Councils, conflicts, correspondence: Urban diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470-1570)

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the city councils of Hanseatic towns participated lively in the Northern European landscape of diplomacy. Often, it was conflict which lay behind the magistrates' diplomatic activities. Discord among the members of the Hanse, intercity disputes between individual burghers, and large-scale “international” altercations, all required town councils to engage with actors and institutions beyond the town walls.

'Councils, conflicts, correspondence' examines how the magistrates of the Hanseatic towns Lübeck and Reval managed such conflicts which often exceeded the formal limits of their own jurisdiction and authority. Through a comparative study of two towns with markedly different access to political power and networks, this book analyses the scope of diplomatic action available to city councils. By placing the diplomacy of municipal governments in the broader frame of European urban political thought and practice, it shows how magistrates combined a flexible conception of the common good with a pragmatic notion of reciprocity to balance their relations to their own citizenry and overlords, as well as to the Hanse and foreign rulers. Furthermore, this book zooms in on practices of diplomacy and processes of negotiation, uncovering the variety of strategies and tactics employed by the councils and their diplomats in written correspondence as well as face-to-face meetings at regional and Hanseatic diets.