With its emphasis on early modern emissaries and their role in England's expansionary ventures and cross-cultural encounters across the globe, this collection of essays takes the messenger figure as a focal point for the discussion of transnational exchange and intercourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

With its focus on early modern emissaries and their role in England's expansionary ventures and cross-cultural encounters across the globe, this collection takes up the literary and cultural productions and representations of ambassadors, factors, traders, translators, spies, middlemen, merchants, missionaries, and other agents, who served as complex conduits for the global transport of goods, religious ideologies, and socio-cultural practices throughout the early modern period.

'... Charry and Shahani's collection charts new ways of thinking about the legal, technological, linguistic, and mercantile frameworks that defined relations between states and peoples in what we might think of as the first wave of globalization.' Clio '... the individual essays are generally of high quality and contain much interesting material... [A] valuable contribution to the current interest in cultural exchange and diversity.' Notes and Queries