Call for papers for an online research workshop “The Diplomatic World in Paris, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Cultures and Networks. Sources held outside France”

Subject

This first workshop focuses on sources now held outside France. Drawing on them, it seeks to examine, as closely as possible, the concrete forms of global diplomatic presence in Paris, as well as its practices, sociability, networks, and materiality, through case studies of all its actors. It is intended as a milestone toward a new understanding of the foreign presence in early modern Paris.

The workshop begins with a simple observation: a decisive share of the diplomatic presence in Paris, its logics of action, and its sociability can be read in archives produced, collected, and organized elsewhere, in the chanceries, state secretariats, princely households, administrations, and information networks of foreign powers. Building, in particular, on the contributions of the new diplomatic history, these holdings should be seen as documenting not only “major” diplomatic decisions but also broader social and cultural phenomena that the program seeks to question. They provide access to intermediate and everyday levels of activity: the making of representations, the management of households and staff, circuits of recommendation and brokerage, uses of Parisian space, relations with the court and the city, confessional dynamics, elite sociability, conflicts of precedence, and the material economy of embassies and legations.

The day has a twofold aim: first, to bring to light corpora that are often dispersed and unevenly accessible; second, to demonstrate, through evidence, what these sources can contribute to historical knowledge when applied to a clearly defined case. Each paper should therefore link a fund or a set of documents to a clearly delimited case study, making visible both the contributions and the limits of the material: the granularity of the information, biases in production, blind spots, possibilities for cross-reading with other series, and, in conclusion, the potential for comparison between political spaces.

Methodological and transdisciplinary approaches are entirely open, particularly those inspired by the Global turn and the history of sensory materiality. Established researchers, archivists, and heritage professionals, as well as PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, may propose microhistorical case studies, comparisons, serial approaches, prosopography, mapping, and network analysis, provided that the core of the proposal remains a source-based demonstration.

The work of this first workshop, as well as that of a second workshop planned for 2027 and devoted to French sources, will precede an international final conference in Versailles. That conference will focus on syntheses that cross results, identify trends, and propose transversal readings.

Research themes and questions

The workshop pays particular attention to sources held outside France that help reconstruct the networks and cultures of the diplomatic world in Paris. Proposals are especially welcome that show how foreign archives shed light on chains of mediation (secretaries, interpreters, agents, informants, suppliers, ecclesiastics, bankers, merchants, artists), forms of social capital (recommendations, patronage, clienteles, kinship ties, alliances), the circulation of news, rumors, and writings, the economy of gifts and counter-gifts, practices of representation (ceremonial, festivities, performances, urban visibility), the circulation of objects and services (purchases, commissions, liveries, carriages, accommodations, domestic service), and the topography of diplomatic presences (residences, sites of sociability, confessional spaces, itineraries, urban anchors).

Proposals may, in particular, fall within the following themes, which structure the research program:
 A. Diplomatic actors, households, and hierarchies: ambassadors, nuncios, envoys, residents, secretaries, interpreters, agents, “invisible” personnel; careers, skills, statuses, mobilities, and, more broadly, chains of mediation among different systems of norms and values.
 B. Women, couples, family and informal diplomacy: roles of wives, female relatives, ladies-in-waiting, children and families; strategies of acculturation, mediation, correspondence, sociability, transnational networks, charity, patronage and forms of social capital.
 C. Ceremonial, precedence and competition in magnificence: entries, audiences, rank disputes, festivities, gifts, music, processions, visible expenditure, and strategies of representation, linked to the economy of gifts and counter-gifts, urban visibility, and the reception of this competition in magnificence.
 D. Material cultures and the economies of representation: budgets, salaries, allowances, purchases and sales (presence in the local economic and commercial fabric), liveries, carriages, suppliers, gifts, consumption practices, inventories, and the circulation of objects (art and collections) and services.
 E. Sociability, acculturation and religious practices: salons, neighbourhoods, linguistic practices, places of worship, confessional sociability, performances, reading, the circulation of news, rumours and writings, mediators and court networks.
 F. Places, residences and the topography of power: townhouses, legations, travel, urban anchoring, historical cartography, the articulation between Paris and Versailles, the topography of diplomatic presences (residences, sites of sociability, confessional spaces, itineraries), extraterritoriality and the symbolic boundaries of the embassy.

Workshop details

• Online workshop only (live on Zoom and YouTube replay).
• Presentations of up to 20 minutes.
• Languages: French and English.
• Subject to successful double-blind peer review, papers will be published in the Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles (ISSN/DOI). Written papers (in French or English, 40,000 to 50,000 characters including spaces, with the bibliography included) are due by 31 March 2027.

To participate

Paper proposals must be sent to benjamin.ringot@chateauversailles.fr by May 31, 2026.
Proposals must include the following:

• Title of the paper.
• Abstract (250 to 300 words) including:
  • presentation of the source(s) that may be used;
  • presentation of the case study (actors, event, chronological sequence, research question addressed, expected contributions).
• 5 keywords.
• Short biographical and bibliographical note (200 words) and affiliation.
• Contact details.

Organising committee

 Lucien Bély, Professor Emeritus Sorbonne université, coordinator of the research program “The Diplomatic World in Paris...”, and Chair of the CRCV Scientific Committee.
 Mathieu da Vinha, Director of the CRCV.
 Benjamin Ringot, Head of the Research, Events and Teaching Department (CRCV).
 Mathilde Deroin, CRCV Research Officer for the program “The Diplomatic World in Paris...”.

Timeline

Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2026 (by email).
Decision by the organizing committee: 22 June 2026 (by email).
Workshop: Wednesday, December 16, 2026 (online).
Submission of full papers: by March 31, 2027.

pdf