E.H. Norman: His Life and Scholarship

D.M.L. Farr is a professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Herbert Norman is remembered as the Canadian diplomat, charged by the American government as a Communist, who committed suicide in a fit of desperation in Cairo in 1957. This book of essays, drawn from a 1979 conference to assess Norman’s achievements, commemorates his life and scholarship. The editor, Roger Bowen, a professor at Colby College, Maine, dismisses the charges that Norman was a Communist agent in a long essay entitled “Cold War, McCarthyism and Murder by Slander.” He closely examines the charges levelled against Norman by the Subcommittee of the United States Internal Security Committee, the allegations which are believed to have led to his death. Bowen concludes that even though Norman possessed youthful left-wing sympathies, there is no evidence that he was a Communist during the years he worked with General MacArthur in occupied Japan or served as a Canadian diplomat. He was the victim of a “blind fear” (p.68) possessing the United States during the McCarthy hysteria. Bowen’s review of the evidence should lay to rest the controversy that has surrounded the tragic affair.

Other contributors, British, American, Japanese and Canadian, remember Norman as a thoughtful and engaging friend and as an innovative historian of Japan’s emergence as a modern state. Four lectures (three previously unpublished) given by Norman after World War II are included, showing Norman’s scholarly transformation from an early position as a Marxist to a liberal in the Jeffersonian tradition. The collection forms a fascinating exercise in intellectual history, one that adds significantly to our understanding of the forces that brought about the Cold War.