In May 2018, the United States relocated its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to its capital Jerusalem, a city whose status remains disputed. The Trump Administration’s decision to move the embassy sent two messages: an external one to Palestinians and their allies, signaling a decidedly pro-Israeli stance in U.S. foreign policy, and an internal one to Israeli citizens expressing support for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. This episode of diplomatic history will likely be relegated to a mere detail, overshadowed by more substantive and far-reaching policy shifts. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that embassies remain a focal point of international relations. The establishment of an embassy—the sending of an ambassador—signifies the importance of diplomatic relations with a country, which, in turn, provides a tangible affirmation of legitimacy to both the international community and that country’s government. 

In fact, this international convention is deeply rooted in historical practice. The international system of resident ambassadors has its origins in early modern Europe, where it coincided with the gradual emergence of sovereign territorial states as the predominant form of government. Resident ambassadors were an innovation of the Italian city-states of the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century, many kingdoms, principalities, and city-states in Western Europe had begun using resident ambassadors, creating the first standing network of embassies and a new model for diplomacy. By the middle of the seventeenth century, permanent resident embassies were the predominant form of diplomacy among the major powers and many secondary polities. In turn, Europe’s new diplomatic system provided crucial precedents for later developments in diplomacy and international order, such as international law, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations. Thus, the history of the institution of resident ambassadors should not be overlooked. 

An important but understudied aspect of this institution is the diplomatic intellectual history of handbooks, manuals, and treatises that are published during the formation of Europe’s new diplomatic system between the early fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries.¹ They purported to educate princes and their ambassadors about ideal diplomatic practices, beginning with the French legal scholar Bernard du Rosier writing “Short Treatise About Ambassadors” in early 1436, meant to be “a handbook of practical advice for diplomats.”² Writing over fifty years later, the Italian humanist Ermolao Barbaro’s De Officio Legati (“On the Duty of the Ambassador”) is regarded by diplomatic historians as one of the most influential texts on diplomacy. As resident diplomacy is established in Italy and then spreads to northern Europe in the late fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, more comprehensive and wide-ranging works followed Barbaro, such as Alberico Gentili’s De Legationibus Libri Tres, Juan Antonio de Vera’s El Embajador, and Jean Hotman’s The Ambassador.³ As the new diplomatic system was established, such works proliferated—thirty-three were published between 1626 and 1650 alone.⁴ Often overlooked, these literary artifacts reveal how early modern European statecraft was understood not just in terms of politics, but also in relation to a wide array of scholarly domains such as law, philosophy, religion, and history. While resident diplomacy itself is widely acknowledged as an important development, the potential contribution made by diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises toward shaping and ordering Europe’s new diplomatic system has been largely overlooked. Diplomatic historians have tended to focus on individual authors like Barbaro and Gentili but have not explored these works as a body of diplomatic thought. To date, there has been no comprehensive monographic investigation considering these numerous works as a collective body or as a canon of writing. Moreover, diplomatic historians have tended to allude to these works as ancillary to their historical chronicles, perhaps dismissing them for their perceived lack of grand strategy and unemotional political calculation. While many historians and other scholars have studied these documents, the scholarship has been uneven and typically centered upon a single text or the life of its author. 

This essay will not explore diplomatic correspondence, traces of reading, or other evidence that these texts had influence on ambassadors and other elites; however, while it is reasonable to assume they provided value to the diplomatic profession, we do not know the extent of that contribution.⁵ With those practical limitations in mind, this essay calls for a closer examination of early modern era handbooks, manuals, and treatises as a corpus of diplomatic intellectual history. First, it discusses the historiographical question of why these texts deserve to be reconsidered. Regarding their significance as historical literature, these texts emerge in a foundational era for diplomatic history when the successful establishment of resident ambassadorships was crucial for states. In addition, sovereign territorial states were fortifying their domestic positions by building up central governments, which included a budding foreign service. The volatile political situation in Europe raised the stakes of diplomacy and heightened pressure on ambassadors. Resident ambassadors were at the forefront of a rapidly changing strategic situation among states. While we do not know the extent of their impact, the diplomatic texts in circulation at this time are a useful lens for illuminating how resident diplomacy was institutionalized. 

Second, this essay discusses how these texts should be reconsidered. To understand their potential significance, they must be understood in terms of what authors hoped to convey and how the diplomatic elites reading these texts understood the authors’ messaging. This essay argues that this canon of works represented the beginning of an intellectual process and scholarly discourse around the building of the institution of resident diplomacy, creating a new facet of elite culture and knowledge production. A preliminary analysis of selected, representative texts reveals normative principles and operative guidance (using contemporary terms) aimed at strengthening the institution of resident ambassadors.⁶ Granted, there is often disagreement between the authors, as well as an uneven treatment of topics from document to document—as one who expect among an intellectual community contesting issues across decades. However, reading across these texts reveals a collective effort to render practical advice to the men who would represent the diplomatic profession and, ultimately, allow for the success of resident ambassadorships as an institution. They also call for more rigorous qualifications for ambassadors—a direct call for professionalization. Finally, they explore two problems of diplomatic practice faced by ambassadors, viz. negotiating with foreign powers and information gathering. Consequently, the intellectual discourse on diplomacy contained in diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises from this era founded a new field of elite cultural and political knowledge. 

Why Reconsider Diplomatic Handbooks, Manuals, and Treatises

Early modern diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises are almost always cited by diplomatic historians studying the era, but are often treated as peripheral material or irrelevant theorizing rather than a coherent body of intellectual history. While a handful of diplomatic historians have made limited efforts to compare and read across certain texts, the majority of recent scholarship—often by literary scholars and cultural historians—has taken the form of biographical studies or close readings of single works rather than assessments of the genre as a whole. The central question of this section is why diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises should be reconsidered as more than ancillary sources. Fundamentally, this corpus of works emerged when the successful establishment of resident ambassadorships was crucial for states. This essay argues that the historical significance of these works is that they are evidence of how the new diplomatic system in Europe was established and institutionalized, informing our understanding of a foundational period in European political and diplomatic history. This section begins by discussing the politico-military situation in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and an analysis of why resident embassies were vital to the furtherance of state interests. Following this, this section will conclude by examining the high-politics diplomatic historiography of handbooks, manuals, and treatises.

Europe’s New Model of Diplomacy

Throughout the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century, warfare was ubiquitous but rarely strategically decisive for any side. Land warfare was dominated by positional battles: sieges involving armies of mercenaries using increasingly sophisticated artillery against resilient, well-engineered fortifications. Thus, not only was there a greater frequency of wars, but those wars involved operations that went on for months. Consequently, an immense fiscal burden fell on combatant states. Typically, wars came to an end when treasuries were exhausted and sources of credit were expended, meaning that “no ruler, however grandiose his ambitions, was ever rich enough to achieve great and lasting conquests in the face of determined opposition.” Moreover, mercantilist economic policies prioritized overseas trade, which caused certain states (Spain and England) to begin marshalling resources to build navies—another fiscally demanding undertaking. In addition, as trade became more economically essential, states at war took steps to disrupt the economies of their enemies, imposing embargoes and attacking trade routes. The emergence of France and Spain as potential imperial rivals increased continental volatility, as did the religious wars set off by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Subsequently, the scale and duration of wars grew, marked by multiple conflicts in Italy driven by the Habsburg-Valois rivalry, the Schmalkaldic War, the French Wars of Religion, the Dutch Revolt, the Anglo-Spanish War, and dozens of smaller conflicts. This confronted states with the challenge of conducting more sophisticated, state-centric foreign policy.⁷

