The Mongol Empire
Come again, the Mongols? Those blood-thirsty brutish sods so close to animals that we named a major genetic deficiency after them?
The Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors ruled Eurasia from China to the Middle East and Russia. This is the largest empire in history. Genghis divided his empire among his four children, while investing one of them with supreme paramountship.
The unity could not be preserved, however, and the individual khanates drifted apart. Even so, Eurasia’s main contemporary centres of power have all their roots in the Mongol empire. China, which after the Tang had broken up into separate kingdoms – the Jin and the Song – was unified politically and administratively by Khubilai Khan, one of Genghis’ grandchildren. Thereafter, China was able to maintain its geographic and political integrity despite the succession of dynasties.
The Moghul Empire of India emerged from the Chagatai Khanate of Genghis’ second son. The Abbasid Caliphate centred on Baghdad was replaced by the Ilkhanate, which eventually became the heart of Persia. The Mongols of the Golden Horde first moved north towards Novgorod in Russia, then veered sharply south and destroyed Kiev and its Viking civilisation – some say at the behest of the Venetians, who schemed to achieve a monopoly of the slave trade. As a result the centre of power in the region shifted to the north, and czarist Russia eventually emerged.
Eastern Europe was laid waste, but the remainder of the sub-continent was spared – possibly because the plunder was judged not to be worth the bother. Europe continued its trajectory as a bunch of warring micro-states vying among each other for hegemony in the region – an issue settled only at the end of WW II.
Military technology and tactic
The Mongols’ was the first modern army. It was built on a rational structure (based, like the Roman legion, on units in the multiple of tens) and promotion was strictly on merit. Thoroughly disciplined and highly mobile – infantry was unknown – it could execute complex tactical manoeuvres in silence upon orders from centralised command. Speed and efficiency in conquest were their trademark, and the source of the fear they struck in the enemy. Horse and bow where the Mongol warriors’ strength – and it the end their weakness. Forests hindered the deployment of mounted armies, in the humid heat of India the bows failed, and the horses’ strength faded when they could not find pastures in the Syrian desert.
Warfare technology and logistics were other factors in the Mongols’ superiority. The gunpowder formula was changed to yield explosive force, rather than slow burn as in fire-lances and rockets. Guns and cannon were developed. Specialised troops of craftsmen were skilled in building complex siege machines from local materials – obviating the need to move them over long distances. They perfected sapping of walls, thus making static defence impossible. A dedicated medical corps looked after the wounded. The army and its horses spread across the plains for forage and sustenance, thus obviating for the need for supply lines – yet a sophisticated communication system based on melodies to ensure accurate memorisation allowed the scattered troops to regroup at short notice and to remain in touch with the distant leadership.
The intelligence system was second to none, and the Mongols knew much more about the lands they were about to invade than the defenders knew about the Mongols – if nothing else because the latter lived off the land and needed to know where water and pastures were to be found. In addition, the Mongols developed highly sophisticated methods of psychological warfare, spreading rumours about their cruelty and destruction. This unsettled the rural populations that then fled before the advancing army, hamstringing the defence efforts.
To what extent the Mongols’ vaunted cruelty was real must remain an open question, according to Weatherford. Few traces remain, among the excavated ruins of desert cities that were pillaged, of massive-scale slaughter, and what is left indicates that the number of casualties was likely to have been inflated by a factor of ten. What seems established is that the Mongols promised justice to those who surrendered, but they swore destruction to those who resisted, particularly if they rebelled and thus threatened supply lines or withdrawal routes. And the Mongols kept their word. Yet the Mongols did not torture, mutilate or main – which sets them apart from the rulers and religious leaders from China to Europe who depended upon such gruesome displays to control their own people.
More specifically Genghis – having battled competing aristocratic lineages to unify his people – was set on killing the aristocrats, whose loyalty, dependability and usefulness he had come to doubt, thus essentially decapitating the social system of the enemy and minimising future resistance. In so doing he shrewdly recognised that the common people cared little about what befell the idle rich.
Cities, particularly in the desert, were razed in order to redirect trade flows, and irrigation systems were demolished in order to make agricultural fields revert to pastures for the horses.
