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DIPLOMACY

DIPLOMACY. Diplomacy in one form or another has had a long history, dating back to the beginning of political states. Since the nature, size, and composition of these states varied, so did the system of relations between them. Usually such relations were simple and personal, but in time they became more complex as the political entities became better organized and more tightly controlled.

THE ORIGIN AND TESTING OF EARLY MODERN DIPLOMACY

By the middle of the fifteenth century the principal city-states of Renaissance Italy had reached a tenuous balance of power and began establishing more permanent diplomatic relations with one another through the instrument of resident embassies. Resident ambassadors were accredited representatives of one government to another, assigned for an extended period of time for the purposes of negotiating, providing a constant source of important information to the home government, and safeguarding the honor and prestige of the ruler they represented. Primary negotiations of treaties and alliances, as well as other specific assignments, were still carried out by special envoys sent with plenipotentiary powers for that purpose, but the more permanent resident became an additional aid in this process.

The system in the early modern period was far less structured than it was later to become. In the first place, not everyone was convinced that it was the safest or wisest course to follow. Rulers, especially, were reluctant to have representatives of other states snooping around their capital, randomly inquiring about matters that they would just as soon the ambassadors not know. But that led to one of the key dictums of diplomacy, quid pro quo ('something for something'), interpreted to mean that the best way to get information is to give it. Diplomats needed to be well informed so they could exchange their own information for equally or more valuable information possessed by someone else. Even the shrewd Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) advised, "A great prince should sooner put in jeopardy both his own interests and even those of the state than break his word." This advice was not often followed, especially by Richelieu, and agents had to be constantly on the alert not to reveal more than they received. By the seventeenth century it was becoming evident that honesty was the best policy for diplomats because honesty inspired confidence and that, more than anything else, gave credibility to what an ambassador was trying to accomplish. The counsel of Charles Colbert, Marquis de Croissy (1625–1696), French secretary of state for foreign affairs, to his son who was leaving for an embassy to Portugal in 1684, "to gain the reputation as a perfectly honorable man, and deserve it," was good advice, even though it was not always followed.

The testing period came in the second half of the sixteenth century when Europe was split into hostile camps as a result of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion. "The religious wars," wrote Garrett Mattingly, the authority on early diplomatic history, "nearly wrecked the diplomatic institutions with which Europe had been trying to adjust its quarrels. . . . Successful diplomatic negotiations require that parties involved can at least imagine a mutually satisfactory settlement, . . . But the clash of ideological absolutes drives diplomacy from the field" (pp. 195–196). Nevertheless, diplomacy was not driven from the field. Compromises and adjustments continued to be made, and some states, especially France under the cautious Catherine de Médicis (1518–1589), found ways to balance ideology and necessity with theory and practice and to give early modern diplomacy a valuable new impulse.

EARLY MODERN DIPLOMATS AT WAR

By the seventeenth century the machinery of diplomatic relations had reached an impressive level of organization. This is not to say that it operated in a totally logical and systematic way, but many of the misgivings associated with its earlier years were being worked out as diplomacy was increasingly applied to European rulers' changing needs.

The selection of ambassadors was determined by several factors: birth, political and family connections, loyalty to the government, and the likelihood of acceptance by the government to which they were being sent. Depending on where he was going, an ambassador of noble rank was usually chosen; sometimes a man of the cloth was preferred, although this was less likely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than it had been in the sixteenth. A man's experience in negotiation and familiarity with the political affairs of the country to which he was being sent also made a difference. Language proficiency was another factor in such a selection. Several Italian dialects were used effectively during the Renaissance, but Latin was the most common language of diplomacy, especially for written correspondence and treaties. After the middle of the seventeenth century, when the court of Louis XIV (1638–1715) set the tone for European culture, French became more widely used, and in the next century it became the lingua franca of diplomatic discourse. What rulers wanted most in their ambassadors, however, was loyalty and dedication to the cause they represented.

