Xiaohong’s method is to present the biographies of a small number of ambassadors she takes to be representative of the four generations of Chinese ambassadors between 1949 and 1994 that she identifies. In between the biographical chapters she steps back and describes the sources of recruitment and typical attitudes of each generation. Those with military backgrounds and other veterans of the Long March only slowly ceased to dominate the ranks of China’s diplomats and for this and other well known reasons it is hardly surprising that, for some years after the revolution, there were many ‘baffled ambassadors’ perched on ‘cold benches’ abroad. The devastating impact of the cultural revolution, which began in 1966 and is the watershed between the second and third generations, is fully detailed. The rest of the book is an account of how the diplomatic service – overseen until his death in 1986 by Zhou Enlai – slowly clawed its way back, turning increasingly to university graduates for recruits and adopting a more ‘professional’ style. The fourth generation (1984-1990s) even began to develop a ‘collegial rapport’ with ‘fellow diplomats from other countries’.
It is not surprising to learn from Xiaohong’s book that in the last twenty years or so the PRC’s diplomatic missions have been doing essentially the same kind of work as those of other states. Public diplomacy began to take on more significance, especially in trying to repair Beijing’s image after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, when China’s ambassadors once more found themselves shivering on ‘cold benches’. (That this was too much for some to swallow is evidenced by the fact that this event was followed by an unprecedented number of defections from China’s missions abroad.) Commercial work also became extremely important, not least for embassies in the Arab world, where the PRC had developed major economic interests. (The desperate lengths to which Guan Zihuai, the ambassador to Kuwait, went to return to Kuwait City in 1991 after the expulsion of Saddam’s forces is fully described and extremely instructive in this regard.) The Chinese diplomatic service even began to appoint a few women ambassadors, and in the mid-1990s abandoned its long-established prohibition on locally engaged staff.
In view of the obvious patchiness of the source material available to her at the Chinese end, I think that – speaking as a non-Sinologist – Xiaohong has done remarkably well with this book. It is a pity, though, that where source material abroad was readily available she sometimes passed up the opportunity to consult it. Some parts of her work must as a result be treated with great caution, not least her account of Sino-British relations in late August 1967, which cites just one (Chinese) source. This is not only peppered with errors but provides a seriously flawed analysis. The burning of the British Office (not ’embassy’) of which Donald Hopson (not ‘Hobson’) was chargé d’affaires, and the sacking of the residence, did not provoke ‘the British public’ to take ‘revenge by staging a siege of the Chinese embassy [actually ‘Office’] in London’. (Because the British insisted on retaining consular missions in Taiwan, Beijing refused an exchange of missions headed by ‘ambassadors’, i.e. ’embassies’, though London continued to call its own mission in Beijing the ‘British Embassy’ until it was forced to leave the old building at the end of the 1950s.) It is certainly true that the FO fell in with Hopson’s plea that it should keep hold of the Chinese diplomats as hostages to be used in his negotiations for an amelioration in the appalling conditions of his own staff. Consequently, the staff of the Chinese mission in Portland Place were informed that they would not be allowed to leave the country without an exit visa, could not go further than five miles from Marble Arch without permission, and could not use diplomatic wireless. Shortly after this, the police guard on the mission was doubled in order to enforce these orders and as a precaution against protesters, though the only other persons initially present in any numbers were pressmen. Some ‘siege’. I concede, however, that, in the hysterical atmosphere provoked by the cultural revolution at its height, it could easily have felt like a ‘siege’ inside the Chinese mission.
Thereafter, a few hotheads and eccentrics began to gather and jeer at the Chinese diplomats, who periodically replied in kind by brandishing at them Mao’s ‘little red book’. However, on 29 August, to the evident astonishment of the police, who had only their batons and dustbin lids with which to defend themselves (Ah! Resourceful nation!) about 20 Chinese ‘diplomats’ sallied out of the mission (Aux armes, citoyens!) and attacked their lines with baseball bats, cudgels, bottles, and at least one axe. What was subsequently dubbed the ‘Battle of Portland Place’ lasted for about five minutes. It left not much worse than some nasty cuts and bruises on both sides, and was immediately followed by an order banning any further protesters (whether packers from Muswell Hill, drivers from Poplar, or sociologists from Hampstead – presumably siding with the ‘besieged’), from assembling in the vicinity of Portland Place. However, Xiaohong then makes another mistake by saying that the Chinese diplomats in London and the British diplomats in Beijing became hostages of each other’s government ‘[a]fter the incident’. In fact, of course, it was precisely because the British were already being held hostage in Beijing that London had placed tighter restrictions on the mobility of the Chinese diplomats – and all of this happened before the Battle of Portland Place.
