2The following essays pit the hard power of government-to-government diplomacy against other levels of diplomacy involving non-governmental stakeholders. In addition, they study official and non-official diplomatic figures, real and fictional ambassadors. Thus these works add to the historical and geopolitical investigation of the constantly renegotiated form of diplomacy, a renewed investigation of the role of art, literature and culture as diplomatic instruments as well as new analytical tools in the study of diplomacy.

3The initial investigation of the inherent flexibility and inventiveness of early modern diplomacy, the linguistic and geopolitical capacity of diplomacy to self-improve in the pre- and Westphalian contexts paves the way to a debate between old and new diplomacy. The discussion of the culture of the new and the old is put into perspective by several case-studies of the reassessment of diplomatic activity through the prism of soft power. Our study will conclude with the creation of a diplomatic written and visual language at the core of the very art used in old and new diplomacy.

4Lucien Bély's introductory chapter asks the fundamental question in this volume regarding diplomatic culture: can we talk of a diplomatic culture in the modern era? ("Peut-on parler d'une culture diplomatique à l'époque moderne ?"). This is a debate which is not limited to the changing world shaken and redefined by the Peace of Westphalia. Focusing on representation, information and negotiation, Lucien Bély reappraises his seminal theories on diplomatic history through the prism of the cultural as inherently part of the political. He recalls that modern diplomacy belongs to the realm of culture as its legacy relies on the written word. Diplomatic writing is based upon an exchange between a government and its representatives, between the latter and their messengers and other intelligence gatherers. The written word implies the construction of a coherent discourse which coordinates secrecy and authorised dramatised public displays. Diplomacy is thus linked with the art of writing; diplomacy is writing, diplomacy is literature. This compels us to question the status of writers—diplomats or diplomatic writers before the nineteenth century. This introductory chapter examines the diplomatic needs for culture (in the widest sense of the term), the theorisation of these needs and the political society’s response to them. It also discusses how culture is made to serve diplomatic agendas, and how diplomacy can serve culture and the cultural life of several countries. Beyond the written word and the use of literature, this introductory chapter calls for a new exploration of diplomatic tactics and strategies through both a diachronic and synchronic approach to the forms of diplomacy before and after the defining moment of the Peace of Westphalia.

6Indeed the two following essays by Camille Desenclos and Muriel Marchal show how the difficult Franco-English diplomatic entente moved early modern diplomacy into unexplored epistemological territories. Camille Desenclos' "La négociation conjointe ou le désespoir d’une diplomatie malmenée : l’échec des menées franco-anglaises dans l’empire au début de la guerre de Trente ans (1620-1622)" analyses the rise of a new type of third-party negotiation. The Grotian method of using a third stakeholder as go-between in the diplomatic relations between two enemy states is taken a step further and blended with Richelieu's "continuous negotiations." What if two nations in constant conflict joined forces momentarily in order to broker a truce in a multi-party conflict in which they are involved? This is the thrilling endeavour of France and England which Camille Desenclos explores and which is pursued in Muriel Marchal's "L’Angleterre et la France, faiseurs de paix en Scandinavie en 1657-1660." Shifting the focus from the well-trodden paths of diplomatic history, Marchal renews the observation of the tactics and strategies of early modern macro-states and emphasises the role of Scandinavia as a cradle for diplomatic innovation.

7Lauric Henneton pursues the investigation of the latter phenomenon by adding to both the theoretical and practical observation of new diplomatic methods in the early modern world. His study of "Frontier Diplomacy: Cross-Cultural Adjustments and Conflict Resolution in Seventeenth-Century North-Eastern America" adds cultural and interconfessional aspects to the previous methodological investigations of the origin of diplomatic methods still in use today. Henneton's luminous analysis ties the linguistic, the political, the cultural and the confessional together and shows the genesic role of the early modern period in terms of diplomatic tactics.

8The early modern era marks not the genesis of diplomacy, but of a different diplomatic self-reflexivity which pushed ambassadors and scholars to reflect on diplomatic identity and methods. The medieval ideal of the European consensus was being challenged by the rise of macro-states and the geographical vision of the known Europe-centric world was being constantly questioned by the Eastern and Western New Worlds. Thus the observation of early modern diplomatic agency is necessary as a mirror for contemporary diplomacy. Indeed the early modern era is the era of new trials and errors that can be fruitfully revisited today.

