bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2004) — Fall/Winter 2004 // Automne/Hiver 2004, pp. 5–7
FROM TOKYO TO CAIRO Much has been written about Herbert Norman in the context of his contributions to our understanding of Japanese history and the extended anti-Communist witch hunt in the United States that eventually caused him to take his own life. However, beyond a colleague’s reminiscences (those of Arthur Kilgour in Roger Bowen’s 1984 edited volume, E.H. Norman) and his biographer’s assessment two years later (Innocence is Not Enough, by Bowen), surprisingly little has been written about Norman’s service as Canadian Ambassador to Egypt in 1956-57, given that much of his work in Cairo helped win the Nobel Peace Prize for his Secretary of State for External Affairs (and a future Prime Minister), Lester B. Pearson. By reviewing the diplomatic circumstances during Norman’s time as ambassador, exploring the connections between his reporting on Japan and Egypt, examining why so little work has been done on Norman’s invaluable diplomatic contributions during the Suez Crisis, and reflecting on the ways in which Herbert Norman himself has been studied and not studied (especially in Canada), we can learn important lessons about how history is written and not written.
CONVERSATIONS WITH NASSER. When Herbert Norman was reassigned to Egypt in the summer of 1956 from New Zealand — where some would say the Canadian government had earlier placed him in temporary diplomatic exile amidst the excesses of McCarthyism in the US and questions about Norman’s loyalty — it seemed to his political masters within the Department of External Affairs (DEA) that Cairo would be another safe yet perhaps more intellectually challenging posting for a person regarded as one of its most brilliant political analysts. Events soon proved their initial motivation mistaken. Intellectually challenging for one of the world’s foremost experts on Japanese political history it was; safe for Norman and the Canadian government it was not.
As portrayed in the 1998 FB documentary on Norman’s life and death entitled, “The Man Who Might Have Been,” a Canadian trade official had recently been murdered, the Suez Crisis was about to break, the appropriateness of Canadian involvement in a peacekeeping force proposed as a way of alleviating the crisis
– an involvement that the Canadian government was desperate to undertake for domestic and international political reasons
– was disputed by Egypt, and the excesses of McCarthyism — thought to be over — were not. Arriving in the Middle East in mid-1956, Norman found himself almost immediately thrust into the midst of an international and domestic crisis in Egypt over control of the Suez Canal. From late summer that year through to his death in the spring of 1957 he would be concerned
– to his detriment with regard to his personal health, fatigue, and coping abilities as it turned out — with little else. The more positive legacy of Norman’s Suez Crisis diplomacy – as gleaned through a series of dispatches he wrote about his interactions with the formidable Egyptian president, Gamel Abdel Nasser
– will be our focus here. Roger Bowen, Norman’s biographer, refers at length to these memos found in DEA file #50153-
40, Vol. 4, 1 May 1955-31 December 1956 and Vol. 5, 1 January 1957-15 April 1958 in recounting the events leading up to his subject’s death in Cairo in April 1957. But the links between Egypt and Japan evident in Norman’s reporting have been overlooked. Reading the first typescript labeled, “Cairo, September 3, 1956: Conversations with the President of Egypt,” our immediate observation is that language, concepts and analytical perspective Norman had earlier used in his classic 1940 text on Japanese political history — Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period – were carried over to his analysis of his encounters with Nasser.
