Scholar-diplomats, protodiplomacy and the communication of history: Alice Stopford Green and Jean Jules Jusserand

The friendship between Alice Stopford Green (1847–1929) and Jean Jules Jusserand (1855–1932) can be traced across four decades, from the literary salons of Victorian London to the reconfiguring world of the 1920s. Grounded in their shared belief in the social and political purpose of History, their intellectual bond was embedded in similar progressive political and literary communities and networks bridging England, Ireland, France and America. Nevertheless, their gender, nationality, political affiliations and diplomatic imperatives set them on diverging trajectories. Jusserand’s path to becoming France’s ambassador in Washington (1903–1924) took a formal route through the Quai d’Orsay. In contrast, Stopford Green advanced through informal diplomatic channels, seeking to use her history-writing for the purposes of protodiplomacy on behalf of an Irish nation-state in waiting. By tracing the contours of this scholarly and diplomatic connection, a picture emerges of the role of History in the making of history.