Diplomatie et ‘relations internationales’ au Moyen Age (IXe–XVe siècle), by Jean-Marie Moeglin and Stéphane Péquignot

Diplomacy in the past decades has peremptorily resurfaced on the historian’s desk: monographs, collections of essays, special editions of journals and research projects have multiplied at a steady pace in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Anglo-American world. After being defined in the nineteenth century as one of the backbones of the building of the nation-state, and being neglected in the second half of the twentieth century as an inward-looking, all-political field, diplomatic history, renovated by cultural history and historical anthropology, is increasingly at the heart of a political history more attentive than ever to how social structures and cultural practices shape political interactions. The ambitious synthesis published in the prestigious Nouvelle Clio series of the Presses Universitaires de France and devoted to diplomacy and international relations from the ninth to the fifteenth century by two well-known French specialists of medieval diplomacy, Jean-Marie Moeglin and Stéphane Péquignot, acknowledges such a resurgence. The Nouvelle Clio is a distinctive series: founded in the 1950s by Paul Lemerle and Robert Boutruche, its aim is to offer, in a recognisable, tripartite format, synthesis and historiographical mise au point on significant historical themes from prehistory to the twenty-first century to a wide readership composed of students, scholars and the educated general public. Moeglin and Péquignot respect such a distinctive identity, and deliberately place their volume in the footsteps of Bernard Guenée’s L’Occident aux XIVe et XVe siècles: Les États (first edition 1971) and Philippe Contamine’s La guerre au Moyen Âge (first edition 1980), which rapidly became classics.

Art · Humanities · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History