The establishment of permanent embassies in 15th-century Italy has traditionally been regarded as the advent of modern diplomacy. In his book 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.

Pirillo is joined by Kinch Hoekstra (Political Science).