In 2007 I won the Higher Education Academy National Award for the Teaching of History in Higher Education. [http://www.hca.heacademy.ac.uk/history/awards/winner2007.php]I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and I am a University Teaching Fellow.Current research students: Georgina Moore Past research students: Ellie Woodacre, Gender and Power: The Queens of Navarre. Completed January, 2012. Kate James [completed]. Georgina Brown, complete 2023 . Phone: 07702081984 Address: 7 Pomeroy Road TIVERTON Devon EX16 4LX
Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern Europ... more Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern European diplomacy. In the period following the Reformations, Europe became divided: all over the continent, princes and their peoples split over theological, liturgical, and spiritual matters. At the same time, diplomacy rose as a means of communication and policy, and all powers established long-or short-term embassies and sent envoys to other courts and capitals. The book addresses three critical areas where questions of religion or confession played a role: papal diplomacy, priests and other clerics as diplomatic agents, and religion as a question for diplomatic debate, especially concerning embassy chapels.
One important way in which society projects influence abroad is through the exercise of diplomacy... more One important way in which society projects influence abroad is through the exercise of diplomacy. This book deals with a particular phase in the diplomatic time scale, a phase which has its own prehistory.
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Why a Cultural History Historicizing the Signs of Diana Di... more Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Why a Cultural History Historicizing the Signs of Diana Diana, Royalty and Femininity The Ambivalent Femininities of Diana Narratives A Life in Images The Mourning for Diana and the Question of National Transformation Epilogue Bibliography Index
After 1603 there was an outbreak of wedding fever at the English court, aptly summed up by John C... more After 1603 there was an outbreak of wedding fever at the English court, aptly summed up by John Chamberlain, who writes that ‘all the talke now is of masking and feasting at these towardly marriages.’ In these early years of James VI & I’s reign, marriage played a key role in defining his identity as Rex Pacificus. After a flurry of high-profile court weddings aimed in some way or another at stabilising political tensions, protracted negotiations with several European nations culminated in Princess Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of James and Anna of Denmark, marrying Frederick, Elector Palatine, on Valentine’s Day, 1613. This paper will uncover some of the proposed bridegrooms offered for Elizabeth, and will examine the negotiations which took place to allow James to settle on Frederick V.
John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provides us with more information about the female participants in... more John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provides us with more information about the female participants in the English Reformation than any other work of the period and, at the same time, poses the question for historians of why some female martyrs of the Marian period differed so convincingly from the Protestant norm, which saw women subsumed to man. While women’s role in society was not of great import to Protestant reformers, the changes they did advocate had considerable significance for women. There is clearly a difficulty in the message Foxe is giving us about appropriate women’s roles, and the traditionally submissive and sexually chaste role prescribed for women is certainly not the one demonstrated by Foxe’s women.
In 1897, after several nasty bouts of bronchitis, the Abbess of St Mary’s, East Bergholt, Lady Ge... more In 1897, after several nasty bouts of bronchitis, the Abbess of St Mary’s, East Bergholt, Lady Gertrude Lescher, was recommended a change of air, and, since her last attack, her physician, Dr Carey, now insisted that it was imperative for her to convalesce in clearer air. Mother Prioress, Dame Margaret Mary Lescher, laid the matter before the Bishop, who at once agreed that the Doctor’s orders should be obeyed. Carey recommended that Hastings would be the most suitable place and plans were into place. This article is based on the diaries and letters of the Dames during their stay in Hastings which are preserved in the Haslemere Collection at Downside Abbey Library and Archive.
Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern Europ... more Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern European diplomacy. In the period following the Reformations, Europe became divided: all over the continent, princes and their peoples split over theological, liturgical, and spiritual matters. At the same time, diplomacy rose as a means of communication and policy, and all powers established long-or short-term embassies and sent envoys to other courts and capitals. The book addresses three critical areas where questions of religion or confession played a role: papal diplomacy, priests and other clerics as diplomatic agents, and religion as a question for diplomatic debate, especially concerning embassy chapels.
