)? 4, How did the agents of diplomacy function in this peculiar geo-political and cultural context, how did it shape their status, practices and the kind of social gains available to them?