The volume documents the findings of an international conference held in Trier in cooperation with the "Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum" and the A 9 project "Visualität der Diplomatie im europäischen Spätmittelalter. Die symbolische Inszenierung in der internationalen politischen Kommunikation" of the Sonderforschungsbereich 496 at the University of Münster.
The ten essays included in this volume deal with the civic characteristics of foreign policy during the Later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, a topic long neglected in research. Not only has the foreign policy of cities been thoroughly ignored, so too has been the evaluation of the competence and scope of action of civic envoys and their relevant institutions. Indeed, that the well known study by Viktor Menzel from 1892 has been considered authoritative work in the field for a long time is a striking example of this.
Recently, however, the evaluation of the nature of urban diplomacy has begun to attract attention once again: there is a stronger focus on the maxims of civic diplomacy, which accommodate the urban centres’ need for foreign policy. This is also the starting point for the present volume, which is divided into three parts.
In the first section, essential fields of research are presented in the light of civic foreign policy. The essays of the following section attend, via a series of case studies, to the intensification of communication and to the tendency of an institutionalisation of foreign policy in the context of federal ties. Finally, the third section addresses, again via a series of case studies, the personal and bearers of urban foreign policy and focuses on aspects of specialisation and professionalisation in this field during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.
All in all, the variety of the observations in the articles bear witness to the need for further multiperspective research of civic foreign policy, a topic largely neglected prior to this volume.


About this series:
The new publication series entitled „Trierer Beiträge zu den historischen Kulturwissenschaften“ (Trier Papers in Historical Cultural Studies) aims at being a forum for papers in the area of Cultural Studies, which focus on historical and interdisciplinary research. In addition to essay collections and conference volumes, the series also covers monographic studies as well as exhibition catalogues.
The editor of the book series is the Executive Board of the „Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum“ (HKFZ) Trier (Trier Historical Cultural Research Centre) at Trier University. The Research Centre is financed in line with the research initiative of Rhineland-Palatinate. HKFZ’s current research topic is called „Räume des Wissens – Orte, Ordnungen, Oszillationen“ (“Spaces of Knowledge – Places, Orders, Oscillations”). In collaboration with national and international partners, groups of linked projects work on this topic at Trier University.