One important way in which society projects influence abroad is through the exercise of diplomacy... more One important way in which society projects influence abroad is through the exercise of diplomacy. This book deals with a particular phase in the diplomatic time scale, a phase which has its own prehistory.
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Why a Cultural History Historicizing the Signs of Diana Di... more Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Why a Cultural History Historicizing the Signs of Diana Diana, Royalty and Femininity The Ambivalent Femininities of Diana Narratives A Life in Images The Mourning for Diana and the Question of National Transformation Epilogue Bibliography Index
After 1603 there was an outbreak of wedding fever at the English court, aptly summed up by John C... more After 1603 there was an outbreak of wedding fever at the English court, aptly summed up by John Chamberlain, who writes that ‘all the talke now is of masking and feasting at these towardly marriages.’ In these early years of James VI & I’s reign, marriage played a key role in defining his identity as Rex Pacificus. After a flurry of high-profile court weddings aimed in some way or another at stabilising political tensions, protracted negotiations with several European nations culminated in Princess Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of James and Anna of Denmark, marrying Frederick, Elector Palatine, on Valentine’s Day, 1613. This paper will uncover some of the proposed bridegrooms offered for Elizabeth, and will examine the negotiations which took place to allow James to settle on Frederick V.
John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provides us with more information about the female participants in... more John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provides us with more information about the female participants in the English Reformation than any other work of the period and, at the same time, poses the question for historians of why some female martyrs of the Marian period differed so convincingly from the Protestant norm, which saw women subsumed to man. While women’s role in society was not of great import to Protestant reformers, the changes they did advocate had considerable significance for women. There is clearly a difficulty in the message Foxe is giving us about appropriate women’s roles, and the traditionally submissive and sexually chaste role prescribed for women is certainly not the one demonstrated by Foxe’s women.
In 1897, after several nasty bouts of bronchitis, the Abbess of St Mary’s, East Bergholt, Lady Ge... more In 1897, after several nasty bouts of bronchitis, the Abbess of St Mary’s, East Bergholt, Lady Gertrude Lescher, was recommended a change of air, and, since her last attack, her physician, Dr Carey, now insisted that it was imperative for her to convalesce in clearer air. Mother Prioress, Dame Margaret Mary Lescher, laid the matter before the Bishop, who at once agreed that the Doctor’s orders should be obeyed. Carey recommended that Hastings would be the most suitable place and plans were into place. This article is based on the diaries and letters of the Dames during their stay in Hastings which are preserved in the Haslemere Collection at Downside Abbey Library and Archive.
Performing Diplomacy in the Early Modern World, 2023
Abstract from conference paper
Woodcock proposal: Performance of diplomacy
Dr Philippa Woodc... more Abstract from conference paper
Woodcock proposal: Performance of diplomacy
Dr Philippa Woodcock
The ambassadors’ fireworks parties: public and private performance in early modern Paris
Firework displays had become a common place visual finale to royal and civic display in seventeenth century France. Indeed, Michel le Pure’s Idée de Spectacles Ancien et Nouveaux (1668) complained of their ubiquity as a type of elite performance. Whilst displays at Versailles are the focus of a current exhibition, these had developed from the model established in Paris by the officers of the Hotel de Ville. Set up on the place de Grève or on the Seine, in front of the Louvre, the fireworks were the final act to a series of rituals, including triumphal entries, Te Deum, formal receptions, theatre, ballet and naumachie. In honour of the royal family, the fireworks might even be lit by the king: thus, court, crown and city were all actors, and audience in this performance. Furthermore, the king dictated that resident ambassadors should play their own part. Special seats were reserved for the choicest envoys in the gallerie du Louvre to ensure that their reports of the fireworks would analytically itemise the event for their foreign masters. In addition, an accompanying ‘programme’, explaining the symbolism of the ephemeral event, was produced. These would be diffused across Europe to inform of the political messages of the display.
