The establishment of permanent embassies in fifteenth-century Italy has traditionally been regarded as the moment of transition between medieval and modern diplomacy. In The Refugee-Diplomat, Diego Pirillo offers an alternative history of early modern diplomacy, centered not on states and their official representatives but around the figure of "the refugee-diplomat" and, more specifically, Italian religious dissidents who forged ties with English and northern European Protestants in the hope of inspiring an Italian Reformation. Pirillo reconsiders how diplomacy worked, not only within but also outside of formal state channels, through underground networks of individuals who were able to move across confessional and linguistic borders, often adapting their own identities to the changing political conditions they encountered. Through a trove of diplomatic and mercantile letters, inquisitorial records, literary texts, marginalia, and visual material, The Refugee-Diplomat recovers the agency of religious refugees in international affairs, revealing their profound impact on the emergence of early modern diplomatic culture and practice.

A helicopter ride to visit troops in the Afghanistan war zone, a tense meeting with the newly elected Prime Minister, and…a wild boar hunt! Eleni Kounalakis was forty-three and a land developer in Sacramento, California, when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During her tenure, from 2010 to 2013, Hungary was a key ally in the U.S. military surge, held elections in which a center-right candidate gained a two-thirds supermajority and rewrote the country's constitution, and grappled with the rise of Hungarian nationalism and anti-semitism. The first Greek-American woman ever to serve as a U.S. ambassador, Kounalakis recounts her training at the State Department's “charm school” and her three years of diplomatic life in Budapest—from protocols about seating, salutations, and embassy security to what to do when the deposed King of Greece hands you a small chocolate crown (eat it, of course!). A cross between a foreign policy memoir and an inspiring personal family story—her immigrant Greek father went from agricultural day laborer to land developer and major Democratic party activist—Madam Ambassador draws back the curtain on what it is like to represent the U.S. government abroad as well as how American embassies around the world function.

"During the turbulent months following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, twenty-one-year-old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, is locked behind barbed wire in a Texas internment camp ... Plagued by fence sickness, her world changes when she meets Christian Lange, whose German-born parents were wrongfully arrested for un-American activities. Together, they live as prisoners with thousands of other German and Japanese families, but discover that young love can triumph over even the most unjust circumstances. When Emi and her mother are abruptly sent back to Japan, Christian enlists in the US Army, with his sights set on the Pacific front--and a reunion with Emi"--

"Read the first English translated memoirs by his widow, Yukiko Sugihara. Learn about the significant roles that Chiune played before, during, and after World War Two. Read about the historical forces and events that occurred during this chapter of our history and how Chiune's decisions made a difference. Learn more about this extraordinarily unique and humanitarian diplomat who made the decision to go against the orders of his Japanese government, putting his life and that of his family at risk, in order to save the lives of thousands of Jewish refugees by helping them escape capture by the Nazis. Discover how this heroic, charismatic, and talented man continually chose to make decisions in his life by listening to his higher-level consciousness and recognizing his love for his fellow man, rather than to allow himself to be swayed by other individuals and outside forces"--Publisher's description.

Inside a U.S. Embassy is widely recognized as the essential guide to the Foreign Service. This all-new third edition takes readers to more than fifty U.S. missions around the world, introducing Foreign Service professionals and providing detailed descriptions of their jobs and firsthand accounts of diplomacy in action. In addition to profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world-from the ambassador to the consular officer, the public diplomacy officer to the security specialist-is a selection from more than twenty countries of day-in-the-life accounts, each describing an actual day on.

Robert Ferrell Book Prize Honorable Mention 2021, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History Honorable Mention 2022, Association for Asian American Studies After the US war in Vietnam, close to 800,000 Vietnamese left the country by boat, survived, and sought refuge throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. This is the story of what happened in the camps. In Camps raises key questions that remain all too relevant today: Who is a refugee? Who determines this status? And how does it change over time? From Guam to Malaysia and the Philippines to Hong Kong, In Camps is the first major work on Vietnamese refugee policy to pay close attention to host territories and to explore Vietnamese activism in the camps and the diaspora. This book explains how Vietnamese were transformed from de facto refugees to individual asylum seekers to repatriates. Ambitiously covering people on the ground—local governments, teachers, and corrections officers—as well as powerful players such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the US government, Jana Lipman shows that the local politics of first asylum sites often drove international refugee policy. Unsettling most accounts of Southeast Asian migration to the US, In Camps instead emphasizes the contingencies inherent in refugee policy and experiences.