In this context, as a new innovation after its establishment in fifteenth-century Italy, the use of resident ambassadors spread among the other kingdoms, principalities, and city-states in Europe. However, this occurred slowly throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and, although disrupted by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the new diplomatic model “proved strong enough to resist the disruptive pressures of religious antagonism.” Despite the diffusion of permanent embassies staffed by professional ambassadors, the overarching political situation in Europe remained volatile. The diplomatic historian M.S. Anderson described a condition of “pervasive distrust, a universal assumption that no state would keep a promise longer than suited its interests, a readiness to disregard quite brutally on occasion what embryonic international law existed, characterise the [sixteenth] century.” With more ambassadors abroad, large states like France, England, and Spain also developed administrative capabilities—early forms of foreign ministries, albeit unstructured and not empowered to shape foreign policy.⁸

Scholars have offered various narratives to explain the political structure of early modern Europe, and yet despite this diversity, there is broad agreement that compelling structural incentives impelled states to build professionalized diplomatic corps. M.S. Anderson described the development of the balance of power system as the framework for European diplomacy. In his account, the kingdoms, principalities, and city-states of Europe moved from the Church-dominated order of Christian universalism to diplomacy driven by secular objectives. By the end of the sixteenth century, the politico-military situation in Europe began to coalesce into a recognizably modern state system where great powers (at that time France, Spain, and England) managed their rivalries through war, trade, finance, and diplomacy under balance of power logic. He argued that states, facing constant warfare and the desire to prevent rivals from gaining power, “followed the Italian example in this respect rather as they did in the creation of a network of permanent diplomatic representatives” and thus began to fight Charles V and “the danger of ‘universal monarchy.’” However, Anderson doubted whether there was any foresight in these policies; “the reality existed long before theoretical discussion or intellectual analysis of it had got under way.” Nevertheless, a diplomacy centered upon balance of power considerations required that states have sophisticated diplomatic functions, most of all professional ambassadors.⁹

In contrast, Perry Anderson’s study of early modern Europe offered a Marxist analysis of state formation. Anderson argues that the absolutist state concentrated the main instruments of rule: military, bureaucracy, fiscal apparatus, regulation of trade, and a more professional diplomacy. Regarding diplomacy, absolutist states prevented other domestic interests from pursuing their own diplomacy and retained exclusive control over foreign entreaties. Consolidating diplomacy in a system of embassies representing similar absolutist states “was one of the great institutional inventions of the epoch” and created “a formalized system of inter-State pressure and exchange.” Anderson also emphasized the role diplomacy played in securing royal marriages as a means of alliance.¹⁰

A more recent analysis from the political scientist Hendrik Spruyt argues that the European system of sovereign territorial states which resulted after the Peace of Westphalia was highly contingent. In international relations, sovereign territorial states tended to understand and recognize similar sovereign territorial states, thus empowering each other and leading to a system where “[i]nternational actors determine who is to count as a legitimate international participant.” Moreover, Spruyt argues that political elites saw that the sovereign territorial state model was “successful in reducing uncertainty and achieving objectives such as a larger revenue and increased military capacity” and by replicating that model in their own territories, they enabled themselves “to be recognized as equals within the state system, by mutual empowerment. In a material sense, they are then more suited to pursue long-run gains through treaties.” Spruyt does not delve into the details of sovereign territorial states benefiting through maintaining embassies, but this point is strongly implied: “Externally, states could credibly commit themselves and engage in long-run iterative relations. As the advantage swung in favor of sovereign states, only similar forms of organization were recognized.” The example of the Hanseatic League being excluded from the Peace of Westphalia illustrates Spruyt’s argument: “The issue was whether the league as an organization of towns could participate in the new order of international politics which was hammered out during the negotiations in Osnabrück and Münster. The answer was negative. Scarcely twenty years later the Hansa dissolved itself.”¹¹

Taken together, these diverse historical narratives explaining European state formation support the view that resident embassies were the fundamental means for conducting foreign policy among early modern states. This highlights diplomacy as a form of state building and underlines the importance of resident ambassadors.

Furthermore, other diplomatic historians have emphasized the importance of resident ambassadorships for the protection and furtherance of state interests. Given nascent state administrative machinery, the ambassador serving at a foreign court was the locus of a polity’s diplomatic mission. In a recent book on diplomatic strategy, A. Wess Mitchell cites Ermolao Barbaro’s imperative that an ambassador “best serve the preservation and aggrandizement of his own state” (which this essay covers in the following section) to explain the prevailing approach of this new model of diplomacy:

Similarly, Garrett Mattingly characterized the resident ambassador as a conflicted or hybrid figure—in part facilitator, negotiator and spy. He highlighted the groundbreaking roles played by figures such as Eustache Chapuys, Charles V’s long-serving ambassador to Tudor England, and Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, the Count of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador to the court of James I of England. The ambassador’s value at a foreign court came from “his ability to deliver a moving formal speech or compose an effectively argued state paper” as well as being “an observer, reporter and manipulator of events.” The ambassador stopped being seen as an emissary of peace but as a valued officer, because “the diplomat, like the general, was an agent for the preservation and aggrandizement of the state.”¹³

In summary, the successful establishment of resident ambassadorships was crucial for states. This elevates the potential historical significance of diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises as they are evidence of how the new diplomatic system in Europe was established and institutionalized. This essay now turns to examining the high-politics diplomatic historiography of handbooks, manuals, and treatises.

The Historiography of Handbooks, Manuals, and Treatises

The historiography of early modern diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises can be organized around four principal authors: Behrens, Mattingly, Anderson, and Berridge. The work of these scholars punctuates the last century. Behrens authored “Treatises on the Ambassador Written in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries” published in 1936. Garrett Mattingly’s monograph Renaissance Diplomacy was first published in 1955 and has two chapters primarily discussing diplomatic writings. M. S. Anderson’s The Rise of Modern Diplomacy was first published in 1993 and has a chapter devoted to the new diplomatic model. G. R. Berridge authored the chapters on Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Grotius, and Richelieu in Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (published in 2001) as well as the introduction to Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel published in 2004. These authors are diplomatic historians of early modern Europe with a focus on the high politics of the era, taking a traditional approach to the field. They have also made extensive use of early modern diplomatic texts in their scholarship. Therefore, this section of the essay will focus on their work as the foundation for historicizing the early modern diplomatic texts. 

Prior to that, however, it is important to consider recent historical work that studies how certain diplomatic texts were understood by contemporaries. Two recent articles demonstrate the potential value of exploring early modern diplomatic texts. First, María Concepción Gutiérrez Redondo explores the history of the French translation and publication of De Vera’s El Enbaxador and its consistency with Richelieu’s ideas about diplomacy. De Vera’s views on resident ambassadors were consistent with Richelieu’s own writing on the subject and resonated with his allies. Thus, with Richelieu’s support, De Vera’s handbook was translated into Le Parfait Ambassadeur and “effectively became the updated authoritative advice book for ambassadors during Richelieu’s tenure.”¹⁴ Second, Tracey A. Sowerby’s article on Francis Thynne’s Perfect Ambassadour assesses the significance of the handbook, the approach Thynne took in selecting his topics, and the wide range of authorities he drew upon to make his arguments. The article makes some comparisons between Thynne’s work and that of Hotman and Gentili. Sowerby also explores whether practicing diplomats would have agreed with some of Thynne’s positions, finding that his use of historical examples would have resembled the approach taken by many diplomats in practice.¹⁵ Lastly, there are a number of recent journal articles on individual diplomatic texts and authors,¹⁶ as well as some notable studies pursuing cultural or literary analysis that touch upon these texts.¹⁷

In fact, Gutiérrez Redondo and Sowerby represent the potential promise of the New Diplomatic History approach to this subject, which would employ social and cultural historical approaches to investigate real-world aspects of diplomacy and international relations. An important revision begins with a reconsideration of these texts as a canon of works. Of the diplomatic historians who have focused on this subject, G. R. Berridge has advanced the study of early modern diplomatic texts more than others. Berridge has moved toward treating these works as a canon. In his brief introduction to Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, he provides an excellent example of what is needed in this field: reading across texts to focus on certain issues, incorporating historiography with analysis of primary sources, and putting early modern authors in discussion with each other. However, as the remainder of this section will illustrate, the traditional practitioners of high-politics diplomatic history deemphasized—and at times discounted—early modern diplomatic texts. There are three major recurring problems with this. 

