POLITICS AND THE ACADEMY: ARNOLD TOYNBEE AND THE KORAES CHAIR POLITICS AND THE A C A D E MY Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair RICHARD CLOGG First published 1986 by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED This edition published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1986 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd and King’s College, London British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Clogg, Richard Politics and the academy : Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair. 1. Toynbee, Arnold, 1889-1975------Resignation from office 2. King’s College, London I. Title 378.421’32 LF434.T6 ISBN 0-7146-3290-2 This study first appeared in a Special Issue of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Contents PREFACE vi 1 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHAIR 1 2 THE ELECTION 22 3 THE CONTROVERSY 53 4 THE AFTERMATH 108 APPENDIX: TOYNBEE'S LETTER TO THE TIMES OF 3 JANUARY 1924 116 Preface The history of academic institutions is seldom written 'wie es eigentlich gewesen'. It is characteristic that the two histories of King's College, London,1 do not dwell on one of the great academic causes célebres of the early twentieth century, which had something of the public éclat occasioned by the college's dismissal in the mid-nineteenth century of the Reverend Professor F.D. Maurice for having the temerity to question the dogma of the eternal punishment of the wicked. This was the furious controversy that developed in the early 1920s between Arnold Toynbee, the first incumbent of the Koraes Chair, and the subscribers who had put up the money for the endowment and who enjoyed the support of a powerful group in the King's professoriate, a confrontation that ceased only with Toynbee's resignation. The establishment in 1918 of the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College, London, arose out of the friendship of Ronald Burrows, Principal of the College between 1913 and 1920, with the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece 1910-15 and 1917-20 (and subsequently 1928-32). Venizelos not only arranged the voting in the Greek Parliament of an annual (if short-lived) subsidy for the new department, but contributed directly to the endowment of the Koraes Chair, while it was the knowledge that the establishment of the chair enjoyed his blessing that encouraged the mar kedly Venizelist Greek community in Britain to raise the bulk of the endow ment. The first holder of the chair, Arnold Toynbee, fresh from his wartime service as a specialist in Near Eastern affairs for the British government, was appointed for an initial five-year term in 1919. Much of Toynbee's tenure of the chair, coinciding as it did with Greece's disastrous entanglement in Asia Minor, was to be marked by fierce con troversy. This was largely occasioned by a series of articles that he wrote on the Greek-Turkish conflict when, for nine months in 1921, on leave of absence from the university, he served as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In these dispatches he was highly critical of the behaviour of the Greek army in Asia Minor. On his return he wrote, at remarkable speed, a brilliant analysis of the origins and progress of the conflict between Orthodox Christian and Muslim civilization in Asia Minor, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: a Study in the Contact of Civilisations (London 1922). In this he repeated the charge that the Greek forces in Asia Minor had committed atrocities, argued that the Greek position in Asia Minor was untenable and concluded that the Greeks had demonstrated 'the same unfitness as the Turks for governing a mixed population'. In the preface he acknowledged that it was likely to be 'painful to Greeks and "Philhellenes" that information and reflections unfavourable to Greece should have been published by the first occupant of the Korais Chair', and it was inevitable that the publication of the book a few months before the catastrophic defeat of the Greek armies in Asia Minor should PREFACE vii have grievously offended the Greek subscribers to the Koraes Chair endow ment. From early 1923 the donors, grouped in the Subscribers' Committee, made vigorous representations to the university, holding that Toynbee's activities as Koraes Professor were incompatible with his continued tenure of the chair. As a consequence of the ensuing pressures Toynbee resigned the chair with effect from July 1924, when his initial five-year term came to an end. The present study2 covers in some detail the negotiations leading up to the foundation of the chair, which afford an insight into what Principal Burrows and some at least of the subscribers saw as its essential purposes; the search for a suitable candidate; the election of Toynbee and the ensuing furore. I have concentrated very much on the academic aspects of the controversy and have discussed Toynbee's writings, journalistic and academic, on Greek-Turkish relations only in so far as some knowledge of these is necessary to an understanding of the academic controversy that ensued. Toynbee was the compiler of the Government Blue Book on The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (London 1916), an undertaking during which, as he himself put it, he had learned 'nearly all that there is to be learnt to the discredit of the Turkish nation and of their rule over other peoples'. He was also the author of The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks (London 1917), a tract replete with anti-Turkish rhetoric of the 'where Ottoman rule has spread civilization has perished' variety. The process whereby he was to emerge as the harsh critic of Greek rule in Asia Minor and the committed champion of Kemalist Turkey can be studied in Toynbee's voluminous contemporary writings on Near Eastern affairs3 and, above all in The Western Question itself.4 It is possible to document this extraordinary story in considerable detail, for a number of collections of papers, reflecting the views of all the major protagonists in the controversy, survive. Moreover, these records are sufficiently detailed to enable much of what the Greeks term the paras kinia, the things behind the scenes, to be reconstructed. One of the reasons for this would appear to lie in the fact that whereas telephones obviously existed in the early 1920s (King's College at that time had all of two lines) they were clearly not yet used for the transaction of academic business, and the conduct of academic intrigue, in the way that they would be now. Indeed, one of the principal protagonists in the story, Joannes Gennadius, the Greek minister in London, even had a strong aversion to the use of the typewriter.5 Whatever the reason, the historian has cause to be grateful for the fact that there is certainly no shortage of documentation. The principal protagonist in the dispute, Arnold Toynbee, not only meticulously preserved all his papers relating to the chair but also annotated them. In a letter to me of 27 