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After writing his Second Letter to the Thessalonians—with the hope of correcting their misinterpretations of his teaching—Paul himself does not tell what has happened in Thessalonica. However, Paul himself says that fourteen years after this first visit to Jerusalem, he returned as a Christian after establishing Christianity in Greece. This chapter argues that Paul made it perfectly clear that he was not an emissary of Jerusalem or a subordinate to Peter. Luke was aware that Barnabas was not Paul's companion on the ‘second journey’. Paul and Barnabas came to the Jerusalem conference as delegates of the church of Antioch. Paul however, insisted that he went up to Jerusalem on account of a revelation. The chapter also discusses Paul's and James' views on the circumcision of the Gentiles.

This chapter explains how heavy sea can also serve as a metaphor for Morris's complex private life in Paris, a tangle of money, politics, and romance. Admiring rumors of his success in finance, gallantry, and constitution-making had preceded him. The key to the Parisian beau monde was that at its core its scale was intimate and manageable, a place where all the leading figures—political, cultural, and entrepreneurial—were able to know each other without difficulty. Morris's considerable reputation as a statesman, lawyer, and financial expert was well known in the higher levels of Paris society and the government. Close dealings with French emissaries in Philadelphia as a member of the Continental Congress and his important post in the Office of Finance had put him in touch with a number of the city's leading characters.

The main protagonists of this book, the rabbinic emissaries dispatched from Palestine to raise funds for the Holy Land among the Jews of the diaspora, are the focus of this chapter. The chapter explores the conditions under which the emissaries undertook their missions, mechanisms developed to ensure trustworthiness and arbitrate conflicts, and the interaction between emissaries and Jewish communities outside Palestine. Livorno, Italy, serves as a case study. The chapter looks at the rabbinic emissary as a traveler and cultural intermediary, linking Jewish communities from different cultural backgrounds, relying in part on the travelogue of an eighteenth-century emissary and his account of his visit to Tunisia.

This chapter focuses on the forceful removal of two southern emissaries—James M. Mason and John Slidell—from the British mail packet HMS Trent by the commander of the USS San Jacinto, Captain Charles Wilkes. The incident threatened an Anglo-American war that would all but assure the Confederacy's independence. Mason and Slidell had sought to deal a lethal blow to the Union by convincing the British and French to disavow the blockade and extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. They could not have known, however, how close they came to achieving this objective before reaching Europe. If anyone could scuttle Mason and Slidell's mission in Europe, it was Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy, a crusty sixty-two-year-old explorer and scientist who had recently assumed command of the San Jacinto.

This chapter examines the “challenges, contradictions, and political nature” of African American sports emissaries during the early Cold War era. Recognizing the impact that Soviet declarations of American mistreatment of blacks were having on global public opinion about the United States, government officials planned goodwill trips that provided opportunities for people around the world to meet successful African Americans whose abilities on the playing field and loyalty to the nation represented a positive counterweight to the claims being posited by adversaries of the United States. The chapter devotes special attention to athletes' response to the program, most of whom were initially unaware of the underlying political purpose of their trips. There was an unintended politicizing effect for the athletes, as many used the forum to distance themselves from domestic policies, push for civil rights, and find common cause with subjugated peoples around the world. An increased unwillingness for citizen diplomats to “stay on message” resulted in the programs being scaled back in the late 1960s.

Chapter 4 uncovers the premiership of Siti Wan Kembang, the ruler of the state of Kelantan in the early seventeenth century. Her rise to power and successful reign provides an illustrative sample of the varied roles Muslim women played in the Islamization of the Malays. In addition to powerful women such as Siti Wan Kembang, this chapter also delves into the creative missionizing methods and links formed by Muslim scholars and emissaries. Networks of Islamic scholars in Malaysia who studied in Patani, the Hijaz, Cairo, and Hadramaut and the movement of Muslims along the hajj routes aided in the diffusion of Islam among the locals in mosques, suraus (prayer) places, and other religious institutions. Among the scholars prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was Tok Pulau Manis. Drawing from the flourishing literary world of kingdoms in Pasai and Perlak, these scholars introduced the Jawi script into Malaysia, which soon replaced the old Pallava script from India. Finally, the chapter highlights the part played by foreigners such as the Chinese Muslims in Malaysia, who acted as emissaries of non-Muslim kingdoms cum missionaries of Islam. The efforts of Admiral Cheng Ho will be analyzed here, most notably the impact of his diplomatic trips in furthering the preaching of Islam in Melaka and other Malay states.