Diplomatic Bodies

Abstract

This chapter centres Anglo-Afghan diplomatic relations around the body. It explores its ubiquity in the Legation’s everyday routines, excavating the diplomatic body from between the lines of diplomatic reporting and recording. Colonial officers introduced the Raj’s notions of physicality and racial difference into their relations with Afghan representatives and statesmen. Diplomats gendered and infantilised, bestialised and Orientalised Afghan bodies. The Legation hospital expanded into Afghanistan’s medical market, and the Legation transferred colonialism’s bodily cultures to Kabul. Formulae developed ‘at home’, in India and during the historical Anglo-Afghan encounter, which shaped, trained and maintained the colonisers’ bodies and civilised the colonised, ensured that Afghanistan continued to be framed in colonial frameworks.