Originally, these privileges and immunities were granted on a bilateral, ad hoc basis, which led to misunderstandings and conflict, pressure on weaker states, and an inability for other states to judge which party was at fault. Various international agreements known as the Vienna Conventions codified the rules and agreements, providing standards and privileges to all states.

It is possible for the official's home country to waive immunity; this tends to happen only when the individual has committed a serious crime, unconnected with their diplomatic role (as opposed to, say, allegations of spying), or has witnessed such a crime. Alternatively, the home country may prosecute the individual. Many countries refuse to waive immunity as a matter of course; individuals have no authority to waive their own immunity (except perhaps in cases of defection).

During the evolution of the international justice, many wars were considered rebellions or unlawful by one or more combatant sides. In such cases, the servants of the "criminal" sovereign were often considered accomplices and their persons violated. In other circumstances, harbingers of inconsiderable demands were killed as a declaration of war. Herodotus records that when heralds of the Persian king Darius the Great demanded "earth and water" (i.e., symbols of submission) of various Greek cities, the Athenians threw them into a pit and the Spartans threw them down a well (suggesting they would find both earth and water at the bottom) (Hdt. 7.133).

A Roman envoy was urinated on as he was leaving the city of Tarentum. The oath of the envoy: "This stain will be washed away with blood!" was fulfilled during the Second Punic War. The arrest and ill-treatment of the envoy of Raja Raja Chola by the Chera King led to the Kandalur War.

Pope Gelasius I was the first ever recorded pope to historically enjoy diplomatic immunity, as it is noted in his letter Duo sunt to emperor Anastasius.

In Islamic tradition, a messenger should not be harmed, even if coming from an arch-enemy and bearing a highly provocative or offensive message. A hadith attributes this sunnah to the time when Musaylimah sent to the Prophet Muhammad messengers who proclaimed Musaylimah be a Prophet of Allah and the co-equal of Muhammad himself.

As diplomats by definition enter the country under safe-conduct, violating them is normally viewed as a great breach of honour, although there have been a number of cases where diplomats have been killed. Genghis Khan and the Mongols were well-known for strongly insisting on the rights of diplomats, and they would often take terrifying vengeance against any state that violated these rights. The Mongols would often raze entire cities to the ground in retaliation for the execution of their ambassadors, and invaded and destroyed the Khwarezmid Empire after their ambassadors had been mistreated.

In 1538, King Francis I of France threatened Edmund Bonner—Henry VIII's Ambassador to the French court and later Bishop—with a hundred strokes of the halberd as punishment for Bonner's "insolent behaviour". Though in the event the punishment was not actually inflicted, the incident clearly indicates that European monarchs at the time did not consider foreign ambassadors to be immune from punishment.

The British Parliament first guaranteed diplomatic immunity to foreign ambassadors in 1709, after Count Andrey Matveyev, a Russian resident in London, had been subjected by British bailiffs to verbal and physical abuse.

Modern diplomatic immunity evolved parallel to the development of modern diplomacy. In the seventeenth century, European diplomats realized that protection from prosecution was essential to doing their jobs and a set of rules evolved guaranteeing the rights of diplomats. These were still confined to Western Europe, and were closely tied to the prerogatives of nobility. Thus an emissary to the Ottoman Empire could expect to be arrested and imprisoned upon the outbreak of hostilities between their state and the empire. The French Revolution also disrupted this system as the revolutionary state and Napoleon imprisoned a number of diplomats accused of working against France. More recently, the Iran hostage crisis is universally considered a violation of diplomatic immunity (although the hostage takers did not officially represent the state, host countries have an obligation to protect diplomatic property and personnel). On the other hand, in the Second World War, diplomatic immunity was upheld and the embassies of the belligerents evacuated through neutral countries.