Diplomáticos “en red”hacia un nuevo horizonte de reflexión sobre la diplomacia. El caso hispano-alemán (1870-1918)

Résumé

International and world history have spent long time studying the transnational actors that compete with the nation state as the only framework in which diplomatic activity should take place. Focusing on the “margins” where these mediators display their agency, diplomacy transforms into a dynamic object, while in the long term its agents, more or less spontaneously, contribute to overcome the state limits, as well as to bond ties between societies and cultures separated by imagined borders. For this reason, this paper first looks at the long path taken by diplomats and historians towards the “unofficial margins” of state diplomatic activity since the early twentieth century. The role that transnational networks have played in the final stages of this historic and historiographical process, as well as the remarkable opportunities they have opened for historical analysis, will be specially highlighted. Finally, the first results of this innovative approach will be applied to an ongoing doctoral research on Spanish-German diplomatic relations between 1870 and 1918.-