Background

I first made contact in or about October 1989, when I attended a meeting in Paris professionally on behalf of IMS, the firm I was contracted with at the time. I visited the museum, and made personal contact with Gilles Baud-Berthier, who has been my prime contact during the decade. In what follows I give selections from the correspondence.

Initial Contact

re: Albert Kahn Fellowships

Madame / J'ai visité les jardins Albert Kahn il y a quelques mois, en espèce de pelèrinage. Je voulais ramasser des traces de mon père.

[Je continue en anglais, en esperant que ca ne vous gene pas; je comprends le francais assez bien, mais quand j'ecris en francais j'ai quelques fois un peu de difficulte a trouver le 'mot juste'.]

My father Joe Johnston was an Albert Kahn Fellow in 1914; he went around the world, and reported on the socio-economic conditions of the countries he visited. He was a Classics graduate of the University of Dublin (Trinity College), and the Albert Kahn experience undoubtedly stimulated him to take up economics, where he made a distinguished career, in Ireland, being also active in politics, as an independent Senator, representing the University.

From what I have since discovered about the Albert Kahn Fellowship, I am convinced that this early experience influenced every aspect of his life. For example, in my recent 'pilgrimage' visit to the Gardens, I immediately felt at home. Perhaps there was some early environmental influence, derived from his style of life, as expressed in his garden.

I understand that the museum and library will shortly be open for research. An interesting task would be to trace the subsequent career-profiles of selected Albert Kahn Fellows. In a research project which I am considering, I would take a selection of the Fellows who, like my father, were part of the intellectual resources of an emerging post-imperial country, and analyse how they 'made out' in the subsequent nation-building process on their home ground. Were there perhaps some Indians, Algerians, or people from the smaller emerging post-1918 European countries (eg the Balkans, or the Baltic States)?

We have a dismal record in Ireland of squandering our intellectual resources; we celebrate them after they die, and usually only if they emigrate (eg Joyce, Beckett). In this we are singularly un-European. I suspect that there may be insights for the Irish nation-building process in the Albert Kahn records, more basic in its nature than the colour photography of Irish social life in remote rural areas, which was researched by Fidelma Mullane, giving rise to a recent article in the Irish Times. I look forward to exploring this further.

I expect to be visiting Paris next April, and would like to make contact, with a view to taking a preliminary look at the records, and possibly defining a research programme.

I will only have about a day available, so perhaps we can take the first steps by correspondence, so that when I am 'sur place' I can use my time effectively.

There is a possibility that my sister Dr Maureen Carmody may be in Paris independently at about the same time, probably somewhat later. She also has expressed a wish to see the gardens and the museum, and if it is feasible I could perhaps leave for her a library agenda related to the project.

I may also be able to contrive a second day towards the end of April. I will be on the way to a conference in Greece, and I may be able to look in on the way back as well as on the way out.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston BSc PhD FInstP CIEI

I wrote to Baud-Berthier on 13/05/90 enclosing a copy of the above, as it seems I must have had no reply, and I wanted to activate the contact. I added as follows:

I have little to add to the agenda as outlined above to Mme Bonhomme, except perhaps to suggest that in my capacity as a physicist I might be able to help you with identifying some of the scientific people on your list (eg Langevin). Would there perhaps be some French Government funding available to enable me to devote more time to this research than I could do if I were depending on my own limited resources?

I visited the Library in April 1995, again on the fringe of a Paris meeting of our EU software development project network. I wrote subsequently to Baud-Berthier (who had come in specially, although it was a Monday and the Museum was closed!) as follows:

10/4/95

Dear Gilles / Further to our encounter on April 3 (for which many thanks, especially as it was Monday!), I have pleasure in enclosing a photocopy of my father's 1916 report on food production in France, which he used in the context of his attempts to get political reforms in Ireland, with Home Rule in the offing, and to develop the consciousness of the co-operative movement. This is available in the 'rare printed books' section of the Trinity College Dublin library.

There is however no trace in the TCD library of his 1915 'round the world' report. This I know is somewhere in his papers, and I had a preliminary look for it, but failed to find it. It will be some time before I get around to going through his papers systematically. I might try and do it during the vacation in July.

I look forward to receiving from you a copy of the list of stagiares from the period 1910 onwards, say to the end of the war. Also the London University contact. Was this the single university contact for all stagiares in the British Empire? Was there no input from Dublin University? I know my father spent some time in Oxford after he got his degree. I wonder was it via Oxford he made the Albert Kahn contact. It will be interesting to see who else there was, where they were from, and what were their domains of interest.

I look forward to keeping up this contact. Do you by chance perhaps have an Internet address? If so, it might be easier to communicate by that means. I never received the letter from the Director which she said she sent some time before I arrived. Postal delivery is increasingly unreliable. My internet address is rjtechne@iol.ie.

Yours sincerely / Dr Roy H W Johnston

I followed up the foregoing with this letter in July 1995:

21/7/95

Dear Gilles / Further to my letter in April enclosing the photocopy of the French Agriculture report, I have now had a chance to go through his papers, and have identified the following items which may be of use to your archive:

1. Rapports Vol 1 No 1 1909-10 Tongo Takebe, Professor of Sociology at the Imperial University Tokyo; published by F Rieks & Cie, 101 rue de Vaugirard, Paris.

