Re: why Blanning just accepts Preuss on Elizabeth when he doesn't accept Preuss' take on Fritz: I suspect laziness, pure and simple. He doesn't have to do extra research that way.
I meant to add, if you don't want to do extra research, fair enough! But you can still do responsible scholarship by refraining from saying things that your sources might not be the most reliable on. If you're talking about the Seven Years' War from a Fritzian perspective, it suffices to say that Elizaveta was Empress and Bestushev was foreign minister, and attempts to bribe and persuade them out of attacking Prussia were unsuccessful. It is not necessary to start commenting on internal Russian politics, or the intelligence of Elizaveta's boyfriend/husband, as though the Prussian envoy had the final word on that subject.
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Re: Blanning 3
Date: 2020-03-03 06:29 pm (UTC)I meant to add, if you don't want to do extra research, fair enough! But you can still do responsible scholarship by refraining from saying things that your sources might not be the most reliable on. If you're talking about the Seven Years' War from a Fritzian perspective, it suffices to say that Elizaveta was Empress and Bestushev was foreign minister, and attempts to bribe and persuade them out of attacking Prussia were unsuccessful. It is not necessary to start commenting on internal Russian politics, or the intelligence of Elizaveta's boyfriend/husband, as though the Prussian envoy had the final word on that subject.