All of these points would have been clear to Xiaohong if she had simply read The Times, which was then still a decent newspaper. The British position was also spelled out in the memoirs (published in 1971) of the British prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson. An even more illuminating British source on this incident is Percy Cradock’s Experiences of China (1994). Cradock was at the time truly besieged – in Beijing. Nevertheless, Chinese Ambassadors remains a valuable and very interesting piece of research. As Xiaohong says in her introduction, a serious deficiency in diplomatic studies is the absence of work on diplomats from non-Western cultures, and she has made an important step towards its correction.
You may also be interested in
Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study of British Practice, 1963-1976
Some years ago, John Young, Professor of International History at the University of Nottingham and long-serving Chair of the British International History Group, turned his thoughts and research in the direction of diplomatic procedure. This is the first monograph to be the product of his shift in direction and it is to be most warmly welcomed. It is original in focus, impeccably researched (private papers and oral history transcripts have been sifted as well official documents in The National Archives), crisply written, and altogether a major contribution to the contemporary history of diplom...
The Summer Capitals of Europe, 1814-1919
This is an original work, meticulously researched, rich in detail, and written in a clear and – here and there – refreshingly pungent style. Soroka is a Russian scholar but at ease in English.
Diplomacy for the New Century
Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge
I started writing a memoire in 1998, but on a long train journey in Germany (Stuttgart to Essen), accompanied by my wonderful wife Mimi, a thought came that it might be much more interesting to write about how the Indian diplomatic system works – or does not really work. That became my first book, Inside Diplomacy (1999). Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge, first published in 2015, is that delayed memoire.
Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time
In this classic text, an eminent historian of international affairs and a distinguished political scientist survey the evolution of the international system, from the emergence of the modern state in the 17th century to the present. Craig and George pay particular attention to the nineteenth century's "balance-of-power" system, the basic tenets of which still determine many applications of modern diplomacy. The authors also focus on the ways in which the 20th century diplomatic revolution--a complex of military, political, economic and ideological factors--has destroyed the homogeneity of th...
In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents
Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age
Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy
Preventive Diplomacy in Southeast Asia: Redefining the ASEAN Way
The Work of Diplomacy
Diplomatic Education
Diplomatic Education’ was published as Chapter 11 in: An Anthology Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of the Higher Colleges of Technology, ed. Tayeb A Kamali, (HCT Press, UAE, 2007).
FDR’s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis: From the rise of Hitler to the end of World War II
What effect did personality and circumstance have on US foreign policy during World War II? This incisive account of US envoys residing in the major belligerent countries – Japan, Germany, Italy, China, France, Great Britain, USSR – highlights the fascinating role played by such diplomats as Joseph Grew, William Dodd, William Bullitt, Joseph Kennedy and W. Averell Harriman. Between Hitler's 1933 ascent to power and the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki, US ambassadors sculpted formal policy – occasionally deliberately, other times inadvertently – giving shape and meaning not always intended by ...
British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866
Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice
Getting to the Table: The Process of International Prenegotiation
Positive Diplomacy
Diplomatic culture and its domestic context
Is there a specific, distinctive diplomatic culture? Given the fact that the conduct of diplomacy is regulated by international law and by custom, and since the structures through which states conduct their external relations, both bilateral and multilateral, are standardized, it is fair to say that both the institutions and the process form a pattern of their own, unique to this profession. The professional diplomatist actors on the international stage, and their institutions, display certain shared characteristics.
Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006
Book review by Geoff Berridge
Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars Before they Start
The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries
Until his resignation amid huge controversy in August 2003, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s official spokesman and director of communications and strategy – ace spin doctor, closest confidante, and constant travelling companion. His diaries have probably been mined chiefly for their astonishing revelations about the internal machinations of his government and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, they should also be read for the sharp and often amusing light they throw on certain aspects of diplomacy.
Embassies under Siege
Essence of Diplomacy
Christer Jönsson is Professor of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden, where Martin Hall is a Researcher. Their book is described as an exercise in ‘theorizing’ diplomacy, that is, an attempt to provide a general account of its causes and consequences. (The authors are thus severe in denying the title of ‘theory’ to the ‘prescriptive tracts’ which scholar-diplomats have written about their art over hundreds of years, though I notice that they are more indulgent to the use of the term ‘political theory’ as in, for example, ‘liberal political theory’.)
Innovation in Diplomatic Practice
Inside the U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America
The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries
Reveiw by Geoff Berridge
Diplomats on Twitter: The good, the bad and the ugly
International Regimes
Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador
A Dictionary of Diplomacy, Second Edition
The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825
Embassies in Armed Conflict
The Practice of Diplomacy: Its evolution, theory and administration
First published in 1995, the long-awaited second edition of this valuable textbook on the history of diplomacy has at last appeared. The first chapter has been expanded to include non-European traditions, and a wholly new chapter has been added to take account of developments over the last 15 years. It is for the main part a work of relaxed authority, clearly written, and – unusually for an introductory work – full of intriguing detail which it would be difficult if not impossible to find in other secondary sources.
