Abstract
Drawing on 81 original letters written by an executive member of staff at UNESCO’s Secretariat 1946–1947, this article aims to deneutralize the work of individual scholars and intellectuals in the officially neutral and invisible Secretariat, and situate the foundational work of UNESCO in the reality of post-war Paris. Olov R. T. Janse, a Swedish-born archaeologist who had worked in Europe, French Indochina and for US intelligence services, worked six months at the UNESCO Secretariat, from November 1946 to May 1947. The letters he sent home to his wife Ronny abound with details and information about his work and life, in and around the UNESCO Secretariat. They outline connections with pre-Second World War cosmopolitan networks and colonial structures, against a background of harsh human reality in post-war Paris, and thus situate UNESCO’s foundation at the point of intersection between pre-war nostalgia and post-war dreams of a peaceful future.
Introduction
Olov R. T. Janse worked for the section of Philosophy and Humanistic Studies in the Secretariat of a newborn UNESCO in 1946–1947. An archaeologist born and trained in Sweden, Janse had previously pursued a successful international career in France, Indochina and the Philippines. The Second World War had made him an academic refugee to the United States, where he had been contracted by the OSS and US State Department. He had only recently settled in Washington, DC with his wife Ronny when he left her there and returned to Europe to work for UNESCO. Over the seven months they were parted, Olov wrote to Ronny several times per week. In the letters, he described his attempts to reconnect with a bygone lifestyle and shattered networks from pre-war France and Indochina. He expressed at the same time a growing sense of unease and longing to return to the United States. Thanks to their detail and explicitness, these letters now allow us to situate the work of the UNESCO Secretariat in the context of post-war Paris.
Ronny had always been closely involved in her husband’s professional life, so the letters also contain details of Janse’s work in and around UNESCO. As such, the letters form unique research material. The highly qualified members of staff in UNESCO’s Secretariat were, and are still, almost invisible in the official documentation of the organization. They stand for most of the structure and intellectual contents of UNESCO’s programme, but their role is to be invisible and neutral servants to the idea(l)s of internationalism and cultural diplomacy. Hence they almost never have their names officially associated with the work they did and the ideas they planted and pursued. Without the letters that Olov Janse sent to Ronny, it would have been impossible only from UNESCO’s own archives to attribute the work he did to him as a scholar with a certain experience and intellectual profile.
This article features Olov Janse’s letters from the Secretariat of a newborn UNESCO, with the ambition to deneutralize the work of individual scholars and intellectuals in the Secretariat, and to situate the foundational work of UNESCO in the reality of post-war Paris.
The birth of UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was officially born on 4 November 1946, but it was in many ways a reinvention of the League of Nations’ Committee on Intellectual Co-operation (established in 1922, later renamed the International Institute for Intellectual Co-operation) that had been created as a peace-striving reaction to the First World War (Valderrama, 1995: Chapter I). The Second World War put an end to the Institute’s activities. But by the end of the war, the victorious nations reinvented the League of Nations, now in the form of the United Nations, with the aim to rebuild what the war had destroyed and find ways to a peaceful future. Just as the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation was a branch of the League of Nations, UNESCO was conceived as a similar branch of intellectual and scientific activities to the United Nations. A first Preparatory Commission was set up in London from November 1945 to September 1946, and a second one in Paris from September to December 1946. The Paris Preparatory Commission ended with the first General Conference, from 20 November to 10 December 1946. Olov Janse arrived in Paris on 22 November, two days into the first General Conference.
The organization had its first headquarters in Hôtel Majestic, at Avenue Kléber near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Its organizational structure was borrowed from the United Nations, with an Executive Board chaired by a Director-General (at that time the British evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley) and a Secretariat. The Director-General and the Secretariat both had their offices in the headquarters. The third important part of the organization, the General Conference with its international representation of high profile academics and cultural diplomats, gathered only once a year for a General Conference. The layout of the Secretariat’s programme sections reflected the layout of the intellectual work, with sections of Education, Libraries, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Philosophy & Humanistic Studies, Arts & Letters, Museums and Mass Communication (Figure 1). All sections worked for the overarching aim to rehabilitate war-torn structures for intellectual and scientific co-operation and create a peaceful world through international solidarity. The core values of the new organization were in the famous formulation of its constitution: ‘That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’ (Pompei, 1972: 19).
Organization scheme of the UNESCO Secretariat 1947. Reproduced from original in UNESCO [UNESCO/Cons. Exec, /2e Sess/1947/Supplement].
Some attempts were made to balance the influence between France and Great Britain, by shifting location between London and Paris, and by deciding on both French and English as working languages. But the two leading nations’ discursive dominance was not really questioned. Thus, there was no critical reflection on the strong reliance on Enlightenment values translated into Western liberal definitions of freedom, the reliance on science as a conveyor of objective truth, nor on the promotion of progress towards Western modernity as an ideal way towards peaceful coexistence (Sluga, 2013: 2–6). From where we stand today, it is easy to hear echoes from the pre-war colonial discourses of particularly France (e.g. Cooper, 2001) but also Great Britain (e.g. McClintock, 1995), in the formulations of a newborn UNESCO (e.g. Huxley, 1947; Valderrama, 1995). At the end of the war, when many colonial territories had gained independence, the former rivalling empires of France and Great Britain, supported by the United States – the moral winner of the war who contributed with nearly half of UNESCO’s total budget – joined forces to create a good and peaceful future for the entire world, based on very similar ideals of humanist knowledge, education, progress and mise-en-valeur, that they had promoted in their own imperial projects. Both contexts allowed them to pose as knowledgeable and benevolent patriarchs of (then) an empire and (now) all of humanity. In this sense, UNESCO can be regarded as an arena to build national grandeur and prestige, enhanced further by the ideals of internationalism (Sluga, 2013). Many of the structures and ideals of UNESCO have remained intact since its establishment in 1946 and today are still ‘embedded within modernist principles of progress and development and similarly subscribes to the liberal principles of diplomacy, tolerance, and development’ (Meskell, 2013: 156).
