A Professor as Diplomat: Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld and the Foreign Policy of the Principality of Transylvania, 1638–1643

Gábor Kármán
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.248

The paper addresses a unique phenomenon, the prominent role played by Johann Heinrich Bistefeld, a German professor at the academy of Gyulafehérvár Alba Iulia/Weissenburg in the foreign policy of György Rákóczi I, prince of Transylvania during the 1630s and 1640s. Having accepted a mission to Western European courts in 1638–1639, where Bisterfeld’s academic activities served as an excellent camouflage for the professor’s secret diplomatic negotiations, the professor maintained a leading role in keeping contact with the representatives of the Swedish and French Crowns also in the period after his return to the principality. As an “alternative correspondent” to the prince, he proved very useful in creating the treaties of Gyulafehérvár (1643) and Munkács (1645), and he played an outstanding role also in keeping the spirits of the prince high not to give up his plans to join the anti-Habsburg side of the Thirty Years’ War. Building upon the ideas Bisterfeld inherited from his tutor and father-in-law, Johann Heinrich Alsted, the German professor treated his pansophistic ideas and faith in the continuing Reformation as well as his political activities as different parts of the same endeavor as long as Calvinist believers were facing political repression in the Holy Roman Empire.

Keywords: diplomacy, Transylvania, international Calvinism, Gyulafehérvár academy, pansophia

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János Szabados
University of Szeged
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.194

Tibor Monostori
“Momentum” Holy Crown Research Team, Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.171

The composite state of the Spanish Habsburgs had a fading military, financial and diplomatic predominance in Central Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy was, to varying extents, integrated into the Spanish Habsburg system. This article presents three forms of integration and diplomatic relationship. First, it examines diplomatic and political encounters in the main governmental bodies and diets advising the emperor in decision-making, or more specifically, in the Imperial Privy Council in Vienna and during the diets of the kingdom of Hungary. Spanish Habsburg politicians and diplomats acted in many powerful ways to establish connections with Bohemian and Hungarian aristocrats so that they follow and adjust to their political agenda. Bohemian families (Slavata, Martiniz) had close relations and alliances with Spanish councilors in Vienna (who acted as ambassadors of the Spanish king), and several Hungarian aristocrats had interactions with them during the diets in order to secure the long-term interests of the dynasty in the Kingdom of Hungary. Second, the exchange, purchase, and influence of cultural goods and objects (e.g., books and gifts) and the ways in which these cultural goods were put to use, as well as the migration of people, show that the relationship went well beyond power politics and formal diplomatic relations. Personal and cultural influence and even early signs of acculturation can be clearly detected in several Bohemian and Hungarian families (e.g., the Forgách, Pázmány, and Zrínyi families), who ordered and read hundreds of books from Spanish Habsburg authors (including several books from Spanish Habsburg diplomats) and cities and exchanged diplomatic gifts with their Spanish counterparts. People, including influential figures (soldiers and nobles), also moved among Habsburg political centers, prompted by diplomatic or family relations between Spanish Habsburg politicians and Bohemian or Hungarian families. Third, information gathered in Vienna radiated to all Spanish Habsburg states in different layers of granularity, density, and confidentiality. Top Spanish diplomats could access and transmit classified documents and the texts of international contracts obtained from Central European aristocrats and events. They also sent thousands of reports to their superiors about general news in Bohemia and Hungary. At the same time, lower-ranking nobles often struggled to keep up with and understand international events and trends and failed to get information about the key results of wars and imperial diets, since they lacked access to the network and the seniority to exert adequate influence.

Keywords: Spanish Monarchy, early modern diplomacy, Habsburg Studies, Central European aristocracy, early modern Hungary, early modern Bohemia

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Zsuzsanna Hámori Nagy
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.224

In this article, I present a case study of a special form of diplomatic encounter that took place as secret negotiations between the resident ambassadors of France, England, Holland, and Venice and the Transylvanian envoys in Constantinople in 1625–1626 about a prospective alliance between Prince Gábor Bethlen and the anti-Habsburg powers during the Danish phase of the Thirty Years’ War. My analysis of this special form of negotiation offers a comprehensive overview of the practices deriving from the most characteristic circumstances and setbacks of diplomatic activity in Constantinople, i.e., what solutions (if any) were found to resolve problems of precedence, information brokerage, poor economic conditions, and bribery and corruption. I address, furthermore, the private interests of the participating Transylvanian diplomats and consider the extent to which these interests corresponded to the interests of their sending polity and especially of Gábor Bethlen. My discussion sheds light on the ways in which, in general, everyday challenges and networks of relations in Constantinople influenced the diplomacy of small states in the Ottoman orbit, specifically Transylvania in this case, when entering into an alliance with major powers outside the bonds of their Ottoman tributary status.

Keywords: diplomacy, Constantinople, Gábor Bethlen, Principality of Transylvania, Ottoman Empire

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Gábor Koloh
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 1  (2023):66–86 DOI 10.38145/2023.1.66

The study explores the changing perception of time through the records of a multi-generational peasant family. By comparing several rural manuscripts from different times and places, the study traces the refinement of the way time is thought, its new meanings, and its emergence in farming and family life. The appearance of the clock plays an important role in the analysis. The clock, first as a prestige object in the household, gradually becomes a tool for the modern use of time. The replacement of calendars by newspapers in the first decades of the 20th century is also a decisive factor in the perception of time. The world expands and information about more and more distant lands is brought into peasant households. The study places important emphasis on the idea that rural households are the last base for the spread of globalization phenomena. What is already occurring at this level within each country is where the spread of the phenomenon has come to an end.

Keywords: rural history, globalization, family history, use of time, peasant traditions

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Róbert Balogh
University of Public Service, Institute of Central European Studies
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 1  (2023):118–146 DOI 10.38145/2023.1.118

The paper analyses the roles of milk production and milk supply in the changes of the state-society relations and knowledge production in 20th early century Hungary. It places laboratories and the perception of milk as material in the centre of analysis prompting a narrative that takes account of the hybrid nature of milk. Building on arguments that Bruno Latour and Timothy Mitchell formulated, this study reveals key aspects of government, economy and modernity by using the notion that there are no clear boundaries between culture and nature. Hybridity also refers to the impossibility of controlling for all aspects of “nature.” The first part of the paper takes laboratories as junctures of legislation and urban-rural relations. The second part highlights the urban conditions as well as the local political contexts of milk consumption and milk shortage in the World War I and post-World War I period. Overall, the paper is a case for why food history is one of the ways to take research beyond methodological nationalism without having to ignore the realm of politics.

Keywords: Food shortage, urban-rural relations, milk history, history of science, history of cooperatives, interwar Hungary

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