Mediation in International Relations
The New Diplomacy
Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk
The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy
Book by Geoff Berridge
Why Persuasion? Reflections after 50 years of practising, teaching and studying diplomacy
From the faraway days when representatives of fighting tribes tried to arrange for a truce, thereby risking their head, to the often derided endless discussions within present day international frameworks, the common aim of diplomacy has remained persuasion. The better a diplomat is at persuading, the more successful he will be in furthering the cause he represents.
International Encyclopedia Of Public Policy And Administration
Public administration - the implementation side of government - is becoming an increasingly international discipline.
Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy
Review by Geoff Berridge
Performance Management in Foreign Ministries: Corporate Techniques in the Diplomatic Service
Instruzione e formazione del diplomatico: la tradizione inglese
Applying the pedagogy of positiveness to diplomatic communication
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Dr Francisco Gomes de Matos applies what he calls the "Pedagogy of Positiveness" to diplomatic communication. He proposes a checklist of tips for diplomats to make their communication more positive, emphasising respect and understanding of the other side, and keeping in mind the ultimate goal of avoiding conflict.
Foreign Ministries: Managing Diplomatic Networks and Optimizing Value
This is a collection of papers presented at the 2006 Conference on Foreign Ministries hosted by DiploFoundation in May 2006, in Geneva. The overarching theme is the adaptation and reform that these ministries have undertaken, in the shape of country experiences and the transformation implemented in specific areas such as the application of information technology for outreach to domestic publics, adaptation in consular services and outsourcing options. Some of the challenging issues addressed cover relations between civil servants and politicians, the role of sub-state entities in diplomacy, an...
Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories
Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, 6th ed
Satow’s Diplomatic Practice is a classic work, first published 90 years ago and revised four times since. This is the first revised edition for thirty years, during which time the world and diplomacy have changed almost beyond recognition. The new edition provides an enlarged and updated section on the history of diplomacy and revises comprehensively […]
The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society
The Diplomats, 1919-1939
The Craft of Diplomacy: How to Run a Diplomatic Service
Statecraft
Internet Guide for Diplomats
The Internet Guide for Diplomats is the first guide specifically conceived and realised to assist diplomats and others involved in international affairs to use the Internet in their work. The book includes both basic technical information about the Internet and specific issues related to the use of the Internet in diplomacy. Examples and illustrations address many common questions including web-management for diplomatic services, knowledge management and distance learning.
Diplomacy and domestic politics: The logic of two-level games
Diplomatenleben
A must-have for German-speaking students of Swiss diplomacy (and diplomacy generally) since the Second World War is Dr. Max Schweizer’s recently published Diplomatenleben.
Bilateral Diplomacy: A Practitioner Perspective (Briefing Paper #15)
A Diplomat in Siam (introduced and edited by Nigel Brailey)
Nigel Brailey, a University of Bristol historian who is well known to students of Sir Ernest Satow, is to be congratulated on bringing out a revised edition of this work, the fruit of Satow's period as British minister-resident in Bangkok from 1885 until 1888. It is the journal which Satow, later the author of the famous Guide to Diplomatic Practice, kept on his long boat journey from Bangkok to the northern city of Chiangmai and back again, which took from the beginning of December 1885 until the end of the following February.
Modern Diplomacy: Dialectics and Dimensions
Curing the Sick Man: Sir Henry Bulwer and the Ottoman Empire, 1858-1865
This is the first book of a very promising young historian. Laurence Guymer, who is head of the Department of History at Winchester College and a research associate in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, has produced a biography of Sir Henry Bulwer that successfully challenges the conventional account of this colourful mid-Victorian figure. It also raises the question of how ‘diplomatic success’ is judged.
Reflections on Persuasion in Diplomacy by Ambassador Joseph Cassar
In our families, in our jobs, in our political dynamic at a national level, we always try to persuade others, first and foremost. Since, diplomacy is part of the global human existence, it is natural that persuasion is an essential part and an essential tool of diplomacy … as much it is in your family life, in my family life, when you try to sort out trouble within your family, between your brothers and sisters, between your children and between your grandchildren at my age.
Diplomacy and Journalism in the Victorian era: Charles Dickens, the Roving Englishman and the “white gloved cousinocracy”
Diplomatic security and the birth of the compound system
21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide
Kishan Rana is a man of lengthy and varied experience in the Indian Foreign Service, ending his career as ambassador to Germany. Since then he has spent many years as a globe-trotting trainer of junior diplomats on behalf of DiploFoundation. Few people, therefore, are as well placed to write a practitioners’ guide to the diplomatic craft; and, insofar as concerns the content of his book, which can be found described here, he has not disappointed.
Bilateral Diplomacy
Bilateral Diplomacy is the first of the DiploHandbooks, a new series on practical diplomacy. The book breaks new ground in the role ascribed to bilateral diplomacy, and its importance in international affairs today. It also covers the de facto “empowerment” of the embassy that flows from its new responsibility for relationship management.
