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.
I must admit that I found the plan of the book rather confusing, and there is a certain amount of repetition. Some long sections, for example on nineteenth century diplomatic life and work patterns in Chapter 5, also tend to take a sledge hammer to crack a nut, and have too many quotations for my taste. In addition, there are some odd failings of language, two of them occurring in the opening paragraph of Chapter 3, at which point the attention of the Harvard UP copy editor must have been on something else. (‘In the autumn of 1861, public opinion [morale?] in the northern part of the United States had reached a low ebb. … Foreign exhaltation [exhultation?] at Southern excesses added insult to injury.’) Another weakness is the absence of a Selected Bibliography, with the result that one has to sift the copious footnotes to identify the most important secondary sources. Nevertheless, excepting the first, these are not serious criticisms and should not dissuade those interested in the evolution of diplomatic method over the last two centuries from poring over this book, which is full of interesting facts and suggestive hypotheses.
The result of the introduction of the electric telegraph in the middle of the nineteenth century was that thereafter diplomatic messages were much more quickly received. This is what everyone knows and the point is duly emphasised by Nickles. What is less well known beyond the ranks of the specialists, however, is that ‘cablegrams’ by no means arrived with the speed of light, were hopelessly insecure, and often quite incredibly expensive – especially if they had to be transmitted by submarine cables, as for example between Britain and America and Britain and France. Because of their expense and the need for laborious encoding, messages sent in this manner were also sparser in their language and shorter on information than the older, hand-delivered despatch. For a variety of reasons, which Nickles explains fully, they were also much more often garbled. Nevertheless, suggestive of modernity and exciting events, prestige attached to them. What were the results? Among those to do with diplomacy (as opposed to signals intelligence) two stand out. The first is the declining autonomy of diplomatic envoys in the late nineteenth century. This is the conventional wisdom but Nickles is careful to point out that this varied from state to state, and within the diplomatic services of the same state from envoy to envoy: the limitations of cablegrams, he demonstrates, ‘furnished independently minded diplomats with means to subvert their instructions and maintain their freedom of action’ (p. 31). The second consequence of the attributes of the cablegram, and according to Nickles ‘perhaps most important’, was that while (he hints) it had a benign influence on routine diplomacy, it contributed to ‘the accelerated speed of international crises’. This was serious because ‘[t]he faster pace of diplomatic disputes invited more emotional and less creative decisions on the part of statesmen, while public opinion, which sometimes moderates over the course of a long crisis, often exercised a belligerent influence on shorter crises’ (p. 191). This is inherently plausible and, in light of Nickles’ examples, historically persuasive, though no doubt diplomatic historians will argue furiously over it. I look forward to reading Thomas Otte’s review of this book, which is to be published in the European History Quarterly.
One final point: Nickles describes how the initial astonishment of politicians and journalists at the technical achievement of electric telegraphy led to much naive and ill-considered mid-century speculation that it promised the demise of the diplomatic service altogether. Of course, this did not happen, and prognoses of this sort diminished in the later decades of the nineteenth century (pp. 46-7). It is a pity that this was not recalled in the later years of the twentieth century, when a similar degree of intoxication was produced by jet aircraft and computer communication and produced exactly the same kind of rash predictions.
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The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825
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.
Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, 3rd edn
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.
The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy
Book by Geoff Berridge
Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice
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 Limits of Neorealism
The Limits of Neorealism
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.
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
DC Confidential: The controversial memoirs of Britain's ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
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.
The origins, use and development of hot line diplomacy
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...
“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.
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.
Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age
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.
The School for Ambassadors
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: Theory and Practice, 4th ed
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...
British Envoys to Germany 1816-1866
Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk
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.
A Dictionary of Diplomacy, Second Edition
Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories
I’ll be with you in a Minute Mr. Ambassador: The Education of a canadian Diplomat in Washington
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.
Embassies and Foreign Courts
Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars Before they Start
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...
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.
The New Diplomacy
Diplomacy and Global Governance: The Diplomatic Service in an Age of Worldwide Interdependence
Politics Among Nations
International Encyclopedia Of Public Policy And Administration
Public administration - the implementation side of government - is becoming an increasingly international discipline.
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.
British Heads of Mission at Constantinople, 1583-1922
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.
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.
Diplomacy for a Crowded World
The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919
Embassies under Siege
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...
