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This special issue highlights the interactions between diplomats and wider audiences in their host country during the seventeenth century. The dynamic and complex relationships between diplomats and foreign audiences in the early modern period have remained somewhat under the radar. While concepts such as "soft power", "cultural diplomacy", and "public diplomacy" have been developed by scholars of international relations in the twentieth century to describe and analyse twentieth-century realities, we argue that early modern historians can draw inspiration from these concepts to start answering the questions how, why, and when different European states and their representatives addressed foreign audiences abroad. Taking such an approach will expand our understanding of the strategies and tools diplomats had at their disposal to engage with different audiences. We conclude this approach has the potential to open new avenues of research into the history of symbolic communication, news, public opinion, as well as early modern international relations.

He is currently working for Arenberg Auctions (Brussels), an auction house specializing in old and rare books. Adam mainly publishes on the history of the book in the Southern Low Countries from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. He is the author of Vivre et imprimer dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (des origines à la réforme) (2 vols., Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

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This introductory article employs the Scottish Jesuit John Hay as a starting point for a wider exploration of the relationship between Jesuits and print, the theme of this special issue. Hay demonstrates how important print could be to a Jesuit’s self-worth and identity. In this, as contemporary catalogs of Jesuit publications attest, he was not alone, but he was a controversial outlier. Hay’s superiors prevented him from continuing a vociferous polemical exchange and appeared to guide him towards a more suitable subject: translations of missionary reports. Hay’s career in print points to the importance of geography and context in shaping Jesuit publications, and to the conflicts between individual authorial projects and institutional restraints. His example shows above all that the commonplace equation of Jesuits with print requires urgent historical investigation. The essays presented here seek to remedy this oversight by paying attention to Jesuits as authors, printers, and readers.