The Professional Diplomat
Managing the Cold War: A view from the front line
Michael Alexander, a Russian-speaking senior British diplomat who died in 2002, was a major behind-the-scenes figure in what he calls the ‘management’ of the cold war to a peaceful conclusion.
Who needs diplomats? The problem of diplomatic representation
This paper discusses the problem of diplomatic representation. Diplomats should remind themselves and others that they are first and foremost the representatives of sovereign states, that this is their raison d’être and a precondition for anything else they might aspire to be or to do. This might require an adjustment in their professional orientation but not a transformation.
Twitter for Diplomats
Twitter for Diplomats is not a manual, or a list of what to do or not to do. It is rather a collection of information, anecdotes, and experiences. It recounts a few episodes involving foreign ministers and ambassadors, as well as their ways of interacting with the tool and exploring its great potential. It wants to inspire ambassadors and diplomats to open and nurture their accounts – and it wants to inspire all of us to use Twitter to also listen and open our minds.
The Art of Diplomacy: The American Experience
Inside Diplomacy
This is a book on diplomacy in general and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in particular. It is also a gem, and a large gem. It breathes life, wisdom, and good humour, and is full of rich detail. I found it thoroughly absorbing. Students of diplomacy at all stages of their careers will find it immensely useful, while those in a position to influence the future shape of the IFS will discover a whole raft of constructive suggestions for reform fearlessly advanced.
The origins, use and development of hot line diplomacy
Inside Diplomacy
This is a book on diplomacy in general and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in particular. It is also a gem, and a large gem. It breathes life, wisdom, and good humour, and is full of rich detail. I found it thoroughly absorbing. Students of diplomacy at all stages of their careers will find it immensely useful, while those in a position to influence the future shape of the IFS will discover a whole raft of constructive suggestions for reform fearlessly advanced.
Byzantium and Venice: A study in diplomatic and cultural relations
This book traces the diplomatic, cultural and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian republic to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, especially after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.
The Evolution of Diplomatic Method
Diplomacy under a Foreign Flag: When nations break relations
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain's ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Multi-Track Diplomacy: A systems approach to peace
The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914
A Diplomat in Japan
The first portion of this book was written at intervals between 1885 and 1887, during my tenure of the post of Her Majesty's minister at Bangkok. I had but recently left Japan after a residence extending, with two seasons of home leave, from September 1862 to the last days of December 1882, and my recollection of what had occurred during any part of those twenty years was still quite fresh. A diary kept almost uninterruptedly from the day I quitted home in November 1861 constituted the foundation, while my memory enabled me to supply additional details. It had never been my purpose to...
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice
Let us suppose that you are left, like Robinson Crusoe, on a deserted island, under instructions to learn about diplomacy. To that elevated purpose you would be allowed to keep one book only, the rest of the luggage consisting of things more essential for your physical survival, like a gun and gunpowder. The choice of that particular book may not be that difficult, if you had at hand the third edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice by G.R. Berridge.
British Heads of Mission at Constantinople, 1583-1922
Embassies and Foreign Courts
American Negotiating Behaviour: Wheeler-Dealers, Legal Eagles, Bullies, and Preachers
Renaissance Diplomacy and the Reformation
We invite you to continue our walk along timeline of Evolution of diplomacy and technology. In May, our next stop is Renaissance diplomacy and the impact of the invention of the printing press on diplomacy in the Reformation period.
The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd ed
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 3rd edn
21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide
In the 21st century, new kinds of challenges resulting from interdependence among states and globalisation have had a determining impact of the conduct of diplomacy. Diplomacy has become multifaceted, pluri-directional, volatile and intensive, due to the increased complexity in terms of actors, dialogues subjects, modes of communication, and plurality of objectives. This unique text, written by a leading scholar and Foreign Service expert, examines all such factors to provide the definitive guide to diplomacy as it is practiced today. With a multitude of examples from around the world, includi...
Cursed is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat [Philip Habib] Versus the Israeli General, Beirut 1982
The Contemporary Embassy: Paths to Diplomatic Excellence
Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy
Diplomat’s Dictionary
The idea of diplomatic culture and its sources
To what extent does an independent diplomatic culture exist which permits diplomats to exert their own influence on the conduct of international relations? Insofar as such a culture exists, what does it look like, is it a good thing and, if it is, how is it to be sustained? This paper explores what we generally mean when we talk about culture and how we see culture operating in contemporary international relations. It sketches the basic elements of a diplomatic culture and discusses different accounts of its origins.
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 4th ed
The Diplomats, 1939-1979
Diplomats as cultural bridge builders
Diplomats are people who are on the fringe somewhere, because they are either permanently living in or at least dealing with alien cultures, cultures with different values. The success of a diplomat depends on this brinkmanship because, on the one hand, they must remain credible with their superiors back home and, on the other hand, they must have access to the leaders in the country where they are posted. This paper discusses the role of diplomats as cultural bridge-builders.