2. Statutes of Autour du Monde 1898.

3. An undated but post-1920 Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship document, aimed at supplying information to applicants; contact-point (amended in pen) is A Chow Ford, University of London.

4. Ivor Back; report 1911-1912,

5. G Lowes Dickenson 1913,

(both these published by U L Press).

6. J Johnston 1914-1916 (he must have got hold of the other ones to give himself a model).

7. Deed of Foundation of the AKTF

8. Letter of Testimonial dated 24/6/14

9. Misc travel memorabilia: photos of India (in album), one negative plate which could be China or Japan; North German Lloyd brochure for SS Bremen; associated stuff like on-board concert programmes, menus etc, the pre-war belle-epoque (!).

10. Permit from the Paris police covering his 1916 visit. Notebook relating to this visit. Letter of authorisation from the Irish Times for him to travel as a Special Correspondent, giving terms of reference. (I suspect that the book of which you have a copy first appeared as Irish Times feature-articles.)

11. A file of MS letters from M Garnier going up to 1929. (He visited Dublin in 1939 and stayed at our house; I remember him. I subsequently visited him in Paris in 1952; he was living in reduced circumstances, in rue de l'Arbalete or thereabouts.)

12. File of MS notes presumably raw material for the Report.

Please let me know which of these you would find of interest, and we can come to some arrangement.

Yours sincerely / Dr Roy H W Johnston

TECHNE ASSOCIATES / Techno-Economic, Socio-Technical, Socio-Linguistic and Environmental Consultancy / PO Box 1881 / Rathmines / Dublin 6

(Please if possible reply by e-mail to the first e-mail address given; Gilles said that e-mail was on your agenda, and I hope it becomes possible soon.)

Jeanne Beausoleil / Musée Albert Kahn / 10 Quai du 4-Septembre / 92100 Boulogne

1/01/98

Chère Mme la Conservateuse / Je préfère écrire en anglais, et j'espère que ca ne vous gêne pas trop! Je comprehend le francais assez bien. On trouve souvent que c'est possible à faire une bonne correspondence chaqun à son propre langue.

Thank you for yours of May 9 last, following on my encounter with Gilles in the library. Also I received the photos of the family, and I wrote to Martine with some information about them. There remains however much unfinished business.

I plan to be in Paris on May 13-16 for a historical conference, and I hope to come somewhat early, so perhaps I can pay a visit to the Library on May 12, which is the Tuesday of that week? Presumably you are closed on the Monday? Or could I come for the Monday as well?

I will have been in London the previous week, in the London University library, where I have been in touch with Ruth Vyse, who has identified some material relating to my father and the Albert Kahn Fellowship. May I ask, is there a good working relationship? Or does this remain to be set up? Ideally the AK archive should be accessible from both locations, at least at the indexing level. If I pick up material there, which you have not got, I can copy it and leave it with you.

I have been through the Garnier letters, and live in hopes that one day the other side of the correspondence will turn up. Is there any progress in finding the stuff which the Nazis took, and which I gather ended up in Moscow? My father's side of the correspondence extends from 1919 to 1945, and is particularly intense in the early 20s when he was briefing Garnier about the Irish war of independence, and its aftermath. What I would like to get hold of, even if the other side of the correspondence is not there, is anything published by Garnier relating to Ireland, in which presumably my father's input would be detectable.

What I will do is leave with you the originals of the Garnier letters, and keep copies, which I have made. There is also correspondence with the Marquis McSweeney, which is on AK headed paper, and perhaps you or Gilles can help me interpret this. He was in Rome, representing the Irish (as yet unrecognised) government.

I have also made a copy of his 1914 book 'Civil War in Ulster' which I can leave with you. He had been in Oxford prior to this, and I am wondering how he came to write it. Was it AK influence; like, for example, had he encountered AK on his Irish tour, of which there is the photographic record? Or was there liberal influence in Oxford which reacted critically to the Tory ultimatum delivered at Blenheim? He must have had some influence to wean him away from the norm of Ulster Protestant Unionism towards a consistent Home Rule position, critical of Carson and co. Could he have picked it up in Oxford? Hardly in Trinity Dublin, which was a Unionist bastion. I have discovered that in Oxford he was in 'digs' with an Indian called Mallampally Narasimham, but I don't yet know if this has any significance. I will be looking into his Oxford background also, and I have contact with the Bodleian people.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

The foregoing projected contact has not yet been made (Sept 2002), due to various unforeseen circumstances. The historical conference was on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, to the record of which I contributed a paper, but failed to actually attend. I did spend time in University College London, and later faxed Baud Berthier as follows:

Feb 16 1998

Dear Gilles / I wrote to Jeanne Beausoleil on Jan 1, thanking her for the photos etc sent from your archives, and mentioning some possible questions for future elaboration, in the context of a visit to Paris in May next.

I am faxing you because I have had some responses from the University of London people, the contents of which you should know.