Ambassadors were accompanied by—or they recruited after arrival at their assigned post—a number of lesser officials: secretaries, scribes, stewards, grooms, and assorted personnel. These were normally paid for by the ambassador himself, although by the eighteenth century, the principal embassy secretaries were being appointed and paid by their home governments.

Once a selection was made, there were several steps that had to be taken before the new ambassador embarked on his assignment: ambassadorial staff and other household affairs were arranged and approved, and sometimes negotiation over salary and expenses took time. If the new ambassador was not well acquainted with the court to which he was assigned, or was unfamiliar with the policies preferred by his home government, he had to take the time and effort to acquaint himself with them. He also needed to learn as much as he could about the people, policies, and preferences of his host government, as well as other sources of information he might be able to tap. Then, after receiving his letters of appointment, introduction, instructions, credentials, passport and safe-conduct, cipher keys, and any other documents or household goods, he was ready to depart.

The arrival of an ambassador at his new assignment was the occasion for elaborate ceremony and ritual, beginning with an impressive procession of troops, carriages, and musicians escorting the ambassador through the streets of the city to a reception spot where he would be received and welcomed by an official responsible for receiving ambassadors. Following a second procession to court, the ambassador presented his letters of credence and instruction to the sovereign and delivered his formal oration. The ceremonial entry was simplified in the eighteenth century, and the ambassador was sometimes received at court to present his credentials without prior processions. However, the entry ceremony continued to play a large role both for resident ambassadors and for special agents and ambassadors extraordinary.

Maintenance of ambassadors at foreign posts was traditionally the responsibility of the government to which they were assigned and depended upon the rank and importance of the envoy and the respect due his government. Because this added to the problem of precedence that plagued the ceremonial practices of diplomacy, it gradually became more common for the home government to provide for the maintenance of its embassies abroad. On the periphery of Europe, however, governments continued to provide maintenance allowances to foreign ambassadors and, of course, expected the same consideration for their own representatives abroad. The victory of the concept of extraterritoriality (meaning that the ambassador carried with him the laws of his own country) reduced the issue of maintenance by recognizing the prime responsibility of the home government for maintaining its diplomats.

Along with the principle of extraterritoriality came the comparable assumption of diplomatic immunity. Some degree of immunity had been claimed for embassy personnel since before the Renaissance, but its general approval was less broadly accepted. Through the next three centuries legal immunity of diplomats became more clearly defined and recognized. Consequently, problems and disputes over immunity declined as people came to agree that ambassadors and their staff were entitled to extensive immunity from both civil and criminal litigation and that they were specifically allowed to practice their own religion even though it clashed with that of their host. Sometimes diplomats abused this right of immunity, but by the end of the eighteenth century it was an accepted principle.

Salaries and other payments to ambassadors by the home government varied a great deal during the early modern period. In most cases an agreement was reached before embarking on the mission as to the amount and kind of compensation to be received. But this was sometimes vague and almost never followed completely. Papal nuncios were among the first to receive a monthly allowance, but it was usually insufficient, and the nuncio was expected to supplement this allowance with money from benefices he held. Likewise, secular agents, with or without specific salaries, were expected to get by partly on their own initiative and the promises of future compensation, usually in the form of titles, land, or other symbols of value.

But these did not pay for current needs. Ambassadors' letters to their home governments related sorrowful stories of their financial problems and pleas for assistance. François de Noailles, for example, wrote to the French king in November 1562: "I humbly beseech Your Majesty to please remember that for nine or ten years I have been almost constantly in your service, during which time I have never shrunk from giving freely of my money, labor, or industry, nor of the resources of my friends and parents, or employing all my means of credit for Your Majesty's service. . . . But my present need is such that serious damage could be done to both my desire and my duty." There follows a marginal note about his creditors closing in on him, and then a concluding plea: "Which moves me to beseech Your Majesty . . . to assist me in whatever way you can . . . before my true poverty is discovered here in Italy and the dignity and grandeur and honor of Your Majesty's name suffers incalculable damage." ("Lettres inédites de François de Noailles, évêque de Dax," Revue de Gascogne, VI (1865): 87–88).

