On the Table: Thinking about the Leg Work of Furniture in Early Modern Diplomacy

Rossman, Sasha (19 May 2022). On the Table: Thinking about the Leg Work of Furniture in Early Modern Diplomacy (Unpublished). In: VERHANDLUNGSKUNST. PRAKTIKEN DER DIPLOMATIE IN DER LITERATUR UND DEN KÜNSTEN. Vienna, IFK. 18.05.2022-20.05.2022.

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During Brexit talks between French President Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson a scandal erupted. Tablegate! The British prime minister (infamous now for rule breaking) had placed his feet on the table separating the two men. Legs were no longer under the table, but on top. It seemed like Johnson had lost his head: the defilement of the table’s top by the body’s lower limbs spoke visually to the breakdown of negotiations (even if it turned out that Macron had cunningly invited the PM to kick back). This talk examines the historical role of tables as a cultural brokers in international peace negotiations as they have been staged in the West in the wake of the Westphalian agreements in the mid-17th century. Specifically, it explores the ways in which tables began to proliferate in images of peace conferences in that period, beginning with Gerard Ter Borch’s seminal painting of the Treaty of Münster (1648). Tables provide
distinct playing fields, separating and conjoining people while placing them into a particular visual relationship to one another and the world they inhabit. This relationship is ripe with visual and cultural meanings which this talk will unpack. Sasha Rossman will attend to the ways in which tables in negotiations and tables in depictions of diplomatic exchanges furnished multiple »grounds« as the basis for communication, gathering people around them. If one follows the rise of the table in images of Western diplomacy, one quickly observes that the art of negotiation is indelibly linked to the role that tables perform as silent agents. Rather than simple accessories, tables appear to activate certain possibilities. In order to better understand the »leg-work« performed by tables in early modern Western diplomacy and art, Sasha Rossman will also revisit Western encounters with Ottoman diplomats, whose tables and table
manners differed from their counterparts.

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