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Wounded pride and petty jealousies: private lives and public diplomacy in Second World War Cairo

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posted on 2023-06-09, 18:12 authored by Martin FrancisMartin Francis
This chapter offers a case study of the affective registers of British imperial policy during the Second World War. It examines how the conduct of war and diplomacy by Sir Miles Lampson, British Ambassador in Cairo, was shaped by his emotional dispositions, in particular his domestic obligations and attachments, his insecure pride, and his susceptibility to jealousy and resentment. It locates Lampson’s personal negotiation between private feeling and public action in the broader context of the heightened emotional registers of wartime Egypt, where it became virtually impossible to quarantine intimate desires, especially romantic and sexual longings, within the private sphere. More critically, it also demonstrates how broader anxieties about Britain’s waning global hegemony during the Second World War were manifested in the various forms of psychological projection, displacement and compulsion exhibited by Lampson, and also in the Ambassador’s recourse in his statecraft to gossip and rumour.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Publisher

Proceedings of the British Academy, OUP

Volume

227

Pages

288.0

Book title

Total war: an emotional history

Place of publication

Kettering

ISBN

9780197266663

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Lucy Noakes, Claudia Siebrecht, Claire Langhamer

Legacy Posted Date

2019-06-24

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2019-06-24

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