Notwithstanding two decades of revisionist work on the statecraft and court culture of early modern England and Europe, diplomatic history has been remarkably resistant to the cultural turn. While study of modern international relations is moving fast into the later twentieth century, its early modern counterpart remains dominated by a late nineteenth-century paradigm that assumes the conception and conduct of diplomacy on the part of rational and secular actors who regarded themselves as the agents of “national” states. According to this vision, Tudor monarchs and their servants were responsible, as the introduction of this book puts it, “for setting down the fundamental principles of `modern' English foreign policy, and for building up England's maritime strength, which became the basis of Britain's rise as a world power” (1). Such protoimperial and balance-of-power priorities have no place in this book. Religion and dynasticism are instead restored to their central places in Tudor policy.

The contributors are, for the most part, established scholars whose work has enhanced our understanding of Tudor politics and policy making. Two types of essay appear in the volume: broad reinterpretations of international relations over broad swaths of the sixteenth century and shorter case studies highlighting key individuals or trends. All of these scholars are to be commended for departing from the Calendars of State Papers Foreign in favor of private papers and hitherto underutilized European archives where much new material can be found to illustrate and revise our understanding of Tudor international relations. Three of the essays are resolutely European in focus. Pauline Croft offers a thoughtful and balanced overview of Anglo-Spanish relations in the reign of Elizabeth that gives long overdue weight to complex European dimensions of Spanish policy. Glenn Richardson gives as much attention to Francis I as to Henry VIII. Rory McEntegart recapitulates Henry VIII's theological and diplomatic dealings with the League of Schmalkalden, and despite the fact much of this material is drawn from his monograph on the same subject, the reproduction of his case in a condensed form makes it much more accessible to students. The same could be said for Paul Hammer's rehabilitation of the much-maligned Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, as a military and diplomatic counselor. McEntegart's piece is particularly interesting for the attention it gives to Henry VIII's theological scruples.

Religion, or so we are told, lay at the heart of English international relations after 1534. David Potter's survey of mid-Tudor diplomacy focuses on the time-honored subjects of practice and personnel but suggests that the anti-Catholic print culture of the period was an increasingly important public relations tool of the crown. David Trim presents Gloriana as a sovereign committed to securing freedom of conscience for her coreligionists in Europe and protecting them from oppression by repeated attempts to form an alliance against Catholic powers. The diplomatic ramifications of court culture, however, get less attention than one would expect. While Richardson and Susan Doran demonstrate that the rituals of diplomatic intercourse, whether on the Field of the Cloth of Gold or in the treatment of ambassadors, constituted manifestations of a chivalric and courtly ethos to which all monarchs subscribed, I would have liked to have seen some analysis of these cultural constructs in the conduct of diplomacy: how, in short, these concepts of honor and status might or might not have worked in international relations. Faction receives more sustained treatment from Richardson, Trim, Doran, and Hammer, who illustrate the roles played by factions and favorites in international relations through their connections at foreign courts. Gender gets short shrift. The blurb on the back cover tells us that the contributors to this volume have taken account of recent developments in gender history, but, with the exception of Potter's claim that the bedchamber diplomacy of Henry VIII could not be exercised by his daughter, Mary, on account of her sex, the book contains almost nothing on the topic.

This book was produced in the hopes of reviving academic interest in an old and neglected topic by opening new areas of debate and discussion on the subject. To what extent this takes place depends on the willingness of Tudor historians to reconfigure their perceptions of international relations by following in the footsteps of their Stuart colleagues. Caroline Hibbard began to outline the connections between religion, courtiership, and diplomacy in Charles I and the Popish Plot (1983). Instructors should nevertheless welcome Tudor England and Its Neighbours as a concise revisionist volume of short essays that will help their students to place English international relations into early modern context.