11Mona Parra's "Renseignement et diplomatie : repenser l’origine de la 'relation spéciale'" explores how intelligence-gathering and its transmission came to be increasingly challenged by the need for intelligence sharing in the contemporary era. She shows that difficult negotiations in the field of intelligence are also a means to challenge old diplomatic practices and strategies, constituting a new form of diplomacy. This discussion of the formal aspect of the most secretive side of diplomacy leads naturally to the discussion of the way Western diplomacy had to move towards the acceptance of the need for constant renewal in the post-Second World War era. Richard Davis's "Old Diplomacy in a New World: British and French Diplomacy 1958-69" complements Datta-Ray's and Boughanmi's essays and emphasises that the potent need for a redefinition of Western diplomacy cannot happen without the beneficial and thorough knowledge of 'old diplomacy'.

12By contrasting different points of views on diplomacy, both old and new, this section aims to reassess the common features between opposing assumptions. The point not being in the origins of diplomacy but rather the study of its fluidity, its successes and its shortcomings each time it was confronted with historically and ontologically defining moments. Furthermore, investigating how diplomacy as a discipline constantly invents itself, reassesses and reinvents its practise, leads us to ponder Lucien Bély's initial discussion of a diplomatic culture by examining the renewed interest in Cultural Diplomacy in the Cold War era. Starting with a study of the seemingly paradoxical use of the soldier-ambassador, the volume contemplates the new directions given to diplomacy after the official end of a conflict and during its engagement in continuous negotiation.

14The four essays in this section examine the policies as well as the non-governmental initiatives that create and use new diplomatic spaces of exchange. Myriam Chasserieau's "'Ambassadors of democracy': les soldats de l’armée d’occupation des États-Unis en Allemagne (1945-1949)" shows the coexistence of hard and soft power through the figure of the soldier. The latter is turned into an unexpected 'ambassador of democracy' and points out the use of sport as a way to turn the military performance of geopolitical relations into an exercise in peace-making and peace-keeping.

15Mixing governmental and public diplomacy, Chasserieau's article is complemented by Molly Bettie's study of "The Scholar as Diplomat: The Fulbright Program and America’s Cultural Engagement with the World". Investigating the Fulbright programme as an instrument of diplomatic exchange, Bettie's work contributes to give a picture of new forms of diplomacy on which hard power also relies. Contrasting the traditional pursuit of furthering specific national interests and new instruments favouring mutual cultural exchanges, Alice Byrne's "Periodical Journalism as an Instrument of Cultural Diplomacy or Informational Diplomacy: the Example of Britain To-Day (1945-1954)" shows the difficulty of the definition and the implementation of soft power. This essay reveals the ontological and ethical ambiguities of soft power by focusing on the British Council's use of journalism during the first decade of the Cold War. Byrne's essay illustrates that public diplomacy is trapped between cultural and informational diplomacy and gives enlightening definitions of these different, and often contradictory, forms of diplomacy. This epistemological questioning is deepened by Raphael Ricaud's enlightening semantic exploration of public diplomacy through the study of the figure of "John Lackey Brown, public diplomat par excellence". Lackey Brown testifies to the cross-fertilisation between the artistic and the diplomatic world, between hard and soft power, between governmental and public diplomatic endeavours as he was both a writer and an ambassador. Ricaud's essay paves the way to the last section of this volume and its focus on the exercise of diplomatic reading and writing.

17Literature can help to read and to fashion diplomatic ontological and political endeavours, and conversely diplomacy can influence the written word. This last section thus follows in the steps of Timothy Hampton and his plea for "a way of reading literature that would be attuned to the shadow of the Other at the edge of national community, and a way of reading history that would take into account its fictional and linguistic dimensions." The study of language learning and the construction of national identity takes us back to the diplomat as a translator and to the necessity to fuse the historical, the linguistic and the literary in the approach of diplomacy.

18This last part completes the purpose of this volume which is to use different disciplinary approaches to understand the protean shape of both diplomacy and the diplomat. It starts with Henri Le Prieult's "The 'Stranger' and the Grammarian: when Early English Grammarians Reached Out", a fresh historiographical study of the techniques and the diffusion of early modern English grammars. The latter favoured a diplomatic dynamic of creating a new lingua franca. Besides, the use and/or the creation of a specific political language in the pursuit of diplomatic and geopolitical goals is not confined to the written word as Stéphane Miglierina elegantly shows in his article on "Delimitation of Diplomatic Spaces: Jurisdictional Conflicts and Triumphal Entries in Spanish Milan of the Counter-Reformation." The signs are visual and are not confined to the epistolary or the printed world but require a dramatisation feeding on the very essence of diplomacy. The rhetoric and the semiotic nature of diplomatic art, language and literature is not confined to the early modern era as Marie-Odile Salati luminously shows in her study of Henry James' The Ambassadors. As both a writer and diplomat, Henry James' prose reveals the use of diplomacy in the creation of a literary language, and in reverse how diplomacy feeds on a specific rhetorical and semiotic language. Salati's article discloses this language, the influence of the diplomatic circle around James and how the literary construction of the ambassador coalesces with the sociology of the diplomat.