Diplomatic Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean

DiplomatiCon. A Connected History of Medieval Mediterranean Diplomacy: The Mamluk Sultanate, Italy and the Crown of Aragon (14th-15th century) is a project funded by the Excellence of Science scheme (EOS) of the Belgian FRSF.N.R.S. (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique) and F.W.O. (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). Made up of four units (Liège, PI Frédéric Bauden; Antwerp, PIs Malika Dekkiche and Iason Jongepier; CSIC Barcelona, PI Roser Salicrú i Lluch; Turin/Bologna, PI Isabella Lazzarini), it has a duration of six years (2022-2027). In addition to the PIs of the various units, the research team is composed of three PostDocs with historical and digital expertise and six PhD students. The theme of the research is the reconstruction of an interconnected history of the interactions with diplomatic content between the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1251-1517), the Crown of Aragon (including the Italian domains of Sicily and Naples), and a wide range of powers and polities in late medieval Italy (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Savoy, Ancona, Bologna, Lucca, Siena). The idea is to reconstruct and illuminate for the first time – through capillary research on published and unpublished sources and the use of a relational database specifically constructed for the project by Laurent Simon, from Liège – the pervasive, multiple and connected nature of the formal and informal relationships that were interwoven between the various protagonists examined. The database, in which people, places, institutions, and contacts will be encoded, and which will be able to produce Social Network Analysis and Spatial Analysis (graphs and georeferenced maps), will be both an essential tool for the research project and an achievement in itself, as an open-access online reference tool in the field of diplomatic and Mediterranean studies. The Bologna workshop, organised by the Italian unit of the project, addresses the second of the project’s thematic axes (Diplomatic Networks), centred on the building of social networks with diplomatic content in the Mediterranean between Italy, Aragon and the Mamluk Sultanate. The history of diplomatic relations in the area has so far concentrated on the history of the commercial treaties concluded between the state actors, which are usually presented as competing powers in the Mediterranean basin. Following the trend within the ‘New Diplomatic History’, Work Package 2 is switching the focus from these state/formal actors to the various agents working with them in order to rewrite a history of diplomacy on a Mediterranean scale that not only crosses the classical borders set by the various fields of study, but simultaneously highlights the multi-layered structure of cross-cultural diplomacy. Such an approach is facilitated by the DiplomatiCon database that will make available all sources from the various groups studied, and that will allow to identify the agents (Christian and Muslim) who have contributed to the exchanges, all the way from home to destination