In the first year of UNESCO’s existence, at the time Olov Janse worked there, surprisingly little attention was paid to the intellectual work and the actual contents of the programme. Going through archive records of meetings, discussions and official documents from 1946–1947, it is striking how almost all concern the structure of the administrative system (based on Anglo-Saxon law, as Pompei [1972: 18] has noted), contracts and salaries, problems with the office building, and not least a constant mulling over budget constraints.
Olov Janse at UNESCO
This week we wish to introduce to those members of the staff who don’t know him, Mr. Olov R.T. JANSE, Counsellor for the Humanities in the Social Sciences Section. […] Of Swedish birth, and a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Upsala, Sweden, Mr. Janse has spent very little of his adult life in his own country. From 1920 to 1930 he was Assistant Curator of the French National Museum of Antiquities and from 1925 to 1927 he was Professor at the Ecole du Louvre. In 1928 until 1934 he was Assistant Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) where he lectured on the history of primitive religions and from 1941 to 1943 he was Lecturer of Far Eastern Archaeology at Harvard University. His interests are centred in the archaeology of the old world, ranging from China to Scandinavia. Numerous methodologically conducted excavations have also been made by Mr. Janse in Sweden, France, Indochina and the Philippine Islands and he has travelled and studied from the archaeological and technical point of view almost all outstanding Museums in Europe, America and the Far East. During the war Mr. Janse served first in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington and later as deputy chief of the South-East Asia section (Research and Analysis Branch) in the State Department. […] Shortly after his arrival at Unesco House he drafted a proposition regarding some future plans for the Humanistic Studies, which were accepted by the Sub-Committee. According to these plans a certain number of temporary committees will possibly be set up, each one to deal with matters related to one of the disciplines within the Humanities Section (Ancient History, Linguistics, etc.). As other services of Unesco, they are still in an initial stage and faced with a great many problems of an urgent and complex character. […] “Undoubtedly”, Mr. Janse says, “we should endeavour to give whatever help we could now. It probably will not be difficult to reach an agreement on the principle but there may be some difficulties as to the procedures to be followed. Such measures – supporting first one applicant then another – will, in my opinion, only serve to tide over temporary difficulties. As we want to accomplish something which will last, we must at the same time look forward to a plan which in a more substantial way – and on a world wide basis – could contribute to rehabilitate the Humanistic studies as a whole. It is also essential that such a plan lay emphasis on the orientation of the work toward values which can be identified with the principle scope of Unesco”. (Mercury [Newsletter of the UNESCO Staff Association], No. 12, 29 January 1947, pp.18–20)
Olov Janse arrived at the UNESCO house with 30 years’ experience of international academic work in the archaeology and museums of Sweden, France, French Indochina, the Philippines and the United States. To his academic vita, he could add important experience of intelligence service from assignments with the OSS and US State Department. And he was fluent in both French and English. Altogether it made for an almost perfect background for a UNESCO civil servant. He was 55 years old and had been forced by the war to relocate his life and career from Paris and France (a country with which he had fallen in love as a young man, and described as the homeland of his soul) to the United States (Källén and Hegardt, 2014; see also www.olovjanse.com for biographical details). A contract with UNESCO allowed him to make the most out of his experiences and expertise, and to work for liberal ideals of peace-striving internationalism that he was passionate about. It also gave him an opportunity to return to the homeland of his soul. So Olov Janse arrived in Paris with great hopes and expectations for a future work with UNESCO.
He had first approached UNESCO via his acquaintance Howard Wilson, professor of Education and Deputy Executive Secretary of the UNESCO Preparatory Commission. Janse wrote (UNESCO: Olov R. T. Janse personal file): Washington, D.C., Sept 12 1946 Dear Howard, The other day I happened to learn that you soon will leave for Paris to attend the UNESCO meeting. As I am anxious to get a position in this organization, when established, may I ask you kindly to let me know if, in your opinion, there will be any openings for me and if so, how to proceed and what people to get in touch with. As you perhaps know my wartime assignment in ex-OSS and later in the Dept of State came to a close at the end of last May and I am now most desirous to join the UNESCO. I already am somewhat familiar with international cultural cooperation, because while connected with the French National Museums and Sorbonne, I was occasionally asked to act in capacity of consultant in the now defunct Institute of intellectual cooperation in Paris. At any event I enclose a short biographical sketch of myself. […] With kindest regards to both you and your wife. Most sincerely yours. Olov R.T. Janse Paris XVIème, 25th September 1946 Dear Olov, I have just received your letter of the 12th September, with its enclosed vita concerning yourself. Nothing would give me more personal pleasure than to have you join our staff, and I very much hope that can be arranged in time. As you perhaps know, we are at present a Preparatory Commission, and go out of legal existence before the end of 1946. The staff we have at present is a temporary staff and the full group of experts we need will be recruited only during 1947. I am calling your letter to the attention of the head of the Social Sciences section and the head of the Personnel Bureau, and we will communicate with you if any post in your field becomes available. Best regards to you and your wife, Sincerely yours, HOWARD E. WILSON Deputy Executive Secretary
A small handwritten note in Janse’s personal file in the UNESCO archives shows that Wilson kept his promise: Awad – I know Janse well and he is tops as an archaeologist. He is a good man to consider. Wilson.
