Diplomacy

Bryan G. Behrenshausen

Avalon Hill's Diplomacy is a military strategy board game set in pre-World War I Europe. It not only underscores but also demands the shrewd and often deceitful making and breaking of alliances between would-be superpowers vying for domination of the continent. Allan Calhamer developed Diplomacy throughout the 1950s while a student of 19th-century European history, political geography, and law at both Harvard University and Harvard Law School. The game achieved its final form in 1958 and saw mass production in 1960. In a 1974 essay written for Games & Puzzles , Calhamer recalls drawing inspiration for his game from an article in Life magazine contending that a world government constituted by multiple Great Powers of relatively equal strength would provide a system of checks and balances adequate for maintaining world peace and allaying geopolitical aggression. “Regardless ...

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