G.R. BERRIDGE is Professor of International Politics at the University of Leicester. He is General Editor of the Macmillan/St Martin's Press Studies in Diplomacy series and Associate Editor of OUP's New Dictionary of National Biography. His most recent books include International Politics: States, Power and Conflict since 1945 (3rd edition 1997), Talking to the Enemy: How States without 'Diplomatic Relations' Communicate (1994), Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (2nd edition 1999), and together with Alan James, a Dictionary of Diplomacy.


MAURICE KEENS-SOPER, a freelance writer, was formerly a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Leicester from 1964 until the end of the 1980s. In 1995 he was appointed a University Fellow in the University of Leicester and in 1997 won first prize in the Philip Morris Institute Europe Essay Competition. He is co-editor of Guide to the Political Classics and his most recent work is Europe and the World.

T.G. OTTE is Lecturer in International History at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is the co-editor of Military Intervention: From Gunboat Diplomacy to Humanitarian Intervention (1995) and Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History (1997), and the editor of The Makers of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt to Thatcher.

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Machiavelli; G.R.Berridge Guicciardini; G.R.Berridge Grotius; G.R.Berridge Richelieu; G.R.Berridge Wicquefort; M.Keens-Soper Callières; M.Keens-Soper Satow; T.G.Otte Nicolson; T.G.Otte Kissinger; T.G.Otte Index

This book offers an introductory guide for students to four centuries of diplomatic thought. Since diplomacy as we know it was created during the Renaissance in Italy, a number of major figures have reflected on the place of diplomacy in foreign affairs and the problems associated with its pursuit. These include statesmen, international lawyers and historians, most of whom had experience as diplomats of the first or second rank. This book examines the thought of some of the most important of them, from Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century to Henry Kissinger in the late twentieth century.