Plunder was the Mongol army’s basic aim, and plunder would be gathered centrally to be distributed in a fair and transparent way among the troops and the relatives of the fallen – the khubi system. In the process they had to record massive amounts of numerical information. What was not plundered, was counted and stored – and thus emerged a highly sophisticated bureaucracy that kept track of the accumulated wealth. Artisans were gathered and moved over long distances to centres of production serving the Mongol tastes. In so doing, technologies spread across the whole continent in all directions.
Beliefs and principles
Genghis Khan believed in the Great Blue Sky that spans the world. He derived his mandate for a world empire from this universal divinity. Genghis had met the many religions flowing back and forth along the Silk Road, however, as these were carried along by traders and adopted women who then married into neighbouring tribes – Khubilai’s mother had been some sort of Christian (probably a Nestorian – it is an irony that narrow-minded orthodoxy prevented the Pope from seizing the opportunity of spreading Christian values among the Mongols). Religious freedom prevailed among the Mongols, and the predominance of the state over religion was secured when Genghis executed troubling shamans that threatened his rule.
Genghis Khan had been a reject among his people and had been persecuted by rival lineages. When he achieved power he established the rule of law, which applied equally to everyone, and to himself. This policy allowed him to amalgamate the various defeated clans into one nation, while destroying the traditional power of the ‘white-bone’ lineages that had oppressed the people.
Economy of the Mongol Empire
Without a production base on their own, the Mongols were dependent on trade for their essentials and luxuries. They secured the Silk Road (which had languished under the petty Muslim rulers that squatted it), established free trade, and moved great quantities of goods in either direction. It is along this Mongol Silk Road that Marco Polo might have travelled to Khubilai’s court.
Paper money had been introduced from China and backed with the plunder of war. But Genghis’s son Guyuk has been too generous with the printing press and had debased the currency. His successor, Mongke, decided to honour Guyuk’s debts anyway, thus securing the continuity of trade flows. He introduced a standardised silver ingot, the sukhe, to achieve convertibility between the local currencies and to monetize taxes, rather than accept payment in local goods. This allowed the establishment of a state budget and the use of money to pay for expenses in places distant from the tax collection point.
Pragmatic universalism
To sum up: ‘the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism. Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, The Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions. They searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries.’
The final achievement of the Mongols was their ability to blend in with the local culture, giving their rule a remarkable degree of stability. Khubilai Khan’s genius derived from the recognition that he had to sinicize in order to rule China – and he did. His successors were less daring, and were eventually overthrown by the Ming. Following Mongol principles of even-handedness and religious and cultural inclusion Akbar in India achieved deservedly the title of Great.
Collapse of the Empire
In the end, however, the Mongols were defeated by an unlikely enemy: the plague. It took off from Khubilai’s summer residence at Xanadu and followed the Mongol trade routes to sow death across the continent. As millions died, trade was cursed and prohibited; and foreigners became the source of fear rather than curiosity. Later on, the European Enlightenment produced a growing anti-Asian spirit that often focused on the Mongols, as the symbol of everything evil or defective in that massive continent. As democratic thought emerged, it has to be contrasted: the Mongols became the ‘Barbarians at the gate’.
The Communist rule sought to suppress Mongol history. It is now slowly re-emerging as the scattered remnants are gathered and interpreted by a new generation of historians. While Weatherford’s book may read to some somewhat as a hagiographic treaty, it has the great virtue of tearing away the cardboard image of the Mongols. May we find out more interesting things about this culture!
Review by Aldo Matteucci
You may also be interested in
The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations
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.
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.
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...
The Breaking of Nations
Robert Cooper is Director-General of External and Politico-Military Affairs for the Council of the EU and thus a man steeped in world affairs. Though he makes no claim to establishing a ‘theory’ of how nations grow and decay, he has presented in this slim volume a rigorous typology of today’s nations. His thoughts are worth setting out in some detail.
