In the early 1780s, the St. Petersburg court decided to establish a new Russian diplomatic post in Frankfurt am Main; the mission in the German Reich was entrusted to a young diplomat, Nikolai P. Rumyantsev. Attempts to clarify the purpose of establishing a new legation have been made since mid-nineteenth century. Prussian historians wanted to see it as an instrument of support for the Berlin court, Austrian authors, on the other hand, the Viennese Burg. According to Russian historiography, on the other hand, the establishment of a diplomatic post in Frankfurt was to manifest the achievement of a significant position in the Reich by the St. Petersburg court. These judgements were pronounced without considering the primary source: the instructions received by the minister. The article is based precisely on that Russian diplomatic correspondence stored at the Foreign Policy Archive of Imperial Russia in Moscow. An analysis of the instructions sent to Rumyantsev proves that Russian plans for expansion in the Holy Roman Empire, to gain supremacy over the “Third Germany” i.e. the lesser and middle states of the Reich, were but political wishful thinking. The Russian domination in the empire, especially over the lesser states of the Reich, was completely unattainable for the empress. The expansion model tried in Courland, Poland and Sweden did not work in Germany.
The history of diplomatic relations provides a sound basis for the study of the history of economy and culture. Single events also offer a possibility of analysing the “long lasting” processes. They also give us a chance to address some issues concerning transformations in the production process, in the structure of barter trade, social relations and culture transformations. The author has made an attempt to show some of such opportunities analysing the history of Medieval Poland.
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The basis of these considerations are editions of sources of the international law as well as reviews of the history of European diplomacy in the 18th and the first half of the 194 j century - particularly the work of the famous Martens family (especially Georg Friedrich von Martens), of Johann Ludwig Klüber, Dietrich Heinrich Ludwig von Ompteda, Karl Albert von Kamptz etc. The evaluation of Polish achievements in the 18th century presented in these publications is very positive, although the compilation of main editions from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is far from complete. Editorial projects of Konarski, Dogiel, Skrzetuski, Obermajer, Jezierski or Siarczyński are a manifestation of a certain specific „documentary” tendency in the Polish literature of this period. In order to explain this certain characteristics of the 18th century culture, visible mostly during the reign of Augustus III and King Stanislaw Augustus, including the controversy surrounding the first partition (with a slight revival during the Great Sejm), one has to appeal to a variety of phenomena associated with the elite of the educated and active in public life personages, represented by a group of patrons, editorial and publishing groups or a list of subscribers of the greatest editorial projects of the period, with Volumina Legum at the forefront. First of all, one has to consider the political context of the phenomenon. Awareness of the crisis of the gentry state exhorted to seek solutions, primarily as part of the „eternal” order: to support institutions on proven and sustainable basis, to restore the good old customs, laws, virtues and long forgotten civic attitudes. There appeared a need for recapitulation - a need for a full, systematic and reliable description of the present, and especially of gathering and organizing the knowledge about the state of the country and of its institutions. A special assignment in systematization, rationalization and restoration of the reality was allocated to history and to the public law - in the Republic of Poland, as in the Reich having the character of „historical right”, based on a continuous, uninterrupted tradition. No wonder that one of the basic features of historical and legal retrospection of the time of Augustus III is the timeliness of topics and the focus on their formal and legal sides, which further obliterated boundaries between history and politics. In the explanations for this „documentary” tendency, one must also take into account the intellectual climate of the period, and especially pay attention to the scholarly pattern of humanities with its main slogan „sources and facts should speak for themselves”. The impact of the idea of „respublica litteraria” on the intellectual life of the elite of the Polish-Lithuanian state reached its apogee in the era of union with Saxony and during the reign of Stanislaw Leszczyński in Lorraine. In the world of scholars, editing sources constitute a specific form of historical writing, which in the Republic was also connected with some journalistic functions, as is exemplified by its surprising popularity in the mid-18th century Dzieje w Koronie Polskiej by Łukasz Górnicki, related to the timeliness of the Republic’s rights towards the Duchy of Livonia. Another, no less important than the current political issues, explanatory part, are the educational issues, especially the currently developing education form the elite, as is clearly evident in the curriculum in the standard facilities of the Piarist and Jesuit Orders. Moreover, international affairs increasingly occupied the public opinion stimulated by new means of social communication, especially by newspapers. In Europe of the 18th century, the subject of dispute at the highest levels of power, between main political camps, were usually different concepts of external actions, whereas in the Polish-Lithuanian state, after the foundation of great factions, each of which claimed to be entitled to pursue its own foreign policy. After the partition of the Republic, the journalistic and political contexts of Polish editing of historical sources did not disappeared entirely, as evidence in the form of publications by Leonard Chodźko shows. One may risk saying that this ever-present up to this day current in Polish political and historical thought referring in the international affairs primarily to legal and ethical arguments, has its beginnings in the literature of the 18th century.
The Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) was expected to resolve all the numerous issues after World War I, but the organisation of this gigantic event was rather insufficient. The conference was held in Paris, recognising the important position of the principal country of the Allied victors. In the past, conferences were predominantly attended by professional diplomats, capable of “coaching” their sovereigns or politicians. The Paris Peace Conference was officially supposed to be different in that secret diplomacy undertaken by dip- lomats was disavowed. The criticism of the old traditions prevalent in diplomacy resulted in a different composition of delegations. Rather than professional diplomats with a legal background as in the past, the participants in the conference were economists, soldiers, or experts in various branches of social sciences.
The article examines a group of historical documents related to history of diplomacy and consular service in Odessa from 1879 till 1889. This group of documents helps to discover biographies some of foreign general consuls, consuls and vice consuls in Odessa. The documents reflect the process of approving candidates for the position of consul, vice-consul by imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Odessa provisional governor general, local administration and police.
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The presented article is primarily focused on the important Baroque aristocrat Count Adolf Vratislav of Sternberg and his diplomatic mission to the Swedish court of King Charles XI in 1673–1674. Sweden, as a S candinavian great power, played an important role in the power arrangement of Europe at that time. In 1675, Louis XIV started a war, thus escalating a diplomatic pressure against the Stockholm government from the French side as well as from the Habsburg Monarchy. The emperor‘s ambassador Adolf Vratislav of Sternberg represented a key person in this respect.
On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty this study deals with the historical development of Franco-German relations in the 20th century. The focus is on the historical models of rapprochement between the two nations. The author presents in detail the possibilities for cooperation in the interwar years (with a special focus on civil integration). This period may be considered one of the most intensive periods of the French-German reconciliation. Bases that the parties could build on after 1945 were founded as the ideas were similar. Following the successes of the large-scale policy, numerous other very important steps were needed to minimise mutual mistrust in the peoples of the two states. This led to a large number of various organisations and cooperations. The patterns presented here greatly influenced communication after 1945. In the second part of the study the author presents the origin and effect of the Élysée Treaty with some new aspects of the history of diplomacy. Of the numerous new initiatives, the author focuses primarily on civil ones. The great innovation brought about by the treaty, however, was the strong involvement of the civil societies of both countries, particularly in education, research, culture and youth exchanges. As a result of historical cooperation “Erbfeinde” (hereditary enemies) have become “Erbfreunde” (hereditary friends) within the European integration.
W kongresie westfalskim (1643-1648) wzięły udział 194 oficjalne przedstawiciel-stwa dyplomatyczne, z czego 178 pochodziło z Rzeszy Niemieckiej, a pozostałe z 16 innych państw europejskich. Uczestnicy rokowań pokojowych odznaczali się wysokim profesjonali-zmem i posiadali często wykształcenie prawnicze (nawet doktoraty i profesury). Największe doświadczenie w prowadzeniu negocjacji mieli reprezentanci państw europejskich, wśród których można było spotkać osoby zatrudnione w służbie dyplomatycznej od ponad 20 lat.
EN
There were 194 official delegations participating in the Congress of Westphalia (1643-1648), 178 of which came from the German Reich, while the remaining 16 from other European states. The participants of the peace negotiations were highly professional and often were well educated lawyers (even doctors and professors of law). The most experienced negotiators were the representatives of European states, among whom there were persons who had been employed in diplomatic service for more than 20 years.
This article deals with the resonance of the press to the nomination of Agenor Gołuchowski Junior for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary. This nomination was commented on, not only in the press of the Habsburg monarchy and the Polish-language press of the three partitions, but also in newspapers issued in other countries, even as remote as the islands of New Zealand. The article reviews the press releases and compares the published opinions and selection of facts. The source material, although of the same nature, is diverse - from extensive political analyses in the Viennese press to laconic references in New York or New Zealand newspapers.
PL
Niniejszy artykuł dotyczy oddźwięku, jaki w prasie wywołała nominacja na stanowisko ministra spraw zagranicznych Austro-Węgier Agenora Gołuchowskiego młodszego. Nominacja ta komentowana była zarówno w prasie monarchii habsburskiej i nie tylko w polskojęzycznej prasie trzech zaborów, ale również w gazetach wychodzących w innych państwach, aż do odległych wysp Nowej Zelandii. W artykule zostaje dokonany przegląd wypowiedzi prasowych, a także porównanie zamieszczanych opinii i doboru faktów. Materiał źródłowy, chociaż jednakowej natury, jest różnorodny - od obszernych analiz politycznych, zamieszczonych w prasie wiedeńskiej, aż po lakoniczne wzmianki w gazetach nowojorskich czy nowozelandzkich.
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