Beyond Sovereign Courts

Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy

Edited by Francesca Caprioli Edited by Ruben Gonzalez Cuerva

Book cover: Beyond Sovereign Courts

Extent: 190 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Early Modern & Renaissance Studies, Hispanic & Portuguese Studies, Social Sciences 

Series: Courts and Courtiers in a Global Context

Series volume number: 3

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(January 2026)

ISBN: 9782503611808

Price: $112.00

In stock

The global interactions between courts tended to follow diverse paths, so that indirect diplomacy must be formalised as analytic tool to grasp how early modern empires came together and negotiated, by pushing the boundaries of their courtier cultures and agents.


The classic model of early modern diplomacy suggests the exchange of missions between royal courts and sovereigns, but recent scholarship emphasises that many cross-imperial contacts transcended this scheme. Whether missions were sent from Manila to Mangalore, from Sanlucar de Barrameda to Marrakesh or from Buda to Vienna, regional authorities or local notables managed and conducted exchanges of their own with tacit or indirect control by their sovereign court. Given the breadth and variety of this typology, which goes beyond the anecdotal exception, this collection sets out to reveal how such indirect diplomacy functioned and developed throughout the first period of globalisation. And of course, many of the actors in these exchanges had contact in some degree with the court, the hub of diplomatic activity. Exploring the further reaches of court cultures therefore will provide a useful opportunity to clarify how diplomatic actors negotiated in socio-political frameworks alien to their own traditions by denying a formalised and ritual approach, many derived from court culture, to discreetly advance their dealings. In so doing, we argue for a change in the way historians think about indirect diplomacy as a scarcely institutionalised practice or unrelated to the court. Indeed, this collection affirms how indirect diplomacy was a peculiar model of diplomacy implemented by early modern empires according to their political and cultural needs.

  • Edited by Francesca Caprioli
  • Edited by Ruben Gonzalez Cuerva