Olov Janse was contracted as Counsellor for the Humanities in the Social Sciences Section of the Secretariat. Telegrams were sent to stress the urgency of a quick arrival, and Janse travelled from the US by plane, arrived in Paris and began his work two days into the first General Conference. He got his own office, in room No. 254 on the second floor of the Hôtel Majestic, and his salary was 1500 US$ per year, plus 30 francs per day in per diem allowance. Olov Janse was (to my knowledge) the only archaeologist among the Secretariat staff at the time, and archaeology had no specific space in UNESCO’s programme. His section – Philosophy and Humanistic Studies – consisted of himself, the Assistant Jacques Havet from France and the Secretary Mrs Perry-Warnes from the UK (Figure 2).
Olov Janse’s UNESCO card (NAA: AK375). ‘Today we had our pictures taken here in order to receive special identity cards which will be issued by the Foreign office and apparently give us a quasi-diplomatic status’ (1947-02-12, NAA: AK1657-58; National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Janse 2001: 29).
He applied for a permanent position on 14 January 1947 (UNESCO: O. Janse personal file), and his letters to Ronny show that he was still, by that time, enthusiastic about his work and the context of UNESCO. He wrote about arranging for her to come and visit him, made plans for the General Conference in Mexico in the autumn, and, perhaps most significantly, he wrote his letters in French. But in the end of January, he began writing in English instead. He was longing to go home [sic] to Washington, and started looking for career opportunities at the Library of Congress. His contract was terminated on 31 May 1947. He used some saved vacation time to travel to Sweden to visit friends and relatives and returned thereafter to the United States with SS America from Cherbourg on 18 July 1947.
UNESCO situated in post-war Paris
Ma Bien Chérie, Jusqu’ici je me suis occupé surtout à m’informer au sujet des travaux et des buts de l’Unesco. J’ai pris contacte avec de nombreuses personnes et j’ai encore à étudier beaucoup de documents qui se sont accumulé sur mon bureau. J’ai un bureau à moi seul. Sous peu je vais dresser des plans pour l’organisation d’une organisation internationale d’archéologique (ceci entre nous). Grousset, G. Salle, G.H.R, Stern et encore d’autres vieux amis m’ont déjà aidé beaucoup dans cette matière qui sera discutée ces jours-ci plus en détail. (1946-11-27, NAA: AK1613-1615)
Six days after his arrival in Paris (still during the General Conference), Olov Janse wrote to Ronny that he had much work to do just getting informed about the subjects of his work and the goals of UNESCO. He was already contemplating setting up an international organization for archaeology, and had for this purpose reactivated his old network of academic friends in Paris, with high profile scholars like René Grousset, Georges Salles, Georges Henri Rivière and Philippe Stern. But this idea was soon dropped, and two months later the tone of his letters is quite different: – When you say that it must be very interesting to listen to so many witty conversations I am afraid that you make some wishful thinking. Before the war it was much more interesting and we were perhaps less critical. Now the conversation deals mostly with matters like cold weather, problem of heating, food, etc. However, the little circle of friends we have here is quite interesting, but they are all trying to go to the U.S.A. (1947-01-31, NAA: AK1645-1648)
How can we understand this transformation, from enthusiastic energy to frustrated disappointment, in only two months?
In the (real) minds of men
Olov Janse, expecting to return to the homeland of his soul, was taken aback by the misery of post-war Paris. Although he and his colleagues – whom he refers to as Unescians – were privileged with a quasi-diplomatic status, income, housing, a restaurant and a cooperative for food and basic supplies, they were also affected by the general situation in Paris: ‘Les gens ici essayent de sourire, malgré tout, mais la vie n’est pas gaie. Si je n’avais pas à faire un travail très intéressant, j’aurai certainement du cafard’ (1946-11-30, NAA: AK446-47). People try to smile but life is not joyful, he wrote only 10 days after his arrival. There was fear for the future, and everywhere were mendicants, blind and mutilated people, as constant reminders of the war. The French have suffered terribly, he wrote (1946-12-08, NAA: AK454-55). The shortage of food and basic supplies got worse and worse, and the Metro was stinking because there was no soap to keep clean (1947-03-09, NAA: AK1678-81). The weather was miserable too. Endless rains were followed by the coldest and longest winter in living memory. The heating system failed, first in the Hôtel Pont Royal where he was staying, and later in the UNESCO building. He was hungry, and the meals of the UNESCO restaurant were insufficient. There were strikes in the postal service, metro, taxis, etc. (1947-02-14, NAA: AK1655-56). Already in December he wrote: Tous ceux qui peuvent quitte le pays et tout le monde rêve d’aller en Amérique – all who have the opportunity leave the country, and everybody dreams of going to America (1946-12-10, NAA: AK1595-1600). It is now very cold and uncomfortable here in Paris. I can not tell enough how glad I am to have with me the heating pad and the electric heater which is now running all night. (1947-01-30, NAA: AK1641-44).