However, upon rare occasions the ambassadors themselves became the patron and the host of these fireworks parties. This paper will consider the fireworks mounted in 1649 by the Venetian ambassador Michele Morosini to celebrate Venetian naval victory, and the celebrations in 1730 to mark the Franco-Spanish alliance, as symbolised by the birth of the dauphin. Using surviving pamphlets and prints, it will consider how the ambassador managed this performance in the interests of his masters, and his place at court and in the city. The paper will ask how the ambassadors faced the challenge of transferring control of the performance, and managed new ‘theatres’ for the accompanying banquets, masques and receptions. Fireworks are by nature public and ephemeral, and were centred around the Hotel de Ville or Louvre. How then could they be manipulated to be focused on the ‘private’ property of the hotel, yet still fulfil the essential need to be seen by the public, and communicate political messages? Furthermore, how did each ambassador switch roles from being a member of the audience, to directing ‘festins tres-splendides, dont il a regalé les principaux Seigneurs de la Cour et de la Ville’? Finally, as well as directing several types of ephemeral performance, how did the ambassadors guide the permanent documentation surrounding each event? Was the court or civic model always followed, or did an ‘embassy’ style emerge?
Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period
DUBROVNIK: 1... more Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period
Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period
DUBROVNIK: 1... more Struggle for Sovereignty? Small States and the Diplomacy of the Early Modern Period
In Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, Mirella Marini explains that: 'The ari... more In Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, Mirella Marini explains that: 'The aristocratic diplomats were not necessarily there to draft the papers. The professionals handled the legal work, but the courtiers were there to use a specific 'court language''. (99) This 'specific court language' is not only verbal, but physical and material. The 2019 edition of The Splendid Encounters will question the gestures of diplomacy both in their literal and symbolic forms. It will consider the evolution of the production and the reception of gestures in diplomacy from the late middle-ages to the post-Westphalian world as a part of a reassessment of the transition from old to new diplomacy. This colloquium will gather researchers in history, literature, art history, political science to reflect on the relationship between diplomacy and the body. During the medieval era, the ambassador was considered as a human letter: he was offered as an object for the foreign master to read, to observe and to manipulate in space as well as to listen to. The ambassador as a gift and as a language is an aspect of the diplomatic activity which, albeit its self-evidence, has been left unexplored. This conference would like to bridge this gap between seminal works produced on the material economy of diplomacy such as Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani's Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture and the actual semiotic language implied by moving bodies in a diplomatic context. Based on Ellen R. Welch's compelling study of the use of entertainment and theatre in early modern French diplomacy in A Theatre of Diplomacy (2017), the organisers would like to explore the dramatic nature of diplomacy as in the physical and material aspects of the trade. We would like to focus on the gestures of the ambassadors and their masters, but also on how they were perceived and understood by the diplomatic and non-diplomatic circles (arts, theatre, proto-journalism, travellers etc). We will thus focus on the tenets of the training of an ambassador both in theoretical treaties and in practice. The expectations regarding the material and the physical
Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Buda... more Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest
Úri u 53
Budapest, 1014
This paper is part of a large work in progress based on previously unseen material from the Hasle... more This paper is part of a large work in progress based on previously unseen material from the Haslemere collection at Downside Abbey. 1 The main sources consist of approximately 28 boxes of loose, mainly unsorted, documents, kept in the archives of the Abbey. This collection contains the profession lists; obituaries; financial and legal documents; histories and other documents which demonstrate the social, cultural and religious activities of the nuns of the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady between foundation in 1597 and suppression in 1976.
Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, ending the Thirt... more Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, ending the Thirty Years War, is often considered to be a milestone for modern diplomacy. It took nearly five years and the countless efforts of numerous diplomats to bring an end to the largest international conflict of the early modern period. However, wars and conflicts between rulers or governing bodies have always been critical to the development of diplomatic practice. While writing about the diplomat's duties one of the first theoreticians of diplomacy, Bernard du Rosier, stressed that the ambassadors were to make peace, to arrange past disputes, and remove the cause for future unpleasantness: in other words, to end and prevent all kinds of conflicts. But how did late medieval and early modern diplomacy approach this problem? What methods did the diplomats use to obtain peace – as Garett Mattingly called it – the grand object of diplomacy? The upcoming conference, Splendid Encounters 7, will focus on answering these questions. Therefore, we welcome all submissions on this subject, but especially encourage proposals for both individual papers and panels of 3 papers addressing the following: • peace negotiations on the local or regional levels • ceremonial of negotiations and signing peace or truce agreements • diplomacy as a tool for ending military, religious, economic, etc. conflicts • diplomats' strategies to deal with conflict on various levels • diplomatic appeasement and peace preservation We invite submission of abstracts (300 to 400 words) for twenty-minute papers. Splendid Encounters is a series of international and interdisciplinary conferences that aims to bring together scholars from the broadest possible range of perspectives to consider diplomacy and diplomatic activities in the early modern era. After successful meetings in Warsaw, Bath, Florence, Budapest, Prague and Lisbon we invite you to join us for another event, this time co-organised by the Lithuanian Please direct queries regarding submissions to Dr Anna Kalinowska: akalinowska@ihpan.edu.pl and e-mail abstract and short biography to: se7.vilnius@gmail.com Deadline for submission is 15 th March, 2018. The applicants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by 15 th April, 2018. Please be advised, that a conference fee of max. 30 EUR, covering the conference package and coffee breaks, may apply.
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Books by Dr Roberta Anderson
Papers by Dr Roberta Anderson
Woodcock proposal: Performance of diplomacy
Dr Philippa Woodcock
The ambassadors’ fireworks parties: public and private performance in early modern Paris
Firework displays had become a common place visual finale to royal and civic display in seventeenth century France. Indeed, Michel le Pure’s Idée de Spectacles Ancien et Nouveaux (1668) complained of their ubiquity as a type of elite performance. Whilst displays at Versailles are the focus of a current exhibition, these had developed from the model established in Paris by the officers of the Hotel de Ville. Set up on the place de Grève or on the Seine, in front of the Louvre, the fireworks were the final act to a series of rituals, including triumphal entries, Te Deum, formal receptions, theatre, ballet and naumachie. In honour of the royal family, the fireworks might even be lit by the king: thus, court, crown and city were all actors, and audience in this performance. Furthermore, the king dictated that resident ambassadors should play their own part. Special seats were reserved for the choicest envoys in the gallerie du Louvre to ensure that their reports of the fireworks would analytically itemise the event for their foreign masters. In addition, an accompanying ‘programme’, explaining the symbolism of the ephemeral event, was produced. These would be diffused across Europe to inform of the political messages of the display.
However, upon rare occasions the ambassadors themselves became the patron and the host of these fireworks parties. This paper will consider the fireworks mounted in 1649 by the Venetian ambassador Michele Morosini to celebrate Venetian naval victory, and the celebrations in 1730 to mark the Franco-Spanish alliance, as symbolised by the birth of the dauphin. Using surviving pamphlets and prints, it will consider how the ambassador managed this performance in the interests of his masters, and his place at court and in the city. The paper will ask how the ambassadors faced the challenge of transferring control of the performance, and managed new ‘theatres’ for the accompanying banquets, masques and receptions. Fireworks are by nature public and ephemeral, and were centred around the Hotel de Ville or Louvre. How then could they be manipulated to be focused on the ‘private’ property of the hotel, yet still fulfil the essential need to be seen by the public, and communicate political messages? Furthermore, how did each ambassador switch roles from being a member of the audience, to directing ‘festins tres-splendides, dont il a regalé les principaux Seigneurs de la Cour et de la Ville’? Finally, as well as directing several types of ephemeral performance, how did the ambassadors guide the permanent documentation surrounding each event? Was the court or civic model always followed, or did an ‘embassy’ style emerge?
DUBROVNIK: 16th -17th April, 2020
DUBROVNIK: 16th -17th April 2020
Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest
Úri u 53
Budapest, 1014
25th – 26th September, 2015