bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1994) — Spring 1994 // Printemps 1994, p. 42
FOREIGN SERVICE by John G. Kneale,
Captus Press, 1993, 223 pages $14.95
Reviewed by J.H. Taylor
As we plan to celebrate the centenary of the Trade Commissioner Service, John Kneale, a Fellow of the Foreign Service Institute, has published this excellent account of the life and work of an experienced trade officer, based on his postings in Algiers, Mexico City, Tehran, Quito and New York, as well as on assignments in headquarters. His book is part memoir, part travelogue, part instruction manual on how the foreign service actually works, and part critique of its operations. The writing is good. Much of the material might well have lent itself to other kinds of development. The author is one of those fortunate foreigners who manage to get under the surface of the countries in which they have lived. He succeeds in conveying a lively sense of what it was like to live, for example, in Algeria soon after independence or in Iran during the hostage crisis. He might, had he taken a different tack, have produced a travel book reminiscent of Jan Morris or Paul Theroux, or — who knows? — perhaps even a novel.
Instead, John Kneale has opted for a more didactic purpose, preferring to combine material about his life in the countries in which he served with material about his work and the organization for which he was working. This may have sharpened his focus by narrowing it. The stitching together of the different themes has none the less been carefully done. The result will be recognized by the author’s foreign service readers as an accurate description of the work they do and how they go about doing it. The chapter on Mexico, for example, includes sections on such aspects of foreign service life as medicals, culture shock, housing and entertaining; as well as passages that describe the organization of a representative embassy and the classic work of a trade officer — in this instance, illustrated by an illuminating story of the competition between French and Canadian bidders to supply the Mexico City subway. Each chapter dealing with a particular post contains something about the nature of the trade officer’s work there, but the author has taken the trouble to go beyond his own work in order to familiarize himself with the work of others, so that there are useful descriptions of, for example, consular work and public diplomacy as well. These various passages give a good sense of how the different facets of representing Canada abroad relate to each other, and of the responsibility of the head of post to ensure that the entire embassy works together coherently.
The book conveys as well a sense of why — depending on one’s tastes and inclinations — the foreign service life can be deeply satisfying and at times exhilarating, albeit at a price in risks, personal difficulties and disadvantages Canadians at home do not face. Kneale’s picture is balanced. He punctures some of the myths about foreign service that the laziest among the Press continue to circulate as a substitute for troubling themselves to get the facts. Sometimes he paints the darker side of the life with dramatic immediacy. The chapter on Tehran during the revolution is particularly memorable from this point of view. Along with portraits of the city in autumn and winter almost lyrical in tone, the author reports instances of blood-chilling menace and violence. These gain in impact from the fact that they are transcribed from Kneale’s diary with a minimum of editing. This is the only chapter of the book presented as a diary. It was a sound editorial decision: the tensions of that unique experience are tellingly communicated by this form of presentation.
The dark side is not overdone, however. Plainly, John Kneale is not a man for whom “abroad is Hell and all foreigners are bloody”. It would be easy enough for any reader to understand why he and others have found foreign service life well worth its disadvantages. He does not spare the foreign service its faults. Those who know it will not be surprised by much of his criticism. Whether they agree with John Kneale or not, they will recognize, familiar as a Pearson cafeteria sandwich, that large, complex and rather unusual organization, eternally at odds with its own imperfections. But even at his most acerbic, the author emerges as a happy warrior who has done justice to his subject.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1994) — Spring 1994 // Printemps 1994, p. 42. Read the rest of this issue →
