The Canadian International History Committee / Comité d'histoire internationale du Canada
Publication Notice | Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order. Timothy Andrews Sayle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Born from necessity, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has always seemed on the verge of collapse. Even now, some sixty years after its inception, some consider its foundation uncertain and its …
Continue reading Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order
There is an exciting new historical research resource available online. Canada Declassified is a digital repository of government records declassified under the Canadian Access to Information Act. The holdings span the whole of the Cold War period from 1945 through 1991, the vast majority being government records declassified by the Access to Information and Privacy …
Publication Notice | Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World. Asa McKercher and Philip Van Huizen. Eds. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. When the field of Canadian history underwent major shifts in the 1990s, international history became marginalized and the focus turned away from foreign affairs. Over the past decade, …
Continue reading Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World
Contemporary International History is a highly popular graduate program at outstanding universities, and undergraduate courses in the field are often filled first. Popular histories and even academic studies of wars since 1939 occupy frequently appear on bestseller lists, and filmmakers seek out spy stories and tales of international intrigue. Yet within the university, particularly in …
Continue reading State of the Field Conference: Contemporary International History
Publication Notice | Reassessing the Rogue Tory: Canadian Foreign Relations in the Diefenbaker Era. Janice Cavell and Ryan M. Touhey. Eds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2018. The years when John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservatives were in office were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history. Variously branded as a populist, maverick, and “Rogue Tory,” …
Continue reading Reassessing the Rogue Tory: Canadian Foreign Relations in the Diefenbaker Era
By Andrew Zhao, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading Concept of Operations in the Event of Unlimited Nuclear War, 1957–1963
By Alexandra Southgate, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading US Investigation of Canadians During the Second Red Scare, 1953-1957
By Daria Mancino, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading Canada, NATO, and Global Strategy: 1952–1953
By Andrew Zhao, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading Preparing for the Warm War: Implications of a Defeat in Korea, 1950–1951
By Daria Mancino, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
By Elisabetta Kerr, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading Draft History of US-UK-Canadian Atomic Energy Cooperation
By Alexandra Southgate, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
By Darcy Taylor, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading “No Annihilation without Consultation”: Canada and the New Look, 1954
By Elisabetta Kerr, University of Toronto | This blog post accompanies the release of a digital briefing book, created in May 2018 by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students participating in the Jackman Humanitie's Institutes Scholars-in-Residence research program. Part of an ongoing series, Canada Declassified's digital briefing books include key documents from recently …
Continue reading “Brief Vodka Honeymoons”: Strategic Canadian Estimations from Moscow, 1943-46
Iain Johnston-White, Roehampton University | The Commonwealth enjoyed some unexpected interest in 2016, at least in the UK. The ‘Vote Leave’ campaign in Britain’s EU referendum made big claims for the Commonwealth. Brexiteers hailed the Commonwealth as a global network and source of post-Brexit trading partners, breaking the cycle of four-year interludes (punctuated by the …
Continue reading Back to the Future: Brexit Britain, Canada, & the Commonwealth
By Antony Anderson | It’s not surprising that contemporary commentators and historians would become so taken by what came to be called the Golden Age of Canadian Diplomacy. After all, that period from the 1940s into the late 1950s glittered with so much international creativity and unlike the dreary, quasi-isolationist 1920s and 1930s, Canadian diplomats …
Continue reading The Other Golden Age: Rethinking Seasons of Canadian Diplomacy
By Susan Colbourn, University of Toronto | In February 1983, the Canadian government ran a series of advertisements in the Washington Post, touting the unique relationship between Canada and the United States. Invoking a long history of cooperation and problem-solving, the ads tried to burnish Canada’s credentials as a trading partner and ally with taglines …
By Jennifer Bonder, University of Toronto | The last few weeks have been an exciting, maddening, “blast” from the past for observers of Canada-U.S. relations as tariff threats – no longer just threats – are being used to put pressure on the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations. But Canada and the United …
By David Webster, Bishop's University | How much does religion matter in global affairs? A seemingly undiplomatic topic, religion can actually tell us quite a bit about diplomatic history. Take the case of Burma, which in 1953 decided to refuse any more development aid money from the United States. Prime Minister U Nu made the …
Continue reading Rethinking Religion’s Role in International Relations
[This post first appeared in the Canadian Historical Association’s Bulletin (now Intersections), 43:3, 2017, p. 17.] By Timothy Andrews Sayle, University of Toronto | The Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada hosted a three-day conference on “Transparency in the 21st Century” in March 2017 to explore and compare access to information regimes in Canada …
Continue reading Transparency, Access, and History in the 21st Century
People, Politics, and Purpose: Biography and the Structure(s) of Canada since 1939 This one-day symposium honours the long and distinguished career of Professor John English, whose scholarly, political, and administrative work has shaped the study of history, biography, and international affairs in Canada. Long-time collaborators and former students of Professor English will speak about their …
Continue reading People, Politics, and Purpose: A Symposium in Honour of John English
The latest issue of International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis has been published. For more information, click on the links below: Editors' Introduction Contents Scholarly Essays AWOL: Canada’s defence policy and presence in the Asia Pacific David Dewitt, Mary Young, Alex Brouse, Jinelle Piereder Seeing ASEAN as a platform for spreading liberalism Ki-Hyun …
Continue reading International Journal Volume 73, Issue 1 (March 2018)
Adam Chapnick, Canadian Forces College | It’s been 20 years since I first entered what was then the National Archives of Canada to study Canadian international history. I didn’t realize it then, but reflecting back, it is now clear that I joined the community of historians of Canadian diplomacy at a time when archival research …
Continue reading Telling Canada’s International Story: Reflections on the Scholarly Process
Graeme Thompson, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History | Nearly twenty years ago, historian A.G. Hopkins made the case for the revival of British imperial history. At the end of the twentieth century – a century shaped by decolonization and the emergence of postcolonial nation-states across the globe – this was perhaps a surprising …
Daniel Macfarlane, Western Michigan University | This post was originally published on NiCHE’s The Otter. | In late April 2017 I had the privilege of attending and presenting at a workshop at McMaster University titled "Undiplomatic History: Rethinking Canada in the World." Organized by Asa McKercher and Phil Van Huizen, this gathering brought together scholars …
Continue reading Natural Security: Conceptualizing Canada-U.S. Environmental Diplomacy
