Papers by Robert Bothwell
Histoire@Politique, 2014
For Canada, the past few years have been a world of anniversaries defined by war. The War of 1812... more For Canada, the past few years have been a world of anniversaries defined by war. The War of 1812 was selected by the Canadian government for special commemoration, as a means of stimulating national pride by recalling the nation's military exploits while highlighting, in particular, Canada's military traditions. The government hoped that $30 million would help, and up to a point it did, with those who were already committed to the art of re-enactment. There was inevitably a certain anti-Americanism, muted, to be sure, by the passage of time: the antique uniforms worn by the many battlefield re-enactors helped place the anniversary in a comfortably remote and colourful past-remembering the violence without having to dwell on its victims, rendered mute and historically harmless by the passage of two hundred years. The public reaction was tepid, and probably disappointing to the government. Now 2014 is upon us, and with it the hundredth anniversary of a much bigger war, one that was, until very recently, within living memory. The war directly engaged hundreds of thousands of Canadians in military service, cost billions of dollars-in the dollars of 1914-1918-altered Canadian society and reshaped the country's politics. The War of 1812 left a few commemorative plinths, notably the monument to Sir Isaac Brock on the Niagara River, erected to honour a British general who fell while successfully defending Canada against American invaders. The monument was subsequently blown up by an American sympathizer, and a second one, more impressive, was then erected. Such monuments are necessarily restricted to eastern Canada, where the war was fought, but the country that fought the Great War extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and its soldiers fought at both ends of the Eurasian landmass, from the Somme to Vladivostok. The First World War left memorials all across Canada, as well as probably Canada's most impressive and most beautiful memorial, at Vimy Ridge, near Arras in northern France, commemorating the most striking victory by the Canadian Corps during the Great War, as it was called, in April 1917. As of this writing, none of these monuments has been blown up.
The Journal of Higher Education, 1986
The International History Review, 1980
Nicholas Mansergh noted that the Canadian Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King had at the v... more Nicholas Mansergh noted that the Canadian Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King had at the very fibre of his being a Gladstonian feel for 'the politics of virtuous passion'. The Virtuous passion' which he felt, Mansergh remarked in The Commonwealth Experience, 'was for Canada and against imperialism'.1 That was certainly true, as was the emphasis given by Mansergh to King's self-proclaimed creed that 'My first duty is to Canada.' 'My view,' King wrote in 1941, 'is that the only real position for Canada to take is that of a nation wholly on her own vis-a-vis both Britain and the United States'.2 Given the weight of geography and tradition, this was a difficult position to uphold and King rarely fought for it with all the vigour one might have expected. But he sometimes did, most notably when he spoke in the House of Commons in Ottawa on 9 July 1943 and enunciated the 'functional principle.' 'Authority in international affairs,' he explained,
Canadian Review of American Studies, 1977
Robert Bottm'ell and do/m •nglish "Canadian trade with both the United Kingdom and the United $•t... more Robert Bottm'ell and do/m •nglish "Canadian trade with both the United Kingdom and the United $•tes is of a complementary nature, and is a classic example of a basically sound division of labour;' the Rowell-Sirois Commission wrote in 1940. It continued: "Canada's position is similar to that of a small man sitting in a big poker game. He must play for the tull stakes, but with only a fraction of the capital resources of his two substantial opponents; if he wins, his profits in relation to his capital are very large, and if he loses, he may be cleaned out."• In the 1930's, this economic equation had not worked very well for Canada. Buffeted by an unfavorable international economic climate, Canada in 1938 possessed a standard of living lower than that of Great Britain; it went without saying that the American standard of living was an unattainable height for most Canadians.-' The small man in the poker game had been nearl;½ cleaned out, a fact which few Canadian officials or economists dared forget in the years that followed. Canadian trade policy during the 1940's was conditioned by the dismal experience of the 1930's. The spectre of depression was ever-present, and to exorcise it the small Canadian poker-player was driven back to the trading table, to gamble with his larger partners, the United States and Great Britain. During the war years, the Canadians occasionally suggested modifications in the rules of the game to afford some protection against bankruptcy. They discovered that the problem was greater than it had been, since now another player, Great Britain, was also in serious straits. As a direct consequence, Canada turned more and more often to the American side in the game, pursuing the goal ofa"sound division of labour"-and a sound bank balance.
Canadian Historical Review, 1977
Canadian Historical Review WE THINK the Canadian HistoricaiReview has been and must continue to b... more Canadian Historical Review WE THINK the Canadian HistoricaiReview has been and must continue to be the foremost journal of the historical profession in Canada. We believe that every country must have a national journal to reflect its best historical writing. Tradition forces the ½I-IR to assume that role. Let us be frank. The CHR has, to some, become the grandmother of the Canadian historical profession; respected but, for important matters, disregarded. We intend to show our readers that this is not true.
The American Historical Review, 1980
Page 1. STEFANSSON and the Canadian Arctic srta -^ £:*5?* RICHARD |. DIUBALDO Page 2. ... In this... more Page 1. STEFANSSON and the Canadian Arctic srta -^ £:*5?* RICHARD |. DIUBALDO Page 2. ... In this award-winning book Richard Diubaldo explores the controversy surroundings Stefansson and his achievements and the reasons Canada rejected one of its biggest supporters. ...
