Maybe peninsulas made it easier for small kingdoms to hold out against potential conquerors.2 Europe might have had an advantage in this era of climate, topography, resources, culture, politics or religion. Or perhaps it was simply down to short-term accident and chance.3
The Chinese had invented the first newspaper in 748. But German inventor Johannes Gutenberg’s creation of the movable-type printing press in the 1440s allowed humans to capture more accurately and share more widely the most important lessons of their ancestors. We no longer relied on oral histories alone. This created an extraordinary platform for innovation, and more time to explore and create. Gutenberg was the Tim Berners-Lee of his age, generating unprecedented access to knowledge.
Within two generations, Columbus and others were leading the Age of Discovery. When Columbus returned from the Bahamas, eleven print editions of his journey spread around Europe. Within twenty-five years, sailors had circumnavigated the globe, and the Reformation was under way, on the back of the production and distribution of millions of Martin Luther’s pamphlets. Merchants and farmers alike began to question the absolute rule of monarchs, and the political fundamentals of society. There was a new thirst for knowledge, stimulating the Enlightenment, the American Revolution and free-market capitalism. This print revolution contributed to the formation of modern nation states, and therefore the diplomats to represent them. The spread of information in shared languages stimulated the emergence of common and competing national identities. These new European nations – Germany, France, Austria, Russia – needed people to understand their differences, and to mediate between them.
As the Europeans closed the gap on their global competitors, they sought new ways to protect and project their advantage. One manifestation of power was the man on the spot. The first more permanent embassies, expressions of ambition and influence, were started by the states of northern Italy during the Renaissance, with Milan the trailblazer. Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) became the first semi-permanent ambassador of the city in 1450. Backed by enormous personal wealth, he helped to create a balance of power between his native Florence and the leading Italian city states. He even took his own bank with him, a luxury sadly but sensibly denied by modern treasuries to their diplomats.
Wars are of course another powerful tool for domination, and the Renaissance had plenty of them. But they are also disruptive and costly for leaders. Increasingly, princes wanted people who could build their influence in other ways. They needed local intelligence, and eyes and ears on the ground. Milan sent the first ambassador to the French court, in 1455, and Spain despatched the first permanent representative, to London in 1487. These tended to be noblemen, able to finance the lavish lifestyle meant to come with the territory. An embassy came to mean a physical presence rather than a formal visit.
Advisers such as Machiavelli began to build a theory of power around this work. These early envoy roles were sought-after positions held by the talented innovators and explorers of the age. Men such as Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio were among the first envoys of Florence. This is like making Damien Hirst, Sebastian Faulks and Ian McEwan Britain’s ambassadors today. For these early envoys, diplomacy was not a career but a pursuit, one that reinforced their social position and cultural instincts. Early forms of the word ‘ambassador’ – ambaxade, ambasciatore, ambaxada – seem to have derived from ambactia, meaning charge or office. Or perhaps ambactus, servant. Even at its well-heeled origins, I like to think that there was a sense of public service to the description.
Inevitably, an informal network of travellers and messengers became more structured. Leaders needed to know that the man in front of them – and of course in this era it always was a man – was really representing his prince. So the tradition of presenting credentials on arrival, which continues to this day, began.
Many diplomats are still communicating with their host government and their own capital using these gloriously archaic instruments. On arrival in a country, the ambassador is not meant to meet anyone officially until he has presented his credentials to the head of state, a process that can often undermine his impact during the most important period. While the private sector focuses on the first ninety days of a CEO’s tenure, the ambassador often spends their first weeks marooned in their house, unpacking and waiting for permission to hand over a piece of paper. When it comes, the ceremony can be moving and memorable – the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I listened to the British national anthem at the president’s summer palace high in the Shouf mountains of Lebanon in August 2011. But the protocol gets in the way of real diplomacy.
Much of the language remains more Renaissance than Digital Age. Here is an extract from my credentials, which perhaps shows that modern diplomats have not travelled as far from our lace-cuffed predecessors as the smartphones in our pockets suggest:
To All and Singular to whom these Presents shall come, Greeting!
Whereas it appears to Us expedient to nominate some Person of approved Wisdom, Loyalty, Diligence and Circumspection to represent Us in the character of Our Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Beirut; Now Know Ye that We, reposing especial trust and confidence in the discretion and faithfulness of Our Trusty and Well-beloved Thomas Fletcher, Companion of our Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, have nominated, constituted and appointed as we do by these Presents nominate, constitute and appoint the said Thomas Fletcher to be Our Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Beirut as foresaid.
Giving and granting him in that character all Power and Authority to do and perform all proper acts, matters and things which may be desirable or necessary for the promotion of relations of friendship, good understanding and harmonious intercourse between Our Realm and the Republic of Lebanon and for the protection and furtherance of the interests confided to his care; by the diligent and discreet accomplishment of which acts, matters and things aforementioned he shall gain Our approval and show himself worthy of Our high confidence.
Terrific stuff, but hard to tweet.
The letter of credence was established to show that an envoy was genuinely representing his state, when there were not other ways to check thoroughly. That’s now easier to establish. Credentials can be replaced by a Google search.
Not every historical leader appreciated the new customs either. When Anthony Jenkinson, a sixteenth-century trader, traveller and envoy of Elizabeth I, tried to present credentials to the cosmopolitan Persian emperor Shah Tahmasp, he failed to wear the slippers offered to cover his infidel feet, was thrown out of Isfahan and his footprints back to the port covered in sand. He was Photoshopped out of Persian history.
As the number of diplomats attached to royal courts grew, they inevitably began to compete for attention and influence. With their masters jostling for power and prestige, diplomats in European capitals were ranked on the basis of the power of their monarchs, a fiendishly complex and contested process. This rivalry consumed much of their energies, and would strike terror in the heart of the modern diplomat less used to having to compete so overtly for attention and influence.
According to Samuel Pepys, the Spanish and French embassies in London frequently came to blows in the 1660s over breaches of such protocol and ranking. Asked where he would like to sit at a dinner with the English king, Charles II, the French ambassador answered: ‘Discover where the Spaniard desires to sit, then toss him out and put me in his place.’ I admit that I have attended many diplomatic dinners where such dark thoughts have crossed my mind. But fortunately for less adversarial modern diplomats, ranking is now based on your date of arrival in post.
Another account describes how, during the 1661 arrival of a new Swedish ambassador to London, the French coach (with 150 men, forty of them armed) clashed with that of the Spanish ambassador, similarly tooled up. The Spaniards killed a Frenchman and took down two French horses, forcing the French to reluctantly cede the second position in the procession. Louis XIV of France was so incensed that he told his