Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation
Description
When they were abroad, diplomats in seventeenth-century Europe used print to promote themselves and influence local debates. Not all ceased publishing when they returned home. This paper will explore how ambassadors in this period used memoirs to recount their time abroad. In particular, it will focus on William Temple, who became one of the first Englishmen to do this in his Memoirs of What Past in Christendom (1691). This book, which was first published ten years after Temple had retired, went on to become a continental bestseller. By the end of 1693, it had been reprinted on four further occasions in English, and it had also been translated into Dutch and French. Yet, the Memoirs also inspired another diplomat to attack Temple in a pamphlet over how he had been portrayed. Through printed memoirs, diplomats could continue to debate the events that they had shaped, decades after they had occurred.