ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the importance of images of nations in international relations. The short review of early image cultivation by states makes no claim to completeness but is meant merely to underscore that image cultivation did not begin with the age of the mass media. Attempts to influence the image of nations in a plainly propagandistic way can also be found in early human history, although it is difficult to distinguish between attempts to influence one's own population and attempts to manipulate the image abroad. Public relations for France reached a high point during the reign of Louis XIV. Louis XIV, the Sun King, reigned for 72 years and was a master of image construction. According to Burke, the foreign reactions to Louis XIV's image-building presentations varied. France had practical reasons for image cultivation in, for example, the Ottoman Empire because both had a common enemy, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
