Australia’s relationship with China is one of its most difficult and challenging: it constitutes a crucial test of the success of Australia’s ability to engage with the region in a way which gives full expression to its energy, initiative and unique identity. While relations have continued to be both cordial and mutually beneficial, and have matured considerably, two major developments in the post–Cold War era are likely to have an enduring impact on their long-term stability. At the international level, the end of ideological confrontation between the superpowers, and of the alliance system that buttressed it, refocused the political and economic attention of both China and Australia at the regional level. At that level, the most significant development, the emergence of China as a dominant economic and military power within a region that was itself shaping up as a financial and commercial powerhouse, opened up new windows of opportunity for Australia, while at the same time highlighting asymmetries in power between China and Australia, which had hitherto been disguised by a confluence of circumstances.

In its annual poll for 2010, the Lowy Institute for International Policy included public opinion data under the heading of the ‘Rudd government’s foreign policy report card’. Asked about its performance across a range of issues, those polled gave their highest mark for the Rudd government’s management of the alliance with the United States (7/10), but only 6/10 for the government’s response to the global economic crisis, a mere 5/10 for combating climate change, and a lowly 4/10 for dealing with Japanese whaling. It must have been slightly unnerving for the government that these issues were precisely those that Kevin Rudd had identified as clear-cut successes in the area of foreign policy. More broadly, the increasingly widespread perception that the Rudd government’s management of foreign policy was indifferent at best posed problems, because it was the one policy area in which Rudd himself could claim particular professional expertise. If the government was unable to point to a record of unequivocal successes in the Prime Minister’s own specialist domain, it raised questions about its capacity to deliver on other fronts as well.

Australia’s relationship with China in the period 2006–10 developed in a paradoxical manner. While the relationship grew deeper, became more broadly based and assumed unprecedented prominence for both countries, it also became exceedingly complicated, controversial and difficult to manage. During this period, China’s vital importance to Australia’s economy was further affirmed. China displaced Japan to become Australia’s largest trading partner and its biggest export market, a position that had been held by Japan for almost 40 years. Burgeoning trade ties with China not only shielded Australia from the global financial crisis that afflicted most of the Western economies from 2007 but also continued to underwrite Australia’s resources boom. During the years 2006 to 2007, the Coalition government led by John Howard continued its successful China diplomacy and strengthened the bilateral relationship, attaining a level and scope unmatched in any other period.

Key developments that began to affect international politics in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War – globalisation, humanitarian intervention at odds with previously unquestioned prerogatives of state sovereignty, and the development of multilateral institutions to manage emerging security and economic challenges – gained further momentum in the late 1990s. Paradoxically, the Australian–US relationship was both reaffirmed and tested in some very traditional ways over this period. The Howard government was elected in March 1996 with a pledge to ’reinvigorate’ that relationship, which it felt had been neglected by its Labor predecessors.

Diplomacy is a political performing art that informs and determines the decisions of other states and peoples. It shapes their perceptions and calculations, so that they do what we want them to do, because they come to see that doing so is in their own best interests. Sometimes diplomacy rearranges their appraisal of their strategic circumstances–and, when needed, the circumstances themselves. Ultimately, it aims to influence their policies and behavior through measures short of war. Diplomacy succeeds best when it embraces humility, and respects and preserves the dignity of those to whom it is applied. Most of what diplomats do is unseen, and it is relatively inexpensive. Diplomacy’s greatest triumphs tend to be preventing bad things from happening, but gaining credit for something that was avoided is difficult.

A long-standing rivalry, filled to the brim with warfare and mutual dislike – that is the picture provided in most investigations of Atheno-Boiotian relations. These often, however, employ a shorter chronological framework, rather than a diachronic overview of the Archaic and Classical periods (550–323 BCE), as will be given here. Moving through this time frame, the fluctuations in outlook between the two will be examined, illustrating that the notion of long-standing enmity with brief moments of friendship portray a faulty impression of this relationship. The wider perspective allows for a more complex picture to emerge. It also brings to the fore the issues of historiography, or how the silence or cursory treatment of events in our sources should not automatically be taken as evidence of periods of hostility, such as after the Persian Wars. This analysis of these periods betrays the intentions of our (literary) sources and, in turn, the assumptions of later scholars in following them. Instead, the neighbourly relationship was mostly one of peaceful co-existence, only occasionally disturbed by the threat of a common foe or through direct warfare.

This chapter examines how Britain used the Shakespeare Tercentenary to forge and strengthen the ties with its actual and desired allies, analysing a number of British overtures and the target countries’ responses. In these exchanges, Shakespeare was presented as a guarantor of shared cultural and ethical values upon which wartime collaborations could be built. Some countries, however, responded with polite rebuffs or used the occasion to present their own demands. On some occasions, Shakespeare-inspired conversations between allies could stray into controversial areas, as when the Belgian consul Charles Sarolea used his Stratford lecture to remind the British of their moral obligation to keep assisting the Belgian refugees. The most complex cases considered in this chapter are the Tercentenary contributions from Britain’s colonies, among them South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. Their tributes often express ambivalent feelings towards the ‘mother country’: simultaneously, a sense of kinship and a desire to forge their own identities in relation to but separate from Britain; an affiliation with Britain and a desire for self-determination. The 1916 Tercentenary provided a platform for addressing a range of controversial issues and contradictory feelings, ranging from imperial pride and loyalty to imperial exploitation and resentment.

After a destructive war of nearly three decades (1231–1259), in 1274 the Koryŏ royal family formed a marriage alliance with the imperial Chinggisid throne that lasted a century. At the same time as Koryŏ–Mongol relations influenced Koryŏ’s political, social, cultural, and economic history, Korean personnel also provided agricultural labor and produced essential goods for the Mongols, campaigned in Chinggisid armies, acted as political advisers, offered religious sustenance, served as intimate attendants in the imperial palace, and married into the empire’s elite families, including the ruling Chinggisid line. This chapter comprises three parts: first, a brief political narrative of Koryŏ’s experience of the Mongol empire; second, thematic discussions of the military, personnel, and cultural exchange; and finally, some concluding comments, including the ambiguous legacy of the Mongol period for Korea.

The dataset discussed in this chapter is coinage, specifically the first coinage minted in the Aegean Basin. The start of this chapter considers to what extent coinage was first used as either an economic or a political tool, and, therefore, whether any patterns in the dataset will reveal more about political or economic networks. In presenting continuities of the dataset using a network analytical model, this chapter illustrates how the spread of coinage across the Aegean from Ionian innovators is indicative of a pattern in the spread of technology. This pattern is juxtaposed with the distribution of amphoras pattern, indicating that there is a qualitatively similar economic pattern, albeit separated with a large time-lag. This pattern is a useful reminder that different types of economic network laid the foundations for one another, and that material evidence may not always be contemporary with the formation of networks.

The chapter examines Churchill’s role on the international stage and his summit diplomacy with Roosevelt and Stalin. Faced with the surprise collapse of France in 1940, he was forced to seek new partners, assiduously courting the United States while seizing the opportunity of an alliance with the Soviet Union. The result was that he had to juggle the conflicting demands of Roosevelt and Stalin, embarking on strenuous personal diplomacy in the face of declining British influence. The chapter reviews the key decisions of the major meetings before looking at their postwar legacy in Churchill’s attempts to advance European reconciliation and his ultimately unsuccessful bid to resume summitry with the Soviet Union.

Chapter 4 looks at Mendonça’s journey to Portugal and Spain, and the network he established. It examines his education in Braga, his appointment as an attorney of the Confraternity of Our Lady Star of the Negroes in Lisbon and Toledo and the alliances he formed with the New Christians in Lisbon, in particular the Mesquita family. Then it interrogates his association with Indigenous Americans in Toledo. It presents the period 1670–1681 in Lisbon as crucial for his compact with the Apostolic Notary in Lisbon, Gaspar Mesquita, and his connection with ‘the New Christian question’ in Lisbon and the Atlantic. Their search for freedom is examined in relation to the denial of enslaved Africans’ freedom. The unity of the regional confederation in West Central Africa shaped Mendonça’s engagement with the freedom of enslaved Africans in Angola, Brazil, Spain and Portugal. It also served as a springboard for his networking with the Indigenous people and New Christians in the Atlantic, Portugal and Spain. Engaging with this dialogue provides a better understanding of how those whose liberty had been denied sought to overcome this by allying with different constituencies in the Atlantic region.

Chapter 3 examines how the exile of the Ndongo royals to Salvador and Rio de Janeiro was aligned with power struggles in Luanda. The House of Ndongo was led by a generation that rejected the Portuguese alliance that its predecessors had endorsed. The new generation broke away from this alliance when Portugal was gaining independence from Spain. The chapter focuses on the royals’ lives in Brazil, on what they saw there of the treatment of enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, how their stay was shaped by African slave communities, Black Brotherhoods, and how these experiences shaped Mendonça’s discourse in the Vatican. It examines the case of runaway slaves and connects it with those of Quilombo dos Palmares. It looks at how this community forged a political and economic alliance with Cristovão de Burgos, a judge in the High Court of Salvador. Palmares provoked the governing authorities in Bahia to reconsider their strategy, which led them to send the royals to Rio. The authorities in Brazil feared that the exiled royals’ status could help fortify the enslaved fugitives’ community, which would endanger Portuguese economic interests.

Focusing on the deployment of Goryeo troops to China in 1354, this chapter begins by tracing contemporary developments within the Yuan, which shaped the broader geopolitical environment in which the Goryeo regime operated. It then examines the choices Wang Gi and his court made when confronted with the largest military mobilization in East Asia in decades. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what the Yuan dynasty’s southern campaign likely revealed to Wang Gi and his advisers about military and political dynamics within the Great Khan’s realm and what they meant for the Goryeo court. This chapter’s narrative details convey a sense of dynamics within the Great Khan’s regime, which in turn sheds light on the Goryeo–Yuan alliance and Wang Gi’s place in the world.

As a boy, what was Wang Gi's experience of the Mongol empire? How did he and the people around him understand the ties between his family and the Chinggisids, between the Goryeo and Yuan polities? Wang Gi left no memoir of his childhood, and detailed – in fact any – accounts of his first years are vanishingly rare. What follows is a reconstruction of some key structural elements that would shape Wang Gi’s life – his family’s relationship with the Chinggisid ruling house, the broad network of personal relationships between the Goryeo and Mongol courts, and the place of the Goryeo dynasty in the wider Mongol empire.

This chapter is organized into four sections. The first traces Zhu Yuanzhang’s rise, including his consolidation of power over regional polities and his military campaigns against the Yuan court. The second section examines Wang Gi’s relationship with the new master of China, and the third section explores Wang Gi’s ties to the Yuan court after its relocation to the steppe. The final section considers Wang Gi’s 1370 military strikes into Liaodong, a region strategically vital to the Yuan, Ming, and Goryeo courts, in a time of rapidly shifting alliances.