PREFACE

 Peaceful contacts between independent groups have always, since the start of human time, required the kind of representational activity which has come to be known as diplomacy. In its modern form – that is, throughout the last half-millennium or so – diplomacy has retained a broadly constant character and given rise to a burgeoning diplomatic profession. Like all professions, it has spawned its own terminology and categories; and inasmuch as its activity concerned relations between proud and jealous sovereigns, later replaced by no less proud and jealous sovereign states, diplomatic language has been finely honed and carries very precise meanings. It also bears the marks of having found expression in the languages of civilizations.