International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2018
begins his Revolutions with a story out of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ''Major Molineux,'' in which a yo... more begins his Revolutions with a story out of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ''Major Molineux,'' in which a young man seeks out his respectable, eminent, and influential relative, Molineux, only to discover that he has been disgraced and publicly humiliated. Acting on instinct, the young man abandons the old and respectable, and signs on with the New Order. Reasonably enough, Taylor takes this as a parable for the American Revolution of the 1770s, though as he notes, Hawthorne does not make this explicit in his story. For a Canadian reading about the fate of Major Molineux, the comparison to the Revolution is irresistible, though where Hawthorne finds excitement and opportunity, the Canadian is likely to scent chaos and mob rule: violence breaking through the crust of civilization that alone makes life bearable. Revolutions have two sides, one usually the winner, the other the loser; and sometimes, over the years, the two sides reverse, and the winners become losers. Such was the fate of the Revolution in France, eventually re-channelled into the reincarnation of the Bourbon monarchy. As Taylor shows, a somewhat similar process occurred in the new United States, where the elitist tendencies of most of the prominent revolutionaries soon reasserted themselves, making the elite of the new republic not all that different in philosophy and practice from the American Loyalists who had rejected the republic and followed the call of the king. This is a theme that occurs in Alan Taylor's earlier work, especially The Civil War of 1812, which, I suspect, sold better in Canada than in the United States, certainly on a per capita basis. Taylor, in Revolutions and The Civil War does a good job of describing the military history of the wars, and anyone looking for a straightforward and comprehensible account of military events will not be
International Journal, Apr 1, 2010
were not enough; as Craig Brown points out sensibly, "they had to use their political power to pr... more were not enough; as Craig Brown points out sensibly, "they had to use their political power to protect and defend them." Borden had never known, and perhaps never would know, what it was like to be part of a linguistic minority passionately committed to preserving their language and their institutions. Borden read French literature, and probably spoke some French (I do not know how well); but that professorial, one might almost say Presbyterian mind of his did not translate French literature of the 19th century into French-Canadian politics of the 20th. Like Woodrow Wilson before the brilliance of Clemenceau, Borden was almost naive in dealing with the sometimes brilliant products of the collèges classiques, of la civilisation française, to say nothing of the Norman shrewdness of the ordinary French-Canadian voter. All of this Craig Brown says with candour and honesty. His book is, indeed, a model of inductive history, written always with an eye to evidence, allowing the portrait of Borden to emerge almost by contrast, by sketching in the politics in which Borden moved, the world in which he lived, rather than, as Lytton Strachey would have done, setting out a clear and misleading portrait going from premise to deduction. Such a book as Craig Brown's is difficult to do, and the rewards in its creation must be indirect; one wonders, indeed, whether Craig Brown's enjoyment of Borden has survived such an exhausting test. One almost suspects not. But for the answer to this, one must await, with some impatience, his Volume II.
International Journal, 1994
The first lesson for students of the history of Canada's foreign relations is not what is known, ... more The first lesson for students of the history of Canada's foreign relations is not what is known, but what is not. This may seem surprising. As a visit to any academic library would show, the literature on Canadian international relations abounds. Bibliographies creak at the seams. Conferences, hearings, task forces sing a virtual song without end. Usually the music is subsequently published, further adding to the confusion. If Europe has its butter mountain and its wine lake, then Canada, thanks to abundant subsidy and an indefatigable professoriate, has a veritable open pit mine of diplomacy. Indeed, if the significance of Canadian foreign relations were measured by the quantity of Canadian woodpulp sacrificed to the cause, or by the contribution of the literature to the national landfill, then Canada would be, without question, a Principal Power. But inside the pit there lurks a Secret. It isn't a deliberate Secret, of the kind that regularly enlivens the press coverage of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but merely a confidence not widely shared, for there are so few to share it among. The number of historians publishing regularly in the field of Canadian foreign policy is, by recent scientific estimate (that is to say, as good as the polls surrounding the 1994 Quebec election), about the same as the digits on the feet of a three-toed sloth. Fewer historians: less history. Or, at any rate, less historiography. This phenomenon generates a paradox: for the tiny number of foreign relations historians belies the interest shown in the
Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1981
The American Historical Review, 1994
The American Historical Review, 1990
Canadian Review of American Studies, 1984
Gregg Herken. The Winning Weapon : The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950. New York: Knopf, 1... more Gregg Herken. The Winning Weapon : The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950. New York: Knopf, 1980.425 + xiv pp. Timothy P. Ireland. Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.264 pp. Akira Iriye. Power and Culture : The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.336 pp. William W. Stueck. The Road to Confrontation : American Policy Toward China and Korea, 1947-1950. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981. 337 pp. Of all the forms of contemporary historiography, diplomatic history has had the worst press over the past decade. Scorned as an elitist preoccupation with personalities and mere chronology, diplomatic history has receded from the consciousness of many of today's graduate students, making way for vast, quantifiable waves of oppression, violence and crime. While facing this assault from the front, diplomatic historians have f...
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Papers by Robert Bothwell