From New Diplomatic History to New Political History: The Rise of the Holistic Approach

Elena Bonora, Aspettando l'imperatore. Principi italiani tra il papa e Carlo V, Einaudi: Turin, 2014; 286 pp.; 9788806217600, €32.00 (hbk)

Catherine Fletcher, Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome: The Rise of the Resident Ambassador, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2015; 202 pp., 3 b/w illus.; 9781107107793, £64.99 (hbk)

Isabella Lazzarini, Communication & Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015; 336 pp.; 9780198727415, £65.00 (hbk)

Brian Jeffrey Maxson, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2014; 312 pp.; 9781107043916, £62.00 (hbk); 9781107619647, £19.99 (pbk)

Massimo Rospocher, Il papa guerriero. Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo, Il Mulino: Bologna, 2015; 392 pp., 27 b/w ill., 4 tables; 9788815253507, €32.00 (pbk)

It has been ten years John Watkins opened a special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies with an introduction entitled ‘Toward a New Diplomatic History of Medieval and Early Modern Europe’. In the very first sentence, Watkins stated that the time had come ‘for a multidisciplinary reevaluation of one of the oldest, and traditionally one of the most conservative, subfields in the modern discipline of history: the study of premodern diplomacy’. ¹ Back then, as a matter of fact, the idea of a ‘new diplomatic history’ – that is, of a history adopting a ‘holistic approach’ to the structures of diplomatic practice rather than focusing solely on the strictly political contents of negotiation – had already circulated for at least ten years, most clearly in the work of Daniela Frigo. ² However, the idea still lacked a label, as well as a base of publications in which to show its promise, and international forums of discussion to be definitively legitimized. These all appeared in the years following 2008: one can mention Timothy Hampton's Fictions of Embassy (2009), or Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture, edited by Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox in 2011, as well as the Oxford conference Diplomacy and Culture in the Early Modern World (31 July–2 August 2014), which later developed in the volume Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World (2017). ³

How has new diplomatic history developed in the last few years? Is its holistic (or multidisciplinary, or structural) approach still thriving, and does this approach resonate with neighboring fields of historical research? A string of five relevant monographs published between 2014 and 2015 allows us to take stock of the situation.

It is appropriate to begin with Isabella Lazzarini's Communication & Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520, because it is certainly the most ambitious of the five books under review. Its declared objective is replacing Gary Mattingly's ‘pioneering, but outdated’ (3) Renaissance Diplomacy as the new reference work in the field. Lazzarini aims to achieve this by detaching the study of diplomacy from two teleologies: the rise of the resident ambassador and that of the modern State. She instead proposes to bring together four fundamental dynamics of diplomatic activities – negotiation, information-gathering, representation, and communication – and to analyze them not only in a political-, but also in a cultural- and social-historical perspective. The time-span of the investigation is in itself a contribution to scholarship. It broadens from the classic focus on the mid-fifteenth century to a ‘long Quattrocento’, spanning from c. 1350 to the core of the Italian Wars (c. 1520), thus enabling the diachronic analysis of several ‘trajectories of change’.

The book is divided into four parts, each one composed of three chapters. Part I, ‘The Framework’, lays out the essential elements of Italian Renaissance diplomacy – its main events and actors (Chapter 1), its origins (Chapter 2), and main sources (Chapter 3) – but also begins to put forward some of the most substantial theses. Lazzarini identifies two turning points in the chronology of the long Quattrocento: the years around 1400, when multiple wars in northern and southern Italy made it clear that the peninsula had become a ‘highly interconnected board’ (15); and the outbreak of the Italian Wars (1494–1495), when the Italian system traumatically opened to European influences. Another argument is that, until the 1450s, diplomacy was a highly inclusive framework: not only ‘formal governments and regimes’, but also ‘every actor – individual, faction, community – … that was able to mobilize some power’ was granted diplomatic agency (27). This changed, beginning with the establishment of the Italian League (1455), when a restricted group of major powers gradually became able to monopolize diplomacy and exclude lesser actors (such as condottieri or minor lords) from important treaties. Furthermore, Lazzarini provides a useful overview of the ‘polygenesis’ of Renaissance diplomacy, showing that the latter did not spring up from nothing after 1350, but derived from a combination of pre-existing (and long-lasting) merchant networks, and from the long tradition of papal envoys (legates, nuntii, collectors).

