Models and Practices of Language Use at the Peace Congresses of the Seventeenth Century

This article examines possible approaches to language policy regarding the choice of language at peace congresses in the second half of the seventeenth century. In particular, it analyses French congress policy, to which research has long attributed the early development of a language doctrine. However, a closer analysis of the sources shows that, at best, only the beginnings of an incoherent language policy can be identified; in this respect, several errors in earlier scholarship must be corrected. This argument is supported by analysing well-known peace congresses but also the Frankfurt negotiations—which continued the Nijmegen Peace Congress between France and the Holy Roman Empire—and by briefly examining the Congress of Cambrai in the 1720s.