NIHON ON THE NILE. The product of a bygone era when at least one ambassador insisted on typing his own reports complete with errors and strikeovers, this September 1956 dispatch — in which Norman reports on his presentation of credentials and a thirty-five minute exchange with President Nasser — finds Norman having led off the conversation by confessing his lack of expertise on Egyptian history. The academic historian in Norman nevertheless shines through as he recounts stressing the importance of history, expressing empathy with the situation of his host’s nation and winning the confidence (or so Norman earnestly believes) of his host by talking of Egypt’s “past and present problems.” As the interpreter and conveyor of Nasser’s words and ideas, Norman then reviews for Pearson and company his host’s discussion of 1. the history of the occupation of Egypt by foreign powers and its desire for independence;
2. the need for any government seeking popular support to act as the guardian of the nation and national independence and in so doing to co-operate with other nations only when this could be done on an equal basis;
3. the ordinary Egyptian’s avid interest in international affairs and understanding of interdependence (although Nasser’s own understanding of interdependence caused Norman to suggest the Egyptian President “may be a rather naïve, even parochial-minded leader” at the head of what perhaps surprisingly “is essentially an insular country”);
4. Egypt’s resentment at broken promises of the United States, United Kingdom and the World Bank after World War II and the need for great powers to understand the aspirations of others — a continually rising “tide of independence and nationalism” being the alternative;
5. the importance of addressing issues such as poor living standards, population growth pressures, and the inequitable trading policies;
6. the relationship between the emerging Suez Canal crisis and Egyptian sovereignty; and 7. the relentless march of the Egyptian Revolution, with or without the President himself being on the scene.
Observing that Nasser had proclaimed that he had “nothing but friendly feelings for Canada,” Norman also comments immediately thereafter that the President “made no reference whatsoever to Israel.”
Norman closes by indicating that he has “endeavoured to capture as accurately as memory permits the burden of the president’s remarks, making a few comments where they seemed pertinent.” Even so, Norman’s approach to the formatting of this report, what he chooses to include, and the words he uses in recounting the conversation bear a striking resemblance to his earlier writing on Japan. Two of the foremost analysts of his life and work, Bowen and John Dower, have drawn our attention to the humanity evident in Norman’s accounts of Japanese history and the concern he shows for the common person. Here we find much the same concern as Nasser’s claims about the ordinary Egyptian’s understanding of international affairs provokes Norman to question the soundness of Nasser’s own understanding of the world around him. Comments about Egypt’s past and present problems echo the subtitle to his already highly respected book on Japan and his professional interest in narratives that use the past to explain the present. Similarly, the stress Norman places upon Nasser’s references to foreign occupation (fresh in the mind of post-war student of Japan), the government as the guardian of the nation (an idea Norman had already demonstrated through his study of Japanese executive, bureaucratic and business elites need not be undertaken with the interests of the nation’s general public in mind), living standards and population issues (subjects in Emergence), the pursuit of equality in international relations (a concept used by Japanese governments in the Meiji period to justify undemocratic practices), the Suez
Canal issue’s connection to Egypt’s perception of its national independence (the struggle for which in the Japanese case had, in Norman’s view, “inevitably led to expansion”) again suggest the author was viewing the Egypt in which he had recently arrived through the same lenses he had used when offering his assessment of Japan a decade and a half earlier. Norman’s emphasis on Nasser’s personality is also reminiscent of his emphasis in Emergence on “the social character of the leaders who accomplished” Japan’s rapid transition from a feudal to industrial society.
In a 6 December 1956 dispatch entitled, “Call on President Nasser,” Norman, who had not seen Nasser since their September encounter, reports on how an exchange on the niceties of Egypt-Canada relations turned quickly into a blunt discussion of Canadian participation in the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), something Norman had wanted to avoid. Concerns about a new form of foreign occupation arose, this time in the context of Nasser’s expressed fear of attempts on his life. Norman for his part felt obliged to set Canada’s position in the proper historical context so as to allay fears about her links to the British Commonwealth and to promote her place as a staunch supporter of the UN. This encounter also saw Nasser break his silence on Israel by criticizing the aggressive Israeli policy towards Gaza ushered in by Ben Gurion’s emergence as Defence Minister in the mid-1950s. The President indicated that such a policy would make it impossible to be friends or good neighbours, at the same time refuting claims that he had responded by calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Much more dangerous for the Israelis, in Nasser’s view, would be the reaction of the “simple folk” to the Ben Gurion policy and the perception of a new form of foreign occupation under the guise of the UN, although he admitted to having “misjudged the public temper” about the UN mission. Here again one finds Norman using history to maintain his host’s support for Canadian participation in UNEF – mindful no doubt that Nasser was once a history professor. He also expresses skepticism about Nasser’s attempt to stress the importance of Arab unity and the role of public opinion in Egyptian political decision-making
With the arrival of a new and fateful year, Norman found himself writing on 14 January 1957 about “Egypt at the Crossroads. “ It now appeared that the US was supporting the British and French in the dispute over Suez and that the present Egyptian régime was thus “facing a critical moment in its history,” one which would require a difficult decision to be taken by a government that appeared to be increasingly indecisive, tense, stagnant, isolated, economically challenged, militarıly inept, and primarily concerned about its prestige at home and among neighbouring Arab countries. The US, neither willing to assist Nasser with his political, diplomatic and economic troubles nor keen on encouraging a coup, seemed, from Norman’s vantage point, “to be content to let this régime wither on the vine.” Had Norman’s abiding supposition in his analysis of Japan that you reap what you sow been proven correct once again, this time in the Egyptian context?
