Barbir: I'm Karl Barbir I am a professor of history at Siena College and a lecturer at the University at Albany. Today I interview Leon Karl Brown. Professor Brown is Garret Professor Emeriti's in foreign affairs at Princeton University. This interview takes place on 18 April 2002. Welcome Professor Brown.

Brown: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Barbir: I'll like to start with a question about your formative years. What can you tell us about you're your background?

Brown: Well I was an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt University, graduated in 1950. Went for a year of study at London School of Economics and the University of Virginia and I guess looking back at someone who spent most of his career in academia as a historian. I was still as we say finding myself. I was from the beginning very interested in Foreign Affairs and that got me into our Diplomatic Service for a brief time after the two separate years of graduate training. As it happen it was really almost one of these divine Pro visit as it shapes our ends roughly than how we may heading recruiting into the Foreign Service. I was given the opportunity of entering the Department Of States Arabic Language and Area Training Program for 18 months program and given typical Government hurry up and wait given literally over night to a make decisions that the class was starting the following day and I realizing I wouldn't have time to research this properly I'll had a little bit, but very little undergraduate training in Middle Eastern North African Studies I decided why not let's try it and that was way back in 1953 and now I can see that from that time onward I have been bound to a study of this part of the world especially the Arabic speaking part of the world.

Barbir: So it was in many ways fortuitous as a decision you had to make on the fly.

Brown: Well exactly so I have often encourage the students both graduates and undergraduates students not to worry too much in fact I guess I wish I worry sometimes when I find students sometimes already so thoroughly programmed at their freshman year I fell that they are not taking sufficient advantage of contingencies that are going to arise. I had always been interested in Foreign Relation and that sort of history of other culture, but I was not all that focused until just the opportunity presence itself to me.

Barbir: And you served in the Sedan and in the Lebanon.

Brown: That's right

Barbir: those were your assignments.

Brown: That's right, first in Lebanon main logistic as a language trained officer and then doing subs titan work for two years in our embassy in Khartoum. I had the great advantage of being able to arrive in Khartoum just less than half a year after Sudanese independence I like to say that when I got off the plane in Khartoum in July of 1956 my presence increased the complement of the American Embassy about a full 50 percent a very few authority service officers had ever been able to say that since. It was a tiny, tiny embassy and thus even as a very young officer I was able to get involved in all kinds of things

Barbir: So that in many ways you helped to established the American Diplomatic presence in Sudan Post Independence.

Brown: I was the huger of wood and drawer of water in the establishment of that, yes the junior most member of the embassy.

Barbir: What made you decide to return to academe?

Brown: Well it was after two years in Sudan and I suppose it would be a good story to say that I was disgusted with Foreign Service and all the rest and wanted to get into the purity of academic life that is absolutely not the case. I was fascinated but I felt ill prepared to be an adequate diplomat without the need for sort of stepping back and really getting in the depths of the study of the language history culture and religions of the people of the Middle East and I was bound to determine to take the risk of dropping out of the foreign service hoping I could get back in after receiving my doctorate, but then to anticipate perhaps your next question. I when I arrived in Harvard as a graduate student I was so quickly hooked on the program and especially the master full scholarship of a gentleman known to all of us in this field of some years back Sir Hamilton Gibb that I never looked back and ever since felt perfectly at home in the academic study of the Middle East.

Barbir: What was it like to be a student of the Middle East in the late 1950's must have been very lonesome there weren't too many programs around?

Brown: Well things were already moving along but you're right certainly I've talk to several people of my generation who were involved either as graduate students and then as academicians in middle Eastern studies or many others who remained in Foreign Service and the difference between even the early 1950's and the late 1950's was already measurable more and more scholarships were coming out. More and more scholars were being produced it's already ancient history to many but of course the National Defense Education (enactody) was the Americans response to (slicknicty) when suddenly the Soviets seems to be getting ahead of us, and what we were going to do and the amount things we were going to do was for the first time seriously beginning to train numbers of people in so-called non Western areas of the world. So in many ways it was an excited times, it was a time when things were building

Barbir: Aside from Sir Hamilton and you can say some more about him. Who were your other teachers, at least those who influenced you?