First, their historical analysis of the subject matter is uneven in that certain writers are emphasized while others are ignored. These diplomatic historians tend to gesture toward a handful of well-known texts and only offer brief conceptual characterizations, while leaving the rest of the genre unexplored. Anderson, for instance, seems to dismiss the entire undertaking; efforts to describe “the ‘ideal ambassador’ are for the most part remarkably stereotyped and repetitive and sometimes plagiarized.” Moreover, after using the work of Thynne and Barbaro as illustrative examples of the genre, Anderson has very little to say about diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises. In his chapter devoted to instantiating the ambassadorial profession and the institution of resident embassies, Anderson explores issues such as an ambassador’s compensation and finances, diplomatic immunity, and information gathering, and yet only refers to Hotman, Commynes, and Gentili. Or take Behrens as another example. She reviews eight treatises “written between 1436 and 1550” but offers no rationale for her periodization or selection of texts. Nevertheless, four treatises are said to “follow the scholastic tradition,” meaning that they are “collections and extracts from the canon and civil law and the commentaries” and make for “dreary and unprofitable reading.” Thus, the balance of Behrens’s article focuses on the treatises written by Dolet, Braun, de Rosergio, and Barbaro,¹⁸ who opted not to follow scholastic and legal conventions. Lastly, while Mattingly and Berridge are far better at considering the corpus of early modern diplomatic writing, their coverage of authors is uneven. In fairness to Berridge, he chose to focus upon certain writers and not take on the entire canon. For Mattingly, he was a historian of a different time and may strike contemporary readers as having a stream-of-consciousness style.¹⁹

Second, when diplomatic historians address important topics such as qualifications, negotiations, and information gathering, the existing literature is selective and incomplete; it is neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive in its analysis of diplomatic texts. Diplomatic historians do not ask what a broader spectrum of such writings looks like on these subjects, how they relate to one another, or how they work together to conceptualize resident diplomacy. Granted, as previously stated, Berridge analyzes these works to explore how they treat certain subjects and issues; however, he does not consider the work of writers like Barbaro, Tasso, and Dolet, whom other historians regarded as offering meaningful contributions. Or consider Mattingly and how he deals with the treatment of an ambassador’s finances. Analytically, he tends to pick out certain authors to illustrate a topic, and he may juxtapose one author’s opinion with another. But his overall analysis is often just a scattershot set of topics and comparisons. He places less focus on this issue than Anderson, who argued that the vagaries around an ambassador’s compensation were a real challenge to the development of resident embassies. In contrast, Mattingly addresses this topic in various parts of his book and almost exclusively relies on what “the theorists” wrote, noting the general agreement among certain writers that ambassadors should be rich but never examining why they had that consensus. Later, he draws an oblique connection between an ambassador’s wealth and the challenges of remuneration alongside a brief quote from De Vera. Additionally, in writing about the wide diffusion of diplomatic literature in the seventeenth century, Anderson ignores the growing sophistication of this writing by authors such as Grotius. His analysis is reductive, for these writings “had nothing essentially new about them. The same is true of the view of the ideal ambassador taken by writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Despite much evidence to the contrary, Anderson concludes this work “remained essentially the same as in earlier generations—inevitably so, since most of the characteristics of a successful diplomat have not changed over centuries.”²⁰

Third, there are many examples of the diplomatic historians critiquing diplomatic texts but making no connection to early modern diplomatic practices or, worse, making anachronistic judgments. For example, Behrens acknowledges that “a precise relationship between theory and practice” is unknowable at times, and yet jumps to the conclusion that the diplomatic treatises she examined only had a minimal effect on diplomatic practices that were “clearly developed more under the pressure of necessity than under the influence of abstract principles.” Moreover, Behrens concludes that some of the treatises offered outdated advice that “found no reflection in contemporary life” and was from a time when “international relations were wholly different.” These are bold pronouncements that are not supported with evidence. Similarly, Behrens’s analysis of the treatises by Dolet, Braun, de Rosergio, and Barbaro makes the anachronistic claim that the authors’ concerns over the physical characteristics and wealth of ambassadors meant that “[t]he position of the ambassador qua ambassador scarcely concerns them” as much as what we can assume she has concluded are inconsequential issues. In fact, Behrens is dismissive of all four writers’ “lofty principles” because “current diplomacy pursued its course guided by no moral considerations whatsoever.” Finally, while Berridge’s work advanced the study of early modern diplomatic texts and New Diplomatic History has provided deeper exploration into the actual diplomatic practices during the founding era of the new diplomatic system, what seems to be lacking is an amalgamation of two approaches: a systematic analysis of the canon alongside a historical exploration of the problems of diplomatic practice.

Those three major recurring problems demonstrate how the traditional practitioners of high-politics diplomatic history have deemphasized and often overlooked early modern diplomatic texts. It stands to reason that the writers of diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises—early modern political scientists in their own right—were simply overshadowed by academic focus on their contemporary, Niccolò Machiavelli. Diplomatic history, international relations, and political theory are overlapping subjects, so the emphasis on Niccolò Machiavelli’s groundbreaking political philosophy may have offered a permission structure for historians to overlook—or even dismiss—diplomatic treatises that “only” spoke to parochial diplomatic matters. Indeed, Mattingly depicted Machiavelli’s political thought as an encapsulation of “a break-down of moral standards” in Italy.²¹ Moreover, prior to Mattingly and Anderson writing their histories, prominent political theorists like James Burnham²² and Leo Strauss²³ were emphasizing the significance of Machiavelli’s work. Ironically, we will see that Machiavelli only offered a minor contribution on the role of the ambassador.²⁴ While the significance of his contribution (or detriment) to political philosophy is not germane to this essay, perhaps diplomatic historians followed the lead of scholars of political philosophy.²⁵

In conclusion, this section has argued that early modern diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises are historically significant because resident ambassadors were key figures in conducting foreign policy, yet historians have generally used these texts only in fragmented ways. Behrens, Mattingly, Anderson, Berridge, and others have advanced the historiography, but they have tended to treat these works as products of intellectual history that merely echo the humanistic zeitgeist, aimed at a small elite readership. The next section of this essay explains how historians should analyze and assess these works by treating them as a canon of intellectual writing aimed at professionalizing resident ambassadors.

How To Reconsider Diplomatic Handbooks, Manuals, and Treatises

Understanding how diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises helped shape early modern diplomatic practice begins with an examination of how their authors intended them to function within their historical context.²⁶ Generally, these texts were written by diplomatic practitioners for diplomatic practitioners. In that sense, they represent a collective project aimed at establishing a formal structure and definitive role for the resident ambassador. While certainly not a coordinated effort across decades, the various authors of these texts shared a common goal of developing a diplomatic political culture centered on the belief in honorable deal-making between princes. Viewed collectively, these works established a facet of elite culture and knowledge production for the diplomatic profession. 

Specifically, who were the intended readers? First and foremost, they were meant to be read by the men who would serve as resident ambassadors, representing their princes day-to-day at the court of another sovereign. Perhaps they were newly appointed diplomats and wanted to educate themselves, or they were veterans reading for professional guidance. Secretaries serving resident ambassadors would almost certainly have taken an interest in these texts. Importantly, these handbooks, manuals, and treatises would have informed the ministers and high secretaries who attended the princes and were asked to identify suitable candidates for resident ambassadorial appointments. Given that these texts were specifically focused on diplomacy—a subject exclusive to political elites—it is reasonable to assume readers had an active interest in the subject matter and purposefully engaged with the texts. With that readership in mind, this essay turns to subjects, themes, and issues emphasized by the authors of these texts.

