Ambassador (pronounced am-bas-uh-dawr)
(1) A
diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to
another as its resident representative (ambassador extraordinary and
plenipotentiary).
(2) A
diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by a government to represent it on
a temporary mission, as for negotiating a treaty.
(3) A
diplomatic official serving as permanent head of a country's mission to the
United Nations or some other international organization.
(4) An
authorized messenger or representative.
(5) A term
for a corporate representative, often the public face(s) of the company, mush favoured
by fashion houses etc.
1325-1375:
From the Middle English ambassadore, from the Anglo-Norman ambassadeur & ambassateur,
from the Old Italian ambassatore (ambassador in the dialectal Italian), from the Old Occitan
ambaisador (ambassador), a derivative of ambaissa (service, mission, errand),
from the Medieval Latin ambasiator, from the andbahti (service, function), from
the Proto-Germanic ambahtiją (service, office), a derivative of the Proto-Germanic
ambahtaz (servant), from the Gaulish ambaxtos (servant) which was the source
also of the Classical Latin ambactus (vassal, servant, dependent). The early Proto-Celtic ambaxtos (servant), was
from the primitive Indo-European ambhi (drive around), from ambi- (around) + ag- (to
drive). The adjective ambassadorial
(of or belonging to an ambassador) dates from 1759.
The
spellings ambassador and embassador were used indiscriminately until the
nineteenth century, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) curiously continuing,
well into the twentieth century, to insist the later was the preferred form in
US English long after it had there been abandoned everywhere except in the halls of the State Department. In diplomatic use, the US government had an
interesting history of nomenclature, neither sending nor accrediting foreign ambassadors,
having only “ministers”. The reason for
this lies in the origins of the United States as a revolutionary state freeing
itself from monarchical tyranny; it thus insisted only on ministers who
represented states, not ambassadors who historically were the personal emissaries
of sovereigns. Functionally there was no
difference and not infrequently, in in casual use ministers were styled as
ambassadors with neither offence or declaration of war following and, having
made the political point for a century, after 1893, every minister became
instead an ambassador.
Margaret Qualley (b 1994), Venice Film Festival, August 2019, Brand Ambassador for French fashion house Chanel.
Diplomatic
ranks since 1961
Diplomatic
rank is the system of professional and social rank used in the world of
diplomacy and international relations. A diplomat's rank determines many
ceremonial details, such as the order of precedence at official processions, the seat at the table at state dinners, the person to whom diplomatic credentials
should be presented and the title by which they should be addressed.
The
current system of diplomatic ranks was established by the Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Relations (1961) and the modern ranks are a simplified version of the more elaborate system established by the Congress of
Vienna (1814-1815). There are now three senior ranks, two of which remain in use:
Ambassador. An ambassador is a head
of mission who is accredited to the receiving country's head of state. They
head a diplomatic mission known as an embassy, which is usually headquartered
in a chancery in the receiving state's capital, often clustered with others is
what’s often styled a “diplomatic quarter”, a feature of town-planning especially
associated with cities where physical security is a concern. A papal nuncio is considered to have ambassadorial
rank, and they preside over a nunciature and often, in predominantly Roman
Catholic countries are, ex officio, appointed
dean of the diplomatic corps. Between Commonwealth
countries, high commissioners are exchanged; they preside over a high commission
and enjoy the same diplomatic rank as an ambassador.
Minister. A Minister is a head of
mission who is accredited to the receiving country's head of state. A Minister
heads a legation rather than an embassy. However, the last legations were
upgraded to embassies in the late 1960s, and the rank of Minister is now
obsolete. An envoy or an internuncio was
also considered to have the rank of Minister; they’re now granted status ad-hoc
but tend to be regarded as being on the level of consular appointments.
None of
this should be confused with the long and tangled history of the resident
minister, appointments sometimes political, sometimes diplomatic and sometime
administrative. At different times and
in different places, it’s meant different things, used essentially to mean
whatever the immediate situation demanded and, being outside any formal rules
or conventions of diplomacy, flexibility was possible.
A chargé d'affaires en pied (usually styled as chargé d'affairs in everyday use) is a
permanent head of mission, accredited by his country's foreign minister
to the receiving nation's foreign minister, in cases where the two governments
have not reached an agreement to exchange ambassadors. A chargé d'affaires ad interim is a diplomat
who temporarily heads a diplomatic mission in the absence of an ambassador.