Who works in an embassy? What do diplomats actually do? Inside a U.S. Embassy offers an up-close and personal look into the lives of the diplomats and specialists who make up the U.S. Foreign Service, taking readers inside embassies and consulates in more than fifty countries, providing detailed descriptions of Foreign Service jobs and first-hand accounts of diplomacy in action. Gain a sense of the key role played by each member of an embassy team from Paris to Kabul, from Bogota to Beijing, and places in between. Travel into the rainforests of Thailand with an environmental affairs officer, face rampaging militias with a political officer in East Timor, and join an ambassador on a midnight trip into a Macedonian refugee camp to quell a riot. The book includes profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world serving in Foreign Service positions -- from the ambassador to the security officer, the consular officer to the IT specialist. Also included is a selection of day-in-the-life accounts from seventeen different countries, each describing an actual day on the job. The story section includes twenty-six tales from the field that give a sense of the extraordinary: the coups, the evacuations, the civil wars, the hardships and rewards of representing America to the world. Inside a U.S. Embassy was published by the American Foreign Service Association in 2003, and updated and revised in 2005. Over 70,000 copies have sold.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, European Jews traveled east to seek refuge in the West. Three thousand refugees transited Japan and China, and more than 21,000 spent the war in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Japanese diplomats in Europe were caught off guard by the flood of visa applicants, and the Foreign Ministry belatedly confronted a refugee problem. Unexpected visitors became uninvited guests. Vice Consul Sugihara Chiune might have faded into history as a minor diplomat in Lithuania had he not issued thousands of transit visas to refugees, including those who fulfilled few visa requirements. Sakamoto demonstrates how he helped thousands escape Europe; in the end, as she points out, a number of Japanese diplomats saved Jews by issuing visas, but very few issued visas to save Jews. Sakamoto focuses on the extensive archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which have not been treated at length before. By examining the cable traffic between diplomats and the ministry headquarters, she reveals the uncensored reactions of Japanese diplomats to Jewish refugees. Through the files of Jewish organizations and the American government, she presents the dimensions of the crisis as Germany's emphasis on emigration changed to extermination. Interviews with former diplomats, refugees, and those who knew Sugihara give human dimensions to a fascinating and little-known episode of the war.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has for over 50 years been central to diplomacy and applied to all forms of relations among sovereign States. Participation is almost universal. The rules giving special protection to ambassadors are the oldest established in international law and the Convention is respected almost everywhere. But understanding it as a living instrument requires knowledge of its background in customary international law, of the negotiating history which clarifies many of its terms and the subsequent practice of states and decisions of national courts which have resolved other ambiguities. Diplomatic Law provides this in-depth Commentary. The book is an essential guide to changing methods of modern diplomacy and shows how challenges to its regime of special protection for embassies and diplomats have been met and resolved. It is used by ministries of foreign affairs and cited by domestic courts world-wide. The book analyzes the reasons for the widespread observance of the Convention rules and why in the special case of communications - where there is flagrant violation of their special status - these reasons do not apply. It describes how abuse has been controlled and how the immunities in the Convention have survived onslaught by those claiming that they should give way to conflicting entitlements to access to justice and the desire to punish violators of human rights. It describes how the duty of diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of the host State is being narrowed in the face of the communal international responsibility to monitor and uphold human rights.

Drafted while events were fresh in his mind in 1942–1943, Alabama-born American diplomat George Platt Waller’s memoir chronicles his war-time experience in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In vivid prose, he recalls the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the “Phony War,” the German invasion of May 10, 1940, and the Wehrmacht occupation. Intimately involved with the political and public life of this small democratic nation, Waller did not follow Grand Duchess Charlotte and her government into exile. Instead, he remained as long as he could to witness and champion the Luxembourg people, doing his best to rescue the flood of refugees seeking visas and asylum in the United States. Waller bitterly condemns the Nazi civilian administration, its oppressive racial laws, and its attempts to annex the country to Germany under the banner of Heim ins Reich. From his pivotal position as dean of the diplomatic community, representative of the powerful United States; and trusted confidant of leaders, executives, and citizens alike, Waller was privy to information from a wide range of sources: government, military, the church, the professions, the resistance, ordinary people, and refugees. He narrates gripping accounts of individual initiative and courage and exposes the many official hindrances to the timely rescue of refugees. His observations shed new light on life in Luxembourg from 1939 to 1941, when he was finally expelled from the country. The editors’ introduction places this brief but highly significant memoir in the context of Waller’s family background, education, and career, including his dramatic return to Luxembourg at its liberation by American troops in 1944 and his participation in the Grand Duchy’s postwar renaissance. Extensive annotations and photographs complement the text.