Olov Janse lost weight and complained of nightmares. He too dreamt of America and began to shift focus towards a future in Washington: Once I have got U.S. citizenship I am sure I
Added to the stressful living conditions in Paris were the increasing tensions in the Secretariat. In Janse’s letters, tensions are first mentioned on 14 December 1946. The American delegation, which contributed around 40% of UNESCO’s budget had proposed Francis Biddle to be the new Director-General and was finally forced to accept the election of Julian Huxley – but only with his mandate period cut from five years to two, and the budget cut by 20% (1946-12-14, NAA: AK1610-12). This seems to have set the tone for the work of the newly formed Secretariat. Budget constraints due to unpaid member fees, and a vague formulation of the format and role of the Secretariat, led to an increasingly insecure employment situation. Here everybody seems rather depressed because of the uncertain and unsettled situation of Unesco, but I believe that the long, dark and cold winter is also to some extent responsible for the tired faces. […] During the general assambly [sic] until some time after new-year there was a great deal of optimism and great hopes, but now the picture is changing rapidly. (1947-03-27, NAA: AK1725-28) [A] great many people around me have received notice so I gather I will receive one too. Sometimes they do it only 48 hours in advance! It is now such a confusion here. Unesco does not receive the funds they have asked for and many bold projects are simply being given up. (1947-05-15, NAA: AK489-92)
The long cold winter, the post-war situation in Paris and the uncertain work conditions at UNESCO altogether created a rather depressing situation for the members of the Secretariat. Deputy Director-General Walter Laves confirmed this in his address before the US National Commission of UNESCO in Chicago in September 1947: I think it is a great tribute to the members of our staff that, with all the special uncertainties of tenure, the very difficult living conditions in Paris, the uncertainty of the programme itself, they have continued to work loyally and indefatigably toward the execution of the programmes of the Organization. (UNESCO: DDG/Misc. 123, p.5)
But from Olov Janse’s letters we learn that he, at least, focused more and more on his own terms of employment, and less and less on the execution of UNESCO’s programmes. We see an increasing sense of surrender and refocus – from fine internationalist ideals to personal and professional survival.
Reconnection with pre-war networks
But let us return to the moment when Olov Janse arrived in Paris, with great expectations – not only for his work in UNESCO but also for the opportunity to reconnect with a city, a lifestyle and a network of friends he had lost by the war. Before the war, he had been a lecturer at Sorbonne and École de Louvre and had worked in close contact with the museums of Saint-Germain, Guimet and Cernuschi.
Three connected circles of old friends stand out in the letters. The first included top academics and museum directors like René Grousset, George-Henri Rivière, Marcelle Minet and André Varagnac. The second, in close connection with the first, involved art collectors and patrons like David David-Weill, C.T. Loo, Gabriel Cognacq, Jacques Orcel and Mary Churchill Humphries. These two categories belonged to or shared social space with the wealthy and influential upper bourgeoisie in Paris. Their relations with Janse were established before he set off to work in Indochina in the early 1930s. The third category was less distinctive in terms of class, and included old friends and colleagues from Indochina, who had returned to France during or after the Japanese occupation. Among them were Paul Lévy, René Mercier, Jean-Yves Claeys and Georges Cœdès. Their relations with Janse could indeed have been complicated by his war-time assignment with the OSS and US State Department (which were explicitly against a French reinstitution of power over Indochina after the Japanese occupation) but judging from the letters to Ronny, Janse’s personal loyalty with the French had remained intact.
Much of his spare time outside UNESCO was spent searching the storages of museums (Cernuschi and Guimet) or the attic of his friend C.T. Loo, renowned dealer of Chinese art and antiquities, for their collections and belongings hidden during the war. The storages were a mess, functioning as safe houses for private collections of artefacts or personal belongings during the war. Janse’s belongings had been packed and stored by their friends when they did not return to Paris from Indochina as planned. Going through the things in C.T. Loo’s attic – feeling the smooth touch of half a dozen silk shirts from Tokyo, the fragrance of jasmine tea (from Indochina?), and a box of dried rose petals from their summer holidays as newlyweds with his family in Sweden (1946-12-05, NAA: AK448-53) – connected him physically and emotionally with bygone times. The letters tell that the reconnection with their old friends and their old things also in some sense induced hopes for reconstruction – of the lives they had lived and the social spaces of affluence and influence they used to occupy before the war.
Most important of all his friends was René Grousset, director of the Guimet and Cernuschi museums, and one of ‘the immortals’ of the Académie française. Grousset had been Janse’s mentor and one of the main supporters for his expeditions to Indochina. Janse often turned to his old mentor for advice about his UNESCO work. When he was preparing a report for his section, Grousset sat with him for hours, bettering his French, and reviewing and discussing the report point by point (1946-12-26, NAA: AK463-65). Janse consulted Grousset on several matters, and Grousset was in this way influencing – informally and invisibly – the work of UNESCO. Several other members of Olov Janse’s pre-war network from Paris and Indochina were informally consulted and thus connected with UNESCO’s work in a similar, invisible way.
The invisible servants
In April 1947, there were 162 executive members of staff in the UNESCO Secretariat (this had increased to 2000–3000 by 1978 [Hoggart, 2011 (1978): 18] and is now around 2000). Of them were seventy per cent citizens of France (48), the United Kingdom (44) or the United States (21). Olov Janse was the only executive member of staff from Sweden (UNESCO: UNESCO/Cons.Exec/2e Sess/14/1947). The working languages were (and remain today) French and English, and it was officially required that all executive staff in the Secretariat were fluent in both (e.g. Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 19).
