The U.S. Diplomacy Center recently acquired a collection of fascinating historical objects from the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Overseas Citizens Services (CA/OCS). Included in the collection are log books, card boxes, cables, and a seal press which are vivid representations of consular work in the early to mid 20th century. Representing different countries and different decades, the objects remind us that despite technological and political changes over the years the mission of Consular Affairs has remained largely the same: to protect the lives and interests of U.S.

The Book of African Records is a project that is researching African records. These records, dating back to the times when records began, are to be published annually, with the first edition expected by the researchers to come out before the end of 2014.

From a brief online search, I gather the United States sent a string of chargéd’affaires to the Republic of Texas. Did the Republic of Texas ever send an ambassador to Washington? Was there ever an embassy?

I like to call it public diplomacy, as it includes culture, media, education, economic engagement, including almost every important gamut that we have. I hope we can at the end say that India is Indonesia’s partner of choice.

Rep. Mac Thornberry wants a piece of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 to fall down. So the Republican congressman from Clarendon is the co-sponsor of a bill that would flick into Cold War history a provision prohibiting the State Department from disseminating its overseas propaganda here in the States.

How would you define PD?
Any communications strategy, from advertising to propaganda to social media to whatever you want to call it, plays second to reality -- actions really do speak louder than words

Unlike Augustan Rome, the Song Dynasty that inspired Qingming Shanghe Tu exerted a different kind of power.... Its entrepreneurs and scholars invented technologies still in use today, technologies that enabled widespread education, encouraged trade and travel, inspired artistic excellence and not only tolerated but encouraged diversity and openness.

Timothy H. Parsons in his book, The Rule of Empires, describes the Romans as “deft practitioners of soft power.” Rome preferred to rule the conquered and the potentially hostile through “semiautonomous client kings which the Senate euphemistically termed ‘friends of the Roman people.’