Tilkidom and the Ottoman Empire: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd, 1906-15
Gerald Henry Fitzmaurice was Chief Dragoman at the British Embassy in Constantinople before the First World War and George Ambrose Lloyd was a young Honorary Attaché based in the Embassy from the autumn of 1905 until the end of 1906. In Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865-1939), which leans heavily on the private letters that Fitzmaurice wrote to Lloyd between 1906 and 1915, I describe the ups and downs of the close friendship which developed between them. I also deal more or less fully with many of the subjects raised in the letters. Why, then, publish them separately?
In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents
The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland
Central Eurasia refers to the countries in the Caucasus and to the five countries of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These countries that had once been part of the Russian and Soviet Empire were broken off and set adrift when the Soviet Union self-destructed at the end of 1991. They belatedly joined Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, three countries that also emerged from the sphere of influence of an empire, the British one, to become – in the words of Charles De Gaulle speaking of the newly independent African states – the dust of empire.
England and the Avignon Popes: The practice of diplomacy in late medieval Europe
In England and the Avignon Popes, Karsten Plöger, who is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in London, has provided an invaluable book not only for students of medieval diplomatic method but for students of diplomacy in general. It is a work of immense and meticulous scholarship: exhaustively researched, well organized, carefully worded, penetrating, and beautifully written.
An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667-1678
A History of the United Nations. Volume I: The Years of Western Domination 1945-1955
The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State
A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West
Note: The author of this review compares Noam Chomsky's A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West and David Fromkin's Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals meet Reality on the Balkan Battlefields.
Diplomacy and Secret Service
Intelligence officers working under diplomatic protection are rarely out of the news for long, and the last two years have been no exception. How did the relationship between diplomacy and secret intelligence come about? What was the impact on it of the bureaucratization of secret intelligence that began in the late nineteenth century? Is diplomatic immunity the only reason why intelligence officers still cluster in embassies and consulates today? What do their diplomatic landlords think about their secret tenants and how do the spooks repay the ambassadors for their lodgings? These are among ...
Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006
In writing her history of the origins and evolution of the office of high commissioner, Dr Lloyd, who is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University, has drawn on a vast range of sources. She has sifted through archives of public and private papers not just in Britain but in Ireland, Canada, and South Africa; and she has conducted many interviews and much correspondence with former high commissioners.
Ottoman Diplomacy
Documenting diplomacy, Evaluating documents: The case of the CSCE
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Rather than individual documents, Dr Keith Hamilton looks at the process and purpose of compiling collections of documents. He focuses on his own experience as the editor of Documents on British Policy Overseas, and particularly on his work publishing a collection of documents concerning the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1972 until 1975.
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
When I feel dispirited about the current crop of political leaders in Switzerland or around the world, I like to take refuge in one of the most uplifting political stories of mankind – the American Revolution.
The Evolution of Diplomatic Method
The Turkish Embassy Letters
The Falkland Islands War: Diplomatic Failure in April 1982
Evolution of Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities
Excerpt from the lecture 1: Principles and concepts, evolution and instruments; Online course on Diplomatic Law: Privileges and Immunities.
Diplomacy of Image & Memory: Swiss Bankers and Nazi Gold
Did diplomatic immunity exist in the ancient Near East?
U.S. Propaganda in the Middle East – The Early Cold War Version
A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era: The Life and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray, Second Edition (Revised) 2015
Unlike Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, the most well-known whistleblowers of the present day, Eustace Clare Grenville-Murray (1823-1881), the illegitimate son of an English duke and an actress who was also a lover of Lord Palmerston, did not make public highly classified documents. Instead, while serving as a diplomat behind the fragile shield of anonymity, he employed satire and ridicule in books, periodicals, and newspapers to attack the aspects of diplomacy he disliked.
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 […]
The Imperial Component in Iran’s Foreign Policy: Towards Arab Mashreq and Arab Gulf States
One of the most important developments the Middle East has witnessed in the 20th centaury was the success of the Iranian revolution of Islamist ideology, with ambitions to control.
