Introduction. The long international history of women and diplomacy

Abstract

It is a curious fact of the contemporary world that more women are appointed to political roles as diplomats, and even to leading foreign affairs portfolios – across the ideological divides of liberalism and conservatism – than almost any other ministerial office. Here we might think of, most recently, Hilary Clinton (United States), Federica Mogherini (Italy) or Catherine Ashton (EU). The list would be much longer if we looked outside of the Western countries that are the focus of this volume. These essays reveal that this accommodation of women in international politics is not simply an anomalous consequence of modernity. It is contiguous with practices since the origins of diplomacy, in which women acted as agents of cross-state and cross-cultural information-gathering, alliance-building and networking, and as political negotiators, even if this was sometimes controversial.