I first got on to Ruth Vyse, and she dug up a listing of the contents of their AK archive, which includes nomination paper material for Fellows in the period 1910-1912. Miers correspondence 1909-13, minutes of trustees' meetings 1910-31 and other such stuff. I hope to get to see it in May before I go to Paris.

Subsequently when I contacted them again (by e-mail; I had been dealing with Ruth Vyse by e-mail) I got a response by post from Keith Austin, the Assistant Archivist (Ruth is the Archivist) to the effect that he had been unaware of the existence of the AK archive, and that he intended to contact you about it. There is an unwritten implication that Ruth Vyse is perhaps retired or otherwise absent.

May I ask, what is the state of your projected collaborative ventures, about which you contacted me some time ago? Is there the makings of a network between AK, UCL and TCD for purposes of historical research into the role of AK in the pre-1914 peace movement? If such were to exist, it would help me to focus on the context of my father's 1914 book, which I hope to lodge with you, as I mention in the letter to Jeanne Beausoleil, a copy of which I am appending, in case if has got lost or mislaid, or perhaps put into a 'pending' tray due to the long lead-time!

May I stress that I am very keen to get hold of anything published by M Garnier in the period of contact, to which my father would have had input. There are references to this in the letters, and I hope to be able to leave the originals with you.

I look forward to further contact. Will you be there on May 12? Are you closed on May 11? I am beginning to think about travel arrangements.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston PhD FInstP CIEI

29/04/1999 e-mail from Gilles Baud-Berthier (extract; the earlier part was about virus trouble.):

......As for your father's book, we shall buy a copy as soon as it will be published. Your note about AK seems to me perfectly right. May I suggest some precisions (not essential, only if you thought them useful) ?

1) creation of the AK Foundation in 1898
2) granted in 5 countries
3) taken over by a French County public funding (sorry, I don't know how to say that)
It will be really convenient to communicate through e-mail (at least when I shall have eradicated the virus in my computer...)

26/09/1999 from GBB:

Cher Monsieur Johnston / We are also eager to get back the Russian archives. According to a letter received from the Russian Foreign Office, there are 45 parcels and 100s of pages of documents.

We got a broad description of their content, and I noticed a bulk of documents : letters from the Great-Britain branch of the AK grants to the President Garnier, about the journey of a member to France, 41 pages, approximative dates : 1920 or 1930. There is another bulk of 30 letters exchanged between different members (some British) and France, about future publications, etc., approximatively dated of 1928-31 ; letters of a British member, Mr. Nicholson, in 1906, about the creation of the British branch, etc.

Russians try to get the greatest amount of money they can, and this makes the deal very much difficult. They make a proposition, wait several months, then make another one, higher obviously than the former one.

A former member of the staff of the Kahn museum lives in Moscow now. She is trying to deal directly with the Russian authorities, but it is a process as difficult as the official one that goes through the channels of the respective Foreign Offices.

But we have good hopes to get these documents back. I cannot give you more satisfying informations about the matter. I shall answer to your other questions as soon as I can work on the archives.

Yours sincerely / Gilles Baud Berthier

03/12/1999 from RJ to GBB:

Gilles: Further to your e-mail of Sept 27, some new information has turned up.

Another letter from Garnier to my father has been found; it was not with the other letters (which I have copied, with a view to giving you the originals next time I am in Paris) but was in my sister's possession. This letter is most important to me, as it throws light on my father's role in the Irish Convention of 1917, which was a political attempt to deal with the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, and which if it had succeeded would have pre-empted the war of independence, and perhaps avoided partition.

The letter is dated May 22 1917 and it is to thank my father for sending a memorandum, which Garnier describes as 'un document de premiere importance....il a du contribuer a aiguiller Lloyd George vers son projet de convention irlandiase. Si vos compatriotes savent tirer parti de cette proposition, ce sera le debut d'une histoire nouvelle....'.

I would like to get hold of this document; perhaps it is the Moscow stuff.

Garnier ends the letter with '..je publierai en juillet le 2e bulletin de l'annee. Si vous pouvez envoyer votre rapport fin juin, je serai heureux d'en publier une analyse ou des fragments...'

This would suggest, as we had suspected, that my father was a regular correspondent. The June contribution requested would presumably be an update on the current memorandum, and would relate to the Irish Convention.

I expect during the next few weeks to be working on the AK aspect of my father's life, and going through the Garnier and other related letters. I have completed the first draft of the academic stream, as well as the Statistical Society stream, and the Barrington Lectures stream (this was his 'political economy popularising outreach' work). The Trinity College politics stream is partially complete.

As I said earlier, I have done some introductory work on the AK stream, which in an earlier e-mail I drew to your attention, giving you the URL, where the material exists accessibly on the Web, privately, to the extent that it is not accessible from my public home-page; I have to tell people what the URL is.

I have made this available to a publisher in the US who has been encouraging me, and to an old friend and colleague, also in the US. Both have been helpful with comments. I would be pleased if I could count you among the people who have access to this 'work in progress'. Please let me know if you are in a position to comment on my work in progress as accessed via the Web; I would particularly like to be reassured that anything I say relating to the AKF is correct and complete. The URL is www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/century/

The foregoing URL is not currently valid. RJ 2003.