The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages
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 Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919
Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century
English Medieval Diplomacy
The Diplomats, 1939-1979
The Argentine seizure of the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands: History and Diplomacy
Munitions of the Mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era
International Diplomacy Volume I: Diplomatic Institutions
Negotiating with the Chinese Communists: The United States Experience, 1953-1967
The post-modern state and the world order
1989 marked a break in European history. What happened in 1989 went beyond the events of 1789, 1815 or 1919. These dates, like 1989, stand for revolutions, the break-up of empires and the re-ordering of spheres of influence. But these changes took place within the established framework of the balance of power and the sovereign independent state. 1989 was different. In addition to the dramatic changes of that year – the revolutions and the re-ordering of alliances – it marked an underlying change in the European state system itself. To put it crudely, what happened in 1989 was not jus...
Notes on the origins of the diplomatic corps: Constantinople in the 1620s
Instruzione e formazione del diplomatico: la tradizione inglese
The Diplomats, 1919-1939
Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy
The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy
The Beijing-Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China
Strategic Public Diplomacy: The Evolution of Influence
Diplomacy in Ancient Greece
The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825
King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America
The Washington Embassy: British ambassadors to the United States, 1939-77
The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and third president of the United States (1801-9), was one of the warmest and most influential American supporters of the French revolution. He had also been a diplomat. In fact, he had joined the American mission in France in 1784, and replaced Benjamin Franklin as minister in the following year. He witnessed the outbreak of the revolution in 1789 and was then appointed secretary of state by George Washington. This scintillating book by Conor Cruise O'Brien, himself a former diplomat, analyses the blossoming and slow - very sl...
A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era
It’s not often that a fascinating and important new book — in this case about an accomplished diplomat, journalist, whistle-blower, novelist, dissembler and controversial celebrity of Victorian times — is made available, totally free of charge, to anyone with a computer, internet access and Adobe software for downloading a book-length PDF file. This is what Professor Emeritus G R Berridge, prolific writer and author of the classic textbook Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, has done with his latest book, A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era: The Life and Writings of E. C. ...
The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
If God ever gave mankind a mission – it was not so much to multiply as to walk. And walk we did, to the farthest corners of the earth. Homo sapiens sapiens is the only mammal to have spread from its place of origin, Africa, to every other continent – before settling down to sedentary life ogling a TV screen or monitor, that is.
Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk
The History of Diplomatic Immunity
This is a massive book in more than one sense. It is over 700 pages long, including an invaluable bibliography which itself stretches over 70 pages. While dwelling chiefly on the Western tradition, it also takes in the Ottoman Empire and the Far East. It begins in ancient times (though having less on the second […]
The Expansion of International Society
History and the evolution of diplomacy
Update: Visit our page on History of Diplomacy and Technology, where we try to discover how civilizations dealt with ‘new’ technologies, from simple writing, via the telegraph, to the internet.
The Congress of Arras, 1435
International Diplomacy Volume III: The Pluralisation of Diplomacy
Public diplomacy: Sunrise of an academic field
Relations between Cyprus and Germany 1960 to 1968
Antonis Sammoutis attempts an examination of relations between Germany and Cyprus during the years 1960-1968. He starts by examining bilateral relations in the first three years of the Republic of Cyprus and then going into the most crucial year of the conflict in Cyprus - 1964. Sammoutis then examines the years 1965-1968 ending with a summary of the main issues along with the main conclusions drawn from the research.
Side-Lights on English Society, or Sketches from Life, Social and Satirical
Misunderstood: The IT manager’s lament
Communication between information technologists and their clients – including diplomats - does not work as well as it should. We know that information technology has become ubiquitous. We also know that diplomats rely extensively on web services, electronic mail and documents in electronic form. Yet when communication does not work well, technologists poorly understand the needs of the diplomatic community. As a result, technical solutions may not address the real needs of end-users. This paper is a study on inter-professional miscommunication.
Post Cold War diplomatic training
Victor Shale's paper refers to a specific time period: the post-Cold War period which brought about new forms of conflicts, and high levels of terrorism. In the light of the change in traditional diplomacy, his paper examines multistakeholder diplomatic training and its importance as an approach in penetrating different cultures, and examines whether this approach could be used to minimise intractable conflicts.
