When we were suitably relaxed and friendly, they asked me what I thought of their work. Students in Sudan were taught to write down every word the teacher said. They learned it by heart and regurgitated it in the examination papers. As the external examiner I got rather tired of this—the same answers, the same points, the same sequence and with the same examples, one after another. I had written a report a year before my visit in which I had said that it was a great pity that the students merely reproduce what they get from their teachers and their textbooks; I suggested it would be nice for them to have their own opinions on these questions. The following year they did exactly the same thing. They regurgitated what the teacher had told them, the same points, the same illustrations; but each answer began with the words “In my opinion.”
So when I met with the students and teachers in Khartoum, as we sat and chatted by the Nile riverbank in a very nice garden club, I asked why they didn’t give their own opinions instead of merely giving back what they had been given. The teachers chimed in and said, “We keep telling them that. We keep telling them not just to tell us what we told them, but to think of something for themselves.” One of the students asked then how he would know whether the answer was correct. I said, “This is a history examination, it’s not a math test where an answer is either right or totally wrong. History is very largely a matter of interpretation of a matter of opinion. On the same facts you might arrive at quite different conclusions from your teacher or your examiner.” So he repeated, “But how do we know which is right?” I replied that a right answer is any answer which is based on correct facts and is intelligently argued. What you do with the facts is your business, as long as it makes sense. I don’t have to agree with you, I just have to respect the way you put it. One of them argued, “Isn’t it much safer to keep with what we know is acceptable to the teacher?” I responded, “If you do it that way, you will be safe for a pass, but you will never get a good degree. I mean you will never get a first or an upper second, in other words you’ll never get a high grade, an A or a B, just a safe C.” We batted this back and forth for a bit, and then finally one of them said, “It’s too dangerous.” And the rest of them agreed, and they went on answering questions in the same way.
My host later suggested that I might like to visit the Islamic Institute in Omdurman, not very far from Khartoum. I was delighted to do so and was received by the principal, introduced to various professors, and taken to various classes. Then we had a large gathering in the quad with masses of professors and students there to be introduced to me. I should mention that this was during the month of Ramadan when Muslims fast. My host asked, “Would you like something to drink?” I declined but he insisted and said, “Bring a Pepsi.” I didn’t particularly like Pepsi but nevertheless I had to take the can and drink it in the quadrangle of the Islamic Institute of Omdurman while the sweating, thirsty professors and students looked at me with mixed feelings.
For many years I maintained a relationship with the department of history of the University of Khartoum. That was weakened by my departure for the United States in 1974, and terminated by the total transformation of Sudanese society and culture under the new regime.
Mission to America
The British Foreign Office periodically arranged for British scholars to lecture at American universities—a type of cultural exchange. While I was working on The Emergence of Modern Turkey I was asked to do such a tour and was told that I was perfectly free to disagree with UK policies but I should explain that I was doing so as an individual, not as a spokesman for the Foreign Office. I agreed.
I arrived in the United States for my first visit on February 23, 1954, and sailed for home on April 13. In those seven weeks I lectured in New York, Philadelphia, Cambridge, Waltham, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Most of my lectures were at universities, colleges, and societies or councils for world affairs. I also addressed a number of luncheon clubs and community groups. In many of the cities I was interviewed on radio and in New York and Hollywood I took part in television programs.
I was struck everywhere by the friendliness with which I was received, not only on the part of individuals but also, what is more remarkable, of audiences. In most places the lectures were followed by a number of questions, most of which were honest requests for information or opinion. There were very few occasions when I could detect any sign of malice or ill will on the part of the questioner. Only in two places did I encounter strong opposition—at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at the University of California, Berkeley. In both of these I was subjected to vigorous questioning by Middle Eastern (but not by American) students. At Michigan the questioning turned on some observations I had made on the governmental traditions of Islam and did not really involve any current political issues. In Berkeley, on the other hand, I was cross-examined for over an hour on all the misdeeds perpetrated by the British in the Middle East from Richard the Lionheart to the government of Iraq. I was sometimes able to disarm the questioner by an appropriate quote, in Arabic, from the Koran or some other Islamic source. Many of the questions were quite unrelated to anything that I had said in the lecture, and I was told afterward that a committee of Arab students regularly organizes a welcome of this kind for British and French speakers. By way of contrast the reception accorded to me by the academic faculty at Berkeley was one of the friendliest of the whole tour.