Please let me know if you have any difficulty in accessing this. / RoyJ

05/12/1999 from RJ to GBB:

Gilles: going through the Garnier letters I find a printed invitation to all Cercle members to attend an Assemblee Generale at rue du Babylone on Dec 22 1919, to review the post-war situation. It is dated December 14, and signed (in print) by E Hovelaque. A week's notice for a meeting of exceptional importance held after a long gap seems to me to be strange. Is there a record of this meeting? What did it decide?

My father must have received the invitation, but it seems he did not go. Yet there is a letter from Garnier dated December 21 1919, in which there is no mention of the Assemblee Generale. The main purport of the letter is to recommend his old pupil Allarq who had gone to Trinity College to study the Irish question. He also mentioned the French elections and the fate of Democratie Nouvelle, the Probus party.

My father replied to this letter on January 3 1920 (he wrote a note on the Garnier letter to this effect, but he did not keep a copy).

Could it be that Garnier has not yet become the key person in the AKF that he subsequently became? What then would have been his connection with my father, and how did it originate, in the course of his Travelling Fellowship? Was he perhaps someone whom JJ had encountered on the academic network on the AKF fringe? / RoyJ

12/12/1999 RJ to GBB:

Gilles: sorry to keep bombarding you with questions which would increasingly seem to be depending on the Moscow archive. However I am trying to plan the stages of this work, and from having been through the Garnier letters I am increasingly convinced that Garnier had a considerable output in the French media, or at least in revue-type journals, specifically about Ireland, and primarily briefed by my father. So this should be accessible via the French public library system. I have approximate dates for when some of the material must have appeared, for example in revue-journals called La Vie des Peuples and Revue de Lapradelle.

Even if the Moscow material is not yet available, it might be worth my while going to Paris to scan these journals, and if I do go, I would bring with me the originals of the Garnier letters, and other material of the JJ/AK record to complete your set, if there still remains some.

On the other hand, if I knew for certain that the Moscow material would be available by some date, I would postpone my visit, and scan that as well.

Please feel free to scan my 'work in progress' which can be found in the private area of my web-site (ie it is not accessible from the home page); the URL of the AK stuff is:

www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/century/akahn

The foregoing URL is not currently valid. RJ 2003.

Once you are in you are of course free to wander round, via the table of contents, where the AK stuff appears labelled as an appendix. It is mostly incomplete, but the 'thread' labelled as the appendix for 'academic output' is fairly complete, as also is that relating to the Statistical Society. The AK thread contains material based on my visits to Paris, and will eventually contain I hope the AK report and the 1916 French agriculture report in full. I think you have both of these. It also contains the result of my visit to UCL last year.

I must ask you not to divulge the above URL to anyone; it is available only to a very small number of people whom I have asked to scan critically certain specified 'threads'. I would like to regard you as being in that group, and if you agree I will put you on the list for mailing an occasional newsletter which I send, to advise the group what progress has been made, and to ask for contacts or advice.

I would be particularly interested in any comments you may have on the AK thread, particularly regarding how I describe the AK Foundation, as I want to do it justice.

I wish you the best of luck in your dealings with Moscow. I wonder would any of the old 'hard-left' Moscow-oriented mafias have any influence with the current Russian bureaucracy? Are not bureaucracies self-perpetuating, with continuity?

By the way I keep getting e-mails from that guy Bernard Planques whom you got to do the AK web-site. He is visibly a graphic arts specialist. This I know is an aspect of the AKF but the main utility of web-sites is for access to structured indexed knowledge in depth, not graphics primarily. A web-site should be a structured portal into the contents of a library or archive, the basic unit of knowledge being an abstract of a document held in the library, and you find the abstract using a 'fuzzy profile matching' procedure, with an n-dimensional parametric indexing system.

The firm I am on contract with is doing this, increasingly, with publishers etc; also conference proceedings etc. To give you an idea, the cost of a conference proceedings to publish virtually on the Web, say 100 10-page papers, with diagrams, illustrations, architecture and indexing, would be (depending somewhat on the complexity of the indexing and the extent of the illustration) in the region of 100K Ffr, which I submit is substantially cheaper than printing a 1000-page document for a circulation of 1000.

I am copying this to myself 'on site' in case you want to take up this latter aspect. And if you do, please reply to both addresses. / RoyJ

July 12 2000 from GB-B:

....I have received your mails, and have to apologize : due to the priority of the consequences of the big storm of December (the Kahn gardens have been destroyed ; we lost 60% of the trees), I neglected to answer immediately, and forgot.

We got the Russian archives back in June ! From July to the end of October, a member of the staff will create a database of the documents. I cannot work on archives in July and shall be on holidays in August (...and shall marry on the 3rd, by the way !). I can therefore look after documents interesting for you on September, despite nobody in the museum has access to them as long as the database is not achieved. If I find anything linked to your father, I shall send you a mail and you will ask for a special access to the Curator (I can assume the culpability for having read the files without permission !!). Does this agree you ? Yours sincerely, Gilles

News of the Russian archive began to come in:

From: Roy Johnston / To: gbb
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 9:34 AM
Subject: Joe Johnston

Gilles: thank you for this encouraging news; please forgive me for being so long in replying, but the load has been heavy. May I comment interstitially, and ask you some more questions:

....I have begun to read the Russian archives. There are definitively documents relevant to your research. May I suggest to you to write a letter to Ms. Beausoleil in order to get photocopies of the documents ?

