The postcolonial geopolitics of training African diplomats in Oxford
FSP Members 1975-76 (Source: DSP)
This month, we were honoured to participate in the Race, Resistance and Belonging at the University of Oxford workshop, where we shared some of our early findings from the archives of the Oxford University Foreign Service Programme. The workshop was inspired in part by the 1965 book Disappointed Guests, a collection of essays written by non-white students at UK universities recounting their experiences of, and resistance to, alienation and discrimination on the basis of race. The following is a broadly reflective of the material we presented to the workshop.
The Foreign Service Program
The Oxford Foreign Service Program (FSP) emerged in the 1960s from the ‘Overseas Service Courses’ run under Committee of Commonwealth Studies since the end of the Second World War (see Sarah Stockwell’s excellent book for more on this). Beginning with ad hoctraining programmes for groups of diplomatic trainees from British colonies approaching independence in the late 1950s (e.g. Gold Coast, Nigeria, West Indian Federation), from 1964 the course was widely advertised to ‘new states’, and attracted diverse cohorts of around 25-30 members each year from its formal establishment in 1969. Members were junior diplomats, seconded for a single academic year to Oxford, where they would join a college, attend lectures, receive academic supervision, and take exams. The course continues today, now known as the Diplomatic Studies Programme.
Colonial/Postcolonial Networks
Like the Overseas Service Courses, the FSP was predicated on colonial institutions and networks that shifted into and found new purposes in the postcolonial era. It was housed in Queen Elizabeth House, an institution created in the 1950s with funds from South African industrialist Ernest Oppenheimer, the UK Colonial Office and a long list of corporate donors linked to Empire, according to its statutes to support “the development of colonial and allied studies” by providing “a hall of residence for advanced students and for other visitors from the Commonwealth among whom priority will be given to men playing or likely to play an important part in public life”. To begin with, FSP members were recruited almost exclusively from former British colonies, and until the late 1980s its directors had all had previous careers in British colonial administration in Africa.
However, unlike the Overseas Service Courses, which began by training British cadets for colonial administration and progressively moved in the 1950s and 60s towards training ‘local’ recruits, FSP cohorts were always entirely non-British and, with a few exceptions, non-White. As such, it represents a longstanding programme that is unique in its recruitment of predominantly non-White students in an Oxford environment dominated by the British upper classes.
Diplomatic Hospitality
One of the most striking features of the course that emerges from materials held at the current DSP was the welcoming and supportive atmosphere that was fostered by the early directors and by the administrative staff. For the directors – particularly Ralph Feltham and Antony Kirk-Greene - previous experience working in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South was a key element in creating a strong sense of group identity through strong pastoral attention and interpersonal relationships. The significance of this creation of a supportive and warm atmosphere was brought into sharp relief when it was absent – leading to the resignation of one director after only a year in charge. However, correspondence about the second Batswana student to attend the FSP (1970-71), Lebang Mpotokwane, evidences some of the complexities and ambiguities of this care, which reflected a desire to provide bespoke and relevant training, and spoke to the optimism of decolonisation, but was also built in part on and through colonial and post-colonial relationships with Africa. The first Batswana student to attend the course (1965-66), Archibald Mogwe, sent one of his “most promising younger officers” to study on the FSP. In response to Mogwe’s request for some specialised study, Mpotokwane was given an international law tutor specialised in the South-West African question, and furthermore was placed in University College “whose Master is Lord Radcliffe-Maud, who you would probably know as Sir John Maud, the [former] High Commissioner [to South Africa]”. When the course was over the formal report to his government was accompanied with a personal note to Mogwe, saying that “Lebang conducted himself with great competence and maturity, and gave a very good impression of his country. I find, incidentally, that the general attitude and "ethos" of a government is often reflected in the attitudes of its diplomats, and yours is obviously a very happy situation on which I must congratulate you”.
Such a focus on individual character and soft skills was carried through in all areas of the course, which featured numerous formal dinners and other such occasions, even to the point that the annual French language oral exam took the form of a cocktail party, complete with “Dubonet, Noilly Prat, various canapes and a very good pate”. The close personal relationships built with the members is evident in the numerous postcards and other correspondence sent by former students, often over a decade after leaving, to the FSP directors and administrators. Many (male) members attended Oxford with their wives and sometimes brought their children – wives were routinely placed in educational courses of their own (often focused on domestic duties such as cooking and entertaining).
An FSP soirée c.1980s (Source: DSP)
Belonging/Not belonging
A strong sense of belonging extended beyond the single year course, and was encouraged and sustained by regular communication within the alumni network. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the course administrator kept an up-to-date record of as many alumni as possible, and sent an annual address book to the whole list along with a Christmas card. Alumni actively engaged with and appear to have appreciated this, with several writing their thanks, in the words of another Kenyan member for “enabling me to communicate with my contemporaries”.
Other members would write up two decades after finishing the course to update their current address. Another key mode of connection was the distinctive Oxford FSP tie, which blended the insignia of the University and of the UN. On the occasion of the FSP’s 25th anniversary, a former director would write of the power of this sense of belonging,
“With such a network in place, and with so many members in so many diplomatic services around the globe, it is not hard to grasp the significance of the account recently given by a senior former member. He tells of how he went into a bilateral conference to negotiate a knotty problem and noticed, to his pleasure and relief, that his opposite number was sporting the same, distinctive FSP tie. The meeting was over in an unexpectedly short time. The non-Oxford diplomats on both sides are said to be still puzzled by how quickly agreement was reached on such an apparent sticking-point.”
Kirk-Greene, A. 1994 Diplomatic Initiative; The Foreign Service Programme 1969-1994, p44
The FSP tie and scarf design (Source: DSP)
Despite this close association within the FSP membership, the course itself was for a long time ‘in but not of’ Oxford University. Despite being badged as an Oxford University course and requiring the members to pass officially overseen University exams, the certificate awarded was not a recognised University qualification, until it became an option to obtain a masters in the 1990s. Throughout the course’s history, wrangling over the status of the qualification appears to have been settled by a combination of the Oxford prestige factor and the fact that the course fees were paid for by UK government scholarships. The certificate’s lack of academic equivalence did not take away from its significance for former members: many were awarded with great fanfare by the British ambassador to their sending state, and when copies went missing years later (for example, during periods of armed conflict) there were several alumni that wrote to request new ones.
In summary, what emerges from this initial engagement with materials in the FSP archive is an ambivalence underpinning the experiences of African students who attended the course in the first decades of its existence. We look forward to interviewing former FSP members to gain further insight into how these were manifest in their individual experiences of training.