Off to Paris tomorrow to give a presentation to a distinguished group of people about Diplomacy.

Meandering around the Internet for inspiration I started looking at the fine story of one of the greatest ever Ambassadors, Thomas Jefferson, who represented the newly emerging USA in Paris in the years leading up to the French Revolution. He returned home to even greater things, namely to be the third President of the USA.

Some wonderful material is to be found.

Including how Jefferson ordered a dead moose to be shipped from North America to Paris so that he could prove wrong annoying French experts who were claiming that the New World in its people, flora and fauna was a stunted, degenerate place. The moose was then displayed in all its (by then) somewhat moth-eaten glory in his Residence.

Here is some background by David Post.

Mr Post was so inspired by this story that he wrote a fine book about today’s emerging Internet as it might have been described by a brilliant person like Jefferson exploring in a very practical way the frontiers of the very latest scientific innovation.

I have just ordered it on Amazon.  

So you should do so too. 

Also fascinating to read about the diplomatic machinations of the time concerning whale oil, a product vital for keeping Parisian streets lit and so deterring crime.

Products change.

The machinations of world trade do not.

Update  Aargh. My first shot had an Amazon Link to the wrong Jefferson + Moose book. Now fixed. I hope.