Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500

Glenda Sluga, Carolyn James, Glenda Sluga, Carolyn James

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317497028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 explores the role of women as agents of diplomacy in the trans-Atlantic world since the early modern age. Despite increasing evidence of their involvement in political life across the centuries, the core historical narrative of international politics remains notably depleted of women. This collection challenges this perspective.

Chapters cover a wide range of geographical contexts, including Europe, Russia, Britain and the United States, and trace the diversity of women's activities and the significance of their contributions. Together these essays open up the field to include a broader interpretation of diplomatic work, such as the unofficial avenues of lobbying, negotiation and political representation that made women central diplomatic players in the salons, courts and boudoirs of Europe.

Through a selection of case studies, the book throws into new perspective the operations of political power in local and national domains, bridging and at times reconceptualising the relationship of the private to the public. Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 is essential reading for all those interested in the history of diplomacy and the rise of international politics over the past five centuries.

1 Women and Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy

Carolyn James

DOI: 10.4324/9781315713113-2

In his persuasive and now classic monograph Renaissance Diplomacy, published in 1955, Garrett Mattingly argued that modern diplomacy was born in the small city-states of late-medieval Italy. According to his narrative, the rulers and ruling elites of the Italian peninsula’s diverse range of regimes, from republics such as Florence and Venice to the principalities of the north, remained so aware of the insecurity of their political tenure that they sought to unify their fractious urban populations by waging war on neighbouring states. By 1460, the debilitating aspects of this predatory approach to maintaining authority were all too apparent, as the economies of even the wealthiest cities buckled under the strain of large military outlays. The notion that a balance of power should be a desirable outcome of diplomatic engagement gained currency; at the same time, resident ambassadors became an increasingly important means by which Italian rulers kept an eye on each other, maintained dialogue and attempted to avert conflict. In Mattingly’s view these two developments marked the beginning of diplomacy as a profession practised by specialists and as a permanent state institution. ¹ Female protagonists do not figure in his account of European diplomacy’s rise, since women had no formal role in the machinery of political negotiation and only men were able to become official ambassadors.

Recent research has shown, however, that diplomacy was not suddenly transformed during the Italian Renaissance into the rational, modernizing discipline that Mattingly describes, even if it is generally agreed that there was a notable strengthening of the organs responsible for foreign policy in Italy from the middle of the fifteenth century. Isabella Lazzarini argues in her work on the duchy of Milan, for example, that allegiance to the ruling family over several generations of service was still more likely to be the main criterion for choosing an ambassador than precise qualifications. She shows that diplomatic appointees had usually worked extensively in various roles within the secretariat before receiving a posting and, once established in a foreign city, agents served not only as petitioners, negotiators, orators and gatherers of intelligence, but also as intermediaries in commercial transactions, as their forebears had done in the past. ² Daniela Frigo comes to similar conclusions about the smaller states of Mantua and Modena. ³ Franca Leverotti, Paolo Margaroli and Riccardo Fubini also emphasize the ways in which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian diplomatic culture remained an ad hoc blend of formal and informal elements, only partly professionalized and reliant on patronage and family connections. ⁴

Although these scholars discuss the place of women in diplomacy’s evolution as sparingly as Mattingly, their research invites the present analysis. As Frigo points out, diplomacy operated not just as a form of representation among sovereign states, but rather as ‘a close-knit and multiform network of exchanges, agreements, alliances, information, interests and dynastic affairs.’ ⁵ Noblewomen were themselves objects of diplomatic exchange in marriages that cemented European political alliances and were well placed to participate in the full range of political interactions that Frigo mentions. It is also recognized that early modern political elites did not make a clear distinction between the private and public spheres; indeed dynastic interests and patronage networks infiltrated to the very heart of government and inevitably shaped foreign relations. Interior and exterior politics have therefore to be examined together, and a wider interpretation of what constituted diplomacy brought to bear, if women’s diplomatic activities are to come more sharply into view. ⁶

