Dec 3
By Kate McGregor (https://katemcgregor.academia.edu/)
As wedding presents go a ship is certainly the pièce de résistance. A gift from the French King François I to his new son-in-law James V, King of Scots, it represented the renewal of the Franco-Scots ‘Auld alliance’. [1] At its helm was a glistening salamander, a ‘dragon in flames of fire’, and the emblem of the French king.
Read moreBy Bennett Ostdiek
On January 22, 1862, nine months into the American Civil War, Henry Hotze arrived in London. Hotze had come to London to serve as a propaganda agent for the Confederate States of America. His mission was simple – to convince Her Majesty’s Government to grant official diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. Both Hotze and the Confederate government believed that once Britain recognized Southern independence as an accomplished fact, the United States government would do the same and give up its military efforts to bring the seceded states back into the Union. At stake was nothing that than the independence of his homeland and the future of its signature institution – slavery.
A under-researched field is women in diplomatic history. Furthering this field would enhance the study of diplomatic history itself as mostly men are in the forefront as leaders of diplomatic missions. This leads to questions such as, “how to treat gender as a concept in foreign affairs and how to write about women in foreign affairs”? There are problems concerning the sources on women’s involvment in diplomatic history, which makes it difficult for historians to find out exactly what was the extent of influence.