There seemed to be quite a lot of general interest in the Middle East, most of it uncomplicated by any knowledge of the area or by any realization of the complexity of the problems involved. I often thought of Adlai Stevenson’s remark that for the Americans every question must have an answer and every story a happy ending. I would add a gloss however: the answer must be a simple one, and the story must have a hero and a villain. There seems to be an underlying belief that basically the Middle East is very much like the Middle West, and if only one could “get together” with people there and get rid of the “bad men” and troublemakers everything would be all right and the difficulties would vanish like the obstacles in the path of a Hollywood hero. This attitude sometimes led to the suspicion that British difficulties in the Middle East or elsewhere were due to British stuffiness and standoffishness, and that if only the British had been able to unbutton and “get together” with other people as the Americans do, all would have been well.
The questions followed fairly constant lines. We were at this point at the height of the Cold War and everyone wanted to know about the Russian threat and what we were to do about it, the prospects of communism in the Middle East, the Suez Canal and Iranian oil. Cyprus turned up in New York but nowhere else, Palestine occasionally but much less frequently than I had expected.
I found quite a lot of sympathy for Britain and for British difficulties, but not very much understanding of what these were. The anti-colonial argument still had quite a lot of effect among some Americans who saw King George III’s redcoats behind every bush but I had the impression that this group was of dwindling importance. I found in many quarters a dawn of understanding that things were not exactly as they had thought and even signs of anger at those who had misled them. Ideas still seemed to be rather vague however, the one certain and universal conviction being that there is a magical formula for every difficulty, and that the task of statesmanship is to find it and pronounce it correctly. There was considerable interest in developments in Africa and India, about which Americans knew little but wanted to know more. In several different places I found people quite puzzled by the pro-British observations made shortly before by visitors from India.
One episode may be worth mentioning. In St. Louis I lectured to students at a teachers’ training college. The professor of history told me that the previous week they had heard a lecture by an Egyptian student who had had a tremendous effect on them. “They were just about ready to drop t
he hydrogen bomb on London,” he said. He had therefore asked the British consulate for a speaker to give another point of view, and that was how I came to be there. He told me that by far the most powerful factor influencing American students on issues of foreign affairs was the presence of fellow students from the countries concerned. He thought that a few more British students at American universities would elicit more empathy for the British point of view than a number of speakers, however distinguished.
In the course of my travels there was a striking difference between the places where I had personal contacts and those where I had none. In the former, such as Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Brandeis, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, the lecture meeting was well publicized in advance, was preceded and followed by receptions and lunches or dinners with the faculty, and was generally attended by a large and representative audience. In one or two places, Detroit and Seattle, information or consular officers managed to achieve the same effect, but otherwise my visits seem to have had a much more limited impact. The lectures were in effect to ordinary undergraduate classes and probably made about as much impact as these normally do.
The tour ended in Washington, D.C., where I was invited to give a lecture at the Middle East Institute on the policies of the Western powers in the Middle East. A diplomat from the British Embassy was invited to act as chairman. Earlier that week there had been quite a scandal. President Eisenhower had appointed as his ambassador to Ceylon (whose name after 1972 was Sri Lanka) a wealthy businessman who had contributed generously to his campaign. This was normal practice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has to approve ambassadorial appointments, was disposed to be friendly. The senators didn’t ask him difficult questions. They asked the first thing he would do upon his arrival in Sri Lanka. He replied that he guessed he’d present his credentials to the king. As there was no king it was obvious he hadn’t a clue what form of government the country had. Having tasted blood the committee went on to press him and his total ignorance became painfully apparent. The State Department official who accompanied him said that of course he would be receiving guidance and instructions from the department.
It was just a few days after this that I gave my talk at the Middle East Institute. During the question period someone asked what, as a visitor to this country, did I think of the way the U.S. government chooses its ambassadors. This really put me on the spot. I was there as a quasi-official guest under the auspices of the British Embassy with someone from the embassy presiding. I had a sudden inspiration and using a well-known diplomatic formula I said, “All I can say is that your ministers may not be plenipotentiary, but your envoys are certainly extraordinary.” That went down rather well and when I revisited Washington ten years later, it was quoted back to me.
This tour was a most interesting and valuable experience. It brought me into contact with teachers and students of my subject in U.S. universities, as well as with other specialists, both official and unofficial, on the area. Incidentally, I received five offers of visiting professorships after the trip, one of which, at UCLA, I later accepted.
A Year in Los Angeles
In the autumn of 1955 I flew from England via New York to Los Angeles to begin a year as a visiting professor at UCLA. The dean of the faculty picked me up at the airport. He drove me to his home in the hills outside Los Angeles where I spent the first night. He remarked that I had had a long trip and suggested I not get up early but stay in bed as long as I liked. I thanked him, went to sleep and slept very well. He had left a car for me and said that when I was ready I should drive to the university and then we could talk. I had to drive from the house to the campus, neither a long nor a complicated drive. The problem was that this was the first time I had driven outside the United Kingdom. I was on the wrong side of the car, the car was on the wrong side of the road; and added to that, the car had automatic transmission and power steering, neither of which I had ever encountered or even heard of before. So this drive down the hill from his house to the campus was a terrifying experience.