The second part of the book, ‘Diplomacy as Political Action’, deals with the subjects of information (Chapter 4), negotiation (Chapter 5), and communication (Chapter 6). Two arguments stand out here. One is that developments in diplomacy should not be measured, as Mattingly and others did, in the transition from ad-hoc to permanent embassies, which was never fully completed in the course of the fifteenth century. Rather, what really matters is the transition from a series of self-contained negotiation phases to the establishment of a continuous ‘dialogue’ involving all the major Italian powers. The other argument is that this dialogue, especially in the written form of diplomatic correspondences, became so ubiquitous, and at the same time so open to skillful manipulation, as to paralyze decision-making in the 1490s, thus paving the way for the use of swords instead of words (111–12).

The third part of the book (‘Diplomacy as a Practice’) discusses the figure of the various diplomatic agents (chancellors, clergymen, captains, artists, scientists, merchants, women), their skills and geopolitical origins (Chapter 7). It analyzes the more formalized aspects of diplomacy: the selection, nomination and control of diplomats; and the rituals, hierarchies and ceremonials surrounding negotiation and representation (Chapter 8). It considers the physical spaces where diplomatic practices were undertaken: capital cities (their castles, palaces, squares, streets) and minor towns, the countryside (rural villas, hunting grounds, building sites), and occasional places like spas and river banks (Chapter 9). Lazzarini interestingly notes that the mise en scène of diplomacy became more and more prominent in the dispatches of ambassadors, signaling that spaces (open or closed, formal or informal, public or private, grand or humble) were able to influence the form and meaning of interactions.

The fourth part of the book, ‘Diplomacy as a Political Language and a Cultural Process’, focuses again on communication: the forms of diplomatic interaction (speaking and reading, actions, writing, Chapter 10); the connection between oral/written arguments and the expression of emotions (Chapter 11); and the development/use of common languages and lexeis that not only were shaped by diplomatic practices, but also shaped their horizons. In this final part, Lazzarini manages to highlight the specific functions of words in all their forms – ‘spoken, declaimed, read, or written but also omitted in a significant silence’ (189) – and also of non-verbal and symbolic communication.

The main strength of Communication & Conflict is its completeness. Diplomacy, as it is stated, was an ‘all-consuming’ activity (262), and all its diverse components are examined thoroughly. In this sense, the book undoubtedly is a landmark of new diplomatic history. However, since the book represents the culmination of two decades of scholarly reflection, it would perhaps have been better to emphasize more a number of core theses. For example, the choice of using the ‘Concluding remarks’ section of each chapter ‘to add a slightly different perspective … [rather] than to offer solid conclusions’ is highly commendable in itself, but goes against the purpose of making Communication & Conflict the reference work in its field for years to come. Nevertheless, Lazzarini's mastery of the subject and historiography ultimately compensates this weakness. Her book is bound to be an essential reading for the study of Italian Renaissance diplomacy.

Catherine Fletcher's Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome: The Rise of the Resident Ambassador is, in many respects, the perfect match for Communication & Conflict. Like Lazzarini, Fletcher divides diplomatic activities into negotiation, information gathering, and representation. However, since her primary aim is analyzing the shift from the unofficial toleration to the ceremonial assimilation of resident ambassadors in the Roman court, the main focus lies on representation, which is the least investigated topic in Lazzarini. Rome, with its 243 accredited ambassadors in the period 1490–1500 (against 161 at the imperial court and 135 at the French court) (28) certainly represents a paradigmatic case study.

Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome is divided into two parts. The first part (Chapters 1–4) provides contexts and chronologies, the second (Chapters 5–7) deals with specific themes. In the first chapter, Fletcher shows that Rome became a first-rate diplomatic hub only after 1447, when the popes were able to ‘reclaim’ the city after the turmoils of the Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism and conciliarism. The forty, relatively peaceful years that followed the Peace of Lodi (1454) consolidated Rome's role as a center of negotiation and international ‘gossip shop’. The Italian Wars naturally brought instability, resulting in the infamous Sack of Rome (1527), but also physically opened the city to diplomats from all over Europe, making the city even more ‘international’ than before. The years between 1447 and 1530 are therefore those covered by the book.