Does she require a real letter by post in hard copy? Do I need to specify any particular documents? If I were to specify a class of documents (eg letters to Garnier relating to Ireland, articles or publications by Garnier relating to Ireland) would there be any means of knowing how many there were?

....The Archives are closed to researchers, and should remain such until we complete the database on intranet that is on work, and until we complete the catalog of the Russian archives (that will not be finished this year as we had planned). A request of direct access to these archives would be embarrassing for Ms. Beausoleil, as she refused already this access to professional researchers, who made a lot of fuss about it....

I understand fully. So I will not attempt to extend my December Cambridge trip to Paris.

....It would be easier to justify an exception if it was on the ground of a special purpose of direct interest for the museum, and also on the ground that a part only of the documents was opened, and the exploitation was made by members of the museum (you would not loose any information obviously, because I know what you are looking for). Such a formal letter (in English, it is ok) to Ms. Jeanne Beausoleil, Curator in Chief (Conservateur en Chef) and Director (Directrice) of Albert-Kahn Museum, could reiterate the mention of your link with Joe Johnston, and the purpose of your demand, i.e. the publication of a work on your father. It would be clever also to ask any information about our copyright policy, and to assess that you do not aim a commercial purpose, and that you would send a copy of the publication to the museum library.

Yes I see, and I will do this, as soon as I get a more detailed understanding from you exactly what I should ask for.

For example, I am wondering should I extend the search to material associated with Simone Tery where it relates to Ireland (she was correspondent with the Irish Statesman in the 1920s; I am wondering did JJ have a hand in setting up this context? There is a record of a lunch), and to the Marquis MacSweeney; also perhaps to the Versailles Peace Conference, and the Irish attempts to get into it.

Also what did JJ do in his 1926 visit, which was it seems funded by Rockefeller. There was significant output from JJ post-Rockefeller, but the French component seems to have vanished.

There is also the question of Garnier's projected book on Ireland, and Garnier's visit to Ireland in or about 1939, which took place, because I remember him.

....I go on reading documents and preparing the selection for you, in order to gain time when the request will be accepted. You could thus receive the documents before Christmas. I hope that this helps you. ....Yours sincerely, Gilles I have found among JJ's papers a cutting from La Victoire, edited by Gustave Herve, August 18 1921, with a front-page article by Andre Lichtenberger headed 'Le Destin d'Irlande. I wonder why JJ kept this: was it something that he had inspired? Had he briefed Lichtenberger? Was there any AKF connection?

I will write as soon as I can get some sort of a picture from you of the extent of what is there.

RoyJ

From GBB in response to the above:

Date sent: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 19:02:26 +0100

Yes, a hard copy on paper would be needed, sent to : Ms. Jeanne BEAUSOLEIL Conservateur en chef, directeur du musee Albert-Kahn

As for your demands, you need not to give too much details :

- all the names of the persons who are interesting for your research (a list would be convenient)
- state the link with Ireland when needed (ex. with S. Tery)
- significant details only when needed (ex. the cutting about Herve can be useful. By the way, we have nothing on Rockfeller grants linked to Kahn)

Most important :

- could you state your family link with JJ
- information on the destination of the documents that we shall send you (book, publisher, delay) and no commercial purpose
- ask for our copyright policy
- intention to deposit a copy of the book in the museum library

May I suggest to state that we had a communication before you wrote, so that if I forget something, there will be no harm to your research. I think that it is all. Sorry to be so bureaucratic, this is due to the special status of our archives.

Yours sincerely, Gilles

I then wrote to Mme Beausoleil as follows:

From: Dr Roy H W Johnston, 22 Belgrave Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6;
Phone +353-1-497-5027; e-mail rjtechne@iol.ie

To: Mme Jean Beausoleil, Conservateur en Chef et Directrice
Musée Albert Kahn, 10 Quai du 4 Septembre, 92100 Boulogne, France

November 16 2000 / re: Archive references relating to Joseph Johnston (1890-1972)

Dear Ms Beausoleil / May I say how pleased I am that you have managed to recover the archives which went missing during the war. The information I collected in my earlier visits to Paris has already enabled a significant part of the story of the life of my father Joe Johnston to be drafted. I can make this available for you or Gilles Baud-Berthier to see, if you are interested; in fact I would be interested in your and his comments. I look forward to completing this part of the picture in a future visit. I have also visited University College London, where some details of my father's 1914 Travelling Fellowship awarding process are available, and I have included this.

This work is part of a publication which I have contracted to do with the US publisher Maunsel, which specialises in the Irish Studies requirements. (Maunsel was an Irish publishing-house which flourished in the first decades of the recent century, and a US academic publisher has bought up the name with a view to interesting the Irish Studies market.) In this context I would need to clear the copyright for anything I quote from your archive. What is your copyright policy? The motivation on my side is scholarly rather than commercial, though the publisher's motive is commercial, insofar as the academic market is commercial!

