Description
This paper - based on a chapter of my forthcoming monograph - is a study of the practices of Dutch, French, and English consuls in the early modern Mediterranean. It illustrates key relations of jurisdictional collaboration and conflict between sovereigns, merchants, trading companies, and regional institutions. It discusses what was expected of consuls and the range of their jurisdictional functions, the policies and strategies developed, such as the restrictive regulations increasingly put in place for the French service and its unique model of salaried and commissioned consuls, as well as the different practices found in Christian and non-Christian parts of the Mediterranean. Through a selection of archive material regarding events in the French embassy in Constantinople from the 1660s to 1680s, the analysis reveals a more interdependent relation between ambassadors and consuls in shaping so-called extraterritorial and jurisdictional spaces. Incorporating these challenges - based on class differences or social origins - formulates new research questions regarding the role of consular diplomacy, its connection to the aristocratisation of ambassadorial diplomacy, and the development of different forms of early modern mercantilism. The analysis concludes that French consular practices are better categorised as transplants of authority, in contrast to the less jurisdictionally autonomous role of English and Dutch consular attempts to transport their sovereign’s authority.The paper also concludes with some of the broader implications for early modern international relations of the concept of jurisdictional accumulation for understanding imperial agency and the construction of modern international law.