During this period, as previously stated, resident ambassadors became an accepted fixture in Rome. In Chapter 3, Fletcher deploys a compelling material-textual argument to demonstrate it: between 1503 and 1506, papal master-of-ceremonies Johann Burchard amended the manuscript of the ceremonial ordinances written by his predecessor, Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini, and incorporated ambassadors into the text for the first time, thus literally marking their assimilation into the ritual world of the curia (61). The acknowledgment of this rising representative role of the ambassadors – which overlaps with that of ‘fixer’, information-gatherer, and negotiator – underlies the thesis that diplomats were understood, and understood themselves, as a ‘dual persona’ (Chapter 2). They could act as private individuals or effectively ‘transform into’ their prince. The manipulation of these two selves, and of the ‘liminal space’ between them, was a crucial skill for success (57–58). The last chapter of the first part deals with the socio-cultural milieu of diplomats active in Rome. It draws a distinction between Italian states – which mostly relied on lay lawyers and humanists – and ultramontane powers – which relied on clerics, or on freelance Italian agents.

In the second part of the book, the chapter on ‘Information and Communication’ analyzes competition and cooperation in newsgathering, highlighting the importance of formal and informal networks. What is especially interesting here, however, is the argument that post routes should not be exclusively seen as a ‘problem’ of early modern politics, but also more positively, as a ‘political space’ that offered multiple opportunities for encounters. Ambassadors traveling in ceremonial style and at a leisurely pace, Fletcher rightly points out, were able to perform a veritable ‘on the road’ diplomacy. Post roads were also prime spots for spying, interceptions, and kidnappings, all of which were, at the end of the day, integral parts of business. Chapter 6, ‘Locating Diplomacy in the City of Rome’, focuses on the ceremonials connected to diplomatic entries, audiences, and feasts. It also deals with the demanding Renaissance cultural mandates surrounding hospitality in the diplomats’ households, with the works of Neapolitan humanist and diplomat Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503) as reference. The last chapter, about diplomatic gifts, takes into account their political usefulness (with nice considerations on tipping) as well as their high symbolic value. More importantly, through the analysis of trials of diplomats accused of corruption, it shows that contemporaries themselves debated on the subtle difference between liberality and bribery. This ambiguity is effectively embodied by gold chains, which became typical gifts to departing ambassadors, probably because they were easy to convert into cash.

Apart from this last chapter, on some occasions there is a feeling that the focus on ritual tends to overshadow what was unofficial in the life of ambassadors and their households. In ‘Locating Diplomacy’, for example, one might expect to find some more informal street politics and newsgathering; or, in the chapter on personnel, something more on the activities of secretaries and servants. The ceremonial perspective, however, works very well to chart ‘the rise of the resident ambassador’ (the objective of the book, as well as its subtitle), and this justifies some partial gaps. On the whole, Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome really is, as Fletcher posits in her introduction, a work about Rome as much as it is about Renaissance diplomacy. We learn about Rome's history in the long Quattrocento (Chapter 1), the ritual world of its court (Chapters 2 and 3) and that of its public and private spaces (Chapter 6). It is no small achievement, because the appeal of diplomacy in a cultural-historical perspective resides precisely in its potential for illuminating subjects other than itself.

The success of the holistic approach of new diplomatic history works in two ways. On the one hand, scholars dealing directly with diplomacy have to be multidisciplinary. On the other hand, scholars dealing with subjects other than the diplomacy may find in diplomacy an excellent vantage point for their arguments. Somehow unexpectedly, therefore, diplomatic ritual features prominently also in The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence. This happens because, as Brian Jeffrey Maxson argues, humanist oratory gradually ‘conquered’ Florentine (and Italian) diplomacy during the course of the fifteenth century. A first stage in this trend can be detected between 1400 and 1455, when a solid humanist training became increasingly decisive in securing diplomatic appointments for citizens belonging to the highest and oldest ranks of the Florentine patriciate (Chapter 6). Then, after 1455 and up to the 1480s, the ritual demand for exceptional oratory skills became so crucial that being a renowned humanist even outweighed the prestige connected to social status (Chapter 7). As a consequence, Florentine diplomacy opened up to ‘parvenus’ who were traditionally excluded from ambassadorial posts, and mostly worked in the city's chanceries instead (Chapter 5). The rise of the Medici played an important role in this process, because loyalty to their ‘pseudo-princely’ regime became a virtue that was more important than mere social origins.