The final installment in this series comes on 15 March 1957, in what would be Norman’s report of his last “Conversation with Nasser” the previous evening. Here his forte as an historian skilled in promoting cross-cultural understanding is put to a dramatic test as he is tasked by the Canadian government with preventing the diplomatic and domestic political disaster that would come with Egyptian refusal to Canadian participation in UNEF on the grounds that as a member of the British Commonwealth Canada was either harbouring or fronting for imperialist designs. As appropriately highlighted at the beginning and end of the 1998 NFB documentary on Norman, the record shows that he succeeded in his mission that day, using all the historical ammunition he could muster in his country’s cause. A verbal tour de force won over Nasser, who had hitherto clung to the idea that the Canadians, rather than coming in peace, might somehow be easily persuaded to use military force against him. This attitude had been created in part by bureaucratic filters that skewed communications between the two coun tries, a danger Norman was well aware of from his studies of the Japanese state. The secret of his success that day was that the real work had been done in his two earlier exchanges with the Egyptian leader. The rapport that had developed between the two men now provided the entrée Norman so desperately needed in this time of crisis. As Norman recounts, Nasser “was glad that some false impressions had been removed and hoped that friendly relations would exist between us as between two free and equal states with no designs on each other.” So successful had Norman been that Nasser also “expressed the wish that I might perhaps see him more often if I so wished, particularly if it would help in clearing up possible misunderstanding.” Admired by many Japanese for drawing their attention to their forgotten democratic tendencies and traditions, Norman ended his report by noting that he had congratulated Nasser on his recent announcement that general elections were to be held. Canadians, as “a democratic people,” Norman said, would be pleased by this development in Egypt “since it would certainly help in closer understanding between us both.” Having already become a beacon of Japanese democracy, Herbert Norman could now be doubly proud.
FROM HERO TO HIDDEN. Ironically and tragically, on the very day of his greatest diplomatic triumph, Norman was once again accused by a US Senate investigation of being a communist. These renewed accusations are generally understood to be the cause of his death by suicide in Cairo on 4 April 1957. This story has been widely told and will not be reviewed here.
Of greater import in our view looking back from our Middle Eastern vantage point now almost fifty years later is the question of why Norman’s diplomatic efforts in Egypt have been neglected by scholars, particularly Canadians and moreover Canadian scholars? After all, these efforts would be largely responsible for securing the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his friend and boss Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs during this period who is generally credited with proposing the idea of UN peacekeeping at the time of the Suez Crisis and who would soon shortly become the Prime Minister of Canada on the strength of his Nobel success. The most extensive studies of Norman’s scholarship and life, for instance, have been penned by Americans, Dower and Bowen. Why? Several possible answers come to mind:
1. The real work in life and in diplomacy is often done behind the scenes. Behind every individual Nobel Peace Prize winner there is usually a host of people without whom the recipient would not have been a candidate. This is perhaps why so many groups, institutions and organizations have received the award in recent decades.
2. Canadians are not very good at recognizing their heroes. Like so many people from heretofore predominantly Judeo- Christian cultures, they are even less prone to celebrate a hero who later committed suicide, no matter what that person had done before. Indeed, merely suffering from any form of mental illness can lead to marginalization or the willful forgetting by others of a person’s accomplishments.
