Diplomacies of the East. Practices of Representation, Mediation, and Conflict between the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

This monographic section identifies the Levant, variously defined, as a point of intersection among different diplomatic traditions between the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, involving long-established powers (the Byzantine Empire, the mosaic of latin dominions, the Mamluk Sultanate) as well as new actors (the Timurid Empire, the Ottoman Sultanate). The need for dialogue led both the local authorities and their diplomatic personnel to coin experimental and juxtaposed diplomatic practices, within processes of power representation, mediation, and information that were anything but linear, thereby qualifying the East as a veritable laboratory of diplomacy. This case study also offers a highly useful vantage point for understanding how diplomacy was not an immutable category but, for all the actors involved, an object in constant definition, placed “at the service” of the parties’ specific political and economic aims, as the four contributions presented here will seek to demonstrate.