Persuasion: bad practices and … others
Persuasion is a very relative concept. Like beauty, persuasion is the eye of the beholder. Admittedly, persuasion does not exist in the absence of results. One can say that persuasion can be defined as such, if and only if it is effective and reaches its goals. If we accept this prerequisite, we may find persuasion where we least expect it.
Just a Diplomat
Close students of the new, Conservative Party Mayor of London, the at once engaging and alarming Boris Johnson, will know that he has Turkish cousins. One of these is Sinan Kuneralp, a son of the late Zeki Kuneralp, probably the most distinguished and well liked Turkish diplomat of his generation. Sinan Kuneralp is a scholar-publisher and runs The Isis Press in Istanbul, a house at the forefront of publishing scholarly works and original documents on the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in English and French. The three works noticed here are all its products and reflect the publisher’s own special in...
How do you know what you think you know?
In his paper, J. Thomas Converse focuses on four records-related areas where the issues of knowledge management and diplomacy come together and provide the greatest challenges to archivists, diplomats, historians and technology providers: validation, trustworthiness, context and longevity. He also explores some of the changes and challenges brought about by technology, and urges for a continued embrace of technology, while at the same time demanding the validating and relational functions which give archives their trustworthiness.
Diplomacy for a Crowded World
To joke or not to joke: A diplomatic dilemma in the age of internet
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): The first paper, presented by Prof. Peter Serracino-Inglott as the keynote address at the 2001 conference, examines the serious issue of diplomatic communication in a playful manner, through one of the most paradigmatic and creative examples of language use: joking.
Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy
Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary
Sir Brian Barder, the senior British diplomat and author of the always sage and sometimes gripping What Diplomats Do, died in 2017 but, courtesy of the professional editorial hand of his daughter Louise, has left us another treat. This is what he called a diary and which for the most part has the form of a diary (dated daily entries), although originally it was a series of letters sent to friends from foreign parts. Compared to diplomatic memoirs, diplomatic diaries are a rarity. And since this one is the product of an acute observer who loved the English language and used it in a vigorous and...
DiploDialogue – Metaphors for Diplomats
On Diplo’s blog, in Diplo’s classrooms, and at Diplo’s events, dialogues stretch over a series of entries, comments, and exchanges and may even linger. DiploDialogue summarises. It’s like in sports events: DiploDialogue aims to bring focus by deleting what, in hindsight, is less relevant. In this first DiploDialogue, Katharina Höne and Aldo Matteucci discuss the usefulness of analogies and metaphors for understanding international relations and diplomacy.
Born a Foreigner: A Memoir of the American Presence in Asia
This is the eighth volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, and is a very solid addition to it. Cross, who was born of missionary parents in Beijing, spent 32 years in the US Foreign Service, and though his tours abroad included Egypt, Cyprus and London, most were in Asia and it is on these which this memoir concentrates.
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War
The publication of these memoirs in autumn 2005 caused a public furore in Britain so I shall not waste time giving any background on Sir Christopher Meyer. (Just punch his name into Google, which will enable you in the blink of an eye even to find out from the BBC website which records he chose when he appeared on Desert Island Discs.)
Persuasion, trust, and personal credibility
Ambassador Kishan Rana indicates the cultivation of relations and the credibility of diplomats as the basis for persuasion in diplomacy. He provides an initial taxonomy of the type of relations that diplomats should cultivate. When it comes to credibility, Ambassador Rana presents the main ways of developing and maintaining credibility in diplomatic relations. The more credible the diplomat, the more likely it is that their persuasion with local interlocutors will be successful.
Yes, (Saudi) Minister! A Life in Administration
After a brilliant ministerial career in Riyadh, Algosaibi fell from grace at the Ministry of Health in 1984. This was the start of his diplomatic life, which commenced in Bahrain and continued in London. This is a shrewd and lively book.
Pragmatics in diplomatic exchanges
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Edmond Pascual interprets diplomatic communication with the linguistic tools of pragmatics. He begins by reminding us that while the diplomat is a "man of action," the particular nature of the diplomat's action is that it consists of speech. Pascual applies three concepts of pragmatics to diplomatic discourse: speech as an intentional act; the effects of the act of speech; and the role of the unsaid in the act of speech.
The Limits of Neorealism
The Limits of Neorealism
Manuel de droit diplomatique
Diplomacy and the American Democracy
John le Carré: The Biography
I thought to review this book because I had enjoyed the spy novels of John le Carré and, having introduced a chapter on secret intelligence into the latest edition of my textbook and mentioned him in it (p. 155), was keen to see if Adam Sisman had turned up anything new about the novelist’s own short career as an intelligence officer in what was then West Germany.