May I outline a few contact-points for further searches in the recovered archive. The primary need is to find my father's letters to Charles Garnier, with whom he corresponded between 1917 and 1946, quite intensively in the period 1917-1922. Also to access any publications of Garnier or others in which was used material about Ireland supplied by my father. For example, my father kept a cutting from La Victoire dated August 18 1921, edited by Gustave Hervé, with an article by André Lichtenberger 'Le Destin d'Ireland'. Was Lichtenberger an AK contact, and did my father brief him?

Garnier it seems visited Ireland in 1923, 1925 and 1939, and any documentation to do with these visits would be of interest.

My father was in France in 1916, 1923 and 1926, and on each occasion he stayed at the Albert Kahn centre. In 1916 he was researching French wartime agricultural production. In 1926 he was researching added value in the food distribution chain, and he had a Rockefeller Fellowship. The 1923 visit is obscure.

Names mentioned in the Garnier letters include Probus, Challage, Allarq, Meredith, Tagore, Douglas Hyde (who in 1937 became President of Ireland). Also Sidney Ball, Lepradelle.

There was much coverage of Ireland in La Vie du Peuple during 1922 and I conjecture that Garnier wrote it based on my father's briefing. There is a record of a lunch in 1924 with Simone Tery, André Maurois and Vaughan Dempsey of the Irish diplomatic service: is there any record of this? ST subsequently became correspondent for the Irish Statesman.

Garnier was writing a chronic 'book on Ireland' which I don't think was ever published. Are there any draft chapters? Were some sections perhaps published as articles or papers?

Cosgrave the Irish Prime Minister visited Paris with one McNeill in 1925, and again in 1925, on his own. Was there any role for my father in setting up contact with AK for these visits? What was the significance of the contact and correspondence between my father and the Marquis McSweeney? Some of this was on AK headed paper.

There were in 1922 some meetings of a study circle in Cour de Cassation: did this concern itself with Ireland, and if so, what was the input?

There was planned I believe a meeting of all AK Fellows in 1926. Did this take place, what was discussed, who was there, and was my father there?

In a 1928 Garnier letter there is a reference to James Connolly, with an indication that my father had drawn Connolly to Garnier's attention: what was the context?

The foregoing are some of the pointers or clues that I would like to follow. I have woven what I know into a hypertext narrative which exists, inaccessibly in draft form on my web-site. That is, if you go to my web-site you will be unable to find it, unless I tell you the path. If you feel you need to see the above pointers in their current contexts as I perceive them, I will make this draft hypertext accessible to you, via the Web URL, as an aid to your identifying areas where I might profitably search in the context of a visit.

I would like to be able to deposit the originals of the Garnier letters with you, and other relevant material which comes to hand, when I have finished this task. Also of course a copy of the book, if and when it gets published. Also perhaps a selection of my father's published books and papers.

We can clarify any of the above points between us by e-mail if necessary.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

There were some exchanges between RJ and GBB regarding arrangements, and then:

From: Roy Johnston / To: gbb@club-internet.fr
Subject: Joe Johnston / Date sent: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 17:28:52 +0300

Gilles I have been updating the record in the light of the 1930s Garnier letters which I discovered. I think it is best that you disregard the attached file I sent you, and look at the AK stuff as a whole, as it is on record up to now in my hypertext work area.

This area of my website is not accessible from the home page or anywhere accessible from the home page. To get to it you have to add /century/ to my website URL, ie thus

http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/century/

This URL, and the earlier ones, are no longer valid; I have had to modify them so as to hide them from the attentions of web-crawlers, thus maintaining a degree of privacy. RJ 2003.

This will bring you to the table of contents of the book, which currently exists at various levels of drafting, the earlier parts to do with my father being nearly complete.

Go to Appendix 3 the AK Foundation and you will get a somewhat revised version of what I sent you, and you will also find from it hot-linked all the underlying AK material, including much of the Garnier letters.

The AK chunks of hypertext are also accessible from the decade chapters, via the notes and references.

In some of the topics I have put in brackets a little note to myself 'check this with GBB'.

Feel free to browse the rest of what is there, but don't give the URL to anyone else, and don't print anything, unless you need it for yourself, and in that case, keep it. This website material is all pre-publication and I don't want any of it to leak out.

RoyJ

There were a few routine enquiry exchanges, and then:

From: gbb@club-internet.fr / To: rjtechne@iol.ie
Subject: Joe Johnston / Date sent: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 13:39:58 +0200 (CEST)

Dear Mr Johnston / I find your mail while preparing to leave to China. I shall be back on the 15th and shall inquire about a hotel. Would you tell me the rough daily budget you intend to put in ? I had to stop research for several weeks, due to new responsibilities at the County HQ, while still performing my duties in Kahn museum. I should be able to work again on archives on December. Meanwhile, the member of the staff in charge of computing the database of the Russian archives will have completed the work, that will make the exploitation of these documents far easier. Taking in account the museum agenda, I think that the end of this year would be a good moment to try the regular process : on November, you will ask authorization of access to the Russian archives in December. I shall propose you the text of the mail. As these archives are still closed, I cannot give you any guarantee that Ms. Beausoleil will give you this access. But several heavy projects will find an end.

