ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the essential features of early modern diplomatic culture, and heightens the case of Philip II, whose own personality and management style intensified the dysfunction. It considers the role of information in early modern statecraft and also explains the definition of political information. 'Information overload' and the anxiety, generates a function of the idiosyncrasies of the Habsburg system and Philip's personality. Geoffrey Parkers insightful examination of Philip II's informational challenges indicates the potential for approach to study in the early modern period. Within the reasonably confined geopolitical space of the Italian peninsula there was no tyranny of distance at work, which was an inescapable structural reality of Philip's global empire. The chapter explains the widespread expressions of excitement married to frustration in a broad array of human endeavours in early modern Europe.
