In her book A Translucent Mirror, Pamela Crossley wrote that “The Ming empire (1368–1644) was perpetually engaged in a struggle against various peoples along its northern borders.” This bald statement contradicts conventional wisdom that the Ming dynasty, having endured Mongol rule for about a century, attempted to limit relations with foreign lands and developed a policy of isolation. In fact, the Ming empire became embroiled in numerous conflicts along its frontiers. Some of these clashes were defensive, but others were attempts to annex additional territory. The court resolved a few of these conflicts through diplomacy or withdrawal from alien lands, yet others festered throughout the dynasty. It scarcely enjoyed clear-cut victories. Nonetheless, such repeated battles necessitated improvements in military strategy and technology, and it is no accident that a spate of texts on the military appeared during this time. The first Ming emperor himself had to master principles of land and naval warfare in the course of defeating other rebel groups and in seeking to gain the throne.

Russia emerged as a European power in the early eighteenth century with a suddenness that alarmed its neighbors – and indeed some of its more distant potential supporters. Russia’s newfound prominence was in large part the outcome of a series of international conflicts often referred to as “the Northern Wars.” Conflict over the fate of the eastern Baltic littoral had entered a new phase near the middle of the sixteenth century with the decline of the Livonian Order and the growing territorial ambitions of nearby states. Aside from the crusading Order itself, which had formally disbanded by 1561, the nearby states of Denmark, Sweden, Muscovy, Poland-Lithuania, and Brandenburg persistently battled one another over the fate of the littoral, in varying configurations but with surprisingly few intermissions until 1721. The more important of these multilateral conflicts are conventionally identified as the Livonian War (1558–83), the mid-seventeenth-century conflicts among Sweden, the Commonwealth, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and Denmark that included the Thirteen-Years’ War (1654–67), and finally the “Great Northern War” (1720–21) which ended in Russian victory. While the earlier conflicts remained relatively confined, in diplomatic and military terms, to Northern and Eastern Europe, the outcome of the last Northern War not only established the Russian Empire as the dominant Baltic state; it also led to Russia’s broader recognition as a major force in the broader European diplomatic world.

On their first arrival in North America, Europeans entered a strange land but, most of all, an unfamiliar Indigenous economy. While capitalism functioned on a disembodied trade of goods or an abstract exchange of currency, Native societies honored the idea of the gift. On this belief in a gift economy, Indigenous people nurtured trade relations, but also diplomacy, war alliances, marriage, friendship, and peoplehood and ecology themselves. This chapter elucidates the idea and operation of an Indigenous gift economy, as it served and serves Native nations, and explores the gift’s impact on and disruption of European and American capitalist market economies. From this alternative Indigenous economic approach, as presented in anthropology as well as in traditional Indigenous thought, we turn to several representative works in American literature, from ancient myth and early testimony to autobiography, novel, and poetry, to illustrate the place of Indigenous ceremony, such as the giveaway and the potlatch, in its resistance to destructive colonial policy such as removal and allotment. Ultimately, Indigenous gift exchange economies give voice to America’s haunted money, from wampum to bucks, in which Native land was never “the gift outright.”

After the Hannibalic war, the leading military role of consulars diminished, though it did not disappear. A significant number of consuls kept their imperium as proconsuls, but only a very small minority held the consulship again. A number of them held intermediate positions as military tribunes or military legates under the command of magistrates with imperium. Consulars played a leading role in international diplomacy and the organisation of newly conquered territories as members of senatorial embassies, especially in the Greek world. Ex-consuls were also common as heads of commissions in charge of implementing the agrarian policy promoted by the Senate during the second century BCE, both for the foundation of Roman and Latin colonies and for the individual distribution of land. The censorship became the coveted culmination of a political career for many consulars. The Senate was the arena in which consulars assumed a leading role in political debate. In contrast, their intervention in popular assemblies was rare. As in previous periods, many consulars were members of priestly colleges. While most of them entered the colleges (long) before they became consuls, others did so at an advanced age after their consulship.

The Old Regime period in which war proved the norm and peace the exception witnessed the development of the modern law of nations. Questions of international law assumed a new urgency as did the status of diplomatic agents. By this time the existence of permanent embassies could still be deplored but no longer questioned, and diplomatic immunity could not be disputed, reinforced as it was by a body of precedent and tradition. This period witnessed first the expansion and later the contraction of diplomatic privilege. European aristocratic society reinforced diplomatic privilege, for the status of the ambassador was inextricably intertwined with that of the ruler. The explosive expansion of diplomats and their staff led many theorists, such as Grotius and Vattel, to analyse the evolving conventions, such as the importance of the civil immunity of the ambassador and the liability of the embassy staff. Practice tended to reinforce privileges identified as personal, that is, attached to the ambassador himself. Of these the exemption from criminal liability was perhaps the most important. Among territorially defined privileges, the right of asylum and the notorious right of quarter were first expanded and later either limited or eliminated.

