Using archival material from four states, interviews and correspondence with diplomats, and a wealth of literature on the Commonwealth and its members, this book explores the evolution of distinctive diplomatic links between Commonwealth states, and their reception into the international system.

This book illuminates two familiar phenomena – diplomacy and the Commonwealth – from a new and unfamiliar angle: the atypical way in which the Commonwealth’s members came to, and continue to, engage in official relations with each other. This innovative and wide-ranging study is based on archival material from four states, interviews and correspondence with diplomats, and a wide range of secondary sources. It shows how members of an empire found it necessary to engage in diplomacy and, in so doing, created a singular, and often remarkably intimate, diplomatic system. The result is a fascinating, multidisciplinary exploration of the evolving Commonwealth and the way in which its 53 members and Ireland conduct diplomacy with one another, and in so doing have contributed a distinctive terminology to the diplomatic lexicon.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) was signed at the height of the Cold War more than fifty years ago. The agreement and its negotiation have become a cornerstone of diplomatic law. A Cornerstone of Modern Diplomacy, which is based on archival research in the National Archives (London), the Austrian State Archives (Vienna) and the Political Archive (Berlin), delivers the first study of the British policy during the negotiation of the key convention governing diplomatic privileges and immunities: the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The book provides a complete commentary on the political aspects of the codification process of diplomatic law. By clearly presenting the case with accessible analysis, author Kai Bruns makes the relations between international law and politics understandable, stressing the impact of the emergence of the third world in UN diplomacy. This unique study is a crucial piece of scholarship, shedding light on the practice of United Nations conference diplomacy and the codification of diplomatic law at the height of the Cold War.

Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory ‘immune’ from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.

This volume offers an inter-disciplinary and critical analysis of the role of culture in diplomatic practice. If diplomacy is understood as the practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of distinct communities or causes, then questions of culture and the spaces of cultural exchange are at its core. But what of the culture of diplomacy itself? When and how did this culture emerge, and what alternative cultures of diplomacy run parallel to it, both historically and today? How do particular spaces and places inform and shape the articulation of diplomatic culture(s)? This volume addresses these questions by bringing together a collection of theoretically rich and empirically detailed contributions from leading scholars in history, international relations, geography, and literary theory. Chapters attend to cross-cutting issues of the translation of diplomatic cultures, the role of space in diplomatic exchange and the diversity of diplomatic cultures beyond the formal state system. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches the contributors discuss empirical cases ranging from indigenous diplomacies of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, to the European External Action Service, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the spatial imaginaries of mid twentieth-century Balkan writer diplomats, celebrity and missionary diplomacy, and paradiplomatic narratives of The Hague. The volume demonstrates that, when approached from multiple disciplinary perspectives and understood as expansive and plural, diplomatic cultures offer an important lens onto issues as diverse as global governance, sovereignty regimes and geographical imaginations. This book will be of much interest to students of public diplomacy, foreign policy, international organisations, media and communications studies, and IR in general.

In recent decades the study of British foreign policy and diplomacy has broadened in focus. No longer is it enough for historians to look at the actions of the elite figures - diplomats and foreign secretaries - in isolation; increasingly the role of their advisers and subordinates, and those on the fringes of the diplomatic world, is recognised as having exerted critical influence on key decisions and policies. This volume gives further impetus to this revelation, honing in on the fringes of British diplomacy through a selection of case studies of individuals who were able to influence policy. By contextualising each study, the volume explores the wider circles in which these individuals moved, exploring the broader issues affecting the processes of foreign policy. Not the least of these is the issue of official mindsets and of networks of influence in Britain and overseas, inculcated, for example, in the leading public schools, at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in gentlemen's clubs in London's West End. As such the volume contributes to the growing literature on human agency as well as mentalité studies in the history of international relations. Moreover it also highlights related themes which have been insufficiently studied by international historians, for example, the influence that outside groups such as missionaries and the press had on the shaping of foreign policy and the role that strategy, intelligence and the experience of war played in the diplomatic process. Through such an approach the workings of British diplomacy during the high-tide of empire is revealed in new and intriguing ways.

EU Diplomatic Law provides a thorough analysis of the interactions between the European Union (EU) and international diplomatic and consular law. Over the past six decades, the EU has been granted unique powers that enable it to act prominently on the international plane, thereby developing a worldwide bilateral and multilateral diplomatic network. Much like the States, the EU sends ambassadors to all corners of the world and accredits permanent missions at its Brussels' headquarters. These developments shake the foundations of diplomatic and consular law, as these branches of international law are based on the principles of state sovereignty, non-interference, and reciprocity. Traditional conceptions of international law only allow states to perform diplomatic and consular functions, leaving little room for non-state entities such as the EU. Sanderijn Duquet addresses this fundamental problem by re-visiting the foundations of diplomatic and consular law, as well as analysing EU practice in initiating, conducting, and terminating diplomatic and consular relations. In particular, she focuses on: the scope of EU diplomatic and consular powers, especially in relationship to its member states; its application of the Vienna Conventions and customary international law; the EU's use of creative legal techniques; the diplomatic and consular protection of EU citizens; questions of protocol and precedence; and the legal status of the EU's diplomatic staff and premises abroad. By critically analysing these issues, this book assesses the specific contribution the EU makes to the shaping of diplomatic and consular law.