A variety of titles exist beneath the formal three such as counsellor, first secretary, second secretary, third secretary, attaché and assistant attaché. The actual roles discharged vary, indeed, some of these jobs are actually covers for spies or other political operatives and, just as ambassadorships are used often as a rewards for helpful services (such as large campaign donations) or as a temptingly lucrative sinecure to get a potential rival out of the country, the lower appointments have been a dumping ground for troublesome public servants when, for whatever reason, they can’t be sacked. The diplomatic appointment also determines the description of the architecture. An ambassador works from (and usually lives in) an embassy where other diplomats (except Commonwealth high commissioners who operate from high commissions) tend to be housed in consulates. Like ambassador and embassador, the terms ambassy and embassy used to be interchangeable but in each case one prevailed and the other went extinct. Etymology has no explanation for either case except it was just a pattern of use which emerged and that’s how English evolves.
The word embassy evolved in another way. It now, institutionally and architecturally, refers to something permanent but, until the late nineteenth century was more often a temporary mission and described a delegation which would return home when its business concluded. The history is reflected in some terms still used in diplomacy such as "Head of Mission".
Uncle Otto and nephew Eric
Uncle Otto, saluting, Paris 1940.
Because the Third Reich never concluded a peace treaty with Vichy France, diplomatic recognition was not possible under international law so no ambassador was accredited. However, there was a de-facto ambassador, Hitler appointing Otto Abetz (1903-1958) to the German Embassy in Paris in November 1940, a post he held until July 1944 when diplomatic conditions changed a bit. As the letters patent made clear, he acted with the full ambassadorial powers. In July 1949 a French court handed Abetz a twenty-year sentence for crimes against humanity; released in 1954, he died in 1958 in a traffic accident on the Cologne-Ruhr autobahn.
Nephew Eric, taking tea, Canberra 2018.
Otto Abetz was the great uncle of Eric Abetz (b 1958 who between 1994-2022, served as a senator (Liberal Party, Tasmania) in the Australian parliament. Because of the coincidence of one being born in the same year death visited the other, there was speculation about the transmigration of uncle Otto’s soul to nephew Eric. Spiritualists however generally agree this would have been impossible because the senator was born on 25 January 1958, his old Nazi relative living until 5 May the same year. Transmigration was known also as metempsychosis and was an idea most associated in the West with pre-Ancient (archaic) Greece but which may (perhaps concurrently) have origins in Egypt and India.
The American Motors Corporation (AMC) Ambassador was produced in eight generations between 1957-1974 although the name had since 1927 been used by a company which would become part of the ultimately doomed AMC conglomerate. Emblematic of AMC's unsuccessful attempt to compete with Detroit's big three (General Motors, Chrysler & Ford), the Ambassador was in those years offered variously as an intermediate and full-sized car and this unfortunately culminated it's largest ever iteration being sold as the first oil crisis struck in 1973; the universe shifted and the Ambassador was axed in little more than year. One footnote in the story is that in 1968, AMC's advertising made much of the Ambassador being the only car in the world, except those from Rolls-Royce, which fitted air-conditioning as standard equipment. That was a bit of a fudge in that at the time a number of European manufacturers fitted air-conditioning (optional in Europe) to all of at least some of the models they shipped to the US but technically, AMC was correct.
Lindsay Logan, nueva embajadora de Allbirds (the new Allbirds ambassador), possibly on a Wednesday.
In 2022, Allbirds appointed Lindsay Lohan as an ambassador for its "Unexpected Athlete" campaign, focusing on her for the new limited edition of its most successful running shoe to date, the Tree Flyer. The promotional video issued for the announcement was nicely scripted, beginning with Ms Lohan’s perhaps superfluous admission that as an ambassador for running “I am a little unexpected" before working in a few references to her career in film (showing again a rare sense of comedic timing), fondness for peanut butter cookies and the odd social media faux-pas, many of which she's over the years embraced. The feature shoe is the "Lux Pink" which includes no plastics. As a well-known car driver and frequent flyer who has for years lived in an air-conditioned cocoon in Dubai, it’s not clear how far up the chart of conspicuous consumption Ms Lohan has stamped her environmental footprint but US-based footwear and apparel company Allbirds claims its design, production & distribution processes are designed to make its products as eco-friendly as possible. It is a certified “B Corporation”, a system of private certification of for-profit companies of their "social and environmental performance" conferred by B Lab, a non-profit organization which aims to provide consumers with a reliable way to distinguish the genuinely environmentally active from those which cynically “greenwash”.
Lindsay Lohan, Allbirds “Unexpected Athlete Ambassador”.
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