3. That Norman’s death came so soon after his greatest accomplishment as a diplomat no doubt compounds the problem in his case. With little time to celebrate and being in such a secretive profession, the news would have been widely spread and would likely have been overshadowed to the point of almost being denuded of any sense of significance. Our memory of his accomplishments would also have been overshadowed by the further rise of Lester Pearson, whose own memoirs do not help much in remedying our understanding of Norman’s role in the activities that brought Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize (perhaps because of the subsequent sensitivity of the issue in the wake of the circumstances surrounding Norman’s death). Some fortieth anniversary celebrations of this award compounded this problem by failing to refer to Norman’s contributions on Pearson’s behalf.
4. Active academic efforts to erase the memory of Norman as a leading scholar of Japanese history in the twentieth century, efforts connected to the allegations in the US Senate of his communist political sympathies and Marxian analytical tendencies, have not done much to keep the memory of his accomplishments alive within classrooms or the academy in Canada and abroad, save for in Japan where his publisher, Iwanami Shoten, marked the new millennium by re-releasing his complete works in Japanese.
5. In the arts community, sometimes the last repository of historical memory, the record is also mixed. Al Purdy drew our attention positively if cryptically to Norman’s plight in the poem, “Homo Canadensis,” but Timothy Findley – in a Purdy-like effort to have us remember Norman with the play, The Stillborn Lover – did Norman a disservice by creating a composite character out of Norman and a homosexual Canadian diplomat, thereby causing further confusion about who E.H. Norman really was and what he accomplished as an historian and diplomat. If anything, Findley’s character has only helped to put or keep whatever public focus might remain on the questions, “Was Norman a spy? Was he gay?”
ONE HISTORIAN AND HISTORY. Did Egypt become Japan when viewed through Herbert Norman’s glasses? If so, is this surprising? Is this a problem? What do the answers to these questions tell us about Norman the historian and Norman the diplomat?
Our review of dispatches written by Norman during his time as Canada’s Ambassador to Egypt suggests that one could build a case for transference. Though a significant finding in the context of Norman’s studies, this observation is probably not surprising. Whatever he was, Norman’s writings in the 1940s on Japan suggest him to be a humanist and it is unlikely that he would have lost this trait even with the rough treatment he received as a result of the career-threatening allegations that he was a communist he had to endure in the early 1950s. That his analysis of Egypt reflected this humanism through his highlighting and questioning of Nasser’s comments about ordinary Egyptians, simple folk, public support and living standards is evidence of a continuous thread and concern in Norman’s worldview and historical narrative. Nor should we consider this transference or continuity a problem; far from it, especially given the high level of respect given to his analyses of both Japan and Egypt. He may have known Japan better and been more qualified to render judgments about that country, but Norman’s skills as a student of history made him the fast learner, astute observer and intelligent reporter many diplomats are called upon to be when it came time to represent his country in Egypt. He used the analytical tools he had developed and those tools served him well in his efforts to understand and convey his understanding of both cultures and his own to others.
Norman the historian and Norman the diplomat thus complemented each other well. His successes in Japan, Egypt and elsewhere — perhaps with the lone exception of the US Senate — may not have been successes had there not been this complementarity. But even in the case of the US Senate’s ideological witch hunt it is possible to see Norman the victim as a success because of the way that his case, as one of the most tragic elements in the story of McCarthyism, illustrates the dangers, cost and absurdity of political excess.
Finally, we are moved to conclude that observing the ways in which Herbert Norman has and has not been studied, especially in Canada, we can derive important lessons and reminders about the ways in which history is written and taught. Conceding that the word might also be herstory and should at least be histories, we find in the ways in which the Norman story is and is not remembered a fine if unfortunate example of the domestic and international politics of forgetting. What passes for history is often just as much about what we are consciously directed by our parents, politicians, journalists, teachers and historians to remember about the past as it is about what we are consciously taught to forget.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2004) — Fall/Winter 2004 // Automne/Hiver 2004, pp. 5–7. Read the rest of this issue →
