This book explores diplomacy and ritual practice at a moment of new departures and change in both early modern Europe and Russia.

Jan Hennings is Associate Professor of History at Central European University, Budapest.

Notes on transliteration, spelling, and dates; List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Barbarous ceremonies? Russia's places in early modern diplomacy; 2. Facts and fictions: the organisation of diplomatic practice; 3. Through the prism of ritual: Anglo-Russian encounters in the seventeenth century; 4. Stage and audience: the Grand Embassy to Vienna (1698) and Peter I's visit to Paris (1717); 5. From insult to imperator: changes and continuities in the reign of Peter I; Conclusion; Bibliography.