Generally, this paper follows Berridge’s approach: reading across a selected group of texts on shared problems of diplomatic practice to place early modern authors in dialogue with one another, with occasional reference to relevant historiography. Four subjects emerge when reading across the documents. First, there was a clear effort to build ambassadorships and diplomatic practice as a profession for men of letters, who would be familiar with Roman and canon law and diplomatic precedents. Second, these texts called for ambassadors to have professional qualifications and the right character traits necessary to represent a sovereign successfully. Third, they addressed the difficulties around information gathering, offering guidance on collecting news, evaluating rumor, and reporting back to their kingdoms. Fourth, they discussed the challenges related to negotiations with real-world guidance on how to pursue negotiations, how ambassadors should present demands, respond to proposals, and balance openness with prudent reserve. This essay now turns to the first of these subjects—professionalization—and how the handbooks, treatises, and manuals sought to convey specialized knowledge.

Professionalization

From a broader perspective, the corpus of early modern documents reveals how writers conceived of the ambassadorship as a profession that required specialized knowledge. This was part of the professionalization of diplomats—a new profession for learned men. Both Mattingly and Anderson made this point in their histories of the development of the new diplomacy. They describe the basic functions of an ambassador’s office, including ceremonial duties, information gathering, and negotiating, but then went about historicizing the professional development in different ways. Mattingly writes about the emergence specialized ambassadors in the Italian city-states, and then in the emergent diplomatic corps in France and Spain. Yet he does not make “professionalization” a central organizing concept; for him, diplomatic knowledge developed largely as a function of the spread of resident embassies. Anderson, on the other hand, observes that there was an emerging profession of career diplomats, but pays far less attention to qualifications, training, or other aspects of professionalism prior to the eighteenth century. Instead, he delves into certain issues relevant to the field: the remuneration of ambassadors, ceremony and procedure, and ambassadorial rights, duties, and immunities. As previously discussed, Mattingly and Anderson refer to certain handbooks, manuals, and treatises when discussing professionalism, but they tend to treat these texts as merely peripheral to actual practice, or as accounts of what others already did.²⁷ Given that many of these writers (Barbaro, Commynes, Guicciardini, Dolet, De Vera) served as ambassadors, that may be a valid position. 

More fundamentally, early modern diplomatic texts were a means of specialized knowledge creation and dissemination, functioning as practical guides that sought to inculcate professional knowledge and prepare inexperienced men of letters for the uncertainties of resident diplomacy. They contained normative principles to navigate potential conflicts and offered operative guidance (to use a contemporary term), which amounted to practicable, conservative approaches to fundamental ambassadorial duties. In short, they tried to make this new institution comprehensible to contemporaries. By conveying this specialized knowledge, they reified diplomatic practices, instantiated norms of international law and diplomatic conduct, and helped establish diplomacy as a facet of elite culture and knowledge production. Evaluating the handbooks at this level allows for their assessment as an early attempt to construct and transmit diplomatic knowledge both geographically (to the ambassadors and princes of early modern Europe) and temporally (to future ambassadors and princes). 

To illustrate this dynamic, the Throckmorton Plot involving Don Bernardino de Mendoza, the ambassador to Elizabethan England from Philip II, resulted in a precedent-setting and knowledge-producing for Europe’s growing network of resident embassies. The outcome of this controversy was that even when an ambassador’s misconduct crosses into illegality, the principle of ambassadorial immunity restricted the remedy to expulsion of the offending ambassador. This outcome was influenced by the opinions of Gentili and Hotman, who went against the sentiment of the prevailing members of the Privy Council that favored criminal punishment. Gentili and Hotman looked to the long-established principle of the inviolability of ambassadors. Moreover, such punishment would have had negative consequences for the institution of resident ambassadors. Beyond discouraging talented men of letters from taking the risk of serving in a potential enemy sovereign’s capital, the ambassadorial office was based on finding peace between kings; the execution of an ambassador was a potential casus belli. Ultimately, this knowledge is captured in the Gentili and Hotman treatises, disseminated as specialized knowledge: offending ambassadors would be expelled and are immune to criminal laws. There was a message to princes in this as well: given the importance of resident embassies in conducting foreign policy, an ambassador’s involvement in plots against his host sovereign was not worth the risk.²⁸

Furthermore, as this essay has pointed out, contemporary scholars should not make anachronistic judgments about the knowledge found in these texts. Take, for example, the authors’ recommendations about the physical appearance of ambassadors. Dolet advises that the ambassador should be “[a] handsome figure [who] moves persons to admiration” and who is “suitable to his office in figure, face, and stature.” Thynne describes a man “liberall comly of person, tall of stature.” Gentili’s “perfect ambassador” has “an immediate impression of both vigor and courtesy—the kind of comeliness which Aristotle commends in a man.” There are many other similar instances. Reading across these texts indicates that an ambassador’s physical appearance was important, a cultural signifier that princes and their ministers needed recognize. The recurrence of this topic should not be dismissed as mere plagiarism or formulaic repetition.²⁹

Finally, Grotius represents the culmination of treatises conveying specialized knowledge. Grotius is more oriented toward international law than toward diplomatic practice. In his Three Books on the Law of War and Peace, he promulgated the right of legation (the right of a sovereign state to send and receive ambassadors) and the fundamental laws governing ambassadorial conduct and the duties of host countries to protect ambassadors. Grotius advanced the specialized knowledge of the profession by recasting diplomacy in the language of international law, marking the shift from humanist treatise to juridical doctrine.³⁰

The virtuous ideals and practical advice represented a specialized knowledge that is aimed at professionalizing diplomacy and bringing about a common European diplomatic culture that would make permanent embassies both a customary and legitimate practice. Turning our attention to the problems of diplomatic practice that these texts sought to address, we now consider the professional skills and character qualities essential for resident ambassadors.

Ambassadorial Qualifications

Handbook and treatise authors wrote extensively about an ambassador’s qualifications. In these texts, “qualification” related to a wide array of traits such as social rank, independent wealth, fluency in languages, public speaking skills, and even physical appearance, but most importantly, the handbooks emphasized more nuanced aspects of professional skills and individual character. Although titles proclaimed descriptions of “the perfect ambassador,” early modern officials were under no illusions; candidates varied in skills and experience and were selected based upon their “fit” with a specific diplomatic situation.³¹ Nevertheless, an ambassador, under all circumstances, reflected the honor and dignity of his sovereign at the court of a potential ally or enemy. Because he was isolated at a foreign court and limited to written communication that could lag by months, the resident ambassador had to exercise considerable independent judgment within his general mandate. In short, the success or failure of a foreign embassy was highly dependent upon the ambassador leading it. Given the challenging circumstances resident ambassadors would find themselves under, the emphasis on an ambassador’s professional skills and individual character promoted the concept of subjecting ambassadorial candidates to a high degree of scrutiny prior to making an appointment.