July 1974 he wrote that he would be happy to lend these to me: 'there is nothing confidential about them, as far as I am concerned, but, though they are now ancient history for me, they do have a permanent interest because of their bearing on the perennial question of academic freedom'. Fifty years earlier, on 5 January 1924, he had written to his principal antagonist within the college, Professor R.W. Seton-Watson, to say that he personally had 'always wished that full public light should be viii ARNOLD TOYNBEE AND THE KORAES CHAIR thrown upon the whole history of the chair and of my tenure of it'. There is some mystery about the present whereabouts of the papers of Principal Burrows without whose drive and enthusiasm for the Greek, and in particular the Venizelist, cause the Koraes Chair would never have been established. In his Propagande et pressions en politique Internationale: La Grkce etses revendications a la Conference de la Paix (1919-1920),6 Professor Dimitri Kitsikis states that Burrows's personal archives were deposited by his widow, Mrs Una Burrows, in the Greek Legation in London where they were extensively used by George Glasgow in his Ronald Burrows: a Memoir (London 1924). There is, however, now no trace of these papers either in the Greek Embassy in London or in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens. This is unfortunate but not so serious from the point of view of this study as it might have been, for Mrs Burrows presented those of her husband's papers bearing particularly on the establishment of the Koraes Chair to King's College. The college appears promptly to have mislaid them, but they presumably came to light subsequently, for a substantial body of material relating to the foundation of the chair is preserved in the college archives. Given the federal structure of the University of London, the controversy arising from Toynbee's tenure of the chair was as much a university as a college matter, perhaps more so. Useful material relating to the university's deliberations on the matter is preserved in the university's archives. Im portant material also survives among the papers of the Subscribers' Com mittee which was established by the Greek benefactors of the Koraes Chair, and of its chairman, Joannes Gennadius, the scholar diplomat who was Greek minister in London at the time of the establishment of the chair. Relevant material is also preserved among the papers of Professor R.W. Seton-Watson, Masaryk Professor of Central European History in the School of Slavonic Studies, which during this period remained a part of King's College. Toynbee's experiences during his tenure of the Koraes Chair have a certain contemporary relevance in that they highlight some of the dangers inherent in the tendency manifest in recent years for British universities to look to external sources of funding when faced with financial stringency. Particularly in the case of 'minority' subjects, recourse is had to funding from foreign governments. Moreover, the increasing impoverishment of the universities has to a degree coincided with a growing concern on the part of newer nations, particularly those with the financial resources to match, to project a favourable image by encouraging the development of the study of their languages and cultures through the endowment of chairs, departments and centres in the universities. While it would clearly be an exaggeration to argue that a particular branch of study at a university is compromised by the mere fact that it is subsidized in part or in whole by funds deriving from a foreign government, none the less the dangers inherent in such arrange ments are self evident, as that great scholar journalist, William Miller, was well aware when he was approached to fill the Koraes Chair as the favoured candidate of Principal Burrows and Eleftherios Venizelos. There have already been indications that the acceptance of external sources of funding has, in certain cases, had thoroughly undesirable consequences in circum- PREFACE ix scribing that unfettered spirit of enquiry that lies at the heart of the concept of the university.7 It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge the assistance of a number of individuals in the preparation of this study for publication. Adrianne Savage processed the manuscript with great efficiency. Patricia Methven, the archivist of King's College, London; Joan Gibbs, the archivist of the University of London; Helen Langley of the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and Mrs Sophie Papageorgiou, librarian of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens were helpful in making available material in their custody. Mrs Veronica Toynbee kindly granted access to her husband's corres pondence relating to the Koraes Chair, as did the Principal of the University of London, Dr William Taylor, to materials in the university archives, and the Secretary of King's College, Myles Tempany, to the relevant sections of the college archives. Mr Tempany's predecessor, Hugh Patterson, was also helpful in this respect. Hugh Seton-Watson generously granted me access to the papers of his father, R.W. Seton-Watson, as did Dr Beata Panago- poulou, the Director of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies, to the papers of Joannes Gennadius. Professor J.G. Joachim kindly alerted me to the existence of the Gennadius papers relating to the Koraes Chair. The archivist of the Venizelos Archive in the Benaki Museum, Athens, enabled me to consult Principal Burrows' correspon dence with Eleftherios Venizelos. Victoria Solomonidis helpfully made enquiries as to the present whereabouts of the papers of Principal Burrows and made available material from the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens relating to Arnold Toynbee's travels in Asia Minor in 1921. Ian Martin kindly provided information about Nicholas ('Eumo') Eumorfopoulos' career at University College. Professor George Forrest promptly identified the passage from Polybius with which Toynbee wished to end his letter to The Times of 3 January 1924. Donald Nicol, the present holder of the Koraes Chair, has read the manuscript and made a number of useful comments, as has Professor P.J. Marshall, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King's College. Should any profits arise from this publication, then it seems only fitting that they should be devoted to the purchase of books for the Burrows Library at King's College in memory of the various protagonists in the controversy, all of whom, in their different ways, were deeply committed to the promotion of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. RICHARD CLOGG Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King's College, University of London NOTES 1. F.J.C. Hearnshaw, A Centenary History of King's College London (London, 1928) and Gordon Huelin, King's College London: a history commemorating the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the College (London, 1978). Hearnshaw, although he does not mention