Diplomacy

Historic Houses, Global Crossroads Research Blend 1

Historic Houses, Global Crossroads Research Blend 1: Diplomacy

RB1 is focusing on ‘subject’ political communities, their ambassadors, agency and ‘international personalities’, revealing cultures of negotiation within empire. It is exploring how both sites, including their gardens as diplomatic spaces, shaped intercultural alliances and enduring connections to North America and Asia.

In particular RB1 is analysing the diplomatic postings of Clandeboye’s Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, Governor General of Canada (1872-78), British Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey (1881) and Viceroy of India (1884-88), including his ‘oversight’ of the 1886 British annexation of Burma. We are exploring the complex unstudied interrelationships between the First Nations of Canada and Irish settler-colonists/administrators during the Irish Famine, Red River Resistance, and Dufferin’s Governor Generalship.

RB1 is producing the first monograph on the life of Dufferin’s wife, Hariot Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, “the most effective diplomatic wife of her generation”. Harriet accompanied her husband on his many diplomatic postings and was a writer and activist for Canadian and global literature, Indian healthcare, and women’s rights, establishing the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India in 1885.  

Banner Image: Painting of Hariot-Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood | ©Clandeboye Estate

Research Programmes

Connecting Cultures

A collaborative project revealing how historic sites can position themselves as global crossroads, enabling multiple global publics to connect their lived experience with them.

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Diplomacy and Treaties

International collaboration revealing globally significant cultures of diplomacy between the Crown, the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours in North America.

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Digital Storytelling

Digital resources that involve the public, advance research, energise teaching, and drive knowledge exchange, built in partnership with the UK’s foremost research software engineers.

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Resource Use and Environmental Futures

Water Cultures in Conflict at Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, Alaska

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New Treatied Spaces

Projects in development

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Political Ecologies

Timely interventions that examine the power relations between Indigenous actors and the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

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Completed Projects

Timely interventions that examine the power relations between Indigenous actors and the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

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