Book III of Alberico Gentili’s De Legationibus Libri Tres provides a salient example that brings professional skills and individual character to the fore. Published in 1585 while Gentili was serving as a professor of civil law at the University of Oxford, this treatise is laden with Greek and Roman history and Biblical passages that buttress lessons on diplomacy. Book III departed from the prior books which focus on customs, institutions, and law of ambassadorships, providing an extensive description of the personal attributes of a “perfect ambassador.” The vast majority of Gentili’s chapters describe aspects of personal character and professional skills. There are multiple chapters devoted to an ambassador needing to have high degrees of fidelity, courage, temperance, and prudence. In addition, Gentili emphasized the need for an ambassador to have a unique professional skill. For example, an ambassador should have a superior intellect (“The ambassador will never be at a loss to reply, speak, and act with decision and effectiveness, if he will use shrewdness and diligence in meditating beforehand what objections can be urged, what remarks made or actions taken in regard to himself and his embassy.”) and have a wide knowledge of history (“He who is skilled in history will know the past, and have knowledge of the present. For I want the ambassador to study not ancient history only, but modern history as well.”). Similarly, Gentili endorsed men with philosophical training with the ability to reason and argue; however, he advised against men who only had philosophical training without a grounding in history (“A philosopher, wo has not a sound knowledge of history, I do not tolerate as an ambassador.”) as well as philosophers trained in the literary studies to one school of thought (“I don’t want him produced from the shades of the schools: I want him educated in practical politics and in the administration of high offices.”). Gentili summarizes the qualifications for ambassadors in Book III’s final chapter, entitled “The Perfect Ambassador”, and further illustrated the multiple skills and character traits ambassadors needed to possess:

While Gentili provided one of the most comprehensive descriptions of an ambassador’s qualifications,³² other handbooks and treaties also delved into the matter of an ambassador’s professional skills and personal character, acknowledging the potential challenges holding a resident ambassadorship and thus the need for princes to scrutinize candidates in order to ensure a successful diplomatic mission.

In fact, Ermolao Barbaro’s De Officio Legati—one of the earliest diplomatic handbooks to emerge from Renaissance Italy—expressed many opinions about an ambassador’s qualifications but did not go into extensive detail. Written in 1489-90 while Barbaro served ambassador to Milan at the Sforza court, this work was the first to discuss the role of resident ambassadors and demonstrated a distinctly humanist approach to diplomacy. In contrast to the first diplomatic handbook Ambaxiatorum Brevilogus written by Bernard de Rosier in 1435-36, which took “the medieval view of diplomacy as working for the good of a single and like-minded Christian community”, Barbaro is clear that the ambassador’s function is “solely to the utilitarian advantage of the state or ruler he serves.”³³ As far as qualifications, he emphasized the need for an ambassador’s competence, noting while “the principles of this office can be set down” what ultimately matters more is an individual’s “practical judgment” to be bold and recognize opportunities when they present themselves. Barbaro, recounting an actual example from his service in Milan, underscores an ambassador’s need to interpret the instructions he receives and modify the messages he delivers to the host court, since “reasons sometimes arise for having to soften and, so to speak, polish some kinds of instructions.” Moreover, he envisioned ambassadors having “a weight of influence and prestige” at the court he attends through demonstrating “all possible moral excellence” including “honest conduct and soundness of character.” Barbaro advised against ambassadors who had “an excessive reputation for clever cunning” in favor of men “of a measured disposition.”³⁴

Between Barbaro’s introduction of the topic and Gentili’s extensive description of qualifications in Book III, there is Jean Hotman’s The Ambassador (1603). He describes ambassadorial qualifications throughout his handbook, listing characteristics (prudence, integrity, etc.) along with various facets of knowledge (law and philosophy). However, Hotman departed from other handbook and treatise writers by his consideration of actual diplomatic practice with less emphasis on Greek and Roman exempla.³⁵ Thus, unlike Gentili and other writers who tried to describe a “perfect ambassador,” Hotman attempted to define the practical requirements for a contemporary diplomat:

Hotman thus describes a very specific kind of individual, and while there are certainly similar ideas at play between the three documents, there appears to be a progression towards formal qualification and the need for vetting candidates for ambassadorial positions.

Finally, the focus on professional skills and individual character appears across other handbooks, manuals, and treatises as well, along with the prudential advice to ministers to be cautious in their ambassadorial appointments. For example, Francis Thynne devoted a chapter of his handbook to qualifications, citing lessons from classical and contemporary texts. He emphasized that an ambassador “must be learned (besides many reasons that may be made for it) these examples following shall manifest. In so much that it appeareth, that Princes did alwayes choose forth the best learned to dispatch their affaires.”³⁷ More candidly, De Vera’s dialogue in El Embajador warned, “Of all the roles necessary for the maintenance of a state there is none more difficult to exercise than that of ambassador.” He goes on to conclude “all the good qualities found in other roles must be gathered together in this one.”³⁸ Even if some degree of imitation is involved, the very fact that multiple authors addressed this topic reinforces the real-world reality behind it: an embassy’s success depended largely on the personal qualities of its ambassador. Reading across these documents reveals practicable, conservative approaches to fundamental ambassadorial duties that helped ensure the adoption and eventual success of resident ambassadors. But an ambassador’s individual traits were only one dimension of the office; gathering and reporting information constituted a central responsibility. The nuances surrounding this ambassadorial role were another area where authors provided extensive guidance. 

Gathering and Reporting Information

Given the volatile politico-military situation in early modern Europe, ambassadors were sent to foreign courts that could rapidly change from ally to enemy, and from peace to a state of war. Moreover, sovereign courts were a place where other ambassadors and traveling elites congregated, making them potentially valuable locations for intelligence. Thus, resident ambassadors were expected to maintain regular correspondence with their sovereigns, reporting information they had gathered, and a failure to make these reports was considered a breach of duty and even a violation of law. Of course, this requirement was complicated by the severe limitations of early modern communication: dispatches were slow, vulnerable to being lost, and often intercepted. This forced ambassadors and their secretaries to use ciphers and restrict dispatches to known, trusted couriers. Beyond military and diplomatic intelligence, ambassadors were also expected to gather rumors, gossip, and general news—developments in technology, culture, commerce, and court politics—that might prove to be valuable to their sovereign. As a consequence, the boundary between diplomacy and espionage was often thin. Resident ambassadors cultivated sources, paid informants, avoided surveillance, transmitted coded messages, and, at times, engaged in subversive action within the host state. At the same time, those types of undertakings flew in the face of the honor and dignity of the office. These practical realities underscore why early modern writers devoted so much attention to this topic.³⁹

As this essay discussed, historians have explored the information-gathering aspect of an ambassador’s duties more than other functional areas—which underscores the importance of this duty to the institution of resident diplomacy and building diplomatic statecraft. As resident embassies were accepted throughout Europe, information-gathering remained essential to an ambassador’s duties, or as Mattingly describes: “The collection and processing of information to be relayed to their home government was still, in the Europe of 1620, as it had been in Italy of 1490, their steadiest and most unremitting task.”⁴⁰ Furthermore, Anderson described information-gathering as one of “[t]he day-to-day processes of this new diplomacy reflected its growing intensity, continuity and professionalism. Diplomats now corresponded with their own governments more regularly and copiously than ever before.”⁴¹ More recent scholarship has further explored the social and cultural history of the information-gathering aspects of early modern diplomats.⁴² Clearly, the emphasis on information gathering and reporting is evident in the primary sources. 

There appeared to be a consensus among the authors that information-gathering and reporting were central responsibilities of resident ambassadors. For example, Machiavelli advises the newly appointed Florentine ambassador to Emperor Charles V, Raffaello Girolami, that information-gathering is difficult because he will have to rely on his own judgment to discern the validity of what he learns. There will be no shortage of rumor, gossip, and intrigues, but as an ambassador “will learn some are true and some are false, although probably, you must weigh them carefully with your judgment, and take cognizance of those that seem to you nearest the truth, and not notice the others.”⁴³ To further illustrate the importance of this function, Commynes argued that even when kingdoms are at war, exchanging ambassadors is a prudent decision, taking the calculated risk that one’s own ambassador will collect more—and better—information than his counterpart.⁴⁴ In fact, Dolet goes so far as counseling ambassadors to retain servants devoted to gathering information:

