Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian

by Bernard Lewis

  One of the main purposes and uses of history is legitimization, using the past to legitimize the present. Monarchist history legitimizes monarchy; republican history delegitimizes monarchy and legitimizes the republic. Colonialist history legitimizes the colonial regime: we brought civilization to the barbarians and raised them to a higher level. Anticolonial history serves exactly the opposite purpose: we won freedom by throwing off the yoke of foreign oppression. And, of course, as the present changes, the past changes with it. The idea of the past as something fixed and immutable refers only, if at all, to history in the first of the various meanings I mentioned, that is, history as what happened. But the documentation, study, interpretation and presentation of what happened change all the time. Insofar as the purpose of history, or rather of the historian, is to legitimize the present, then, as the present changes, the past must change with it, and official historians constantly rewrite the past to meet new requirements.

  Official rewriting affects international history even more than internal history. Take the case of a war between two countries. Obviously the history written in one country will differ from the history written in the other, even if they use the same evidence and the same methods. This is a rather primitive kind of history, but for most of the recorded history of mankind, it was the only kind that existed. In some such histories, for example of World War I and World War II in the twentieth century, there may be a hard core of commonly agreed fact. In the national historiography of some more recent wars even that limited agreement is missing, and history is overwhelmed by mythology and ideology.

  Context is critical. Gandhi, whom we all admire for his long struggle against British imperialism and his ultimate success, succeeded because he was fighting against a civilized democratic enemy. He wouldn’t have lasted a week against Hitler or Stalin or even Saddam Hussein. One is reminded, sadly, of Gandhi’s advice to the Jews in German-controlled wartime Europe to deal with Hitler “by passive resistance.” He seems to have overlooked the fact that Hitler was not British.

  6.

  Episodes in an Academic Life

  In the midsixties a special message was sent from the Imperial Japanese Academy to the British Academy in London. It was part of a general attempt to improve and strengthen relationships between the two island kingdoms in the postwar period. The Japanese Academy suggested an exchange of visitors. They would invite a British scholar, to be nominated by the British Academy, and host him for a month-long stay in Japan to visit academic institutions and generally acquaint himself with the world of scholarship and culture. In return the British Academy would invite a Japanese scholar to England for a similar visit and a similar purpose. The British Academy accepted and proposed to send one of their Far Eastern experts. To their surprise, the Japanese showed reluctance to accept this suggestion. They were well acquainted with our Far East specialists, and preferred something different. The choice of the Academy directorate fell upon me, since I was at that time the chairman of the section of the Academy concerned with Oriental studies. I accepted with delight. The prospect of a visit to Japan as a guest of the Academy had obvious attractions. The Japanese agreed to this, and as a first step sent a round-trip air ticket for me on Japan Airlines, London-Tokyo-London.

  What horrified my colleagues at the Academy was that the ticket was first-class. They had not thought in those terms. Obviously they would have to reciprocate and provide a first-class round-trip ticket for the Japanese visitor, a rather heavy expense for the not very richly financed Academy. But there was nothing that could be done about it, and in due course I was installed as a first-class passenger on a flight to Tokyo in conditions of luxury and indulgence.

  At the airport I was met by a representative of the Imperial Japanese Academy who escorted me to my hotel and made sure that I was safely and comfortably installed. All my bills would be paid by the Academy, but to cover out-of-pocket expenses he had been instructed to give me a check and suggested that we go immediately to the neighboring bank to cash it.

  Here our problems began. At the bank the teller explained that he could not simply cash a check at sight—it had to be paid into an account and the cash withdrawn from that account. I had no account but I was willing to open one for the duration of my stay. I was told that this was not possible, as temporary visitors to Japan could not open accounts without special permission and that, if given at all, would take a long time. My escort dealt with this with characteristic Japanese efficiency. He asked me to endorse the check to him and immediately opened an account in the bank into which he deposited the check. He then withdrew the entire amount in cash, handed it to me, and closed the account. Problem solved.

  But there were other problems, the most important being that for the first time in my life, I was in a country where I could not even read street names. Going by taxi was comparatively easy. One normally had the address written on a piece of paper in Japanese and one handed this to the driver. But I also like walking around and it was all too easy to get lost, particularly for someone like me who has no sense of direction and no visual memory. I can get lost in my own backyard.

  My base was at the British Embassy, and I began every day by going there first to see what arrangements had been made for me. This was done by taxi. I had a slip of paper with the words “British Embassy” in Japanese written on it and each morning I handed this to the driver, who promptly drove me there.

  For someone who relishes language as I do I felt I must, at least, learn how to say “British Embassy” in Japanese, so I asked my host how to say it. I wrote it down, memorized it, and the next day when I got into the taxi I asked for the British Embassy in Japanese. He looked bewildered; I tried again; he looked still more bewildered; I tried a third time and he put out his hand with the clear message “Stop the nonsense and give me your piece of paper,” which I did.