In the organization structure of UNESCO, which was borrowed from the UN, the Secretariat was (and still is) one of three principal organs along with the General Conference and the Executive Board. While the latter two were the most visible and apparently active to the public eye (the General Conference owned responsibility for determining policies and the main lines of work, and the Executive Board was responsible for examining and executing the programme), the task of the Secretariat was, according to the regulations set in 1946, to ‘prepar[e] the ground for decisions by the General Conference and the Executive Board, and execut[e] such decisions in co-operation with the Members’; and ‘[t]he manner in which the Secretariat performs these tasks will largely determine the degree in which the objective of the Constitution will be realised’ (UNESCO/C/Admin. & Jur/S.C.Ad. & Fin. /12). The Secretariat was, in other words, responsible for most of UNESCO’s work (Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 30), but most of its activities were officially neutralized and made invisible in the form of bureaucracy (Weber, 1978: Chapter XI).
The members of staff in the Secretariat were subject to strict regulations (UNESCO/C/Admin. & Jur/S.C.Ad. & Fin. /17) defining them as international civil servants with no national or personal interests. ‘By accepting appointment, they pledge[d] themselves to discharge their functions and to regulate their conduct with the interests of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation only in view’. They were all subject to the authority of the Director-General and were responsible to him in the exercise of their functions. They had to ‘exercise the utmost discretion in regard to all matters of official business’, and ‘not communicate to any other person any unpublished information known to them by reason of their official position’ (see also Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 11 and NAA: AK1737-39). In addition to this, they had to undergo a medical examination to make sure that they were ‘free from any defect or disease that would interfere with the proper discharge of [their] duties’ (UNESCO/C/Admin. & Jur/S.C.Ad. & Fin. /17). These regulations in some sense work to dehumanize the members of staff – strip them of bias, individual point of view, the right to communicate, diseases and physical defects – in order to fit in as invisible parts of a well-oiled bureaucratic machinery (Weber, 1978: Chapter XI).
A noteworthy paradox in the construction of the Secretariat was that the members of staff were recruited on the basis of extraordinary individual achievements and international experiences in the academic fields of Education, Science and Culture. Like Olov Janse, most of the executive members of staff had built their careers on visibility and strong individual voice. Moreover, they were instructed to work for a Constitution that enshrines the idea of free enquiry (Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 11) and with a programme built on humanist peace-striving ideals, which demanded informed experiences and personal points of view. They were ‘by their oath required to be much more than faithful functionaries’ (Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 41). At the same time, their explicit role was to be quiet and invisible servants, like cogs in the larger machine. Some aired their frustration with this paradoxical situation in the Heads of Section meetings (e.g. Joseph Needham, head of the Natural Science section in the meeting 1947-03-06, UNESCO: [UNESCO/H.S./14/1947]). Others, like Olov Janse, were worn down more quietly and just lost enthusiasm for their work. In his letters, he made several insinuating comparisons with his time at the OSS (e.g. 1947-01-09, NAA: AK1740-41). Darling, Dear, Since I wrote you my last letter nothing special has happened, no invitations, life continues dull and uninteresting here. The work is becoming rather monotonous, except for the meetings of the heads of section where there is a great deal of animation. […] Next week we expect to start the execution of the programme for the Mexico conference and I presume it will be a very, very busy time. Rush, rush, rush. Never mind, I will do my best! (1947-03-14, NAA: AK1675-77) UNESCO stamps (NAA: AK1616). ‘Je fini cette lettre à la hâte pour pouvoir la mettre au bureau de poste à l’Unesco. Estampillé UNESCO les timbres ont plus de valeur’ (1946-11-27, NAA: AK1613-15).
Contribution and reward
Shortly after Janse arrived in Paris, still enthusiastic about the opportunity to work for UNESCO, he attended a General Conference meeting to discuss the future work in Humanistic Studies, based on a report from the Preparatory Commission. A few days later, he wrote to Ronny (1946-12-05, NAA: AK 448-53) that he had found the report weak and insufficient. He had picked up the same sentiment in the comments from the American delegate George Shuster and approached him as they left the meeting. Janse presented his own thoughts to Shuster, who responded – ‘I agree fully with you’. Janse had then decided to spend his free Sunday writing an alternative report, which he presented to George Shuster on Monday morning. Shuster had immediately taken it on board and presented it as a new proposal from the American delegation. At the plenary meeting in the afternoon, Shuster had (to the astonishment of himself and the whole assembly, says Janse) stood up and read the report as a proposal signed by the American delegation. Janse wrote to Ronny that his report suggested, in summary, that UNESCO’s work in Humanistic Studies should not only be academic but also political, and that the principal questions should be examined during 1947 by a number of ‘fact-finding boards’ (a term that he had picked up from listening to the radio): one for archaeology, one for history, etc. (1946-12-05, NAA: AK 448-53).