The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office
What Diplomats Do: The Life and Work of Diplomats
Sir Brian Barder’s book What Diplomats Do offers comprehensive insight into the life and work of diplomats. It deserves to be read by practitioners and aspiring practitioners of diplomacy, by students and teachers of diplomacy, and by anyone interested in what diplomats actually do. It crosses genres as easily as it addresses and holds the attention of a broad audience.
The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-1880
Once more students of Ottoman diplomatic history are in debt to the scholar-publisher, Sinan Kuneralp, for Sir Henry Layard was one of the most remarkable and controversial of British ambassadors to Turkey in the nineteenth century and served there during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 – and yet the volumes of his memoirs dealing with this period have hitherto languished unpublished in the British Library, in part perhaps because of their size. (Layard admits himself to having been ‘somewhat minute, perhaps a great deal too much so’, p. 692.)They are here published almost in their entir...
Diplomacy: The world of the honest spy
Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel
All Fall Down: America’s fateful encounter with Iran
All Fall Down is the definitive chronicle of Americas experience with the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis of 1978-81. Drawing on internal government documents, it recounts the controversies, decisions and uncertainties that made this a unique chapter in modern American history. From his personal experiences, the author draws revealing portraits of the people who engaged in this test of wills with an Islamic revolutionary regime.
Theatre of Power: The Art of Signaling
Japanese middle-power diplomacy
Building relations through multi-dialogue formats: Trends in bilateral diplomacy
The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy
The School for Ambassadors
Persuasion in sociology of diplomacy
Dr Milan Jazbec, a practitioner and researcher in diplomacy, positions a discussion on persuasion in the sociology of diplomacy. Social context determines both diplomacy and persuasion. Dr Jazbec makes a distinction between pressure and persuasion. In a rather counter-intuitive view to dominant discourse, he argues that genuine persuasion cannot be public. As soon as it becomes public, it immediately becomes pressure.
Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians
This book, which rests on extensive use of private papers, official documents, press archives and not least Grenville-Murray’s vast output (including novels), is the first biography of this complex man to be written. It begins with the difficulties produced by his illegitimate birth, and then describes his patronage by Lord Palmerston and Charles Dickens, his colourful diplomatic career, and finally his blossoming as a successful writer in France in the 1870s
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, Fifth Edition
In 2005, I reviewed the third edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice by G.R. Berridge as essential reading for Robinson Crusoe, had he been a student of diplomacy. We all know that eventually Crusoe ended his assignment on the foreign island and returned to his native country where he found himself a wealthy man for whom bibliography no longer had a role to play … unlike the rest of us, who have continued to practise diplomacy and read books about it.
The Visa Dimension of Diplomacy
Chinese Ambassadors: The rise of diplomatic professionalism since 1945
Xiaohong worked on Western European affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing from 1977 until 1989. At some point after this she entered the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and in 1997 was awarded a Ph.D. This book is her doctoral thesis, and - on the whole - a very good one it is. Chinese Ambassadors is based on many interviews with former diplomats and a variety of Chinese primary sources (including memoirs), and is clear, well organized, and - in its main thrust - tightly argued. As a result, it offers a rare insight int...
Switzerland’s good offices: a changing concept, 1945-2002
A Diplomat’s Handbook of International Law and Practice
The inertia of Diplomacy
Diplomacy is used to manage the goals of foreign policy focusing on communication. New trends affect the institution of diplomacy in different ways. Diplomacy has received an additional tool in the form of the Internet. In various cases of interdependence and dependence interference in a country’s affairs is accepted. Multilateral cooperation has created parliamentary diplomacy and a new type of diplomat, the international civil servant. States and their diplomats are in demand to curb the excesses of globalization. The fight against terrorism also brought additional work for diplomac...
Multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD
In his paper John West outlines multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD. West first explores the main points and facts of the OECD before going into the emergence of globalising stakeholder societies. Finally he gives his remarks on multistakeholder diplomacy at the OECD.
The impact of the Internet on diplomatic reporting: how diplomacy training needs to be adjusted to keep pace
Over the last 20 years, the Internet has changed the ways in which we work, how we socialise and network, and how we interact with knowledge and information.
The Foreign Office
English Medieval Diplomacy
Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy
A weak diplomatic hybrid: U.S. Special Mission Benghazi, 2011-12
In the widespread coverage of the brutal murder of US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and others in the US mission in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, there has been much confusion over the character of the post. It has been repeatedly described in the media as the American ‘consulate’ but the official position, recently stated emphatically by the Report of the Accountability Review Board for Benghazi (ARB) convened by secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is that ‘the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi was never a consulate and never formally notified [in any character] to the Libyan ...