International Diplomacy Volume IV: Public Diplomacy
Lord Elgin and the Marbles
Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice
The origins, use and development of hot line diplomacy
The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece – A Short Introduction
Employed against a warlike background, the diplomatic methods of the ancient Greeks are thought by some to have been useless but by others to have been the most advanced seen prior to modern times.
The Law of Nations or Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns
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...
The languages of the Knights
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): In his examination of the languages used by the Knights of St John in Rhodes and Malta during the 14th to 16th centuries, Professor Joseph Brincat applies the methodology of historical linguistics. As an international and multi-lingual entity, the Order faced difficulties with its administrative methods intimately linked to linguistic issues.
The History of Diplomatic Immunity
This is a massive book in more than one sense. It is over 700 pages long, including an invaluable bibliography which itself stretches over 70 pages. While dwelling chiefly on the Western tradition, it also takes in the Ottoman Empire and the Far East.
Philosophy of Rhetoric
There are several reasons which have induced the author of the following sheets to give the public some account of their origin and progress, previously to tbgir coming unaer its examination. They are a series of Essays closely connected with one another, and written on a subject in the examination of which he has at […]
Amarna Diplomacy: A Fully-fledged Diplomatic System in the Near East?
Searching for the prehistoric origins of diplomacy
What if diplomacy had started in the first contact between two distinct bands of nomadic Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers in the Palaeolithic period, even before the advent of agriculture and the transition from nomadism to Neolithic sedentary societies? In this post, prepared especially for this blog, a summary of the author’s argument, originally published by the Cambridge Review of International Affairs [1], is presented to DiploFoundation readers searching for the ancient origins of the diplomatic practice.
The British Interests Section in Kampala, 1976-7
The evolution of diplomacy in the Caribbean
This paper will focus on the development of diplomacy in the Caribbean and how it impacts the development of small Caribbean States, paying attention to the regional, bilateral and multilateral levels of diplomacy.
A Manual of Greek Antiquities
Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador
The Secret History of Dayton: U.S. Diplomacy and the Bosnia Peace Process 1995
The Power of Small States: Diplomacy in World War II
This Is an inquiry into how the governments of small and militarily weak states can resist the strong pressure of great powers even in crisis periods. The continued existence and, in deed, startling increase in the number of small states may seem paradoxical in the age of superpowers and the drastically altered ratio of military strength between them and the rest of the world. It is well known that the ability to use violence does not alone determine the course of world politics. Some of the other determinants can be observed with exceptional clarity in the diplomacy of the small ...
The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China 1792-4
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...
The British Diplomatic Service 1815-1914
Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006
Book review by Geoff Berridge
Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations
Guicciardini on Diplomacy: Selections from the Ricordi
Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers of the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies
The papers presented at the 24th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in Cambridge in 1990, are collected in this volume. It is a detailed examination of Byzantine diplomacy from the empire’s emergence in late antiquity to its death throes when the Ottoman Turks conquered it. This is not just a narrow study of political […]
Under the Wire: How the telegraph changed diplomacy
Nickles, who is a State Department historian, has written what I believe is the first full-length study of this important and intriguing subject. Excluding an introduction and short conclusion, it has seven chapters presented in three parts ('Control', 'Speed', and 'The Medium'), each having a chapter devoted to a case study: the Anglo-American crisis of 1812, the further Anglo-American crisis of 1861 ('the Trent affair'), and the Zimmerman telegram of January 1917 - which of course also involved the United States.
The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office
Politics and Culture in International History, 2nd ed
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...
Japanese middle-power diplomacy
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.
Machiavelli’s Legations
A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, vol. 2
British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy
A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, vol. 3
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 ...
The Forgotten French
Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel
Regionalism in the Post-Cold War World
Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry
English dragomans and oriental secretaries: the early nineteenth-century origins of the anglicization of the British embassy drogmanat in Constantinople
The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945
Nation, Class, and Diplomacy: The dragomanate of the British embassy in Constantinople, 1814-1914
In Markus Msslang and Torsten Riotte (eds.), The Diplomats’ World: A Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815-1914 (Oxford University Press for the German Historical Institute, London: Oxford and New York, 2008), pp. 407-31
Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings overseas, 1800-2000
Mark Bertram joined the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works after reading architecture at Cambridge and remained in the civil service as architect, project manager, administrator, estate manager and – in his own words – ‘quasi diplomat’ for the next thirty years.
