2 - From touring to training: the case of diplomacy, 1680–1830

Summary

The idea that it is necessary to travel in order to survey policies and developments in other countries is recurrent in European thought, and goes back to Classical Antiquity. In this respect, travel appears as an acceptable, if not desirable, endeavour, even in the eyes of thinkers who consider it otherwise mostly unfit for other purposes such as education. Travel also has a deep connection and mutual influence with standardised forms of international contact and negotiations, generally known under the name of diplomacy.

As chapter 1 has shown, simple ‘curiosity’, which is more often seen as a weakness, or even a sin, than a virtue, was not enough to justify extensive travelling. On the other hand, observing the mores of another nation, its government, and that government's interaction with its citizens, was often specified as a worthwhile goal. Such an enterprise provided two benefits: training a young man so that he would potentially be ready to take up important positions in state administration, and providing crucial intelligence for the state. Beyond creating an entire class of men well versed in the ways of foreign nations, a possible additional benefit of travel was that it could be seen more specifically as a step to becoming a professional agent in intercultural negotiations – a diplomat.

The idea that diplomacy requires trained professionals emerged only very gradually. The rise of the professional diplomat was a lengthy process, one that spanned from at least the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. In this chapter, I shall tackle a specific aspect of this development, through the example of France: how educational travel came to be seen as a possible first step in the direction of a diplomatic career. To begin with, there is a natural, one might say ‘organic’, link between travel and diplomacy. Especially in the case of the aristocracy, travel to foreign courts can act as an antechamber to a diplomatic career and provide opportunities for ‘intelligencing’. This chapter will first focus on the late seventeenth century, a time when several texts reflect on the intersection of travelling and training.