Olov Janse’s original report is nowhere to be found in the archives of UNESCO, nor has it been kept in Olov and Ronny Janse’s personal archive. But according to the verbatim record of the meeting on 2 December 1946 (UNESCO: C/Prog.Com./S.C.Soc.Sci./5), the meeting begun with a report from the Sub-Committee that had been formed to come up with a shortlist of proposals based on the Preparatory Commission’s report. After the committee report had been presented, the United States delegate George Shuster immediately asked for the word, and so he began: In the opinion of the United States delegation the Sub-Committee’s report does not offer a sufficiently wide basis of action. The basic principles are defined clearly enough, although, in our opinion, somewhat academically. They should be defined concretely, and an attempt should be made to show the way in which they are linked with Unesco’s work as a whole. It would be advisable to undertake a research programme and other definite work. I might give an example: It would be useful to discover to what extent the study of the Humanities and the way in which they are studied may further the aims and ambitions of imperialism […]. We are therefore in favour of the establishment of small commissions or study sections, and suggest that there should be seven of them. For example, a history section, a linguistic section, an archaeological section, a section dealing with the history of art and textual criticism, a section devoted to criticism, and one to aesthetics. These are only examples of the kind of study sections or fact-finding boards that might be set up. […] This would involve activities outside the scope of the present report, which, in the opinion of the United States delegation, merely envisages a revival of the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation. That, in our opinion, is not a sufficiently wide radius of action, nor is it sufficiently definite. We should be alive to the need for establishing contact between eastern and western civilization and culture. […] (UNESCO: C/Prog.Com./S.C.Soc.Sci./5, pp.4–5). […] Our motion proposes: 1. The Secretariat should during 1947 carefully study the basic principles of the action to be taken in the humanistic studies and define those principles both with regard to their academic implications and to their implications in so far as the principles of Unesco are concerned. 2. The Secretariat should during 1947 set up special commissions or fact-finding boards with the aim of recommending more concrete proposals for further consideration and implementation. (UNESCO: C/Prog.Com./S.C.Soc.Sci./5, p.13)
The ‘American’ proposal ‘was adopted,
Although Olov Janse did not get his name officially stamped on UNESCO’s 1947 programme for Humanistic Studies, he was duly rewarded for his work. He was immediately given responsibility for the implementation of the idea of fact-finding boards and was put in charge of the work in the section for Humanistic Studies. In the evening after the meeting, he was invited to an exclusive cocktail reception with the US delegation at the legendary Hôtel Crillon. To Ronny he wrote, apparently proud and pleased, that there had not been more than 30 people invited, only Americans. Very ‘selective’: Le soir même j’étais invité à l’Hôtel Crillon par M. Archibald MacLeish à un cocktail party où j’étais présenté à Mr and Mrs Benton, assistant secretary of State et chef de la délégation américaine, Mr Charles Thompson, Compton etc du State Dept, Chester Bowles, ame. chief de l’O.P.A. Il n’y avait que des américains et c’était très « selectif ». Une trentaine de personnes. (1946-12-05, NAA: AK448-53)
He continued to nurture his relations with the US delegation and was frequently invited to luncheons and cocktail parties at Hôtel Crillon (f. ex. 1946-12-07, NAA: AK1601-05 and 1947-04-09, NAA: AK1578-80). He enjoyed the exclusive opportunity to meet influential Americans, and they in turn got the opportunity to influence the officially neutral Secretariat with their politics. Judging from his letters to Ronny, Olov Janse was strongly in favour of pre-war French imperialism and post-war American anti-communism (f. ex. 1947-01-16, NAA: AK1635-38). These political orientations are reflected in the social networks he attracted and hence connected with UNESCO. He worked cunningly and strategically with his networks, using one to enhance his position in the other: I think that Hamlin soon will get the Legion of Honor and I hope also that he will not forget, that I made the first steps to get it for him. […]. I am now pretty sure that he has noticed the esteem, the leading scholars here have for me and that this has been a reason why he was quite friendly to me here. Dr H[uxley] has just sent me a note that he wants me to attend the weekly meetings of the Chiefs of section of which he is the chairman and to-day I have been invited to a diner [sic] he is giving for the top-men here in U. All this is of course strictly between us. (1947-02-19, NAA: AK1747-50)
The ‘Hamlin’ referred to is Chauncey Hamlin, director of Buffalo Science Museum and later initiator of ICOM (the plans of which he also discussed with Janse [1946-12-20, NAA: AK458-59]). This letter and others demonstrate how Janse used his French connections to enhance his position vis-à-vis the Americans, and used his UNESCO position to gain prestige in his French networks. He acted as a translator and bridge between the two groups, for example, by arranging joint luncheons (1947-05-12, NAA: AK485-88). This strategic positioning was mainly for his personal gain but affected, in the form of cultural diplomacy, the work he did for UNESCO (Hoggart, 2011 [1978]: 44).
A world heritage sketched
Archaeology was not defined as a field of its own in UNESCO’s programme 1946–1947, and Janse did not work officially with any specific archaeological projects. But he used his unofficial network contacts to promote his own ideas. In December, he wrote to Ronny that he had discussed with Howard Wilson (who ‘endorsed it completely’) an idea that ‘could spark the imagination of the entire world’: Je propose de mettre les grands monuments archéologiques et historiques sous le mandat (trusteeship) de l’Unesco (Forum Romanum, Parthenon, les pyramides, le sphinx, Angkor, etc) et aussi de faire des répliques de ces monuments dans les déserts ensoleillés d’Arizona (un Skansen mais dans une échelle mondiale). Ainsi on pourra essayer, dans le domaine des Humanités de subordonner les souvereignités [sic] nationales à un gouvernement international (ce qui était une idée de Roosevelt).
His proposal was to put major archaeological and historic monuments (Forum Romanum, Parthenon, the Pyramids, Angkor, etc.) under the trusteeship of UNESCO, and to make replicas of the monuments for display in the sunny desert of Arizona. Janse never presented his idea officially at UNESCO, but according to the letters, he discussed it informally with several colleagues and acquaintances in and around UNESCO.