The Consular Dimension of Diplomacy
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 2nd edn
Diplomacy and Global Governance: The Diplomatic Service in an Age of Worldwide Interdependence
Ever the Diplomat
The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919
Lessons from two fields
Diplomacy, Force & Leadership: Essays In Honor of Alexander L. George
I’ll be with you in a Minute Mr. Ambassador: The Education of a canadian Diplomat in Washington
The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages
Journeying Far and Wide: A Political and Diplomatic Memoir
Kaiser was an active Democrat and 'noncareer officer' in the US Foreign Service under three Democratic presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. His memoir, which is uncluttered with the trivial detail sometimes found in this genre and written with great verve, will be valued by diplomatic historians of the whole period since the Second World War. (Kaiser had served earlier as Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs in the Truman administration.)
The 21st Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive
Ambassador Kishan Rana, a diplomatist for four decades, is now a noted scholar and theorist of international relations and the new diplomacy that has evolved.
Diplomatic Persuasion: An Under-Investigated Process
The under-investigation in diplomatic studies of processes of persuasion in explaining diplomatic outcomes needs to be addressed in the interests of better scholarly explanations and diplomatic practice. Although such processes are implicit in nearly all concepts and practice of diplomacy, neither scholars nor practitioners explicitly investigate them. Yet other related fields of study and disciplines examine persuasion and demonstrate its explanatory value.
British Diplomacy and the Descent into Chaos: The career of Jack Garnett, 1902-19
I am in favour of biographies of relatively obscure individuals like Jack Garnett because there are plenty of them on the famous; moreover, studies of this kind often turn up interesting details (including how the famous were seen from the foothills) and stimulate thought on bigger questions. John Fisher’s well written and thoroughly researched study of this early twentieth century British diplomat, into which contextual detail is expertly woven, is no exception.
Texts in diplomacy
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Professor Dietrich Kappeler provides an overview of the various types of formal written documents used in diplomacy, pointing out where the practices surrounding these documents have changed in recent years. He also discusses multi-language treaties, including the difficulties of translation and interpretation.
Reflections on multistakeholder diplomacy
Through analysis of the procedural and institutional arrangements in the functioning of international bodies, Valentin Katrandjiev, seeks to measure the extent to which diplomats accept nonofficial networks and entities as equal partners in the diplomatic negotiation process. Katrandjiev analyses the trend that on the domestic front, societies demand greater public accountability of governments in the process of national foreign policy making. He attempts to do so through the organisational units in MFAs responsible for relationships with domestic stakeholders.
The Turkish Embassy Letters
Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations
In a previous book review for DiploFoundation, Petru Dumitriu described G. R. Berridge’s Diplomacy: Theory and Practice as 'a Robinson Crusoe’s book on diplomacy'. Suppose one is left on a deserted island and allowed only one book to study diplomacy; in that case, Dumitriu recommends Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. Without doubt, I wholeheartedly support this recommendation.
Beyond diplomatic – the unravelling of history
In his paper, Robert Alston travels through time to rekindle an important highlight – as well as a personal highlight – in the history of knowledge management. His journey takes him back to the 1850s, which saw Antonio Panizzi’s efforts in creating a universal repository of knowledge in the British Museum; and to the 1990s, a time in which he acquired first-hand experience at the same museum, drawing conclusions on the various available ways of navigating large bibliographical and archival databases.
Twentieth Century Diplomacy: A case study of British practice, 1963-1976
Book review by Geoff Berridge What is so original about the book is that the author has asked himself: What are the major forms of diplomatic contact? And followed this with the question: How and to what effect were they each employed by one state over a period sufficiently short to make detailed research possible […]
True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office
A Selection of New diplomatic memoirs
I have just written a review article on these six books of British diplomatic memoirs for the English Historical Journal, so here I shall just provide some notes on those that I believe to be most valuable to students of diplomacy.
A practitioner’s view
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): With examples from a detailed case study of the historical New Zealand Treaty of Waitangi, Aldo Matteucci shows us that the diplomat's job is to decode language. Matteucci writes that all language comes with "hidden baggage": hidden meanings and intentions, historical and political context, legal precedents, etc. In order to find these hidden meanings the diplomat needs a broad understanding of the context of a situation.
Diplomatic Notebooks 1, 1958-1960: The view from Ankara
Zeki Kuneralp (1914-1998) was one of Turkey’s most gifted, well-liked and influential diplomats of the second half of the twentieth century. This book, dispassionately edited, introduced and annotated by his son, the scholar-publisher Sinan Kuneralp, is the first of a promised series of six volumes. Beginning in January 1958 and ending in August 1960, when Zeki Kuneralp became ambassador to Switzerland, it covers all but the first seven or eight months of the period when he was assistant secretary-general for political affairs in the Turkish foreign ministry in Ankara (in May 1960 he was ele...
A Dictionary of Diplomacy
Like all professions, diplomacy has spawned its own specialized terminology, and it is this lexicon which provides A Dictionary of Diplomacy's thematic spine. However, the dictionary also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written influentially about it over the last half millennium. All students of diplomacy and related subjects and especially junior members of the many diplomatic services of the world will find this book indispensable.