The chapter gives an overview of dispute settlement during the Old Regime. Contrary to older assessments of the historiography, dispute settlement retained its importance in this era, both in qualitative and in quantitative terms. This was true for the field of theoretical literatures, which, from the last decades of the seventeenth century, dealt intensively with the subject. Normally, a clear distinction was made between an elected arbiter, who definitively decided a dispute, and a mediator, who only made peace proposals. Diplomatic practice, which made intensive use of the instruments of dispute settlement until the last decades of the eighteenth century, was much more flexible. The transitions between arbitration and mediation were fluid; the boundaries of confession and rank were also frequently crossed. In Old Regime Europe, mediation was also used for the first time in peace negotiations between Christian and Islamic powers. New forms of mediation emerged as well. One was the armed mediation, in which a power intervened in a conflict uninvited and set a peace ultimatum; this could easily lead to war. This indicates that dispute settlement did not automatically contribute to an increase in peace; the relationship of dispute settlement to war and peace remained rather ambivalent in Old Regime Europe.

This chapter charts the profound transformations undergone by diplomacy, both secular and papal, in an age of dramatic intellectual, political and military upheaval. Considering both scholarship and practice, the chapter assesses the rise of ‘resident diplomacy’ and highlights the new structures that were put in place in order to manage longer missions. The investigation of the right to send ambassadors reveals persistent traits of pluralism in early modern Europe, while the plurality of diplomatic envoys and roles is taken into account to make the complexity of the notion of diplomatic status more apparent: this status, in fact, cannot be reduced to that of a fully fledged ambassador exclusively committed to the object of their official mission. Information-gathering, negotiation and mediation are singled out as the most significant diplomatic functions. Changes in the conception of diplomatic inviolability and immunity are also considered, and include the emergence of the idea of extraterritoriality concerning both the person of the ambassador and diplomatic premises.

Between 1660 and 1775 the number of European countries with diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire that obtained ahdames of their own grew rapidly, but many of these newcomers did not establish networks of consulates and vice-consulates in the eastern Mediterranean. Instead, they appointed the consuls of other European nations as their vice-consuls. This did not hurt the legal privileges of the merchants from these countries. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some nations asked the Ottoman government to renew their capitulations several times with the single aim of obtaining more privileges. This development culminated in the French capitulations of 1740, which incorporated the clauses of virtually all earlier ahdnames. In the eyes of many Ottomans, the capitulations of 1740 came to symbolise the Europeans’ ceaseless attempts to obtain more and more privileges from the Turks. But the French renewal of their capitulations in 1673 already laid the foundations for the rise of imperialism. It was then that the Ottoman authorities granted Ottoman subjects working for foreigners as interpreters or as warehousemen the same fiscal and legal status as the Westerners. It was also in 1673 that the French had their role as protectors of the Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem, as well as of all Catholic clergymen – not just Western missionaries, but all Catholic clerics – in the Levant codified in their capitulations. It was this French model that the Russians used in 1774 to claim their own protectorate over all Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman realm.

In the early modern age, the settlement of disputes between the actors of ‘international’ relations hinged on communication channels and negotiation networks that were meant to limit the recourse to violence. Multireligious Renaissance Europe saw the emergence of the jus gentium – as a distinct, gestating branch of law – and modern diplomacy, perceived as a social and cultural practice used not only by sovereigns, but also by non-sovereign actors – a practice allowing both Europeans and non-Europeans to engage in formal and informal interactions, in state and non-state settings, through the elaboration of common languages, of (verbal and symbolic) communication practices and of shared political and legal cultures. In a belligerent era, which spawned many wars, European diplomacy developed new forms of negotiation that attest to an elaborate ‘art of peace’. By the end of the period, the Thirty Years War ended with the first experience of dispute settlement through multilateral talks involving nearly all European powers in Westphalia (1643-9) and reflecting conflicts that attest to the successive integration of non-European territories in ongoing European dispute. The congress demonstrated both the effectiveness and the limitations of this innovative negotiation model.

This chapter is a study of India’s involvement in the Korean War, particularly in the later stages of that war and in bringing it to a close through the successful negotiation of an armistice agreement. The period under review is 1950–1953. The Korean War is an insightful case study because it combines a study of the beginnings of Indian diplomacy at the UN with Nehru’s idea of Asia.

Chapter 5 discusses the Congo Crisis, one where India was involved between 1960 and 1963. The contention in this chapter is that India’s involvement in the crisis, particularly in the form of heavy military support to the UN, was rooted in Nehru’s idea of Africa. The advent of peacekeeping and the UN’s reliance on India’s troop contribution for its continued survival and success in the Congo exposed India to rapid alienation from African member-states and cost Indian lives on the ground. In turn, this exposed Nehru’s administration and foreign policy to criticism from within the domestic realm in India. The crisis was soon overshadowed by border problems with the Chinese and the eventual Sino-Indian War of 1962, but the Congo Crisis shows how India chose to strengthen the UN by military means, in complete contradiction of its stated position a decade earlier.

