ABSTRACT
As the practices of fifteenth-century Italy gradually spread to the rest of Europe, the transitions took place patchily both in space and time, but by the early eighteenth century, most of the machinery of modern diplomacy was in place. The emergence of the resident ambassador to become the principal operator in the system has been discussed. Developments in five other areas also deserve attention: payment and recruitment, precedence and procedure, the evolution of diplomatic theory, the first appearance of foreign ministries and the emergence of the peacetime conference.
