Behind the Headlines


Book Description




The Oxford History of the British Empire: The twentieth century


Book Description

This text looks at the growth of vibrant, often new, national identities, movements and new nation-states that reshape the political map of the late 20th century world.




Prejudice and Pride


Book Description

As a country with enormous economic, military, and cultural power, the United States can seem an overwhelming neighbour - one that demands consideration by politicians, thinkers, and cultural figures. Prejudice and Pride examines and compares how English and French Canadian intellectuals viewed American society from 1891 to 1945. Based on over five hundred texts drawn largely from the era's periodical literature, the study reveals that English and French Canadian intellectuals shared common preoccupations with the United States, though the English tended to emphasize political issues and the French cultural issues. Damien-Claude Belanger's in-depth analysis of anti-American sentiment during this era divides Canadian thinkers less along language lines and more according to their political stance as right-wing, left-wing, or centrist. Significantly, the era's discourse regarding American life and the Canadian-American relationship was less an expression of nationalism or a reaction to US policy than it was about the expression of wider attitudes concerning modernity.




History Has Made Us Friends


Book Description

Separated by the world’s longest land border and engaging in over three billion dollars in trade daily, Canada and the United States share security concerns, cultural interests, and a history spanning more than 250 years. Alan Rock, former Canadian ambassador to the United States, has said that this special relationship represents “a bond that is beyond practical. It borders on mystical.” The rise of nativist sentiment, however, has raised concerns over preserving this relationship. History Has Made Us Friends illuminates the nature and dynamics of Canada-US relations, examining their history, attributed meaning, and conceptualization. Contributors consider many angles and perspectives, including the impact of geopolitical change, to determine whether the relationship warrants the moniker “special.” They explore whether shared values and demographic similarities continue to cement the relationship, and if it still matters whether presidents and prime ministers get along. While things look different today from when President Kennedy declared, “What unites us is far greater than what divides us,” History Has Made Us Friends argues that the Canada-US relationship – often narrowly understood or dismissed as a relic of the past – continues to be unique and resilient.




Sovereignty or Security?


Book Description

Sovereignty or Security? explores the numerous and diverse influences responsible for the dramatic change in northern policies during the 1940s and their subsequent impact on the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Apart from concern for the social, economic, and political development of the North, two major issues emerged which became central to the policy initiatives in the war and postwar years -- the question of maintaining optimum sovereign control and of providing adequate defence against possible enemy attack. As a result, Ottawa abandoned its former laissez-faire approach to northern affairs and adopted an active interventionist role, accompanied by unprecedented financial support.




The Shaping of Peace


Book Description

When Mackenzie King went to the San Francisco Conference he told the Commons that Canada had played its part in winning the war and it was now its duty to play a part in 'the shaping of peace.' This is a history and analysis of Canadian participation in the peace settlement and in the establishment of the United Nations and other international institutions, written by a man who was in the Department of External Affairs at the time. Although the book records the principal events, its emphasis is on the ideas and basic philosophies which Canada applied to the world scene in these years. The first of two volumes deals with postwar planning in Ottawa, the institutions which were created before the war ended, and Canada's part in settling the war, both in relief and reconstruction and in the peace treaties. It describes the shifting relations with Britain and the United States, including new defence and economic relationships, the working of the 'atomic triad,' and the postwar Commonwealth. It concludes with an extended discussion of Canada's part in the preparations for San Francisco and in the conference itself, with reference both to political and security issues and the economic and social functions involved. A second volume will describe Canada's attitudes as the cold war developed, the shifts in NATO, the experiences of the Korean War, and the evolution of middle-power diplomacy in the 1950s. John Holmes' well-informed account of 'the shaping of peace' is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of what has been regarded as Canada's most creative initiative in international affairs.




Debating a Post-American World


Book Description

The United States is currently the linchpin of global trade, technology, and finance, and a military colossus, extending across the world with a network of bases and alliances. This book anticipates the possible issues raised by a transition between American dominance and the rise of alternative powers. While a ‘post-American’ world need not be any different than that of today, the risk associated with such a change provides ample reason for attentive study. Divided into four parts, 50 international relations scholars explore and discuss: Power Transitions: addressing issues including the rise of China; the passing of American primacy and the endurance of American leadership. War and Peace: addressing nuclear weapons; the risk of war; security privatization and global insecurity Global Governance: addressing competition, trade, the UN, sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, law and power. Energy and the Environment: addressing resource conflict, petrol, climate change and technology. This unique project offers a compilation of disparate arguments by scholars and policy practitioners, encompassing a plurality of disciplines and theoretical perspectives. By providing clarity and focus to this essential debate on the future of the world in the next several decades, Debating a Post-American World will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations and global politics, American politics, US Foreign policy and International Security.




The American Response to Canada Since 1776


Book Description

Canadians long have engaged in in-depth, wide-ranging discussions about their nation's relations with the United States. On the other hand, American citizens usually have been satisfied to accept a series of unexamined myths about their country's unchanging, benign partnership with the "neighbor to the north". Although such perceptions of uninterrupted, friendly relations with Canada may dominate American popular opinion, not to mention discussions in many American scholarly and political circles, they should not, according to Stewart, form the bases for long-term U.S. international economic, political, and cultural relations with Canada. Stewart describes and analyzes the evolution of U.S. policymaking and U.S. policy thinking toward Canada, from the tense and confrontational post-Revolutionary years to the signing of the Free Trade Agreement in 1988, to discover if there are any permanent characteristics of American policies and attitudes with respect to Canada. American policymakers were concerned for much of the period before World War II with Canada's role in the British empire, often regarded as threatening, or at least troubling, to developing U.S. hegemony in North America and even, in the late nineteenth century, to U.S. trade across the Pacific. A permanent goal of U.S. policymakers was to disengage Canada from that empire. They also thought that Canada's natural geographic and economic orientation was southward to the U.S., and policymakers were critical of Canadian efforts to construct an east- west economy. The Free Trade Agreement of 1988 which prepared the way for north-south lines of economic force, in this context, had been an objective of U.S. foreign policy since the founding of the republic in 1776. At the same time, however, these deep-seated U.S. goals were often undermined by domestic lobbies and political factors within the U.S., most evidently during the era of high tariffs from the 1860s to the 1930s when U.S. tariff policies actually encouraged a separate, imperially-backed economic and cultural direction in Canada. When the dramatic shift toward integration in trade, investment, defense and even popular culture began to take hold in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in the wake of the Depression and World War II, American policymakers viewed themselves as working in harmony with underlying, "natural" converging economic, political and cultural trends recognized and accepted by their Canadian counterparts.




Canada at War


Book Description

This essay collection traces the sustained work over the past fifty years of the foremost historian of Canadian politics in the era of the two world wars.