Ideas of international protection of important historical monuments and sites were circulating already before the war in the International Institute for Intellectual Co-operation (Titchen, 1995; Turtinen, 2006: 46–49). Olov Janse’s idea of a UNESCO trusteeship of important monuments together with his replica idea – alone a rather frightening imaginary lovechild of Skansen and Las Vegas – capture in some sense the protection/consumption essence of the World Heritage Convention that was formed 25 years later. There are also important differences, most notably perhaps that the World Heritage Convention works through the nominations of National Committees, rather than the starkly internationalist framework suggested by Janse. Janse connected this idea with Roosevelt’s idea of international governance, and thus presented it as a US-rooted concept. But the monuments he picked as examples – a classic choice of sites to visit on a 19th- and early 20th-century round-the-world-trip – fell back on his European experiences and reflect the bildung ideals of the European cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and upper classes.
His letters say that he had positive responses to this idea from (at least) Howard Wilson, Chauncey Hamlin and the French anthropologist Paul Lévy: Paul Lévy tells me that my suggestion to place certain cultural monuments under Unesco trusteeship may be regarded as most welcome regarding Angkor. This strictly between us. He is very reluctant to return to Indochina. Will sail probably in about two months and stay there only for some time to arrange to get various collections and documents sent to France. He has promised to choose a nice head from Angkor and apply a very reasonable price. (1947-02-12, NAA 1657-58)
He mentioned several times in his letters to Ronny this ‘head from Angkor’ that Paul Lévy (who was then Director of the French colonial research institute Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient in Hanoi) had promised to get them for ‘a very reasonable price’. It appears to most of us today like a paradox to work for an international trusteeship of Angkor, and at the same time, arrange for a part of in the same monument to be removed and shipped overseas to be included in one’s own private collection. But this was clearly no paradox for Olov Janse. The possibility of such a combination – even written in the same paragraph of a letter – indicates a certain restrictive discourse of rights and ownership, and an exclusive definition of ‘mankind’ in the earliest days of UNESCO.
Final reflections
The premises for my final reflections can be summarized in three points. The first is that (i) the image of a neutral and objective UNESCO Secretariat should be regarded as a forced official manifestation of Weber’s bureaucratic ideals and not as a direct representation of the actual situation. At the formative time when Olov Janse worked there (1946–1947), there was an overwhelming British, French and American dominance of the UNESCO Secretariat, which is evident from the choices of language, location and staff appointments. The second point is that (ii) the political consequences of this formal dominance of UNESCO’s invisible work were further enhanced by informal personal network connections and interactions by officially neutral actors like Janse. The third point which follows from the combination of the first two is that (iii) the official image of a neutral bureaucratic body was in fact not encouraging diversity, but rather allowed the invisible Secretariat to act as a conceptual laundry machine which was ‘cleaning’ politicized messages and structures of inequality, allowing them to be presented as neutral and representing all of humanity. Similar arguments have been put forward in more recent analyses of UNESCO and its World Heritage Convention (e.g. Hoggart, 2011 [1978]; Hølleland, 2013; Turtinen, 2006), but through Janse’s letters, we can follow these structures and practices back to the very foundation of the organization.
Even with the details of Olov Janse’s letters to Ronny, his actual work in the Secretariat 1946–1947 remains to the most part invisible. The threads that can be picked up from the letters (which meetings he went to, which people he talked to formally and informally, which tasks landed on his desk … ) are impossible to follow into the formal UNESCO archive, because there is almost no detailed material kept there from the intellectual work of the Secretariat. Hence it is difficult to say if and in what ways Janse’s specific involvements and priorities have been influential on the structure and mission of UNESCO today. So, rather than to speculate about Olov Janse’s personal legacy, I want to use the details of his letters to deconstruct the image of UNESCO’s first Secretariat as a neutral machinery, and find more general traits and trends that are of importance to understand what went on in the invisible Secretariat in the earliest days of UNESCO.
Invisible influence
‘[R]ather than by its official aims, the Convention is spurred by informal life, from strategic practices and tactics located “backstage”’, says Jan Turtinen in a study of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (Turtinen, 2006: 186). In his research and fieldwork, he learned that while it is important to master the formal rules of procedure and behave diplomatically in the visible parts of UNESCO’s work, ‘[p]articipants who also master the informal rules, i.e. lobbying and networking before the meetings and during coffee breaks, cocktail parties, and other backstage venues, are in a better position to obtain a desired outcome’ (Turtinen, 2006: 187–188, see also Hoggart, 2011 [1978]).
The Janse letters show that this was a practice very much present already at the moment of UNESCO’s creation. You could say that it was already inscribed in the genetic code of UNESCO by its between-the-war ancestor the IIIC and was activated in the new organization by the recruitment of Secretariat staff who, like Janse, had both international academic experiences and diplomatic skills. To earn such experiences and skills, these individuals must necessarily have been familiar with and excelled at pre-Second World War cosmopolitan networking, positioning and prestige strategies. In the case of Olov Janse, we know that an exceptional talent for translation, positioning strategies and cultural diplomacy had been a crucial foundation for his pre-Second World War career as a cosmopolitan archaeologist in Europe and Southeast Asia (Hegardt and Källén, forthcoming; Källén and Hegardt, 2014).
A detailed focus on one actor in the early UNESCO machinery allows us to see the historical contingency of the informal rules and backstage practices that are still at the heart of UNESCO reality. Olov Janse used the backstage of UNESCO not only to promote his own views of what was best for UNESCO. He did it just as much, if not more, to enhance his own position; at UNESCO, in his French networks, and towards an envisioned future in America. He had learned the know-how of this practice from pre-Second World War cosmopolitan archaeology, where networks of art collectors and intellectuals among the upper bourgeoisie and noble classes in France and Sweden supported his research and his archaeological expeditions to French Indochina (Hegardt and Källén, forthcoming). This practice was based on enlightenment ideals of the cosmopolitan individual and was intimately linked with late 19th- and early 20th-century European colonial societies with its well known structural inequalities in terms of gender, class and race (e.g. Cooper, 2001; McClintock, 1995). It would have been remarkable if Olov Janse had not brought this practice with him, when he only a few years later came to work for a newborn UNESCO. So, what from early UNESCO policy documents may appear as a clean break with pre-war colonial structures was in practical reality a continuation of a pre-war network and positioning culture, where actors like Olov Janse carried pre-war foundations for structural inequality into the new organization.
