Italian Renaissance Diplomacy
A Sourcebook
Description:... "Diplomacy has never been a politically neutral research field. The most recent research is moving away from diplomacy as an institutional tool and is increasingly viewing it as a social and cultural practice that enabled Europeans and non-Europeans alike to engage with each other in formal and informal, state and non-state contexts, through the elaboration of common languages, shared practices of communication, and political cultures. Since the nineteenth century, Renaissance Italy has been on the front line of diplomatic research. Italian polities have provided excellent case studies for the theory associating the beginnings of permanent diplomacy and the emergence of resident ambassadors with the process of state-building. Diplomacy during the period from about 1350 to about 1520 increasingly experimented with new ways of answering urgent political needs--to represent, negotiate, participate, and keep informed--by developing a broad range of innovative solutions that had to be integrated and absorbed within the traditional jurisdictional framework of medieval diplomacy. During the fifteenth century, diplomatic sources multiplied at an unprecedented rate, mostly due to the remarkable volume of dispatches exchanged between governments and envoys sent abroad for increasingly prolonged missions. The present book draws on these rich diplomatic sources, which are mostly unavailable to English readers. Most of the chapters present a selection of dispatches, either in their final version or in draft form; occasionally, instructions, letters of appointment, and final reports are added. The published and unpublished sources presented in English translation by the contributors to this volume cover a broad chronological and geographic arc. The aim is to illustrate the richness of diplomatic documents both for the study of diplomacy itself as well as for other less obvious areas such as gender and sexuality, crime and justice, art and leisure, and medicine. The potential for further study is practically infinite. The modest aim of this volume is to enrich classroom discussion and to bring diplomatic documents into focus for scholars and students interested in the Italian Renaissance more generally"--Provided by publisher.
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