Abstract
When historians talk about the embassy sent by the Duke of Gottorp to the Persian court, the diplomatic aspects of the mission are rarely taken into account: even today, our view of this embassy and its results remains largely dependent on the travel descriptions to which it gave rise, and our knowledge of this exchange is consequently limited by an epistemological prism that has readily reduced it to one of the episodes in the "creation of the Orient". However, in addition to the famous accounts published by the scholar Olearius (the mission's secretary), other sources help us to grasp the stakes and complexity of the ducal project, and thus to better understand the modalities of the encounter between the Gottorpian delegation and their Persian hosts. This paper aims to place the 1637-1638 embassy in the context of international relations, taking into account its political, social, economic and cultural dimensions. The aim is to show that an approach combining connected history and the "new" diplomatic history - both of which focus on the actors and practices at work in encounters between different worlds - enables us to take a fresh look at an exchange long considered characteristic of the Baroque spirit of the 17th century, and thus perceived as an irregularity in the history of international relations in the modern era.