Had it not been for the custom of giving a departing gift to ambassadors when they completed their missions, their plight would have been greater. The amount or value of such donations depended on so many variables—the rank of the recipient ambassador, the length of his service, the evaluation of his accomplishments—it is unlikely that all parties to the transaction were equally satisfied. The most common gifts were gilt plate, gold chains, jewelry, or any item of recognized worth. As the office of ambassador became more professional, the number of such presents declined although there were many other occasions when gratuities were still granted.

AMBASSADORIAL DUTIES

The primary duty of resident ambassadors was to obtain and transmit information. This was done in many ways and varied greatly in extent, reliability, and difficulty. The most open method, which had many drawbacks as far as reliability is concerned, was direct interviews with the sovereign or with leading ministers. When at court, the ambassador could pick up information from other agents, but this too might be laced with misinformation and lies; tapping many such sources increased the chances of getting good intelligence. As printed newsletters and newspapers began to appear in the eighteenth century, it became easier to acquire overt information. For more vital and furtive intelligence, ambassadors still relied on paid informants and spies, although the complex implementation of international espionage was increasingly conducted through contacts outside the official diplomatic system.

To communicate this variously gathered intelligence to his home government, the early modern diplomat used the methods available to him: national post, paid couriers, commercial caravans, and private messengers. More confidential communications were put into increasingly complex ciphers. Duplicates and triplicates of important messages were often sent by different routes to insure the delivery of at least one. On occasions demanding extreme secrecy, messages, or parts of them, were given verbally to a courier or other confidant who then delivered the message orally to the proper authority. Such precautions were felt to be necessary because, with increasing frequency, written communications were intercepted and ciphers broken.

By the mid-seventeenth century, London postal officials were routinely opening and copying many of the dispatches intended for foreign diplomats. A secret office was established in 1653 for such activities and by the end of the eighteenth century, it maintained an active staff of semi-undercover employees who deciphered and read foreign correspondence. The same thing was happening in France, where the cabinet noir (black chamber) conducted a similar type of surveillance during the ancien régime. Other countries had their appropriate procedures.

NEGOTIATION

Early modern diplomats were involved in many functions other than information gathering. They might be assigned to important negotiations, according to the powers and instructions given by their home government. Normally, negotiation was the primary duty of special representatives with precise powers for that purpose, but resident diplomats were also involved in a variety of negotiations, especially at major diplomatic conferences and congresses. After four tortuous years of negotiation, the major settlement ending the Thirty Years' War took place in 1648 at two locations in Westphalia: at Münster, where ambassadors and other representatives of the Holy Roman emperor, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and delegates of the German Electoral College met; and at Osnabrück, where other emissaries of Sweden, the emperor, France, several German principalities, and others also convened. The total number of delegates at these two locations reached one hundred thirty-five, the largest assemblage of diplomats ever seen by that time.

The resulting Treaty of Westphalia marked a new direction in the political composition of Europe toward secularly oriented, sovereign, almost absolute states. The various states of the empire were given territorial sovereignty under the nominal authority of the emperor. Calvinism was officially recognized along with Lutheranism. Sweden was given a voice in the imperial councils and a vote in the Diet. France emerged as the leading power in Europe as imperial unity disintegrated and Habsburg Spain declined. Switzerland and the Dutch Netherlands were both declared free and sovereign. Similar congresses met at Nijmegen in 1676–1679 following the Dutch Wars, at Ryswick in 1696–1697 at the conclusion of the War of the League of Augsburg, and at Utrecht in 1712–1713 after the War of the Spanish Succession. The Treaty of Utrecht, especially, created a new order in Europe based on an "equilibrium of power" among the leading states. Belief in this balance of power became a recurring feature of eighteenth-century diplomacy.