Diplomacy, however, is only a case study in the bolder argument that ‘the preparations to meet the demands of social, religious, [and] political … rituals underlay the popularity and spread of Florentine humanism’ (83). In other words, according to Maxson, the Florentines cultivated humanist studies not only out of purely intellectual interest, but also because this was essential to gain credit in multiple occasions of sociability, formal as well as informal (Chapter 4). The all-purpose function of humanist culture extended its appeal to the lower ranks of the Florentine patriciate, and even to people/families outside the ruling circles: Maxson demonstrates this through a clever investigation of mundane records (notarial documents, inventories) listing book collections (Chapter 3). The ubiquity of humanist culture is also testified to by the impressive amount of ‘learned connections’ linking individuals through a shared interest in the classical world. These connections mainly emerge from private epistolary correspondences, and prove to be as important as familial, political, or neighborhood bonds (Chapter 1).

This all prompts Maxson to put forward what is perhaps the most brilliant contribution of his book: the distinction between ‘literary humanists’ and ‘social humanists’. The former are those who scholarship typically recognizes as ‘the humanists’ proper – i.e. the famous intellectuals who authored works in Latin, such as Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Bartolomeo Scala. The latter are all those who did not make an original contribution to humanism, but nevertheless consumed, spread, and interpreted humanist culture. Social humanists deserve recognition too, because it was their everyday engagement with humanism that ultimately determined the success of the humanist movement as a whole, something that a handful of literary humanists could never have accomplished on their own. Equally importantly, Maxson points out that the categories of literary and social humanists constitute the two ends of a nuanced spectrum. The acts of writing, sponsoring, being the dedicatees of, translating, reading, owning, performing humanist works position the Florentine somewhere in it. This is a very convincing framework that could (and should) easily be exported to any study of humanism and its socio-political implications.

As is clear from this summary, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence is, by all means, well worth reading. However, one limitation – quite paradoxical in the context of this review – is its too heavy reliance on diplomacy as a case study for the broader argument that humanism was successful mainly because it satisfied the demands of political, social, and religious rituals performed in Renaissance Italian cities. Maxson states that ‘diplomacy provides but one example of a phenomenon that extended, in one form or another, to rituals throughout Italian society’ (151). Later on, he insists that ‘there is every reason to suspect that other rituals, other examples, show the same exact rise in prestige attached to extraordinary humanist learning’ (152). Yet he does little to demonstrate it. Hopefully, this will be the theme of future publications.

From Lazzarini, Fletcher, and Maxson, diplomacy emerges as a complex and diverse field that can be analyzed in the light of, and at the same time throws light on, many different historical problems. However, for the most part, diplomacy also remains isolated from ‘the outside world’, which is only fair since engagement with a broader ‘public sphere’ is beyond the scope of the three books. Here Massimo Rospocher's Il papa guerriero. Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo proves helpful. The aim of this work is exactly that of showing that diplomatic and political communication was not an affair of the elites only: the debate systematically extended from chanceries, courts and universities to streets, markets, and piazze. In this way, the holistic approach of new diplomatic history expands to a ‘new political history’ tout-court. Julius II (the ‘Warrior Pope’, one of the most controversial figures of the Renaissance) and the celebratory or defamatory representations of his behavior as pope (1503–1513, characterized by the frenzy of the Italian Wars) become the perfect setting to ‘redefine the notion of public space’ and to ‘illuminate a transition period in the history of communication’ (13).

The book is divided into three parts. In the first one, ‘Viva Iulio el gran pastore!’ (Chapters 1–5), Rospocher reconstructs the means and themes through which Julius II (whom historiography has traditionally passed down as a corrupt and greedy pope) actually acquired a positive reputation and won political consensus. In the second part (Chapters 6–8), the focus shifts to Julius's Italian opponents (the Bentivoglio faction in Bologna, Este Ferrara, and Venice) promoting defamatory campaigns against him. In the third part (Chapters 9 and 10) we move to France and England, where the relationship between the kings (Louis XII and Henry VIII), their chanceries/courts and the pope changed with the ever-changing political situation. In all these different cases, depending on the circumstances, Julius is represented as the bearer of a golden age or as ‘universal scourge’, as a peace-maker or as a warmonger, as the liberator or the ruin of Italy, as a new Julius Caesar or as an evil ‘pharaoh’.