International Diplomacy Volume II: Diplomacy in a Multicultural World
Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815-1914
A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, vol. 1
Although special questions and particular periods of diplomatic history have been carefully studied and ably discussed by historical writers, it is a noteworthy fact that no general history of European diplomacy exists in any language.
Gerals Firzmaurice (1965-1939), Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey
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.
US Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?
The post-'9/11' revival of interest in US public diplomacy encompasses a wide variety of opinions, all overwhelmingly critical.
Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The structure of diplomatic practice, 1450-1800
This collection of essays, edited and well introduced by Daniela Frigo of the University of Trieste, reflects the comparatively recent rediscovery of interest in the diplomacy of their own peninsula by Italian historians. (The only non-Italian contributor is Christopher Storrs.) All of the essays are of a high standard and most contain much new research. Adrian Belton is, therefore, also to be congratulated for making them accessible to English readers by means of his excellent translation.
The ‘Working’ Non-Aligned Movement: Between Belgrade, Cairo, and Baku – The NAM’s Leadership Visibility
The objective of this chapter is to highlight lessons learned, promote best practices, and carry takeaways that are useful for other levels of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), or even other forums.
The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd ed
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.
Guicciardini’s Ricordi: The Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini
Francesco Guicciardini was born into a long-established patrician family in Florence in 1483. He trained and then practised successfully as a lawyer, but in January 1512 was sent by the signoria, despite his youth, as ambassador to Spain.1 His mission was conducted against a background of acute tension and at a time when the goodwill of Ferdinand the Catholic — that master of deceit’ 2 — was of the first importance to the republic. (Ferdinand’s soldiers, only recently allied to those of Pope Julius II against Florence’s ally, France, were entering the nearby Romagna.) Guicciardini re...
Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age
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.
Foreign ministries and the management of the past
In his paper, Keith Hamilton looks at Foreign Ministries’ treatment of historical diplomacy, and specifically, the publication of diplomatic documents. Through his historical analyses, the author examines the various aims of these documents, such as, to shed light on past developments and help in current and future negotiations; to influence parliamentarians and a wider public; and to further international relations’ studies.
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Ask anyone who was the person that most influenced world history: few would mention Genghis Khan. Arguably, however, Genghis Khan and the Mongols were the dominant force that shaped Eurasia and consequently the modern world. Not for what they destroyed – though they wrought much destruction all over the continent – but for what they built. They came close to uniting Eurasia into a world empire, and in so doing they spread throughout it technologies like paper, gunpowder, paper money, or the compass – and trousers. They revolutionised warfare. More lastingly, in the words of the author: '...
The Professional Diplomat
The Origins of the Diplomatic Corps: Rome to Constantinople
Peacemaking 1919
Diplomatic integration with Europe before Selim III
Back Channel to Cuba: The hidden history of negotiations between Washington and Havana
This book went to press after the much-publicised handshake between US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in December 2013 – but before their historic, simultaneous announcements a year later, assisted by a prisoner exchange and the good offices of the Vatican, that they were resolved to end their 50 years of estrangement and normalise relations.
Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy
Review by Geoff Berridge
Studies in Dipomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C. H.
British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment
Years of Upheaval
A kind of diplomatic incantation: Exchanging British and Japanese diplomats in the Second World War
The First Resort of Kings: American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century
The Counter-Revolution in Diplomacy, and Other Essays
This book brings together for the first time a large collection of essays (including three new ones) of a leading writer on diplomacy. They challenge the fashionable view that the novel features of contemporary diplomacy are its most important, and use new historical research to explore questions not previously treated in the same systematic manner.
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.
Kautilya’s Arthasastra on war and diplomacy in Ancient India
Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana
This book went to press after the much-publicised handshake between US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in December 2013 – but before their historic, simultaneous announcements a year later, assisted by a prisoner exchange and the good offices of the Vatican, that they were resolved […]
Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations
