This is the first book-length study of the role that friendship plays in diplomacy and international politics. Through an examination of a vast amount of sources ranging from diplomatic letters and bilateral treaties, to poems and philosophical treatises, it analyses how friendship has been talked about and practised in pre-modern political orders and modern systems of international relations.

The study highlights how instrumental friendship was for describing and legitimising a range of political and legal engagements with foreign countries and nations. It emphasises contractual and political aspects in diplomatic friendship based on the idea of utility. It is these functions of the concept that help the world stick together when collective institutions are either embryonic or no more.

Reviews

'This investigation is more thorough and far more original than anything else ever written about friendship in diplomacy or, for that matter, in public life.'
Nick Onuf, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Florida International University

'This book reconstructs the fascinating history of a neglected concept, and should be read by anyone interested in the history of international thought.'
Jens Bartelson, Professor of Political Science at Lund University

'A richly detailed, closely argued history of the concept from antiquity to the emergence of the modern era. Roshchin makes a convincing case that a genealogy of this alternative conception of friendship is germane to contemporary debates among International Relations scholars and intellectual historians alike.'
Martin J. Burke, The City University of New York and Executive Co-editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas

Introduction
1 The ambivalence of ancient friendship
2 Early modern friendship - politics and law
3 The ethics of friendship in early European diplomacy
4 Turning friendship into a moral prescription: conceptual change in modernity
5 The unknown friendship of modern international orders
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Author

Evgeny Roshchin is Dean of the Department of Comparative Political Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), St Petersburg