Yours sincerely, GBB

I replied to the above as follows:

From: Roy Johnston / To: gbb@club-internet.fr
Subject: Joe Johnston / Date sent: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 15:49:17 +0300

Thanks Gilles for the positive and hopeful response. Let me reply interstitially:

....I find your mail while preparing to leave to China. I shall be back on the 15th and shall inquire about a hotel. Would you tell me the rough daily budget you intend to put in ?

As small as possible consistent with civility. I suppose one or two star, if such still exist, preferably in easy reach of FAK and metro. I hope to bring Janice with me and stay a few days. I am doing this at my own expense from a situation of partial retirement.

....I had to stop research for several weeks, due to new responsibilities at the County HQ, while still performing my duties in Kahn museum. I should be able to work again on archives on December. Meanwhile, the member of the staff in charge of computing the database of the Russian archives will have completed the work, that will make the exploitation of these documents far easier.

Is it possible to estimate the date of completion? Do names like Joe Johnston, Ireland, Irish Free State, Garnier letters to Ireland etc come up in the indexing?

....Taking in account the museum agenda, I think that the end of this year would be a good moment to try the regular process : on November, you will ask authorization of access to the Russian archives in December. I shall propose you the text of the mail. As these archives are still closed, I cannot give you any guarantee that Ms. Beausoleil will give you this access. But several heavy projects will find an end.

You are suggesting I write to Mme Beausoleil seeking access some time in November. Is there a chance that before writing you could give me an outline of what material is indexed, so that I can see if there are any good starting-points for searches, that I can mention specifically when applying?

Thanks again for everything / RoyJ

I received a letter from Mme Beausoleil dated 23 April 2002 which contained some enclosures derived from the recovered Moscow archive. On the whole however the haul was disappointing. Here is her letter:

Gilles Baud-Berthier let me know your request of information, as your publisher intends to publish soon the book you wrote about your father, Mr Joseph Johnston.

You had already get copy of the documents relating to your father in Albert-Kahn Museum Archives. The sole documentation we got since you came to visit us are files given back by Russian Government, that had been in first place seized by German Occupation Army in France during World War 11.

These 'Russian Archives', as we have get accustomed to name them in the museum, are still not open to outside researchers. The reason is that the indexation is not yet achieved, and takes up longer time than expected, due to a complex process of digitalization. Later, the researchers will have access to a database that will provide the text of the documents on a Word format, and their digitalized picture as well.

But, obviously, as you are yourself a witness of Albert Kahn's Work, I warmly support your project. I cannot allow a direct access to the files until the indexation is achieved. If I did it, I could not refuse to give the same privilege to other researchers. That would delay the indexation, and deprive the museum of information hitherto unpublished, that we intend to exploit in scientific articles. I therefore asked Gilles Baud-Berthier and Anne Besoulle, who is in charge of the Archives, to proceed themselves to the research. They did not get many documents devoted to your father, or to the 'Irish Question'. They nonetheless found some that seem to me not deprived of interest. The hand manuscripts ones are difficult to read, but, as they come from your father, I guess that you will not encounter major difficulties to read them. If you needed some help, I would ask for a typed copy from my staff. Anne Besoulle added some documents, that you know already, but I made them enclosed, as they could be useful.

As for your questions in your letter of November 16, 2000, I am afraid we cannot be of much help. All the names you mention are persons close to Albert Kahn, but we have not any briefing of their meetings else than the ones published in the Bulletins of Societe Autour du Monde, copies of which you have already. We have not as well any information on the 1924 lunch with Simone Tery or on the link with McSweeney (as a member of the Societe, Mr. Johnston would have used Albert Kahn headed paper when he came in Boulogne. We have no information - we did not even know this - on the visit of the Irish Prime Minister in 1925, nor on the project of Garnier to write a book on Ireland. The meeting of all AK Fellows took place in 1931. Nothing new. As for the meetings of the CNESP (Cour de Cassation) in 1922, we verified and did not find any topic relative to Ireland (we did the same research for the year 1925, in case there was a link with the visit of the Prime Minister).

Generally speaking, if you make use of any document (excerpts, large citation, etc.) coming from us, I would be grateful if you would mention (in a footnote or within brackets): (c) copyright Albert-Kahn Museum Archives).. The word (c) copyright or << source >>, etc., is facultative, according to the model of references you are accustomed to.

Could you send a copy of the parts of your book devoted to Kahn Fellowships ? Gilles Baud-Berthier will be able to help you if you needed some more information.

I am eager to read this book that will allow us, for the first time, to follow the career of a prominent Kahn Fellow, and wish you to finish soon this most useful work.

Jeanne Beausoleil, Conservateur territorial en chef du patrimoine, Directeur du Musee.

I replied by e-mail as follows:

From: Roy Johnston
To: museealbertkahn@cg92.fr
Subject: for Mme Beausoleil re Joe Johnston
Copies to: gbb@club-internet.fr
Date sent: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 12:06:30 +0100

Dear Mme Beausoleil / I hope it is all right to reply by this means, which has been my primary channel of communication since 1988 !