However, there were substantive differences among the authors on the recommended manner and extent of these practices—in other words, a question of degree, not of kind. While acknowledging that the information-gathering and reporting function was a vital one, many of the writers expressed concern about ambassadors acting as spies. “Remember that you are an ambassador, not a spy” wrote Barbaro, who nevertheless acknowledges that an ambassador should still collect and report information, but “must survey everything not with stealth, and not like bandits, but sometimes straightforwardly and openly, sometimes in stages and with a certain feeling of the way, as it were, and not noisily but in silence.” Likewise, Barbaro urges the ambassador to “compile a record of every tiniest detail in scrupulous coverage of their activities” and to never fabricate or embellish when reporting his observations.⁴⁶ Both Bernard de Resergio and Conrad Braun sounded similar positions, opposed to resorting to deceitful means to access state secrets.⁴⁷

Gentili is, at best, ambivalent about the information-gathering and reporting. An ambassador serves as an intermediary who must exercise sound judgment but could also be considered “the ears and eyes of their government.” Yet Gentili distinguishes representation at court from more active means of gathering information, writing, “[F]or we hear of many ambassadors whose instructions included directions to play the part of a spy, and find out everything possible about the affairs of the sovereign to whom they were accredited.” After all, this was a commonly known practice by Venetian ambassadors—which was why Henry VII did not allow its resident ambassadors. For his part, Gentili “never approved of this sort of thing in ambassadors” and invokes the wisdom of Emperors Honrius and Theodosius who “warned their ambassadors not to pry into the secrets of a foreign kingdom.” In addition, informed by his study of Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza’s involvement in the Throckmorton Plot (a conspiracy to overthrow Elizabeth I with French troops), Gentili had concluded that an ambassador’s immunity even extended to breaking the law; however, the lawful recourse was that the hosting sovereign could expel that ambassador. He applies similar reasoning to potential spies, writing “if, on the mere suspicion that one had come not as an ambassador but as a spy, it should be lawful to deprive him of the title of ambassador and to degrade him.”⁴⁸ Thus, for Gentili, the potential of ambassadors acting as spies threatened the very institution resident ambassadors.

To conclude this part of the discussion, information-gathering and reporting was a defining feature of resident diplomacy—though also a contested one. In this way, the diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises acknowledged that ambassadorships will always involve a degree of espionage intertwined with diplomatic missions. Moreover, the guidance on information-gathering offered by the diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises may have helped to instantiate these practices. Turning now to the topic of negotiations, there is the similar kind of tension between honorable conduct and political necessity. 

Negotiations

With the establishment of resident ambassadors during the course of the sixteenth century, states increasingly gave them a broad mandate to negotiate on behalf of their governments, assuming the role once fulfilled by special envoys. Summits between sovereigns were discouraged and fell from favor for many reasons, including the risk of such meetings turning out to be catastrophic because princes took a personal dislike to each other. Similarly, peace congresses were usually multilateral and procedurally complex, involving multiple representatives and therefore requiring protracted negotiations over ceremony and precedence. Prior to the advent of foreign ministries, the resident ambassador served as the in situ representative of the state. The authors of handbooks, manuals, and treatises wrote extensively about negotiations, offering practical and tactical advice on how to hold these discussions while also underscoring the need for an ambassador to maintain an honorable reputation so that he would be a credible, reliable counterpart in negotiations with the host court. Like information gathering, the realm of negotiations demonstrates tensions between honorable conduct and political necessity faced by practitioners.⁴⁹

Certain writers were clear in their preference for diplomatic exigency. The Florentine diplomat Francesco Guicciardini in his handbook Ricordi (1530) devotes considerable attention to negotiation—especially tactics and strategy. A contemporary and colleague of Machiavelli, Guicciardini shared Machiavelli’s penchant for pragmatic statecraft. For example, the ambassador should keep his counterparts off balance: “[a]lways deny boldly what you would not have known, and affirm what you would have believed” because “confident assertion or denial will often perplex and puzzle the brains of him who hears you.” Similarly, Guicciardini urged ambassadors to be patient and act at “the proper moment” when conditions ensure the best chance of success, but when “surrounded by difficulties and embarrassments” it was best to “procrastinate and gain what time you can” so that conditions may change. Nonetheless, Guicciardini cautioned ambassadors against employing deceit, knowing that an ambassador’s credibility at court could eventually be undermined, ruining his entire diplomatic mission. Instead, deception should be saved for times of “extreme emergency” when the ambassador’s “reputation for plain dealing…will blind men more.”⁵⁰ Thus, honor is a means to an end. Finally, an intriguing aspect of Guicciardini’s work is its applicability to the contemporary world—touching on basic psychology. He urged ambassadors not to succumb to what we would today call “perfectionism” (“[I]t is scarce possible to find anything which has not somewhere imperfection or blemish.”) In negotiations it was important to work toward the “questions that are of most moment” by reaching agreement over smaller issues first. Guicciardini’s work views the ambassador is a vital tool of state, placing great emphasis on that man’s rhetorical skill and cunning.⁵¹

Seemingly in contrast, De Vera insisted that ambassadors be honorable, good men who “must not deviate from the path of justice for the sake of anyone, nor make himself the instrument or the executor of some crime or impiety.” Perhaps in deference to the Spanish Habsburgs, De Vera granted “that orders so odious hardly ever come from a Catholic prince.” To his credit, he problematized the real-world issue of an ambassador disagreeing on moral grounds with the instructions of his prince or republic amidst negotiations with a foreign power. Still, after raising the issue, De Vera prevaricated by assuming it away: the ambassador should delay acting on orders and request clarification, and if the orders are still objectionable, perhaps he can then persuade the prince to take a different course of action. De Vera was ultimately compatible with Guicciardini. The ambassador must “execute the orders of the king without question, suppressing his judgement and imprisoning his mind” rather than disobey orders in pursuit of “equity and justice.” Ambassadors had to be good men, but they also had to be men who were resolute in furthering the interests of the prince—men who accepted that they “must settle for behaving imperfectly.”⁵²

Finally, considering that sixteenth-century writers like Dolet and Thynne hardly mentioned negotiations, much less offered practical advice, the early seventeenth-century work of Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu—who was responsible for directing French foreign policy—represents a major advancement in early modern diplomatic writing. His Testament Politique was intended to be read by the king, conveying Richelieu’s assessment of the French strategic situation. Richelieu’s thoughts on diplomacy echo other handbooks and treatises, but by advocating “continuous negotiation,” he seems to declare a foreign policy—though, like his contemporaries and predecessors, he also offered tactical negotiating advice. As Richelieu described it, “continuous negotiation” would probably be understood in contemporary international-relations terms as an activist, outward-looking foreign policy. Moreover, Richelieu stressed the importance of a king keeping his word, recognizing reputation as a component of state power (“the greater courts the risk of being abandoned by the lesser”). Berridge interprets Richelieu’s “continuous negotiation” as “continuous diplomacy,” but also calls into question Richelieu’s declaration that “[n]egotiations are innocuous remedies which never do harm,” pointing out reputational risks. Still, if Richelieu’s vision was for greater engagement, perhaps he was simply stating a preference for an activist, outward-looking foreign policy regardless of the potential costs and risks.⁵³

In conclusion, when read together as a coherent corpus of political writing rather than as marginalized works, these texts describe a recognizable effort to professionalize resident ambassadors, identify the skills and dispositions required, and confront the tensions between political imperatives and the need to preserve strong relationships at foreign courts.

***

Perhaps it is a sentimental notion to believe that history contains lessons that can inform both the present and the future. The writers of diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises helped build the institution of resident embassies and the new diplomatic system that grew around it. That system evolved into the international order of the present day, an incomplete and ever-changing array of international laws, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations. These texts are an important part of diplomatic intellectual history, and diplomatic historians, international-relations scholars, and political theorists should reconsider this body of work. While the New Diplomatic History has the potential to generate important work on the cultural signifiers and actual practices of diplomacy, its predominant focus on micro-level analysis loses sight of the power politics, grand strategy, and economic forces that shaped the system in the first place. There is still a need for a high-politics approach, which treats institutions, decision-makers, and the intellectual history of the international order as central objects of analysis.