Brown: Well another name who was there Dusty Books published back in the 1950's was Gorge Kirk. A very interesting example of a fine, solid, careful Historian who had a very strong antiphony understanding of to the modern political tendencies, and even perhaps to some extent the people of the Middle East. He use to joke not completely lacking in seriousness that he was the least biased scholar of the area because he hated both sides the Arabs and the Israelis and there was a little bit of a tough John Bull approach but coming through all I saw a great appreciation of a careful, factual reconstruction of the record that was very stimulating.

Barbir: Would you describe him as an old fashion imperialist?

Brown: Oh I think so very definitely yes

Barbir: Sort of like J. B Kelly

Brown: Yes, yes

Barbir: Scholar of the Gulf. Was Richard Fry one of your teachers?

Brown: I know Richard Fry and later for a brief time when I taught there we were colleagues, but of course as you know Richard Fry working largely in Iranian and Persian language studies I found that I never took any course work with him.

Barbir: Was there anyone else who was an influence on you at Harvard?

Brown: Oh I think certainly there were a number of I feel like I shouldn't leave any out I did almost no course work with the late A. J Myer Economist, Economy historian in the Middle East, but in many ways I found his outlook and his ideas important to me, and of course at the time it was a very healthy thing. I think this is something one should keep in mind at many History Departments throughout the country insist on this. I was not permitted to have only Middle Eastern fields of studies has in my graduate program and so I hopped for one field of British History and was given the opportunity to define that in terms of British Imperial History and the scholar who supervised my work in that field was David Owen, who was one of these absolutely spell ponding lecturers and so a wonderful individual with a depths of knowledge, and in terms of trying to learn how to convey what you've learned in history and to be an effective lecturer that man has always been my model weathered I could of lift up to his standing but that few of us can. He was the sort, I guess like many scholars eminently approachable modest and unassuming to a fault. Once the word probably pocketful like most stories was that in his shyness he as is the custom of some university certainly was at Harvard at the end of the lecture series the last lecture of the semester the students would applaud if they thought it's been a good series and of course there was always loud applauds for David Owen much deserve and he and his confusion of the applauds which really did sort of disorient him. Instead of leaving through the exit he walked into the broom closet and being the shy sort of person he was he simply remain there until all the class had left the room.

Barbir: That's a wonderful story. How did you come to choose your dissertation topic and what was it?

Brown: Well that too is, I talk about a life by indirection. I am afraid that's what I am giving you, but I had first thought having been so impress so interested in my two years service in Sudan that I would deal with a body called The Nationalist Movement there called The Graduates Congress it was a small groups of Sudanese who had in first become graduates not necessary of higher universities but even just graduates of secondary school, but they were the educated elites of Sudan at that time and the name itself is interesting because they had adopted The Indian National Congress name and calling themselves Congress imitating that of Mohammed Gandhi's name roots Congress Party in India and that would have been a fascinating subject but suddenly after my two years and my general exams at Harvard I realized my goodness there is a great junk of the Arab world that's supposed to be my specialty that I've done no work on at all and that's everything west of Egypt, Libya to Nauja, Algeria and Morocco so I went in rather rationally to Sir Hamilton Gibb and suggested that this was a gap in my knowledge and that I should do something about it and so instead of taking a dissertation topic about which I knew something which was always my wiser approach I really ought to try to used this opportunity this genus to learn a little something about North Africa the Mother Land and Sir Hamilton thought it was a great idea and he sat done with me and cobble together an approach that I would not have been competent to do and would not have been very interesting in doing it. Fortunately I didn't do it had to do with sort of modern literary tendencies in Arabic intonation. A little too narrow and a little bit beyond what I feel are my strengths, but armed with at least his blessing to take on an entirely different subject I went to a Tunis and had my field research there. Very soon learned several things that can always serve as a bit of a joke to graduate students when they are suddenly in the field. First all of my work in Arabic was going to be of limited utility as far as oral communication with Tunisians because looking on a pale face westerner from the United States I obviously spoke French and that obviously any kind of communication among intellectuals was expected to be conducted in French, and that accordingly if I was going to get the benefits of interviews and the light has part of my work along with the checking of the archives and other written sources I was going to have to operate largely in French so my Arabic at that time was pro forma except for written text but this too was a period of time not too long after Tunisian's Independence in 1956 in the hay day of these (Bourgebus) reforms which many of you will remember were very modernizing and secularizing in their orientation. In fact I at the time wasn't incline to suggest (Burgeba) was to some extent the closest thing to an Arab equivalent of turquoise (Commal Aditore) and I was able in interviews in sort of reconstructing that record to put together a faceless topic on the history of Honor lectural change into Asia put throughout the period of the French protectory own up to and through independence

Barbir: So from 1881-1957

Brown: Essentially from 1881 to the 1950's

Barbir: You never publish that did you?