Thank you for your letter; I am chagrined that you felt the need to produce it in English; I really prefer to read letters from France in French, because I feel they lose precision when written in English! My French is quite good but not good enough to risk writing in French. I enjoy reading French.

Let me reply in detail:

1. I understand your problem with indexing the Russian archive. I note however that you are working towards a database dependent on Word format. May I comment technically: Word format is not 'future-proof'; Microsoft is notorious for producing stuff which is not compatible with its earlier versions. For archiving it is essential that you find a format which is not dependent on any specific word-processing system at a specific time. I can go into this in great detail if you wish, with access to the experience of the firm with which I am on contract, IMS, which specialises in the design and delivery of knowledge-rich systems. This is another day's work, which I would be pleased, if you wish, to explore with you from my IMS location, to which I am copying this e-mail.

2. Thank you for encouraging Gilles and Anne to dig through the material in a preliminary search on my behalf. The handwritten material is indeed from my father, and I have no problem with it. I am also copying this to GBB for his record.

3. Most of the hints I had probably have come from various informal contacts over the years, and therefore, it seems, have left no recorded trace. Perhaps this is an essential part of the AK role: to provide a location for informal networking. I suspect the Garnier's interaction with my father was of this type, and his journalistic work on behalf of Ireland, with inputs from my father, would have been in marginal time, and not on the AK record. If this is the case, my father's letters may perhaps turn up in Garnier's personal papers. I wonder have these been conserved, and are they accessible?

4. I have some material in a reasonably final form, which I will send to Gilles as soon as I have updated in in the light of what you have sent. I will send it in the form of html files, as I am writing the background material in hypertext, so that in the electronic version of the book the references will be hot-linked into the source material. The printed book will be the 'overview of the hypertext' and hopefully it will encourage a reader of the printed book to register for access to the hypertext version, which will be maintained on a library web-site, in a format which be long-term accessible (ie not Microsoft). I am convinced that academic publication is going to evolve in this direction, and am currently concerned with the problem of how to develop simple user-friendly tools, such as to facilitate authors, editors and publishers to take this road.

Now as regards the actual material you were able to find:

5. The paper dated 21 juin 1918 (1.35.104) relates to some other Johnston, as the company and the occasion is quite inconsistent with my father's role in 1918.

6. His letter of 10/8/14 gives useful additional insight and I will certainly use it. The 'Liste' probably relates to his 1926 visit for his Rockefeller project. The 26/11/1920 letter from UCL about the Report indicates that there were 100 copies. Would there be any record I wonder of where they went? Did any end up in India? Were they sent to libraries which knew to order them, or was there a standard circulation list? His 10/7/14 letter is an interesting declaration of intent, and I can use it. I had picked up about his 1938 honour; Garnier visited about then, researching his book. His 1935 letter in support of students indicates reasonable fluency in written French, but I often wondered how he managed to improve his French between 1914 and 1916 to enable him to carry out his French agricultural project credibly.

7. The printed archive material is useful; I think I had seen some of it, but not all; it gives additional support for episodes I had already identified. The 1914 article on rural co-operation it seems is a translation, probably from Russell's 'Irish Homestead'; at the time he was promoting consumer co-operation, and the Templecrone co-op was indeed a pioneering example, which survives to this day. I have not found the original, and this will encourage me perhaps to search for it, if I have time.

It looks like there is no need for me to make the trip to Paris, but perhaps I will do so when the indexation is complete, even it it is subsequent to the publication date, as I expect to be adding material to the hypertext support indefinitely, if necessary fuelling a second edition.

I am currently working on the 1960s and 70s, mostly my own material, and I hope to have completed the full Century draft by August, and to do some (hopefully final) revision before October, so as to publish before the end of the current year. I will try to send the revised and updated material to GBB within the next few weeks, but I don't want to interrupt my current 60s-70s agenda, which is quite complex.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

I sent her on the draft material as requested:

Mme Jeanne Beausoleil / Musee Albert Kahn
10 quai du 4 Septembre / F-92100 Boulogne Billancourt / France

May 4 2002 / re: Joe Johnston

Dear Mme Beausoleil / Further to my e-mail, I have pleasure in enclosing a diskette containing the current draft of the AK appendix of my book, in a file called akahnov.htm. All the other files should be accessible from this one via the hypertext 'hot-linking' process.

If you 'click on' this when displayed in your 'windows explorer' it should, because of the .htm extension, bring up your browser and display the contents. It should work with any browser.

You will see notes and references, and these should appear hot-linked from the reference numbers. Within the notes and references you should also find hotlinks to all the other files, except a few which are not directly AK-related.

Some of these files require further editing, and I have embedded in some of them queries to Gilles B-B.

I have not yet edited in anything from the material which you sent, but will do so in due course, perhaps when I get some comments from yourself of GBB on what I have done to date.

Please confirm receipt of this material, and that you have been able to access it in workable hypertext mode, using akahnov.htm as starting-point.

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston PhD

JJ's Final Selection

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002