Diplomatic Emotions: International Relations as Gendered Acts of Power

This chapter explores diplomatic emotions, by which I mean a wide range of affective and emotional behaviours performed in ceremonies, rituals, spaces and texts associated with diplomatic action – in this case, generally high-level political activity. Such behaviours were written into both publicly visible and closed-circulation forms of diplomatic documentation such as letters, treatises and peace agreements, and performed through bodily gesture and actions. These emotions included both staged performances and their lived experiences, both as consequences of the former but also as disruptive, unexpected emotional and affective expression. I explore a range of methodologies by which we can interpret diplomatic emotions and assess how contemporaries understood their influence on forms of power. This chapter examines how we can think about what diplomatic emotions achieved in particular analytical contexts of international relations, and within different kinds of diplomatic sources as they changed over the period 1100 to 1700.