Negotiation included far more than treaty arrangements. It also comprised a large range of topics and goals set out by the home government, including interpretation of the rules of trade, persuading a sovereign to follow agreements previously made, convincing the sovereign to pursue policies favorable to the ambassador's master, and in general trying to maintain good relations between the two governments. A good diplomat might be involved in negotiations over many issues, from alliances, boundary disputes, and commercial regulation, to territorial treaties and usurped property.

CEREMONIAL

Another duty of early modern diplomats was to represent their ruler as if he were present. The ambassador stood in the place of his master and therefore represented both his person and prestige. If an ambassador failed to receive, or assert, the proper respect for his ruler, he was held accountable. But not everyone recognized the same hierarchy of station, and therefore ambassadors were locked in a rivalry of rank at public functions, especially those offering high visibility, such as official state gatherings and processions. Public entries of new ambassadors still served to reflect the power and importance of the states they represented, and no expense was spared to make the carriages and horses magnificent and the dress of the ambassador brilliant. Assertions of precedence at such occasions frequently led to awkward dilemmas or even open conflict. In London in October 1661, for example, the Spanish ambassador, thinking he merited a more honored position than the French ambassador, tried to overtake and pass the French coach in a state procession through London. In the ensuing fray several people were killed.

Following the elaborate first audience, proper etiquette still had to be maintained at subsequent official visits of the ambassador to the head of state and to the diplomats of other nations, being especially careful to visit those of highest rank first. Throughout his tour of duty the ambassador was expected to participate in many public functions, from state banquets and weddings to frequent funerals of prestigious persons. Even at these gatherings the issue of precedence continued to arise and sometimes awakened strong feelings and even disputes among diplomats. "Points of honour, rank, and precedence are the most delicate articles of political faith," wrote Rousset de Missy in 1746. How could it be otherwise in an age when hereditary differences in the social orders were universally justified and even considered essential to the survival of any state? The maintenance of that same social stability on the international level was thought to be just as fundamental to the existence of international sociality.

THE THEORY OF EARLY MODERN DIPLOMACY

The theory and practice of diplomacy did not always correspond in real life. Diplomatic practice continued along lines determined primarily by precedent and practicality rather than by the suppositions of political theorists. Still, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their correspondence was closer than it had ever been, due in part to the fact that it was practical diplomats themselves who wrote most insightfully about diplomatic theory.

The first of these practitioner/theorists was Juan Antonio de Vera, a distinguished Spanish nobleman and diplomat who published his El embajador (The ambassador) at Seville in 1620, better known in its French version of 1642 as Le parfait ambassadeur (The perfect ambassador). In this dialogue de Vera talks about the conduct of embassies, privileges of ambassadors, diplomatic procedures, and the qualities needed for success. The leading prerequisite, he insisted, was moral virtue, which meant not only obeying the letter and objectives of his master, but also being true and honest in his dealings with the ruler to whom he was assigned. The illustrious Dutch lawyer and diplomat Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) provided a reasoned repertory of maxims in his 1625 De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the law of war and peace), allowing for the compatibility of a world of sovereign states committed to their own self-interest and yet consistent with the notion of peace and justice. He also argued convincingly for the extraterritoriality and diplomatic immunity of accredited ambassadors. Another Dutch writer, Abraham de Wicquefort, published his widely popular book on practical diplomacy, called L'ambassadeur et ses fonctions (The ambassador and his functions), in 1681. In this diplomatic manual Wicquefort abandoned the myth of a "perfect ambassador" and supplied diplomatic examples, especially contemporary, of how diplomacy operated in the late seventeenth century. In 1716 an important treatise appeared in Paris, written by a man who had spent his life in the service of Louis XIV's diplomatic business. De la manière de négocier avec les soverains (On the manner of negotiating with princes), by François de Callières, was another book of reflections on the principles and conditions of successful diplomacy, arguing in favor of the careful selection and specialized training of career diplomats rather than relying on the erratic behavior of capricious nobles.

