From Winston Churchill to David Cameron, British politicians have long boasted of the unlikely achievements of our small island.
But when American propagandists chose to demonstrate Britain's relative lack of stature after the Second World War by sending the Bahraini royal family a map comparing the British Isles and the United States "to the same scale", British mandarins were not amused.
In a series of letters published for the first time today, the India Office officials accuse the Americans of "belittling" Britain by sending the "offensive" map to Sheikh Khalifah, a member of the royal family and Superintendent of the Bahrain Police. They plan to confront their American counterparts to demand an explanation.
The map was sent as part of a pamphlet called This Is The USA, published by the US Office of War Information in an apparent attempt to win support for America in British-controlled areas of the Middle East. It showed that Britain would barely stretch from the tip of Florida to the top of South Carolina.
It has come to light as part of an £8.7 million project run by the British Library and the Qatar Foundation to digitise more than 500,000 pages from the archives of the India Office and the East India Company.
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