---

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Barbaro, Ermolao. De Officio Legati. In Ermolao Barbaro’s On Celibacy 3 and 4 and On the Duty of the Ambassador, edited by Gareth Williams. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024. 

Commynes, Philippe de. The Memoirs. In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G.R. Berridge, 18-38. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Dolet, Étienne. “De Officio Legati (1541).” Translated by James E. Dunlap. American Journal of International Law 27, no. 1 (1933): 82–95.

Gentili, Alberico. De Legationibus Libri Tres. Edited and translated by Gordon J. Laing. New York: Oceana Publications, 1964.

Grotius, Hugo. On the Right of Legation. In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G.R. Berridge, 98-114. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 

Guicciardini, Francesco. Ricordi. In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G.R. Berridge, 47-56. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Hotman, Jean. The Ambassador. London, 1603. Early English Books Online. Accessed [November 15, 2025]. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A03724.0001.001?view=toc.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. Advice to Raffaelo Girolami. In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G.R. Berridge, 39-46. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis. “Political Testament.” In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G. R. Berridge, 115–21. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Thynne, Francis. The Application of Certain Histories Concerning Ambassadours and Their Functions. London, 1651. Early English Books Online. Accessed [November 23, 2025]. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A94341.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

Vera y Figueroa, Juan Antonio de. The Perfect Ambassador (from El Embajador). In Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, edited by G.R. Berridge, 88–97. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Secondary Sources

Anderson, M. S. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919. London: Longman, 1993.

Anderson, M. S. The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618. London: Longman, 1998.

Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.

Behrens, Betty. “Treatises on the Ambassador Written in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” The English Historical Review, 51(204), 616–627, (1936).

Berridge, G. R., Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte. Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.

Berridge, G. R., ed. Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Burnham, James. The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. London: Lume Books, 2020.

Chiaruzzi, Michele. “Diplomatic Personae: Torquato Tasso on the Ambassador.” History of European Ideas 48, no. 5 (2022): 481–98.

Constantinou, Costas M. “Between Statecraft and Humanism: Diplomacy and Its Forms of Knowledge.” International Studies Review 15, no. 2 (2013): 141–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/misr.12037.

Daniel, Marie-Céline. “A Diplomat and a Translator: Jean Hotman and the Good Use of Translations for a Soft Diplomacy.” Caliban 54 (2015): 35–49. https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.2892.

Fedele, Dante. “The Renewal of Early-Modern Scholarship on the Ambassador: Pierre Ayrault on Diplomatic Immunity.” Journal of the History of International Law, 18, no. 4 (2016): 449–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340069.

Gehring, David Scott. Diplomatic Intelligence on the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark During the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI Three Treatises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2015.

Gutiérrez Redondo, María Concepción. “Publishing Le Parfait Ambassadeur for Richelieu: The Translation of Vera’s El Enbaxador in Early Modern Europe.” Culture & History Digital Journal 12, no. 2 (2023): e023. https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2023.023.

Hamilton, Keith & Richard Langhorne. The Diplomacy of the Renaissance and the Resident Ambassador. In The Practice of Diplomacy, 37–60. New York: Routledge, 2011. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203841891-9

Hampton, Timothy. Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Mattingly, Garrett. Renaissance Diplomacy. Originally published 1955. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010.

Mitchell, A. Wess. Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025.

Netzloff, Mark. Agents Beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Reeves, Jesse S. “Étienne Dolet on the Functions of the Ambassador, 1541.” The American Journal of International Law 27, no. 1 (1933): 80–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2189784.

Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53.

Sowerby, Tracey A. “Francis Thynne’s Perfect Ambassadour and the Construction of Diplomatic Thought in Elizabethan England.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 82, no. 4 (2019): 539–58. https://doi.org/10.1353/hlq.2019.0031.

Spruyt, Hendrik. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Strauss, Leo, and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