More than the strict contents of these representations, however, what stands out is the range of communication forms unfolding throughout the book. The written word (manuscript and printed), the spoken word, music, performances, gestures, and images, were all employed to instigate debate. Crucially, all these means and practices of communication did not exist in isolation, but influenced and integrated with each other. Clear barriers also break down between ‘high’ (Latin) and ‘low’ (vernacular) discourses, which easily exchanged topoi; and between unofficial and official narratives, because the latter became barely controllable as soon as they took informal communication channels. During the papal domination of Bologna between autumn 1506 and spring 1511, for example, Rospocher analyzes several ‘communication episodes’ that can work as a demonstration of this variety: the wall-posting of vernacular sonetti libeling the pope (printed written word, unofficial), that a patrician (high social status) sang (spoken word) during an assembly (official), and because of which a shoemaker (low social status) was tortured and jailed; the cancellation of the Bentivoglio arms (images) from coins and all city walls as soon as the papal faction gained control of the city; the burning of the Bentivoglio palace; the spread of scrittarini (literally ‘little writings’, manuscript, unofficial) that led to the issuing of public proclamations (official) which urged the population to denounce the scrittarini’s creator, a notarial clerk who was then hung in public (performance); a dyer, a tanner, and a woman were punished for things said (oral) in public or in private.

To define this vivid landscape, Rospocher adopts the words ‘intermediality’ and ‘polyphony’. He also takes the space of the piazza (where power was celebrated, but also contested) and the figures of the cantimbanco (the street-singers who transformed learned culture into popular culture, the written word into the spoken word) as the metaphors to summarize it. Ultimately, Il papa guerriero does not launch any completely ‘new’ thesis. Rather, its strength consists in taking a well-defined and relevant case study, and using it to bring together political, social, literary, art, and media history in an inclusive and coherent perspective. This kind of multidisciplinarity makes Rospocher's work ‘new political history’ at its finest.

Finally, Elena Bonora's Aspettando l’imperatore. Principi italiani tra il papa e Carlo V is the most ‘événementielle’ book of those under review. For a simple reason: Bonora tells a story which was largely untold, that of an ‘Italy of the emperor’ (Charles V) so influential as to compete, between the 1530s and the 1540s, with an ‘Italy of the pope’ (Paul III) for the control of the Peninsula. She therefore drives the reader through the key moments of this struggle.

Shortly after the election of Pope Paul III Farnese (1534), a wide imperialist front composed by Cardinals (like the powerful Benedetto Accolti and Ercole Gonzaga), states (Medici Florence and Gonzaga Mantua, plus Este Ferrara and the Spanish Kingdom of Naples), and important clans (like the Colonna family) came together. It supported the old ideal, revitalized by Charles V's Chancellor Mercurino da Gattinara, that the emperor should achieve a monarchia universalis, of which Italy had to be the cornerstone. As a result, the political power of the popes had to diminish or even disappear.

By the early 1540s, the project was so concrete that memoirs were written with detailed plans for invasion of the Papal States. Veritable ‘proxy wars’ were fought, with the imperial party fueling rebellions in papal cities and fiefdoms, while Paul III promoted a French invasion of imperial Milan. When, in spring 1547, Charles V defeated the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League in the Battle of Mühlberg and could therefore focus his efforts on Italy, it seemed that the final clash between him and the pope was unavoidable. The level of tension indeed reached its peak with the assassination of Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and illegitimate son of Paul III (September 1547), but the imperial army never took the repeatedly invoked ‘way to Rome’. The decisive battle became the conclave to elect Paul III's successor, which took place between November 1549 and February 1550. Here, however, the imperial party failed to converge on a single candidate, broke down and never recovered.

The book makes at least two major contributions to the political historiography of the sixteenth century. The first is, as previously mentioned, having revealed for the first time the real scope, ambitions and strategies of the ‘Italy of the emperor’. Before Aspettando l’imperatore, scholars saw the imperial party as a small group of isolated agents doomed to fail, and tended to anachronistically consider them ‘anti-Italian’. Thanks to this work, it is now clear that their network had members in the Roman curia, as well as in the imperial chancery and in some of the most important Italian states. Furthermore (and Bonora insists on this argument), the imperialists did not limit themselves to theorizing about Charles V's hegemony over Italy and the annihilation of Paul III's political power, but actively operated to achieve their goals, and almost succeeded.

