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Author: Geoff Berridge

Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The structure of diplomatic practice, 1450-1800

2007

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.
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It is invidious to pick out particular chapters, so I should make clear that the two I mention below are simply those in which I happen to have a special interest at the moment.

I found Andrea Zannini’s lucid and comprehensive essay on the crisis of Venetian diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a particularly rewarding read. This was not least because, as the author says, the last work specifically devoted to this subject “dates back more than half a century”, while the famous end-of-tour reports of Venetian diplomatists have tended to attract disproportionate scholarly attention. Venetian diplomacy holding such an important place in the history of diplomacy, this is a very valuable essay. I also found stimulating Maria Grazia Maiorini’s chapter on eighteenth century Neapolitan diplomacy, in the shaping of which the secretary of state, Bernardo Tanucci, played such an influential role. I was struck here by the contrast between Tanucci’s very parsimonious attitude to diplomatic representation and that of his earlier counterpart in France, Cardinal Richelieu (see especially p. 192). So, not all of the architects of early modern diplomacy were disciples of the Cardinal.

There are also essays by Fubini on Florence and Venice in the fifteenth century, Contini on Medicean diplomacy in the sixteenth, Frigo on the diplomacy of the small states of Mantua and Modena, Storrs on Savoyard diplomacy in the eighteenth century, and Riccardi on Vatican diplomacy over the whole period. All hold great interest.

My only regret about this excellent collection – apart from the fact that the name of the best known English writer on diplomacy is repeatedly misspelled (Nicolson, not ‘Nicholson’) – is that it only has a ‘name index’. I would not go so far as to suggest that the grave of the person who first dreamed up the idea of a name-only index should be hunted down and desecrated, though the thought is a tempting one. He has, however, a lot for which to answer. Frigo’s book, in which different authors deal with the same topics, is precisely the kind that cries out for a proper index, that is, one which deals with subjects as well as proper names. The absence of such an index in this work will limit its usefulness to students. I also thought it pretty cheap that, while acknowledging on the Contents page that the book has only an ‘Index of names’, the publisher should then have used the misleading sub-head ‘Index’ at the end of the book. If Cambridge University Press does this sort of thing, all hope is lost.

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Regionalism in the Post-Cold War World

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ottoman Diplomacy

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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.

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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...

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The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd ed

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English Medieval Diplomacy

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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...

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Amarna Diplomacy: A Fully-fledged Diplomatic System in the Near East?

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A History of the United Nations. Volume I: The Years of Western Domination 1945-1955

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Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador

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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.

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Years of Upheaval

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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.

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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 […]

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King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America

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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.

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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.