Language, signaling and diplomacy
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Ambassador Kishan Rana introduces the dimension of diplomatic signalling. Beginning with a reference to the Bhagwad Gita, one of the sacred texts of the Hindus, Rana outlines the qualities of good diplomatic dialogue: not causing distress to the listener, precision and good use of language, and truthfulness.
Reforming Diplomacy: Clear Choices, New Emphases
“Control yourself, Sir!”: A call for research into emotion cultures in diplomacy
This essay examines and seeks to explode the notion that diplomats are, or should be, immune to emotion in the conduct of their duties. It also discusses the concept of emotion cultures - cultural rules governing the experience and expression of emotion and suggests the possibility that modern diplomacy, perhaps a distinctive culture in itself, encourages the socialisation of diplomats into a distinctive, ostensibly global diplomatic emotion culture.
Quick Diplomatic Response
In the increasingly interdependent world, diplomacy is our only alternative. Wars do not provide solutions for modern problems, whether these are regional crises, environmental challenges, such as climate change, or the risk of global pandemics. Compromise and consensus are not only the most ethical approach, but necessity. This interesting comic presents one day in life of an e-diplomat.
Diplomatic Security under a Comparative Lens – Or Not?
“Diplomatic security” is the term now usually preferred to “diplomatic protection” for the steps taken by states to safeguard the fabric of their diplomatic and consular missions, the lives of their diplomatic and consular officers, and the integrity of their communications; it has the advantage of avoiding confusion with the controversial legal doctrine of diplomatic protection.
Leaders’ rhetoric and preventive diplomacy – issues we are ignorant about
In this paper, Drazen Pehar analyses the argumentation made by George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley in his seminal paper on ‘Metaphor and War’, in which he tried to deconstruct the rhetoric U.S. president George Bush used to justify the war in the Gulf. He also analyses a reading by psycho-historian Lloyd deMause, whose theory differs from Lakoff’s. Throughout his analysis, Pehar describes the role of rhetoric in diplomatic prevention of armed conflicts, and its several functions, and concludes that the methods of preventive diplomacy depend heavily on the theory of...
The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy, Third Edition
Indispensable for students of diplomacy and junior members of diplomatic services, this dictionary not only covers diplomacy's jargon but also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations, e-Diplomacy, and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written about it over the last half millennium.
Language and Diplomacy: Preface
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): In the preface below, Jovan Kurbalija and Hannah Slavik introduce the chapters in the book, and extract the general themes covered by the various authors.
Politics Among Nations
The Beijing-Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China
Lucky George: Memoirs of an Anti-Politician
This is a belated and less than comprehensive note on this book, which I stumbled upon in a second-hand bookshop while on holiday. It is one of the most lively, shrewd, and brilliantly written diplomatic and political memoirs that I have ever come across.
Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a political survivor
Jack Straw was the ablest and wisest of Tony Blair’s foreign secretaries and served in this capacity from 2001 until he was ungratefully dumped without warning by his leader in 2006. Afterwards he hit the headlines by courageously publishing his dislike of the full veil worn my some Muslim women, on the grounds that this was such a visible statement of separation and difference that it complicated community relations and was, in any case, a cultural preference rather than a religious obligation. (Straw was then and still is the Labour MP for a Bradford constituency with a large Muslim popula...
The New Diplomacy
Shaun Riordan was a British diplomat for 16 years before resigning in 2000 to take up private consultancy work and journalism in Spain, where he had ended his diplomatic career as political officer in the embassy. He has written a conceptually flawed, often vague, sometimes contradictory, and essentially polemical attack on 'traditional diplomacy'. It is also peppered with New Labour jargon ('stakeholders', 'global governance', 'civil society'), has its fair measure of superficially examined mantras, misquotes Clausewitz, and sports a shop-soiled title - is he not aware that Abba Ebban publish...
On the manner of practising the new diplomacy
The traditional model of diplomacy, founded on the principles of national sovereignty and of statecraft, is becoming less relevant as a field of new, influential actors enter the international system.
Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth diplomacy in wartime
In their Preface, the editors of Diplomats at War say that the two world wars in the twentieth century had a “catalytic impact upon the practice of diplomacy”; among other things, they continue, this produced “an unprecedented revolution” in the way heads of mission conducted their business.
Ottoman Diplomacy
Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy
On 21 April 2004, the Security Council adopted resolution 1538(2004), the most embarrassing resolution in the history of the United Nations. The resolution appointed an independent high-level inquiry whose mandate was to 'collect and examine information relating to the administration and management of the Oil-for-Food Programme, including allegations of fraud and corruption on the part of United Nations officials, personnel and agents, as well as contractors, including entities that have entered into contracts with the United Nations or with Iraq under the Programme.'
Diplomacy by other means
Diplomacy by other means