The second contribution consists in the way Bonora keeps together the political and religious history of the 1530s and 1540s, two domains that (as she points out in the introduction, 16) have developed independently from each other, but are in fact intertwined. For example, it is difficult to understand in full the situation of the Roman curia if we do not consider that the political division between pro- and anti-Farnese Cardinals added up to the exclusively religious division between ‘spirituals’ (spirituali) and ‘hardliners’ (intransigenti). The political views of spiritual Cardinals like Reginald Pole and Giovanni Morone were more akin to those of their supposed arch-enemies, the hardliners, than to those of imperialists like Benedetto Accolti and Ercole Gonzaga.

But besides this classic focus on high politics and the succession and interpretation of events, the book is also innovative because it explores the structures that informed the network of the imperialists and its struggle with the papists in a cultural-historical perspective. A first compelling example of this approach is in the fourth chapter. Bonora investigates the relationship between Accolti and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, imperial ambassador in Venice, not only as a strictly political alliance, but also (to use Maxson's vocabulary) as a learned connection. Mendoza's library in Venice was an important meeting point for intellectuals and diplomats. The political appropriation of classical texts and authors (like the work of Thucydides) was an important bone of contention between competing courts and chanceries. Furthermore, the eleventh chapter is devoted to the production and circulation of political writings libeling Paul III, and the dynamics that emerge naturally match those studied by Rospocher.

The true highlight of Aspettando l’imperatore, however, is the attention to the modes of epistolary communication in use between imperialists; and, more specifically, to the gramuffo, a jargon adopted in the correspondence between Benedetto Accolti and Ercole Gonzaga (which constitutes the bulk of the book's source base) to encrypt the most compromising contents in case of letter interceptions. Through the gramuffo, the people, places, and actions of the struggle between imperialists and papists are renamed with an extraordinary mix of references to the classical world, the Bible, and chivalric literature. Paul III becomes Polifemo or Cacco; the Cardinals are the ciclopi; Charles V is Sansone or el Gran Grifon; Rome is the spelonca (literally ‘cave’, but also ‘hovel’) and doing business there thus becomes speloncare, whereas making someone pope becomes impolifemare. On the one hand, Bonora does well to extensively include gramuffo excerpts throughout the text, as their wit really sets the tone of her account. On the other hand, it is odd that the gramuffo does not get at least a dedicated section, given its importance in the economy of the book.

This introduces what is perhaps the only weakness of the book: a structure that is not self-evident, that can hardly be inferred from the rather obscure chapter and section titles, and that the reader can therefore discover only by progressing page by page. It is true that the narrative follows a chronological order, but, for example, nowhere is it stated that five (out of 12) chapters are centered on the events surrounding Cardinal Benedetto Accolti. Another slightly surprising element is that it is only at the very end of the book – when Charles V vetoes the main candidate of the Italian imperialists to the papacy, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, at the 1549 conclave – that Bonora points out that imperial Italy had in fact repeatedly acted without the go-ahead of the emperor himself in previous years: this issue could have been raised and discussed earlier in the text. In any case, these details are minor when compared to the book's achievements.

Ultimately, the fact that also a solidly événementielle book like Aspettando l’imperatore focuses so much on the structures and sidelines of political struggle is, perhaps, the clearest proof that the approach of new diplomatic history not only is still thriving, but also inspiring other histories. More specifically, it seems clear that the focus on communication in all its forms (verbal and non-verbal, written and oral, learned and popular, ritual and pragmatic), despite not being a novelty anymore (Filippo De Vivo's Information and Communication in Venice turns eleven this year) is still capable of opening up new perspectives on old historical problems. In effect, not only Lazzarini's book, but also Rospocher's and Bonora's could be entitled Communication & Conflict, showing that the latter also maintains its huge heuristic value. Political history may now keep on re-working the freshest insights coming from diplomatic history – after all, communication, negotiation, and representation were the axes of political practice in general, not only of diplomacy. It remains to be seen what direction diplomatic history will take after the achievement of this ‘totality’.