Chapter 4 discusses the year 1956 as bringing together two crises that coincided in time almost to the hour but were starkly different in their causes and consequences. These are the Suez Canal Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. India was intimately involved with both in very different ways. On the one hand, in the Suez Canal Crisis, India assumed again the mediatory role so well constructed during the Korean War. The anti-colonial fervour of the crisis and India’s support of the Egyptian cause did not impede India from mediating with both sides and contributing substantially to the closing of the crisis. On the other hand, in the case of Hungary, Nehru exposed himself to severe criticism, both international and domestic, for his delayed and ambiguous response to Soviet actions in suppressing the revolution. Both these events are discussed in conjunction as an attempt to read them as a discursive moment in which non-alignment as an approach to world politics encountered its first challenge and Nehru responded through an ambiguously constructed idea of Europe.

The Secretariat of State is a body of the Roman Curia that is closely linked to the heart of the papacy, insofar as it operates in direct union with the pope and makes his wishes a reality. Studying its development is helpful for identifying the evolution of the policies of the popes and, above all, the evolution of the institution of the papacy. The more the papacy assumes a central role in Catholicism, the more it requires effective political offices. Thus, the Secretariat of State constitutes that key uniting feature between the will of the pope and the structure of the Roman government, local churches, and national governments. The history of the Secretariat of State is an institutional history and a history of its members; it is a history that can be properly understood from the perspective of religious history; it is a history of the ideas and power within the Church.

This chapter examines papal–imperial relations during the thirteenth century. It focuses on series of oaths sworn by prospective emperors to popes from Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) to Nicholas IV (r. 1288–92), part of broader negotiations over imperial rights on the Italian peninsula and obligations toward the Papal States. Historians often associate this era with the apex and subsequent decline of the so-called medieval “papal monarchy,” as characterized above all by its dramatic conflicts with the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. The history of those solemn pledges allows us instead to discern a remarkable continuity in papal attitudes toward imperial monarchs, envisioned as partners in the reform of the Church, the defense of the faith, the eradication of heresy, and crusades to recover the Holy Land. By the late thirteenth century, however, for reasons endogenous to their respective spheres of influence, both parties began to lose interest in the realization of those increasingly anachronistic oaths.

The Ottoman Empire’s territorial and maritime reach throughout its nearly 600-year existence led to a plethora of adversaries at whose expense the empire continued to expand. The resulting boundaries that constantly shifted over time prove to be sites of cultural, socioeconomic, as well as political history. Ottoman borders are critical windows into the dynamics shaping the larger empire, including the great urban centers often located far from these frontiers. The territorial limits (or beginnings) of this multiethnic empire, extending from South Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and Libya, to the Danube and the Caucasus, are crucial tools to gain insights into the complexities that constitute the processes by which the Ottomans administered as much as lived in these regions. Be they witness to the stability that accompanied peace between neighboring states or the frequent volatility caused by war, the empire’s edges served as theaters for intraimperial development that shaped subject and state alike.

European diplomacy changed significantly during the Ancien Régime. Sovereign powers made increasing use of different categories of ambassadors while grappling with religious division, international conflict, and emerging globalization. Papal diplomacy was itself hardly new, although it too evolved in these challenging circumstances. In various respects, the structures of papal diplomacy mirrored those of Europe’s dynastic states. Popes were nevertheless supposed to abide by certain ideological values as paternal figureheads, maintaining peace amongst warring Catholic powers while extending authority beyond Europe. This was problematic, as the papacy sought to square its own political interests with its moral duties. Given early modern Europe’s changing political landscape it is also unsurprising that the papacy’s supranational power was under increasing pressure. That was evident by the mid-eighteenth century, and the upheavals of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, although today it retains its traditional identity as a neutral diplomatic actor.

This chapter examines the brief but formative pontificate of Benedict XV, the most important in the early twentieth-century history of the papacy: Benedict’s return to the policies of Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903) and, above all, his responses to the challenges of the First World War and its aftermath, transformed the scope and impact of Vatican diplomacy, restoring its prestige and influence on the international stage. More broadly speaking, Benedict set the agenda of the next two pontificates, those of his successor Pius XI (r. 1922–39) and Pius XII (r. 1939–58). They continued the policy of seeking to implement the new Code of Canon Law, and where possible by concordats with states, they would continue to seek reunion with the Orthodox Churches and Benedict’s postcolonial vision for the missionary outreach of the Church. They would also continue to follow the broad outlines of his initiatives in Vatican diplomacy through his commitment to seeking to play a role in international peace and security. Benedict’s policy of impartiality in war was not a passive one, but active and constructive, aimed both at providing humanitarian relief to victims and encouraging peace negotiations between the belligerents. His peace-making and humanitarian efforts reflected new forms of papal humanitarian diplomacy and have become a permanent feature of the papacy’s role in promoting international peace and security.