De emotionele diplomatie van vriendschap

De correspondentie van Madame Van der Goes, informeel gezante aan het Deense hof, 1787-1793

Abstract

This article opens up new territory by cross-fertilising insights of New Diplomatic History and gender history focused on the diplomatic agency of informal actors, and specifically the female spouses of European male diplomats and ministers at the end of the eighteenth century, with perspectives from the history of emotions. To this end, Todd Hall’s concept of ‘emotional diplomacy’ is focused on friendship. Letters from the players on the international stage of the European powers that were once labeled as ‘personal’ and therefore largely ignored in historiography so far – can thus be read as a source of historical knowledge about various social and cultural tactics of ‘soft diplomacy’ behind the facade of the official interstate diplomacy. The case developed here comprises the epistolary legacy of Geertruida Francisca van der Goes-de Eerens, wife of envoy Maarten van der Goes who served the Dutch Republic in the late eighteenth century. This corpus comprises more than three hundred letters from members and representatives of European embassies, envoys, secretaries, the Danish and Spanish courts. The part selected for this article comes primarily from Danish ministers’ wives Augusta Bernstorff and Charlotte Schimmelmann, and from Russian ambassador’s wife Julie von Krüdener. Their letters provide an insight into the close collaborative practices of women and men in the cosmopolitan mixed world of diplomatic, political and royal circles in Copenhague in the years between 1787 and 1796.