Brown: I publish apart of it in a little book Tunisia the Politics of Modernization in which the three of us the late Charles Lee Cole and Climeth Henry at the time using his name Climeth Henry Moore and I the three of us. I did the historical part up to the 1930's Climeth did the structure of the Neodestro the Nationalist Political Party and Charle Lee Cole did the more social and economic aspects of the reforms taking place. That little book was publish and there after I felt that rightly or wrongly the essence of what I had to say and how I had to say it my dissertation had taken care of and move on to other things.

Barbir: I noticed that almost from the very beginning of your career you were probably earlier than other scholars you were involved in collaborative efforts, and I wonder why that was the case?

Brown: Well looking back at the Piruels and pit falls and I am sure what I am going to well received by anyone who has served as an editor of academic books and try to bring together recalcitrant colleagues and hold them to deadlines in the like. It is indeed true all told looking back at my career I had serve as editor or co-editor of seven different books on all a quite a variety of subject. Essentially it's the interest and the importance of team work the fact that none of us can really be specialized in so many different things but if we can some how manage to work together and bring in this person who is really study this aspect of the subject and another that the hole is more than the some of its part. The down side of that is one never completely succeed in turning a collective work into the coherent thing that the work of the single author could or should be. There is always a considerable amount of slippage, even so even though it's is giving me a lot of heartache from time to time this or that collective work. I've enjoyed doing it and I think the person who serves in a collaborative project certainly learns a lot in the process.

Barbir: What took you to Princeton in 1966?

Brown: Well it was a great opportunity I had only just the one tour none renewable as an assistant professor at Harvard and I must confess I had not really known Princeton all that well. I knew of the reputation that goes back to this great Lebanese scholar Philip Hipty who way back in the 1930's had pushed forward what was such a revolutionary idea at the time. He had hounded and I think that's a proper word, hounded the Princeton faculty to face up to the fact that orientalism or the study of the Middle East was in one ways venerable disciplinary study and America academia, but it was basically rooted in ancient history and in biblical studies alike and it didn't even really pay much attention to the Islamic period starting in the 7th century of the common era. And even less a modern Middle East and Philip Hipty from Shin land and Lebanon sort of push through fighting the good fight to we can call just quiet candidly academic respectability for the study of the Islamic period and the Modern Middle East so that was quiet a challenge to be part of that program and even many years later and so it was I was aware of that and realizing the standing of Princeton it was really a no need to get much thought if the offer was there I would certainly happily and cheerfully accepted , which I did.

Barbir: And the other advantage I think to Princeton was that it had a special collection of Middle Eastern manuscript as well as a very solid collection of books from the region

Brown: Yes exactly.

Barbir: As good as Harvard if not better.

Brown: We like to say at Princeton and a colleague of Harvard even accepted this as fair statement that Harvard's collection of the Middle East is bigger but Princeton's is best.

Barbir: At what point did you return to the study of Foreign Affairs in which you held a chair?

Brown: Yes that too grew out of the occasion imposing itself upon me rather than a lot of careful planning ahead. By the time I was schedule for an academic sebanicle leave in 1973 I had done quiet a bit of work on Tunisian history especially I had translated a political critics of a Tunisian statesman you can say even an Ottoman Tunisian statesman one clear to the tunacy written commentary that I had written a book on a Tunisian modernizer reformer some what equivalent to Mohammed Ali of Egypt or to (o tam Macmode)of the Ottoman Empire one of bay of Tunisia as yet another example of the Middle East being confronted by the West and responding to it and I was really seriously considering first that it was time to get back to the Middle East proper to the Muorick not be just a Mogovry specialist

