Public news: an ambassador’s secret weapon. Diego Guzman de Silva’s interventions in the Low Countries from the embassy in Venice, 1568-1573
The papers of early-modern ambassadors have increasingly been used to study a wide range of topics. My own was in some ways traditional but also different: I wanted to find out the type of information that Philip II’s ambassadors in states not directly involved in the civil war in the Low Countries had of that conflict, and if possible learn something about the informants and what the ambassador did with that information. The results were disappointing in some embassies, but by dint of putting together some of the dispersed papers of the embassy in Venice, they yielded a wealth of material on the manipulation of manuscript news and Guzman de Silva’s use of the embassy in Venice in order to intervene in the politics of the Low Countries and change Philip II’s policy towards them.

Link: earlymoderndiplomacyevents.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/mia-j-rodriguez-salgado-the-london-school-of-economics-and-political-science-iberian-habsburg-diplomatic-relations-with-muslim-powers-in-the-sixteenth-century
Date: 26 February 2019, 16:30 (Tuesday, 7th week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: History Faculty, George Street OX1 2RL
Venue Details: Gerry Martin Room
Speaker: Professor Emerita Mía J. Rodríguez-Salgado (The London School of Economics and Political Science)
Organising department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)
Part of: Early Modern Diplomacy c.1400-1800
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Laura Spence