The Republic of Geneva and France in the 18th century: asymmetrical diplomacy and political cultures

The widely shared conviction that war is the ultima ratio in international relations, which necessarily premised state interactions on the ideas of violence and iniquity, discredited the value of asymmetrical power relations, in particular those existing in Europe during the Modern Era. In view of that, asymmetrical relations amounted at best to a diplomacy of domination as expressed by the notion of protection, frequently reduced to the protectorate. However, if interpreted not only in terms of political but also social and cultural history, the relations between the Republic of Geneva and France in the 18th century demonstrate that a priori nothing prevents asymmetrical interactions from producing beneficial results for all parties involved, provided that one takes into account the legal equality of the sovereign actors as well as the power inequality that the hierarchy of the European states entailed. The present article begins by examining the modalities of Geneva's integration into the European system as it focuses on the practices of mediation, the privileged juridical instrument for the organization of the relations between the small republic and the Kingdom of France. Subsequently this contribution considers the personnel of the Franco-Genevan diplomacy, thereby studying the social and cultural identities of these actors whose modes of expression largely depended on the asymmetrical nature of the interaction. Finally, the present text proposes an interpretation of the practices of public diplomatic celebrations in the city-state. This analysis places the bilateral relations with France in a complex European system that provided the weakest state with the means for its independence, while pointing to the reciprocal sphere of diplomacy, in which, between cooperation and hostility, different political cultures came to express themselves.