Pre-war nostalgia and post-war reality
Olov Janse seems to have believed in the official ideas and ideals of UNESCO, and initially expressed enthusiasm for his work. He was at the same time driven by nostalgic longing for his lost pre-war lifestyle and found himself restricted by the reality of post-war Paris: I have just had a visite [sic] here in U. of Mme Maspero, widow of the famous sinologist who was killed in Büchenwald. She is asking for a job in Unesco to make translations or almost anything so she can at least get the benefit of the restaurant and the cooperative. Her eldest son was killed at the end of the war at Metz and she was during most of the war in a polish concentration camp. Grousset has asked me to do what I can for her here, but it is not easy for the French to get into Unesco, because their quota is already almost filled. There are many cases like this. Paul Lévy expects to leave in a few months for Indochina. Do you want me to ask him to buy a Angkor head for us? He kindly promised to let us have one on a special rate. When I see him I will ask him the approximate price. (1947-03-05, NAA: AK1659-62)
In its earliest days, UNESCO dealt more with practical solutions to severe post-war problems than intellectual work for peace in the service of mankind. Before I began reading Olov Janse’s letters, I had not understood to what extent the newborn UNESCO was concerned with resurrection and reconstitution of what had existed before and been destroyed by the Second World War. Much of Janse’s work was concerned with rebuilding pre-war intellectual works and networks, and he used his own pre-war networks and skills in his work for UNESCO. He connected influential French academics, art dealers, collectors and colonisers with UNESCO’s work and also with the US delegation.
In a more subtle way, since he did not work explicitly with archaeology, Olov Janse also brought a pre-Second World War structure of archaeological thought to the UNESCO table. In terms of archaeological theory, Janse worked with diffusionist explanation models and was in tune with social evolutionist ideas of cultural development that had since the 19th-century informed not only archaeology and ethnography but also French and British colonial policy making (Källén and Hegardt, 2014). The Director-General at the time, Julian Huxley, wrote a starkly evolutionist programme for UNESCO (Huxley, 1947). The programme was criticized by many, but Huxley got along very well with Janse. This also rhymes well with Janse’s attitude towards the head from Angkor. His attitude reveals a residual worldview from colonial times, where the people who were defined as the most evolved and sophisticated in colonial discourse (like Paul Lévy and Olov Janse) were the rightful owners of all monuments and things from the past. Olov Janse obviously saw no paradox between his ideas of a UNESCO trusteeship over Angkor and the removal of a part of the same monument for his own collection. While the first part reflected his dreams of a peaceful future as a liberal citizen of the world in America, the latter responded to his nostalgic longing for his pre-war cosmopolitan life in Paris and Indochina. And both were contained within the single body of the 55-year-old Olov Janse.
Olov Janse’s letters are first and foremost testimonies of the situation for the first UNESCO Secretariat 1946–1947. However, the organization has changed little in terms of structure and overall mission since its foundation. Many of the same values of internationalism and cultural diplomacy are still celebrated at the heart of the organization. And the Secretariat remains officially invisible according to the same bureaucratic principles as in the 1940s. Several recent studies of UNESCO have pointed to the inconsistency between the fine internationalist ideals of UNESCO and what appears to be a lurking set of traditions and practices that work against these ideals (e.g. Hølleland, 2013; Meskell, 2013; Sluga, 2013; Turtinen, 2006; see also Hoggart, 2011 [1978]). Through his letters, Olov Janse provides us with a real historical body to think with in analyses of UNESCO and its invisible Secretariat. We see how he worked in his own interests just as much as in the interest of the organization that was supposed to be his only framework and goal. We see how he attracted other invisible bodies with other situated experiences to UNESCO. And perhaps most significantly, we see clearly how he bridged pre-war French-style colonial nostalgia with post-war US-style liberal internationalism in one (for him) consistent ideological package.
The fact that nostalgic longing for pre-war cosmopolitan life and dreams of a peaceful liberal internationalist future formed two compatible parts of one cohesive body in UNESCO’s first Secretariat, might also say something about UNESCO today. With Olov Janse’s letters, we can situate the foundation of UNESCO at a point of intersection between nostalgia for pre-war times and post-war dreams of a peaceful future. And in the ‘modernist principles of progress and development and […] the liberal principles of diplomacy, tolerance, and development’ (Meskell, 2013: 156) that characterize UNESCO today, we see the shadow of Olov Janse’s nostalgic longing for pre-war times and his dreams of a liberal post-war future, still contained within the institutional body of UNESCO.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Most of the research for this article has been done within the project ‘Olov Janse – archaeologist and museum expert from Indochina to the Cold War’ that I have shared with Johan Hegardt, and which has been funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. I am grateful for generous help from Tim Winter and insightful advice from Elisabeth Niklasson. Many thanks also to the three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.
Primary Sources
a) NAA. ‘Janse 2001-29’. Olov and Renée Janse’s personal archive, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives, Washington, DC and Maryland, USA.
b) UNESCO. The Archives of UNESCO, Place de Fontenoy, Paris, France.
Author Biography
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