[Podcast] Soft and hard power of Byzantine diplomacy

An interview with Prof. Jonathan Shepard

In January 2021, Diplo began a series of online discussions titled History of Diplomacy and Technology, led by Dr Jovan Kurbalija.

As part of the series, Kurbalija interviewed Prof. Jonathan Shepard, historian, and one of the leading scholars on the subject of Byzantine diplomacy, to find out the secret behind the Empire’s longevity. What were the tactics of Byzantine diplomacy? How did it last for over 1,000 years? Listen to the podcast to find out!

Prof. Shepard received his doctorate in 1973 from Oxford University and was a lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. He was co-author of The Emergence of Rus(London, 1996) with Simon Franklin, with whom he also edited Byzantine Diplomacy (Aldershot, 1992). Edited volumes include The Expansion of Orthodox Europe (Aldershot, 2007) and The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, 2008). Has published over 100 articles on subjects ranging from Anglo-Saxon settlements on the Black Sea to the First Crusade; In 2011 he published a collection of these in Emergent Elites and Byzantium in the Balkans and East-Central Europe.