I soon learned that in order to live in Los Angeles I would have to acquire a car and that meant that I would have to acquire a California driving license. At that time a British driving license would have been recognized in the United States but in California, as a professor, even a visiting professor at UCLA, I was a state civil servant and a state civil servant is required to have a California driving license and for that I had to take a California test. The time and place were fixed and I went for the test. I sat in the car; the examiner got in next to me and told me to drive around the block. I drove around the block and he said, “That’ll do.” “Is that all?” He said, “That’s enough to show me whether you can drive or not.” Then he said, “There is one other thing you have to do.” “What’s that?” “Parallel park.” We came to a place where there was a space between two parked cars and he admonished, “You have to get in there in not more than three moves.” I failed miserably. I was on the wrong side of the car, the car was on the wrong side of the road and I just couldn’t do it in three moves. I was able to take the test again a week later and, fortunately, pass it.
On my early visits to the United States I was shocked by the level of institutionalized anti-Semitism which would have been inconceivable in England. It was quite normal at that time for some hotels not to accept Jewish guests. In England, any hotel that did that would have lost its license.
During that first trip I had the opportunity to chat with a Jewish lawyer in New York who had never been to England and who asked me various questions about the Jews in England. He asked if there were any Jewish members in Parliament. When I answered yes he wanted to know how many. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to answer that, but it so happened that I had recently read an article about Jewish members of the House of Commons, and was able to answer that there were thirty-something. He was astonished and said he didn’t know there were that many Jews in England. I replied that there were indeed more than thirty-five Jews in England. “No, no—I mean to elect them.” I had to explain that they were not elected by Jews. They happened to be Jews but they were elected as members of their party. “Oh,” he said, “that couldn’t happen here. The only Jewish members of Congress are elected from heavily Jewish districts. We would never get Jews elected in non-Jewish districts.” Although that may have been true at that time, it’s no longer true now, and it certainly wasn’t true in England. Most of the MPs came from districts with few or no Jews.
He asked how the first Jew came to sit in the House of Commons as for several hundred years they were prohibited from even living in England. Jews were expelled from England, by law, in 1290 and not readmitted until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell agreed to a Jewish request to establish a community and a synagogue. Various reasons have been adduced to explain why he did this. One is that he thought that they would be a useful and productive element. Another, more probable, explanation is that he believed that the dispersion of the Jews had to be completed before the Second Coming. There was no law excluding Jews from the House of Commons, but there was a clause in the Oath of Loyalty, taken by a new member on taking his seat, which included the words “on the true faith of a Christian.” This obviously excluded non-Christians.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, a member of the Rothschild family stood as a Liberal candidate for the city of London and was elected. He went to take his seat in Parliament and the clerk of the House tried to administer the oath. Rothschild said he was sorry but as a Jew he could not swear on “the true faith of a Christian.” The clerk then referred it to House. The House debated it, and decided that since he could not take the oath his election was not valid and there would have to be a by-election. In the British system, if a seat falls vacant for any reason, they do not have to wait for the next general election, nor is there anyone who is empowered to nominate a member. There is a by-election, an election in just that constituency. So a by-election was ordered and Rothschild ran again and was elected again. The
same thing happened the second time. The election was declared invalid. And it happened a third time. After his third election, the House of Commons decided that it couldn’t really disregard the wishes of the electorate, so it modified words in the Oath of Loyalty and from that time onward it was possible for Jews to be elected members. Rothschild took his seat in 1858. The region where he was elected was the city of London, which was certainly not Jewish.
In America one has much more contact with Jewish matters than in England. It’s very difficult to define how, but both Jews and others in America seem to be aware fully of a distinction. It is not an antagonism or a hostility; it is just a distinction. People are conscious of their differences. I noticed this in my first teaching appointment at UCLA. I was in the history department of UCLA through the academic year and within a couple of months I knew the religious affiliation of practically every member of the department. I had never asked or sought this information, which was really of no interest; but I just knew it because it was part of the common knowledge in the department. I had been teaching in an English university for seventeen years before that without knowing the religious or sectarian affiliations of my English colleagues. It wasn’t an issue and nobody gave a damn.
There are Jews in the modern world who accommodate themselves to the majority culture and develop either a great resentment and contempt for it or excessive admiration or even a combination of both. In my case, and others like me, we didn’t want or need to accommodate ourselves to the majority culture; we were part of the majority culture. I have no sense of ambivalence toward Western European culture. I am by birth, origin, upbringing, part of it, and my claim to it is no less than that of anyone else who was born and grew up in that culture.
Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian Page 12
