S. N. Iskiul', Vneshniaia Politika Rossii I Germanskie Gosudarstva (1801- 1812) (Book Review‪)‬

S. N. Iskiul', Vneshniaia politika Rossii i germanskie gosudarstva (1801-1812) (Russia's Foreign Policy and the German States [1801-12]). 329 pp. Moscow: Indrik, 2007. ISBN-13 978-5857594162. This book is a study in diplomatic history in its classic and traditional form: we learn in great and chronologically presented detail about the place of the German states in Russian foreign policy between 1801 and 1812. (1) So far, this field has not attracted the attention of researchers, and Iskiul"s work closes a considerable gap in the literature on the prehistory of 1812. (2) Older research is either very old indeed or deals only with certain aspects, regions, or sub periods of the time in question. (3) Five chapters tell the story from the slow and complicated process of dissolving the Holy Roman Empire in 1801-3, the Bartenstein Convention of 1807, the Peace of Tilsit (1807-8), and the Congress of Erfurt in 1809 to the eve of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812. The perspective, naturally, is a Russian one, and the various responses and strategic designs of Russian diplomacy are discussed without neglecting proposals that were not, in the end, carried out.