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Recensions

Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture. Elizabeth R. Williamson. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture Series. Routledge: New York-London, 2021, 289 p.

Anna Kalinowska
Bibliographical reference

Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture. Elizabeth R. Williamson. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture Series. Routledge: New York-London, ISBN 978-367-76129-5, 289 p.

Editor's notes

Index nominum
Elizabeth I, David Scott Gehring, Mary Anne Everett Green, John Herbert, William Salkins, Sir Henry Sidney, Sebastian Sobecki, Sir Henry Upton, Elizabeth Williamson

Full text

1There is something very uplifting about Elizabeth R. Williamson’s monograph, and that is the fact that the author delivers on her promise, made literally in the first sentence of the introductory chapter, which reads: “This book is about access to information; its production, management, transmission and use” (1). This volume may not be a thorough study of Elizabethan diplomacy, but whoever decides to write it should definitely build on Williamson's research when it comes to correspondence, information and intelligence. What she has provided is a detailed analysis of a hitherto neglected type of primary source, the diplomatic letter-book. The volume offers a very useful overview of the way in which diplomatic correspondence, and information more generally, functioned as part of a complex system involving the Elizabethan administration, the court, diplomatic personnel, English travelers to the Continent, and those responsible for the preservation of diplomatic documents. It also analyses how to use these documents today in connection with the issues of digital archives and digital scholarship.

2The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on a very different aspect of epistolary culture: “writing”, “copying”, and “keeping”. The introduction sets out the rationale for the monograph and some brief conclusions, and an appendix listing 19 letter-books and some other materials of interest. Together they provide a framework for considering diplomatic correspondence in a wider context, not simply as a series of letters produced by an ambassador during a mission and containing specific information about the ‘here and now’ but also as a tool for self-identification, a possible reference material long after the mission has ended, and a primary source that is now increasingly accessible to historians through digital platforms.

3The first section on writing is the part of the book most concerned with diplomacy itself. It contains two chapters: one focusing on the people within diplomacy (not just ambassadors, but also other diplomatic personnel and agents) whom Williamson calls “diplomatic players”, and the other on English travelers abroad and their role in gathering information. The overview of the workings of Elizabethan diplomats presented in chapter 1, focusing on their required skills, their place in the state service, their status and ranks, as well as the analysis of two interesting case studies, is well researched and strongly argued. We should particularly note the call for greater appreciation of the fact that diplomacy at this point was very much embedded in domestic government (20), of the status of resident and extraordinary ambassadors (32), and of the multi-country missions typical of Elizabethan diplomacy in Central Europe (35). However, one might disagree with some observations: John Herbert's reservations about the status of his co-ambassador, Eastland Company merchant William Salkins, with whom he was to work in Poland-Lithuania, were well-founded and cannot be seen as just another example of complaint about the appointment of persons of lesser status as extraordinary ambassadors (31). Chapter 2 looks at individuals who did not have official diplomatic status, but who were able and willing to gather information and intelligence, that was crucial for formulation of England’s foreign policies, during their educational travels to the Continent. Thus, they were able to establish relationship with the administration that could lead to their employment in the future. What seems to be missing from this chapter is another case study (analogous to Chapter 1) to illustrate how this worked in practice, and some wider geographical context, since this particular kind of “complementing” diplomats’ activities was extremely important in relation to northern and central Europe (see David Scott Gehring and Sebastian Sobecki’s recent research).

4These two chapters serve as a good introduction to the second section, which is much more primary source oriented, as chapter 3 focuses on the phenomenon of the diplomatic letter-book. It begins with a very useful definition (95) and goes on to analyze the form and function of the letter-book in various situations during and immediately or long after the mission. The key argument, very clearly and convincingly demonstrated here, is that the letter-book cannot be analyzed as a mere record of texts, but is an original and consciously created object that, like diplomatic letters in general, needs to be considered in the much wider context of a diplomat’s work and world (118-9). Chapter 4 tells the fascinating story of the letter books of the unsuccessful but famous for his narrative portrait in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Ambassador Sir Henry Upton. In addition to the material analysis of the surviving manuscripts, the reader can follow the process of creating a new narrative by selecting certain letters and omitting or re-editing others, and the way in which the letter books circulated among different audiences, and how they were useful in managing Upton’s image even after his death.

5The final section looks at the “afterlife” of diplomatic correspondence, but from very different perspectives. Chapter 5 examines Elizabethan administrative practices in relation to diplomatic correspondence, including the initial lack of distinction between public and private ownership of letters (perfectly illustrated by the ownership of the Cecil Papers), although Williamson fails to mention that this was something that was quite common throughout Europe at that time. She also looks at specific “tools” used by the principal secretaries and clerks, such as indexes and “precedent books”. She presents a case study of the Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir Henry Sidney’s letter-books, a practical reference work aimed at a wider audience (187-92). The final chapter might seem a surprising addition to a book focusing on the sixteenth century, but given the author’s background in digital humanities, it is actually a rather logical supplement to the text. As technological changes have made it possible to create digital archives many historians are increasingly relying on their contents. This chapter is therefore an important reminder that while this can be very useful in some ways, it has some drawbacks in others (e.g. paywall resources can contribute to the exclusion of some groups of researchers), and one could not agree more with Williamson when she argues that it is easy to assume that digital resources are properly curated and comprehensive, but in fact “these assumptions are rarely valid, and we need to improve our own and our students’ digital literacy to use such resources responsibly” (214). She makes another important observation regarding the role of women in the creation and curation of various collections, including State Papers, which has not been properly recognized, although in this context a typographical error in the name of Mary Anne Everett Green Wood on page 216 seems a typical Freudian slip.

6In conclusion, the book is a much-appreciated addition to the secondary literature on Elizabethan diplomacy, and will be useful to anyone who wants to learn more about how it worked, but especially to those interested in information and its role in formulating policy, working the administration, building individual careers and even managing the reputation of people who either fully or semi-officially represented Elizabeth I abroad. It also shows that while the relationship between diplomacy and political history is undeniable, we have had to recognize that even the most typically diplomatic sources, such as diplomatic correspondence, deserve to be reinterpreted and placed in a much wider context than in the past.

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References

Electronic reference

Anna Kalinowska, Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture. Elizabeth R. Williamson. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture Series. Routledge: New York-London, 2021, 289 p.Caliban [Online], 71-72 | 2024, Online since 20 August 2024, connection on 14 May 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/12874; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/12dmr

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About the author

Anna Kalinowska

The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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