---

Notes

1. This time range starts with the founding of resident diplomacy among the Italian city-states in the early fourteenth century and ends with the Peace of Westphalia (1648).  ↩︎
2. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, originally published 1955 (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010), 28-29. ↩︎
3. Ermolao Barbaro, De Officio Legati, in Ermolao Barbaro’s On Celibacy 3 and 4 and On the Duty of the Ambassador, ed. Gareth Williams (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024); Alberico Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres, ed. and trans. Gordon J. Laing (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964); Juan Antonio de Vera y Figueroa, El Embajador, trans. as The Perfect Ambassador in Geoff Berridge, ed., Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Jean Hotman, The Ambassador (London, 1603), Early English Books Online, accessed [November 15, 2025] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A03724.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext. ↩︎
4. M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (London: Longman, 1993), 45. ↩︎
5. The institutional establishment of resident ambassadors coincides with this emergent body of diplomatic writings and is the main subject of these texts. It is reasonable to assume these texts were circulated, read, and duly considered by early modern elites. For example, we know many of the authors served as ambassadors themselves. We also know they often quoted and made references to earlier diplomatic publications. Some texts had multiple re-printings; others were translated into several languages. Finally, there is also the basic fact that these documents have been preserved as historical artifacts for centuries. Therefore, probabilistically, these texts circulated and were actually read by ambassadors, ministers, and other diplomatic elites. But that is not to argue against more extensive research. A full account of this subject that established causality would require deeper research on records of proceedings at court, diaries, ambassadorial correspondence, etc., in order to assess how these texts contributed to the establishment of the diplomatic profession. A historian could make a deductive historical argument using a small set of primary evidence to support a specific claim about the relevance of handbooks and treatises. However, a more defensible, inductive approach would require an extraordinary research effort examining approximately 250 years of available evidence from diplomats and ministers across multiple kingdoms and city-states. That is a project for future historians—assuming enough primary evidence has survived to support such an undertaking. ↩︎
6. Note that this paper considers eleven primary source texts listed in the bibliography. As a further matter of research, obtaining English-translated versions of the influential handbooks by Torquato Tasso, Conrad Braun, Bernard de Rosergio, and others would enhance to this essay’s analysis.  ↩︎
7. M. S. Anderson, The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494–1618 (London: Longman, 1998), 1-51. ↩︎
8. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 10-11, 38-39, 73-80. ↩︎
9. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1-20, 149-154. ↩︎
10. In Lineages of the Absolutist State, Perry Anderson’s argument was that “a crisis of medieval feudalism” compromised nobles’ hold on power; this crisis was multicausal and included factors such as the labor shortages and peasant revolts that followed the Black Death, increased trade and the growing use of money, and military innovations that made warfare more expensive and demanding. Movements toward “absolutist monarchies” were innovations that centralized state functions in order to compete effectively against external and internal rivals, thereby preserving the aristocratic class’s hold on economic and military power. Absolutist state building entailed wide-ranging taxation, bureaucratic centralization, and the consolidation of territorial control. Absolutism retained aristocratic property relations while also moving toward capitalist markets with an urban bourgeoisie that remained subordinate to the aristocracy. Most importantly, the absolutist state could meet the rising fiscal demands of warfare and support large standing armies and navies. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), 1-42. ↩︎
11. Note that Spruyt confronted various narratives of “unilinear evolution” (Marx, Durkheim, Weber) away from feudalism and towards strong, centralized states. There was both military and economic competition among rival forms of government, namely sovereign territorial states, city-states, and urban leagues. Spruyt supports his thesis by comparing the political and economic histories of Capetian France, the Hanseatic League, and Italian city-states. Ultimately, the sovereign territorial state became the predominant model by the mid-seventeenth century because it utilized economic resources better than other models, while also asserting clear authority over a distinct geography. Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 3-7, 169-172. ↩︎
12.  A. Wess Mitchell, Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025), 57-59. ↩︎
13. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 63, 243-246, 256-268. ↩︎
14. María Concepción Gutiérrez Redondo, “Publishing Le Parfait Ambassadeur for Richelieu: The Translation of Vera’s El Enbaxador in Early Modern Europe,” Culture & History Digital Journal 12, no. 2 (2023).  ↩︎
15. Tracey A. Sowerby, “Francis Thynne’s Perfect Ambassadour and the Construction of Diplomatic Thought in Elizabethan England,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 82, no. 4 (2019): 539–58. ↩︎
16. The following academic articles are notable examples: Dante Fedele analyzes how the French jurist Pierre Ayrault (1536–1601) redefined diplomatic immunity. (Ayrault is only mentioned once by Mattingly with no discussion of his work.) Fedele shows that Ayrault’s writings on situated ambassadors within the emerging framework of resident ambassador, showing more sophistication and stronger legal reasoning than well-known contemporaries like Dolet and Braun. Dante Fedele, “The Renewal of Early-Modern Scholarship on the Ambassador: Pierre Ayrault on Diplomatic Immunity,” Journal of the History of International Law 18, no. 4 (2016): 449–68. Michele Chiaruzzi explores Torquato Tasso’s Il Messaggiero (1582), and the potential conflicts between following a prince’s orders and the role of an ambassador as a peace maker. Michele Chiaruzzi, “Diplomatic Personae: Torquato Tasso on the Ambassador,” History of European Ideas 48, no. 5 (2022): 481–98.  ↩︎
17. Costas Constantinou’s essay that traces the humanist origins of diplomatic practice in the creation of knowledge to inform policymaking. Costas M. Constantinou, “Between Statecraft and Humanism: Diplomacy and Its Forms of Knowledge,” International Studies Review 15, no. 2 (2013): 141–62. Timothy Hampton’s Fictions of Embassy explores how early modern literature made use of diplomatic settings and ideas, including drawing on treatises. Chapter 6 is of particular interest as it examines Shakespeare’s Hamlet alongside theories of a diplomatic practice by Gentili. Timothy Hampton, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). ↩︎
18. Note that in the article Behrens refers to Ermolao Barbaro using his Latinized name Hermolaus Barbarus. ↩︎
19. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1-40; Betty Behrens, “Treatises on the Ambassador Written in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” The English Historical Review 51, no. 204 (1936): 617-618. ↩︎
20. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 34-36, 215, 231; Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 44-45. ↩︎
21. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 117. ↩︎
22. For example, Burnham (writing in 1943) juxtaposed Dante’s De Monarchia—a text with “formal, presumed goals, and the hidden real goals” requiring a careful interpretation and contextual analysis—with Machiavelli’s more direct “method of science applied to politics”, which is “primarily the study of the struggles for power among men.” To Burnham, Dante only wrote “nonsense” while Machiavelli offered actual political science and models for understanding elite behavior. James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (London: Lume Books, 2020), 27-44. ↩︎
23. Strauss (writing in 1963) was less enthusiastic but nevertheless viewed Machiavelli as a pivotal thinker. Strauss contended he broke with the millennia of political philosophy that preceded him, advancing “a politics guided exclusively by considerations of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends—its end being the aggrandizement of one’s country or fatherland—but also using the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one’s party.” Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 296-317. ↩︎
24. Berridge downplays Machiavelli’s contributions to “the art of diplomacy” and argues he never offered a systemic view of how sustained diplomatic relations among states in Europe could result in a “system of states.” See G. R. Berridge, Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte, Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 7-32. ↩︎
25. Machiavelli is still recognized for having originated foreign policy realism and the power politics of the present day. However, those are anachronistic concepts relative to the elite knowledge production of diplomatic handbooks, manuals, and treatises, and the lack of “Machiavellianism” in those texts should not give reason to overlook their historical importance. ↩︎
26. Methodologically, this essay follows Quentin Skinner’s approach to analyzing texts in intellectual history with the aim of avoiding the anachronism and presentism that contemporary scholars of diplomacy sometimes commit. Following Skinner, the historian should attempt to identify both the author’s intended meaning and the way that meaning was meant to be received by the text’s intended readers. A text is a deliberate act of communication, and the historian’s role is to identify potential meanings based on the text’s linguistic and cultural situation and then determine which of these meanings the author sought to convey. Context is essential, but it should only be used to explain possible intentions and not used to overdetermine an author’s “actual” meaning. Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 48-49. ↩︎
27. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 108-120, 211-222, 254; Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1-40. ↩︎
28. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 25; Berridge, Diplomatic Classics, 57, 75; Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 277. ↩︎
29. Étienne Dolet, “De Officio Legati (1541),” trans. James E. Dunlap, American Journal of International Law 27, no. 1 (1933), 84; Francis Thynne, The Application of Certain Histories Concerning Ambassadours and Their Functions (London, 1651), Early English Books Online, 14; Alberico Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres, 141. ↩︎
30. Hugo Grotius, On the Right of Legation, in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. G. R. Berridge (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 100-110. ↩︎
31. Berridge, Diplomatic Classics, 4-6; Behrens, “Treatises on the Ambassador,” 620-621. ↩︎
32. Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres, 145-146, 153-155, 156-157, 161, 198-201. ↩︎
33. Gareth Williams, introduction to On the Duty of the Ambassador, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024), 167-179. ↩︎
34. Barbaro, De Officio Legati, 185, 189, 191, 193. ↩︎
35. Geoff Berridge, introduction to François Hotman, The Ambassador, in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. Geoff Berridge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 75-76. ↩︎
36. Hotman, The Ambassador, “His Behauiour.” ↩︎
37. Thynne, The Application of Certain Histories Concerning Ambassadours and Their Functions, 14. ↩︎
38. De Vera, El Embajador, 92. ↩︎
39. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 20-23. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 241-251. ↩︎
40. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 241-242. ↩︎
41. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 20. ↩︎
42. Noteworthy works include David Scott Gehring’s edited volume of early modern English intelligence treatises that analyze the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark during the late Tudor and early Stuart periods. David Scott Gehring, Diplomatic Intelligence on the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark during the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI: Three Treatises (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2015). See also chapter 3 of Mark Netzloff’s book Agents Beyond the State, which juxtaposes three episodes of English diplomatic history to demonstrate how diplomatic practice “was forged through networks of friendship, mentorship, and sociability” around an ambassador. Mark Netzloff, Agents Beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 164-222. ↩︎
43. Niccolò Machiavelli, Advice to Raffaello Girolami, in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. Geoff Berridge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 42-43. ↩︎
44. Philippe de Commynes, The Memoirs, in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. Geoff Berridge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 34-35. While Commynes may sound illogical, note that game-theoretic modeling reinforces Commynes’s insight. Recognizing all princes operate under a condition of incomplete information, the equilibrium outcome is the reciprocal acceptance of ambassadors—even during war—because those information channels will decrease uncertainty and lower the risk of strategic miscalculation. ↩︎
45. Dolet, “De Officio Legati (1541),” 86. ↩︎
46. Barbaro, De Officio Legati, 193. ↩︎
47. Behrens, “Treatise on the Ambassador,” 626. ↩︎
48. Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres, 65, 169-170; Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 277. ↩︎
49. Berridge, Diplomatic Classics, 7-11; Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 66-67. ↩︎
50. Machiavelli makes a similar comment in his Advice to Raffaello Girolami: “This sincerity and this frankness are of great importance; for I know some men who, from being cunning and dissembling, have so entirely lost the confidence of the prince, that they have never more been able to negotiate with him.” This is self-defeating because when it was “necessary to conceal facts with words…it should be done in a manner that it shall not appear.” Machiavelli, Advice to Raffaello Girolami, 41. ↩︎
51. Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. Geoff Berridge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 51-54. ↩︎
52. De Vera, El Embajador, 92-96. ↩︎
53. G. R. Berridge, “Richelieu,” in Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger, ed. G. R. Berridge, Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 71–87; Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, “Political Testament,” in Diplomatic Classics: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel, ed. G. R. Berridge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 115–21. ↩︎