Professor of contemporary history at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Laurence Badel studies the changes in diplomatic practices in international relations. She is notably the author of European diplomacy, XIXe-XXIe century (Sciences Po Press, 540 pages, 35 euros, to be published on February 4).
When is diplomacy born?
If we adopt the traditional definition, which makes diplomacy the art of managing relations between states, and identifies its development with the sedentarization of embassies, we give birth to it in Italy, in the middle of the 15th century.e century, but at very variable rates depending on the State. If we speak of diplomacy as an activity of representation, communication and exchange, we can admit that it has been present in all societies as soon as they have started to interact.
The XIXe century was the golden age of diplomacy?
The XIXe century was mythologized as such after 1918, by nostalgic diplomats. It undeniably marks the apogee of a European culture of negotiation, rooted in a common legal and historical soil, unified by the French language. A real diplomatic and consular law then arose, but it was only in the midst of the cold war that diplomatic and consular relations were the subject of international conventions, respectively in 1961 and 1963, negotiated within the framework of the UN and … in Vienna.
From the end of the XVIIIe century, Europeans had to confront the alternative practice of the United States. They affirmed, through the voice of Thomas Jefferson, the very first Secretary of State of the United States, their refusal of secret negotiations and the rituals of European courts, and advocated a “moral” diplomacy, based on respect for the law. people, which was not incompatible with the fierce defense of their interests, especially economic ones. A century later, there has been a relative standardization of their practices. Western diplomacy is challenged today by an alternative use of international law on the part of States carrying a different vision of the world. For two centuries, the “diplomacy of diplomats” has also had to learn to live with other infra and transnational actors.
Are there invariants in diplomacy?
There can be no somewhat constructive meeting without a minimum of common language, codes or shared principles. The Soviet Union, after having attempted to radically question the diplomatic institution in October 1917, ended up accepting a form of normalization, manifest in diplomatic language and the resumption of traditional legal terminology, within the framework of a economic diplomacy made imperative by famine.
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