Barbir: Easter agric World

Brown: Yes Eastern agric world as oposed to not just the West agric world, and I was looking forward to a study of the period of the Arabic pastier in the Egyptians history of the sort challenge to the existing regime in the 1870sand 1880s in Egypt that led to the British occupation. Concentrating largely on ides of political organization maybe we can say constitutional rule and I was well embarked on that when I found myself with family, with wife and all three children in Khyrol at the time of the out break of the Ramadan Yumkippur October War, and the realization that this was a war initiated by two daring political leaders in the Arab World unorthodox and office of , not in order to defeat the enemy Israel because they realized that was beyond their capability. But to make its efficiently good show in order to at least provoke outside intervention of the Great Powers. Some how everything fell in line, and I thought my goodness here is if not the most important single issue. Certainly an issue in modern Middle Eastern history that cannot be swiped under the rug Constitutionalism the rise of parliamentarianism and in it abroad it's falling apart in Egypt that can wait. I really needed to step back and look at what historian since time out of mind has referred to as the history question. As this convoluted very difficult aspect of the European State System slowly working to dismember the Ottoman Empire in a way that would avoid a European War but not necessarily other problems within the Middle East itself, and that had been going on at least ever since Napoleon and forty thousand French troops had arrived in Egypt in 1798 or if not earlier in the disastrous war for the Ottoman against the Russian in 1774 and so I found myself plunged into a diplomatic history which as been a major but not exclusive focus of my interest ever since. So I guess it took a war to shock me into that. Let me just add one other point. One reason why I had avoided diplomatic history up to that time even though my earlier interest were always that was I felt very strongly and I still feel strong there is tendency on the part of us outsiders to study excessively the Middle East as an arena of outside interest of outside politics in doing that we are not doing justice to the study of the history of the people we are not paying enough attention to the Middle Easterners themselves. So I sort of tended to almost quarantine off Eastern questions diplomatic history for that reason I said look I worked hard to become a fairly competent Arabist. I am trying to give these people their history to talk about them, but then with the outbreak of the October War I had to say look even studying these people without studying the extent to which they're being intertwined with them, with the outsiders is to miss a major organizing key to understanding what's been taking place. So that sort of got me embarked perhaps I can say more honestly re-embarked on the study of diplomatic history or international relations.

Barbir: Well I'm sure you have anticipated this question. Do you think the Eastern question is still alive today?

Brown: It, yes and no because it to one extent. One aspect of the Eastern question is I sort to interpret it and reconstruct it in my study was a phenomenon of many different pockets of political influence was in the air. Little states or would be states with in the Middle East and several outside states not just Britain, but Britain and Russia and France and even in a manner way Germany. The many different states creating what I call in my book on this subject a collidescopic Nature of the whole kind of jacking for position. In what is a multi polar of phenomenon not something that we Americans tend to almost take for granted. We tend to see foreign affairs in terms of one issue at a time, In terms of popularities. We haven't lived the way so much of Europe or certainly the Middle East have, and which there is almost always been sort of a multi polarity.

Brown: Now of course the multi polarity became largely a bipolar outside phenomenon during the period, during the years of the Cold War but still very definitely multi polarity within

Brown: Now for at least a certain period of time we all talk and understandably of the world's only surviving super power, of the single super power there is a little bit it would seem of something approaching unit polarity in terms of the outsider, the outside world which I still think may well be only a transcend phenomenon its not likely to continue indefinitely. Even so with in the Middle East itself we still have this great multi polarity. So to some extent and in also the way in which Middle Easterners are almost oppressively concerned with their daily political life, their daily diplomat life in terms of how this plays with how one can either frustrate the effort of the outsider or recruit the outsider to achieve their gains within. I think that aspects of what I would call the classic Eastern question is still there

Barbir: Would you say that President Bush's decision to send the Secretary of State back to the region ten days ago was illustrative of that of the outside power becoming involved again?

