Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World

Paul Dover is Associate Professor of History at Kennesaw State University. He has published widely on the political, diplomatic and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe.

• About the Contributors1. Introduction: the Age of SecretariesPaul M. Dover2. Records, Politics and Diplomacy: Secretaries and Chanceries in Renaissance Italy (1350-1520 ca.)Isabella Lazzarini3. Mercurino di Gattinara (1465-1530): Imperial Chancellor, Strategist of EmpireRebecca Ard Boone4. ‘This continuous writing’: the Paper Chancellery of Berhard Cles, Megan K. Williams5. Parables and Dark Sentences: the Correspondence of Sir William Cecil and William Maitland, 1559-1573Rayne Allinson5. Axel Oxenstierna and Swedish Diplomacy in the Seventeenth CenturyErik Thomson6. Statecraft and the Role of the Diplomat in Ducal Savoy: the Career of Alessandro Scaglia (1592-1641)Toby Osborne7. Richelieu, Mazarin and Italy, 1635-1659: Statesmanship in ContextDavid Parrott8. The Learned Ideal of the Mughal Wazīr: the Life and Intellectual World of Prime Minister Afzal Khan Shirazi (d. 1639)Raveev Kinra9. Reconsidering State and Constituency in Seventeenth-Century Safavid Iran: the Wax and Wane of the MunshiColin Mitchell10. Choreographers of Power: Grigorii Kotoshikhin, State Secretaries, and the Muscovite Royal Wedding RitualRussell E. Martin11. Eberhard von Danckelman and Brandenburg’s Foreign Policy, 1699-1697Daniel Riches12. Chancellor of State: Prince Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, the Habsburg Foreign Office and Foreign Policy in the Era of Enlightened AbsolutismFranz A.J. SzaboIndex

Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World convincingly demonstrates the complexity of diplomatic action, the power of bureaucrats, and the challenges of the information explosion between the later fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. It embraces global history to show that the approaches and even some of the conclusions of the 'new diplomatic history' are applicable beyond the European continent. Additionally, each essay is carefully constructed, thoughtful, and convincing, while the book’s focus remains consistent throughout.