The establishment of permanent embassies in 15th-century Italy has traditionally been regarded as the advent of modern diplomacy. In The Refugee-Diplomat (Cornell, 2018), Diego Pirillo (Italian Studies) offers a new history of early modern diplomacy, centered not on states and their official representatives, but on “refugee-diplomats”—Italian religious dissidents who left Italy in order to forge ties with English and northern European Protestants in the hope of inspiring an Italian Reformation. He reconsiders how diplomacy worked, not only within but also outside of formal state channels, through underground networks of religious refugees who were able to move across confessional and linguistic borders.

Pirillo is joined by Kinch Hoekstra (Political Science). After a brief discussion of the book, they open the floor for discussion.