The ambassadors
Subtitle: from ancient Egypt to Renaissance Europe, the men who introduced the world to itself
By: Jonathan Wright.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Orlando, Fla
Language: eng
Number of pages: 374
ISBN-13: 9780151011117
Subjects: Ambassadors -- History -- To 1500.; Ambassadors -- History -- 16th century.
Description: We think of ambassadors as simply diplomats--but once they were adventurers who dared an uncertain fate in unknown lands, bringing gifts of greyhounds and elephants to powerful and unpredictable leaders. Historian Wright traces the journeys of these emissaries, taking us from the linguistically challenged Greek Megasthenes to the first Japanese embassies to China and Korea; from Mohammed's ambassadors to Egypt to the envoys of Byzantium, who had the unenviable task of convincing Attila the Hun to stop attacking them. We also witness the dialogue between Europe and Moorish Spain, and meet the ill-fated envoys sent in search of the mythical king Prester John. What Europe still thinks of Asia and what Asia still thinks of Africa were in no small part kindled in these long-ago first encounters.--From publisher description.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: "Glorious Hermes, herald of the deathless gods"; title: Greeks and Indika; title: A Sanskrit Machiavelli; title: The son of heaven; title: Charlemagne's elephant; title: Byzantium; title: The crown of thorns; title: A rooftop in Naples : Europe and the Mongols; title: The new diplomacy; title: Reformation; title: Schisms; title: "An iliad of miseries" : Europe and the Ottomans; title: Wotton versus Sherley; title: The physics of diplomacy.