Jennifer Mori’s first book (William Pitt and the French Revolution [Edinburgh, 1997]) was a densely argued, quite conservatively conceived study of Pitt the Younger and the French Revolution. Her new book has broader ambitions. As she is keen to emphasize, this is not an exercise in traditional diplomatic history, concerned with the definition and competition of national interests. Rather, her aim is to reconstruct diplomacy as an occupation, to show what a diplomatic life consisted in, and to reconstruct diplomacy as a matter of perception and self-fashioning. This is, in short, a social and cultural history of British diplomacy in this period. The method adopted, however, is traditional, in that it rests on a close reading of the correspondence of around fifty diplomats and their families from across the period.

The book is divided into three parts. The first examines who became diplomats, their training (such as it was), and the role of family, marriage, and sexual relations outside of marriage in a diplomatic life. The second focuses on what diplomats were expected to do, something that, unsurprisingly, varied according to where they were stationed and over time. The third section examines the broader cultural activities that claimed the attentions of certain diplomats, especially ones stationed in Mediterranean countries. Within this basic structure, Mori investigates a series of interlinking themes to do with change, such as the slow, partial transformation of the diplomat from courtier to bureaucrat, the impress on diplomats of shifting attitudes within British culture and society toward public service and national and social identity, and the ways in which diplomats were drawn into interaction with the developing “public sphere.” In several of these areas, the 1790s and the French Revolution marked a turning point. This was so, for example, in respect of attitudes toward Europe and Britain’s place in Europe. The early nineteenth century, in this context, saw diplomats becoming more judgmental, more convinced of British superiority and distinctiveness. In some ways, diplomats are very good vehicles for exploring changes such as this, precisely because their lives inevitably involved a degree of adaptation and even assimilation to deal with the new contexts in which they found themselves. Another implication of the book and its arguments is that Britain’s European connections remained of foremost importance throughout this period, despite growing imperial commitments. In this way, this book can be read as part of a recent trend toward reemphasizing the centrality of the European contexts to British history in this period. British diplomacy in 1830, however, remained rather less than “a professional bureaucracy” (211).

There was thus considerable diversity, both in the types of individuals attracted to diplomacy and in the roles that they came to play in their different postings. The personal interests of diplomats, as Mori notes, “took them in many directions” (183). She is here talking primarily of cultural interests, but the point might be applied more widely. Circumstance could also play a significant role. John Strange was free to pursue his wide-ranging intellectual interests in Venice, precisely because there was not much else for him to do there. As Strange put it on one occasion, “I consider myself as much a Planet as ever” (173). Given the diversities of experience and individual personalities, change across the diplomatic corps as a whole was necessarily slow and uneven, and it is one of the qualities of this book that Mori does not seek to impose too rigid an interpretative framework on her material. Mori argues, nevertheless, that it was not just personal interest that led some diplomats to cultivate cultural and intellectual interests, but rather this reflected how far diplomacy might offer the individual the opportunity to fashion a public identity in terms of a form of “cultural diplomacy.” This was not cultural diplomacy in the modern sense, in that it was not centrally organized or directed.

But diplomats did have unusual opportunities in this sphere, and in their activities they could play, Mori argues, a considerable role in shaping contemporary attitudes toward Europe and the wider world. Quite why people chose to become diplomats remains as much of a puzzle as when D. B. Horn (The British Diplomatic Service, 1689–1789 [Oxford, 1961], 85) noted that diplomacy tended to bring neither profit nor great recognition. Mori makes very clear the frequent difficulties and challenges encountered by diplomats and their wives. Several of the latter were evidently discomforted by the courtly culture that they encountered abroad. However, an absence of ceremony or protocol could cause equal unease, as Elizabeth and Anthony Merry found in Washington under President Jefferson. Diplomatic service was costly, which was partly a function of the boundaries between public and private remaining notably indistinct in a prebureaucratic era and partly a function of the onerous task of dealing with large numbers of grand tourists in search of introductions and hospitality. There was some chance of social advancement through service, although much continued to depend on connection and good fortune, as becomes clear in Mori’s discussion of the fortunes of the Werrys and Moriers in the early nineteenth century, two families with origins in trade. Francis Peter Werry, who was relatively unsuccessful, may have entered the profession “convinced that hard work and initiative would be rewarded by success.” “In this,” as Mori tersely notes, “he was disappointed” (48).

This is a book based on a great deal of research and considerable learning, and it deserves a wide readership. It opens up fascinating questions that go well beyond the traditional remit of diplomatic history. The mainly biographical approach yields many insights, and the book is engagingly written for the most part. The only cost that comes with the focus on personal narratives is in respect to the clarity of the argument at times and a somewhat fragmentary feel to some of the chapters. Brief introductions to each main section partly compensate for this.