While the republics of Renaissance Italy endeavoured vigorously to keep patrician women firmly in the domestic sphere, the courts associated with the southern monarchy and the northern principalities were enabling spaces for female participation in many kinds of political activities, including diplomacy. Courts were sufficiently enclosed to provide a protected milieu for women to operate across the public–private divide. From around the middle of the fifteenth century, when soldier-princes were obliged to take to the battlefield, there was an increasing tendency for their wives to provide a stable point of reference for the coordination of administrative, juridical and foreign policy during their absences. The women were privy to the whole diplomatic apparatus of their husband’s regime and were themselves important actors in it, sometimes in their capacity as regents, at others, as conduits to power. The evident authority of princely consorts, as well as the presence at court of many noblewomen, who participated in patronage networks and had ample opportunities for unofficial diplomatic engagement, inevitably prompted criticism from those who took the traditional view that women were innately unsuitable for political responsibilities of any kind. In response, a number of high-ranking female patrons in Ferrara, Milan, Mantua and Urbino attempted to build consensus about their authority and influence by encouraging the writing of treatises in defence of women and of biographical anthologies featuring biblical and classical heroines. ⁷

Evidence that this tacit campaign by elite women and their literary apologists achieved a degree of success appears in the chronicle of Ugo Caleffini, a notary and bureaucrat at the Este court in Ferrara. Under the entry for February 1476, he describes a visit to the Republic of Venice by the duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora d’Aragona, and a large party of nobles, which included Bianca d’Este, the duke’s half-sister. ⁸ Whether the chronicler was among the delegation, or heard about the incident at second hand, does not emerge, but he records snippets of dialogue, which he ascribes to Bianca, and presents her in a way that suggests he was accepting of her active participation in a diplomatic exchange. According to Caleffini’s account, as the visitors toured the Arsenal, Bianca was invited by her hosts to admire Venice’s impressive military stockpile. The munitions were indeed a fine sight, Bianca apparently declared, but what a pity that they were lying idle when they could be sent to help King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in his battle against the Turks. Quoting a biblical adage that was often cited in contemporary diplomatic discourse: ‘Cum inimicis meis vindicabo inimicos meos [With my enemies I will take revenge on my enemies],’ she pointed out the advantages of the Venetians putting aside their distrust of Corvinus and allying with him against a common foe. ⁹ The Venetians quickly changed the subject, disconcerted perhaps by a woman articulating her views so publicly. Nevertheless, they apparently remained impressed by Bianca’s eloquence and political awareness, especially when she addressed the Senate the following day on behalf of her husband, Galeotto Pico, Lord of Mirandola and Count of Concordia. ¹⁰ Caleffini seems to have included Bianca’s forthright speech as evidence of a satisfying Ferrarese triumph over the arrogant Venetians, who tended to treat neighbouring Ferrara as a subject state, and to have taken it for granted that a woman could make a dent in Venetian pride with deft and well-informed diplomatic parrying. Caleffini’s chronicling of a woman in diplomatic action is rare, but there is abundant other evidence from the same period in the letter collections of the chanceries associated with Italy’s northern principalities.

The diplomatic forays of one of the best-known figures of the Italian Renaissance, Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), were analysed extensively by Alessandro Luzio in a series of essays written in the first decades of the twentieth century. ¹¹ He saw Isabella’s political role as controversial and unconventional, the result of her forceful personality, intelligence and the unusual times in which she lived, not typical therefore of her female peers. Isabella herself is at least partly responsible for this perception, since she wanted to be recognized as a remarkable, even unique, woman of her time. Eldest daughter of the duke and duchess of Ferrara, Isabella married Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of the neighbouring principality of Mantua, in 1490. Her voluminous surviving correspondence reveals the intellectual sharpness that Luzio so admired and documents a substantial involvement in both domestic politics and foreign affairs. ¹²

However, Isabella d’Este was far from alone in taking so active a role in government business. Indeed, a significant number of Italy’s duchesses and marchionesses had become an integral part of the diplomatic networks and procedures of their day. As they moved upon marriage from one geographical location to another, young noblewomen brought with them valuable family connections, knowledge of other languages and sensitivity to the diverse social customs and political traditions of an array of natal and marital kin. Most had been educated well, on the grounds that a high level of literacy and cultural sophistication were necessary prerequisites for the prominent positions they would assume in adulthood. It is also the case that the military perils which beset Mantua and its allies in the early sixteenth century severely tested traditional diplomatic responses and solutions. ¹³ Improvization drove innovation, opening up broader possibilities for women to contribute to diplomacy. In what follows, I explore the extent to which Isabella tested the boundaries of what contemporaries regarded as an appropriate female contribution to diplomatic engagement and to what degree her political role conformed to, and deviated from, those of her predecessors, whose legacy was already substantial. ¹⁴