Brown: It certainly was illustrative of the well let me kind of put it this way we have we Americans. I 'm going to trace it back to the time of Henry Ciscenger have make much of the argument that only we as an outside power can possibly arrange, mediate, orchestrate a settlement between Israel and the Arab or the settlement between now the Israel specially and the Palestinians that we are the only power trusted by both sides. I think that has become almost a mantro we all tend to say that now and in funny sort of way it's been a pretty well accepted at least in part in the area. So we have reached a situation in which we are sort of horsed by our own button we have make much of this and we have seen by the parties concerned as the only power likely to be able to have a strong influence in That. Given the interest of the Bush Administration in achieving certain other goals in the Middle East maintaining or creating where there don't exist good relations with the cluster of so many different Arabs states of quite possibly arranging a campaign even a military campaign against Sadam Musain and Iraq doing the best we can to bring to heal the kind of international terrorism we experienced after the September 11th there is all kinds of reasons for getting involved and quite frankly the earliest seems to be that the earlier inclination of the Bush Administration to sort of take a some distance from the Israeli, Palestinian confrontation and unless or until the parties were are seem to be more nearly ready to back off and move towards negotiation the terrible downward spot of all that violence on those has really force the hand of the Bush Administration and one can only hope not be absolutely sure that the our administration has a fairly coherent strategic plan of where we go from here, but yes we are very much involved in it now and it is not as if this was a choice rather freely taken again without outside consent we almost felt obliged to do something and that accounts for the secretary's visit there in my judgment.

Barbir: Well it certainly illustrates what you said earlier of how the Eastern question operated that it was a two way street that it was not a only the attempts of European powers in the past to either interfere or to promote their interest in the region the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and area of spears of interest and so on, but also the way in which the regional powers could involve the outside power as in this case the United States and almost and force the outside power to become involved in one form or another.

Brown: I think that is also a very important point which really needs to almost put forward as one possible way of interpreting diplomatic conduct at any time and every time what I had in mind is quite often in areas among states among people s who are relatively weak these are the super power great power in the fight there is the tendency to think in terms of importance of we are totally at the mercy the outsiders the best we can focus is just sort of dodge their crude moods that might be against our interest . We don't some times think through sufficiently of seriously the ways in which the smaller power with a different focus of immediate interest can manipulate a great power a the late Earnest Glaner Anthropologist of the British Anthropologist put it well when he averted when he sort of turn upside down or turn inside out the old maxim of divide rule of divide that you may not be ruled and the way in which a small regional power Middle Eastern else where for that matter can play off the outside power very effectively and often left incite the wary statement of one of the last Soviet Ambassador in the Syria in saying the Syrians take everything from us excepted advice.

Barbir: Just returning to academic life I was wondering whether you could share your best and your worst moments, actually students and colleagues might find that interested.

Brown: Now there is going to be a whether embarrass pulses as I try to think of the best things and worst, but that is surely a very useful and interested approach trying to confide it to more strictly academic matters I guess really one of the best is that funny kind of experience when you've become so totally wrapped up in the study of a earlier time and a earlier place that you suddenly find yourself living in that time, you feel you know that time better perhaps even than you know what's right around you the whole idea of the past being a foreign country and of course you must come back in this one, and this sounds like a benignity and this may not necessarily my best point my best point might have been the birth of my first child or very sudden more substantial things clearly it just comes to mind when you confronted me with that question unexpectedly that what a wonderful feeling it was and sort of just the thrill of being an historian when I visited a friend and later a student Louise Wear Lou Wear he was serving as a peace corp. voluntary in Tunis and he taken a lovely old house in the old part of Tunis in the Medina of Tunis and he told me he had just learn that this house was the house of a Tunisian Historian of the 19th century called ( ) now by this time Bendiagh had been my principal source for what is still my favorite study the study of the Tunisian of ( ) mid 19th century Tunisia of carefully reconstruct what government what society what the people were like and how things were how the outside world was impinging and how they were trying to work their way toward grouping with that and becoming modern and the whole business that so much that I am working on and just suddenly there is what . There is an epiphany there I was an( ) it was almost if he was just sitting on a divine opposite me so it was one of those great little moments that sort of made it all worth while, but then of course as I think it was David Hume said you've got to come back from the past if you're going to be of any use to anybody and explain it all and I insisted I have to come back , but there was that moment of just your adulterated pleasure and being apart of that and being able a feeling you sort of, of course you didn't want to be you didn't want to fool yourself you didn't want to be so absolutely cocky that you headed all straight but you did have a feeling it would some how you were on the right track and understanding the very human dimension of a people at a certain period of time and that's very satisfying.