  For one of my temperament this was not only frustrating but humiliating. I asked my Japanese host again to repeat the words for British Embassy in Japanese and this time I realized what I had done wrong. I had got the words right but the not the intonation, which is very important and can vary according to circumstances. The next time I lowered my pitch and had the words come from deep in my throat. How delighted I was to be whisked away to my destination.

  I was reminded of a colleague of mine who studied Japanese in England at a time when it was impossible to go to Japan. He did however meet, fall in love with and marry a Japanese girl. They lived happily together in London and he became fluent in Japanese. After the war, he went to Japan for the first time, and wherever he spoke to Japanese they were obviously making great efforts not to laugh at him. Finally he mustered the courage to ask them why and they told him, “You speak Japanese like a young girl.”

  My program included meetings with dignitaries, visits to institutions, and the usual lectures. It was explained to me that for foreigners like me lecturing in Japan, a common occurrence, there were three possibilities. First, one could lecture in English to a limited invited audience of Japanese with a sufficient knowledge of the language to follow the lecture and participate in a discussion. This was very rare, but when it happened, it worked. Second, one could provide a written text to be duplicated and distributed to the audience so that they could follow the lecture as one read it. And thirdly, the most frequently used, the speaker could lecture in English with an interpreter standing by his side who translated, sentence by sentence. This was generally the most effective method, the one with the greatest level of communication between the lecturer and his audience. I recall one incident when an English lecturer told a rather long and rambling funny story which the translator rendered in one very short sentence followed by laughter from the audience. My escort explained to me that what he had actually said was, “This is a joke; please laugh.”

  One of my fellow students in Paris before the war was from Kyoto and had since become a professor at the university of Kyoto. I was eager to see him again and renew our acquaintance. We made
the necessary arrangements but the simple train journey from one Japanese city to another proved incredibly complicated. I could neither read nor speak and I developed a lively sympathy, which I have retained ever since, for the physically impaired. However, I did manage to get there.

  Some years later I went on a second visit to Japan, this time as guest professor at one of the Japanese universities. I had a sort of guide/interpreter permanently attached to me and that certainly made everything a lot easier.

  It has apparently long been a tradition of the Japanese royal house that those members not directly engaged in government choose a profession and make a career of their own. Normally, they chose the armed forces. Prince Mikasa, the younger brother of the Mikado of Japan, was different and chose the academy. More specifically, he chose the history and archaeology of the Middle East. He made a deep and extensive academic study of these and eventually was appointed professor at a Japanese college. I met him several times in the Middle East and was his guest on this visit for lunch at the Palace in Tokyo.

  My hosts arranged to take me on a trip into the mountains outside Tokyo to visit a sacred shrine and meet the religious leader. The British Embassy had warned me that the Queen was coming on a royal visit to Japan and that there would be a reception at the embassy to which members of the British community would be invited. They told me the day and I made sure that I had no engagements. Sometime later my friend at the embassy telephoned to say that he was sorry but there had been an error; the reception was not on that day but on the following day. I had in the meantime told my Japanese hosts that I was free on that day and they had made all their arrangements for the pilgrimage to the mountain. I explained this to the embassy and said that I could not change my plan at the last minute and would therefore not be able to come to the reception.

  Somehow word of this reached my hosts at the university, and on the day we went to the mountain they explained to me how flattered and gratified they were that I “stood up the Queen” to come with them. Not exactly accurate, but not entirely wrong.

  Lunch at Buckingham Palace

  The one and only time I was invited by Her Majesty the Queen to lunch at Buckingham Palace was sometime in the 1960s. The British government had announced its intention of withdrawing all British troops from the Gulf sheikhdoms in Arabia, and the Gulf sheikhs were scurrying to London one after another to discuss how to deal with the problems that would arise following this precipitous and unexpected withdrawal. Publicly they proclaimed their delight at the British decision to go. Privately they came to express their concerns and to plead for some delay. As they were all heads of state, however small, they were entitled to the appropriate welcome and hospitality, and for several weeks there was a very full program of royal and quasi-royal occasions. The guest lists grew longer and longer, and even reached my level. I was tickled when an invitation with the royal crest arrived, inviting me and my wife to join Her Majesty and Prince Philip at a lunch she was giving in honor of I forget which Gulf sheikh. We accepted with alacrity and were then given further instructions. The appropriate garb was what was known as “morning dress”—a long gray jacket with tails, and a kind of bow tie. I did not of course own these and had no intention of buying them but they were available for hire. I also received a Buckingham Palace parking permit which I would have loved to keep, but I had to surrender it when I used it.

