MIRIAM JOYCE, Kuwait, 1945–1996: An Anglo-American Perspective (London: Frank Cass, 1998). Pp. 205. $52.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Abstract

Seeing a country through the eyes of diplomats is to see it both intimately and from a distance. Diplomatic messages are full of gossip: who is close to who, what various characters are like, how they look, what they wear—in this book, even how they eat. At the same time, diplomats are odd people, plucked from their home cultures, yet representing them in alien and perhaps alienating climes. A conviction that home is best might not be realized consciously, but it is there, permeating judgments about characters and incidents and shaping advice given to foreign offices at home and decisions about how to handle things on the spot. Coupled with the generally narrow view represented in routine reports—how much can one person see, after all, and how well can most of those who come for only a few years interpret the range of meanings of what they see?—an account that rests heavily on a limited range of diplomatic sources may itself be two-dimensional, more anecdotal than reflective about what these various accounts might have to say to us today.