EXPANSION AND SPECIALIZATION OF DIPLOMACY

Although much in the operation of eighteenth-century diplomacy was still reminiscent of the procedures and attitudes of earlier times, many changes had taken place and gradual modification continued. Notable among these was the expansion of diplomatic activity. In the time of Louis XIV, European diplomatic relations were still concentrated in western Europe, with fewer continuous contacts with the Ottoman Empire, Poland and eastern Europe, and tsarist Russia. The eighteenth century saw notable expansion of these contacts. Relations between Moscow and the West increased dramatically during the reign of Tsar Peter I (1684–1725) as reciprocal diplomatic representation was established with western states from Vienna to London. Similarly, connections were expanded between Europe and the Turkish Empire, and even China, although not as fast nor as completely as with Russia. More permanent relations were also established with Scandinavia and with eastern Europe.

In the eighteenth century budding foreign offices also began to appear as the need for greater continuity and order required more specialized effort. Developing out of the earlier royal chanceries, the foreign office became the principal department for handling relations with other states and for dispatching ambassadors to them. Such offices were still small and rudimentary but indicated the direction of later growth. In France the secretary of state for foreign affairs became one of the chief ministers of the government. England and other states also developed more effective machinery for the conduct of foreign affairs. To operate this new diplomatic machinery, a more professional bureaucracy slowly emerged. This gradual growth of professionalism in the management of foreign affairs was one of the marks of more modern times.

See also Grotius, Hugo; Law: International; Louis XIV (France); Military; Richelieu, Armand-Jean Du Plessis, cardinal; Wars of Religion, French; Westphalia, Peace of (1648).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adair, E. R. The Exterritoriality of Ambassadors in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London and New York, 1929. An old but very valuable book.

Anderson, M. S. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919. London and New York, 1993. A useful survey yet frustratingly disjointed.

Barber, Peter. Diplomacy: The World of the Honest Spy. London, 1979. Examination of early modern diplomacy and catalog of the British Library exhibition.

Carter, Charles H. The Secret Diplomacy of the Habsburgs: 1598–1625. New York, 1964. Well-crafted study of Spanish diplomacy and espionage at the court of James I.

——. The Western European Powers, 1500–1700. Ithaca, N.Y., 1971. Emphasizes the use of diplomatic sources.

Chaytor, H. J., trans. and ed. Embajada española [Spanish Embassy]. Camden Miscellany, vol. 14. London, 1926. Anonymous contemporary guide to diplomatic procedure at the end of the seventeenth century. Spanish and English texts.

Hatton, Ragnhild, and M. S. Anderson, eds. Studies in Diplomatic History: Essays in Memory of David Bayne Horn. London, 1970. Valuable collection of articles primarily on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diplomatic affairs.

Horn, David Bayne. The British Diplomatic Service, 1689–1789. Oxford, 1961. Comprehensive yet detailed study of a century of British diplomacy.

Jones, Dorothy V. Splendid Encounters: The Thought and Conduct of Diplomacy. Chicago, 1984. In conjunction with the 1984 University of Chicago exhibition.

Lachs, Phyllis S. The Diplomatic Corps under Charles II and James II. New Brunswick, N.J., 1965. A thoughtful analysis of a segment of English diplomacy.

Lossky, Andrew, "International Relations in Europe," The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 6, pp. 154–192. Cambridge, U.K., 1970. Excellent summary of diplomatic relations in the late-seventeenth century.

Mattingly, Garrett. Renaissance Diplomacy. Boston and London, 1955. The best study to date of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century diplomacy.

Roosen, William J. The Age of Louis XIV: The Rise of Modern Diplomacy. Cambridge, Mass., 1976. Many insights and extensive research, but too many printing errors, and no index.

Thompson, J. W., and S. K. Padover. Secret Diplomacy: Espionage and Cryptography, 1500–1815. New York, 1963. Simplistic but very interesting.

DE LAMAR JENSEN