ABSTRACT
The history of diplomacy in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century was rooted in the concept of the ‘Modern State’. In recent decades historians have largely abandoned this concept, insisting on the polysemy of both the noun ‘state’ and the adjective ‘modern’. 1 Recent interpretations have highlighted, in fact, not only the peculiarities of the institutional systems linked to the various forms of government but also the complex and changing social and cultural dynamics involved in the relations between the central government and the ruling classes. In these pages I will examine the latter interpretation, highlighting networks of aristocratic relations transversal to European history and not easily explained by taking as a single unit of measurement the processes of centralisation, rationalisation and institutionalisation of functions that have been taken together to form the ‘modern state’. Through the prism of these networks, I will try to deepen the discussion of the international interventions during the treaties of Utrecht that strengthened the power of the Savoy dynasty over a composite territorial space. Since the Middle Ages Savoy had sat in the ‘saddle’ of the Alps but was to expand conspicuously to Lombardy and the Mediterranean in the first half of the eighteenth century.