  Half a century later, two recollections remain. The first one was the introductions. The guests, about fifteen or twenty, were ushered into a reception hall and arranged in a semicircle. The Queen then arrived, accompanied by the official who had chosen the guest list and made the arrangements. They walked around the semicircle and the official introduced us to Her Majesty, one by one, by name and description. When this was completed, we stood partaking of refreshments for a few minutes, and then the guests of honor arrived—the sheikh with his entourage. They also came around the semicircle but this time with the Queen leading the guests. What really astonished me is that without any written text or any visible prompting, the Queen introduced each one of us to her guests correctly, by name and function. Either she has an excellent memory or a secret device.

  While we were having drinks before lunch, a footman suddenly came over to me and said that Prince Philip wanted to talk to me. I went and found that the problem was one of communication. Prince Philip was chatting with the Gulf sheikh. The Prince knew no Arabic and the sheikh knew very little English. They did however have an interpreter and for some reason the interpreter was unable to cope with the situation; either he didn’t understand or could not translate the words that were used. The sheikh put his point to me in Arabic and fortunately I was able to understand it and repeat it in English. A moment of immense pride, but unfortunately I haven’t the slightest recollection of what it was about.

  The lunch itself was less than exciting and was, at best, tepid. My table companion, one of the ladies-in-waiting, explained to me that the food served at Palace banquets is never hot—the distance is too great from the royal kitchens to the royal tables.

  History and the Present

  The primary concern of the historian is the past—to study it, using whatever evidence he can find, and then to communicate the results of his study to others by means of writing and teaching. For some reason, historians are often asked to say what will happen next. Most of us reply that our business is the past, not the future; that we are historians, not prophets. But that is not usually enough to put off the persistent questioners. I remember a meeting of historians in Rome where we were discussing whether historians should or should not attempt to predict the future. That was when the Soviet Union was still alive and well. A Soviet colleague among us remained silent through the discussion and then we turned to him to ask him what his view was. He said, “In the Soviet Union, the most difficult task of the historian is to predict the past.” He was of course referring to the constant rewriting of the past by the Communist hierarchy.

  I don’t think the historian can reasonably be expected to predict the future but there are certain things that the historian can and should do. He can discern trends. He can look at what has been happening and what is happening and see change developing. From this he can formulate, I will not say predictions, but possibilities, alternative possibilities, things that may happen, things that may go this way or that way, in evolving interactions. It is of course much safer to predict the remote rather than the immediate future. There are occasions, however, when the historian, for one reason or another, becomes involved in the present, not just observing and recording the historical process, but affecting or influencing or even directing it.

  Most historians have some experience of this. My own work on His Majesty’s service during the war years would I suppose come under this heading. Even after my return to academic life, like most of my colleagues, I had occasional encounters with the historic process through meetings which made policy. Over the years, in my innumerable visits to the Middle East I had meetings with kings, presidents, prime ministers, other high officials, as well as with ambassadors of different states. We talked of various things, and from time to time I gave my opinions—sometimes in response to a request, sometimes not.

  I do recall one particular episode when it was precisely my work as a historian, using the technical professional methodology of the historian, which seems to have affected the historical process. On May 27, 1971, Russia and Egypt, known at that time as the Soviet Union and the United Arab Republic, signed, in Cairo, a “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.” Given the situation in the Middle East at that time, the signing of this treaty was a major event, with considerable impact on the international political process.

  Since the treaty was between a Russian and an Arab government, it was drafted, signed and ratified in two languages, Arabic and Russian, both texts being valid. Both the Soviet and Egyptian governments published English translations, one based on the Russian text and the other on the Arabic text. Though these were o
fficial, they were nonbinding. Interestingly, both the Soviet and the Egyptian versions in English used British not American spelling, but otherwise differed on a number of points.

  I became keenly aware of these differences in a quite accidental way. My copy of the treaty was provided by the Egyptian Embassy, the Arabic text with the Egyptian English translation. It so happened that the next day I was participating in a discussion group on the international situation. At a certain point I wanted to quote the treaty, but had omitted to bring my copy with me. I was sitting next to a colleague who was a specialist in East European affairs and I asked him if by any chance he had his copy of the treaty with him. He did and he very kindly passed it to me for my use. His copy had been published by the Soviet Embassy and contained the Russian text and their English translation. Glancing at it, I saw immediately certain differences between the two versions. I therefore procured a copy of the Soviet handout, and proceeded, in the way of the professional historian, to make a comparative study of the two.

  The differences were significant and far-reaching, and led me to some further comparisons—between this treaty and other treaties signed by the Soviet Union, with its allies, its satellites, and neutral powers. I wrote a long article indicating these differences, which eventually appeared in a learned journal.

  This lengthy piece, as is normal, had little or no impact outside the academic community. But besides my scholarly article for a learned journal, I also wrote a brief journalistic one, which was published in The Times of London on October 8, 1971. This apparently came as a shock to the Egyptian diplomatic establishment, and may even have had some influence on their subsequent dealings with the Soviet Union. The following year, on July 18, 1972, President Sadat ordered the Soviet military to leave Egypt.