When the 15-year-old Isabella entered the Gonzaga castle in February 1490, as the newly proclaimed marchioness of Mantua, she would almost immediately have encountered a series of frescoes, painted by Andrea Mantegna a little over two decades before, on the walls of the room now known as the Camera degli sposi. Here, there was a large group portrait of her husband’s grandparents, Barbara von Hohenzollern of Brandenburg and Lodovico Gonzaga, surrounded by their children and members of the court. Barbara of Brandenburg’s visual prominence in a chamber that was often used to receive important visitors was entirely appropriate. She came from a noble German family with close connections to the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund of Luxemburg, technically the feudal overlord of Mantua. Her marriage to Lodovico Gonzaga cemented a crucial northern alliance and provided the elevated social connections and aristocratic genealogy that the Gonzaga family had formerly lacked. In fact, the political worth of the bride’s dynastic ties was calculated in such concrete financial terms that not only did the von Brandenburg family provide no dowry, but the Gonzaga paid 50,000 florins to seal the marriage agreement. ¹⁵ This large sum proved to be a sound investment. Barbara used her family networks to good effect, especially in the successful diplomatic campaign to have her son Francesco made a cardinal. ¹⁶ Francesco Gonzaga’s appearance in Mantegna’s fresco probably refers to his triumphant visit to Mantua in 1472, ten years after his appointment to the cardinalate, and generally celebrates a high point of Gonzaga political and dynastic success, one to which the marchioness’s contribution was decisive. ¹⁷

Barbara of Brandenburg was only 11 when she arrived in Mantua in 1433 as Lodovico Gonzaga’s betrothed. Her education, therefore, then continued under the tuition of the distinguished humanist Vittorino da Feltre. She learned to speak Italian well, but also retained an excellent knowledge of her native language. In later years, this allowed her to translate German correspondence for her husband, offer useful advice about the significance of developments in the imperial court, keep abreast of news from her relatives north of the Alps and even facilitate negotiations between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor. ¹⁸ There is little doubt that the choice of Mantua as the site for the Imperial Diet of 1459 was directly related to Barbara’s presence there. Germans travelling on diplomatic business to Rome regularly interrupted their journey to pay their respects to the marchioness and to exchange information with her, while Italians seeking information about German affairs also sought her help. ¹⁹

Letters between Lodovico Gonzaga and his wife suggest that they had a cooperative partnership, with the conventional hierarchical relationship between spouses mediated by Barbara’s superior blood lines and sophisticated knowledge of the world. During her husband’s absences from Mantua in the 1460s, Barbara read incoming diplomatic reports, forwarded letters that required the marquis’s urgent attention and discussed policy in her own exchanges with him. Resident ambassadors also wrote letters specifically addressed to the marchioness, some of them containing top secret information. Correspondence addressed to Lodovico Gonzaga might be read by a number of chancery employees and in this sense was semi-public. Letters to his spouse, on the other hand, were assumed to be for her eyes only and a safer medium to communicate politically sensitive intelligence. ²⁰ In December 1459, for example, Vincenzo della Scalona wrote to Barbara from Milan in the following terms:

My Illustrious Lady, Your Excellency will see the latest news in letters to my illustrious lord but, because the information I include in the present letter has come my way by very secret means, I did not want to include it in the aforementioned news report. ²¹

As Barbara Swain has pointed out, a resident envoy could also express his views more freely to the marchioness, since he could write to her without the risk of seeming to be presumptuous by offering political advice directly to his master. If the marquis’s wife agreed with the ambassador’s assessment, she could persuade her spouse to act accordingly, leaving the envoy’s opinion safely in the background. ²² It seems, then, that Barbara of Brandenburg brokered information sent directly to her and provided a secure means of passing on confidential news. Few ambassadors could hope to rival the marchioness’s degree of access to her husband and to other powerful men. It is little wonder th...