Barbir: Certainly I think it is something that, that I think students should know that we are in this business primarily for the pleasure of finding things out and of making that connection with the past times and yet has you said returning to the present. One of the things that I've experienced and I would like your comment on it is that very often when I say something when I am introduced to somebody and I say that I study the Middle East they immediately assume that the only thing interested about the region is the Arab Israelis conflict or the war on terrorism. How do you deal with that in your experience? When you were sort of defined by others in some ways?

Brown: Well as in a different context senator (Gold) used to say that you got to go hunting were the ducks are in terms of getting students interesting in the larger issue in the Middle East one can make the mistake of sort of moving away from what they've learned from today the headlines and what people are talking about in the media or what they may have learned from their parents if they have roots in the Middle East or other lights it's not a bad idea they always to go from the least relative to the well known to the lesser known but I think you are absolutely we want to define our subject of study in a way that gets a certain sense of you might say gives their innings to all people involved and not just the picking and choosing of this or that issue, but again the best way to do it is not by as it were wrapping their knuckles and saying all of the Israelis and all of the Palestine's together are less than the population of greater carol today let's be a little more comprehensive in our interest study but to move them step by step towards an understanding and appreciation of people in their own right. There is a lot of issues that I found myself wrestling with right now that subject certainly in many History Department now there is an effort and very commendable very understandable effort to get beyond just diplomatic history get beyond just history of confrontation of what use to cause sort of dispiriting the drumming bugle history or the like. I am strongly supportive of the history from the bottom up movements of cultural history and alike, but having said that I still counter reversed myself perhaps and played the other side of the street these diplomatic history the history of the grand problems of our day if we have to pick and choose our more important in terms of having a greater impact on people's lives then the history of this or that poet or the history of this or that peasant and alike and we have to make that hard choice. Someone one said reversing the English version and said after all there are kings as well as cabbages well there aren't many kings left but still there are rulers and like it are not unfortunately this or that ruler is just by the nature of the parceling out of political power is more likely to have an impact on your life and mine than this or that peasant or this or that poet.

Barbir: And one of the things that we as educators do is to make people aware of that impact, because sometimes they are not .For example my students are always surprised when I say that raisins from Ismer in Western Turkey was on sale in the streets of Boston in 1785. It establishes the kind of a connection with the past that they found fascinating. I wanted to ask you now that you are retired seemed to be able to write more extensively than when you were teaching and working, and so I thought may be the listeners would like to hear something about what you're working on now what research projects are on the boards.

Brown: Well I don't honestly know whether what I'm going to tell you is partially an effort to move away from the very genuine individual anguish I have and looking on the modern seen and from September11th the horrors of that story the downward cycle of violence Israel and the Palestinians subject I necessarily found myself so intimately involved and studying for now and almost exactly half century but my immediate research projects are really rather far away from all of that and it my be escapism on my part but I hope not. One thing is to complete a translation of the man I mentioned earlier (pfpgii) who in the 1860's wrote his multi volume history of Modern Tunisia. The first volume of which was really I think we called it the Political Treaties an effort in political theory most in political theory and it has the advantage of being the time when just these new western ideas are impinging and he is taking the measure of and even the terminology he uses is an interesting index of the mind set of you might say the classic Arabal Islamic world cultural world trying to zero in on it understand different mind set as coming in from the outside and that is a subject that I want to finish translating that and with the commentary on it, and then I am considering a group of separate chapters and yes perhaps of Modern Middle Eastern history including a what I hope to the effort of taking little seemingly incidental occurrences and using them as giving an insight to larger issues to what was taking place and I'll just mention one which has just always stuck in my mind to do a lot of work to pull it together, but it concerns someone known to the American historians to Americans in general Alexis Detoufield , but it something that is not too well known to most Americans or even in some case scholars who knows quite a bit about Detoufield in addition to his visit to our country and his writing classic democracy in America. He had a very important visit to recently crinch-captured Algeria in the 1830's, and the one seen I was stop with it was just in my mind an absolutely fascinating one liner if I dare say on which to build a whole historical reconstruction when he visited the city of Alger's in the 1830's he compared it to the cities of Cincinnati just a few years earlier, and there in lies a tale that I hope to tell.

Barbir: Professor Brown thank you very much for taking the time to be with us.

Brown: You're very welcome