Excerpt from A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, Vol. 2: The Establishment of Territorial Sovereignty But what is even more important to the international development of Europe is the fact that it was in the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy that Italian diplomacy was born, not as a mere technical art, but as an essential function of independent states exposed to the ambitions of coexistent political communities. It was from Italy, and in continuation of Italian policies, that Europe, as a whole, derived those conceptions of the State and those devices for its maintenance that have become classic in European statesmanship. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.