The Canadian International History Committee / Comité d'histoire internationale du Canada
By Asa McKercher, Royal Military College of Canada | As several recent articles attest, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Although he left the Prime Minister’s Office amid scandal and historically low approval ratings – indeed in the election held soon after his departure, the Progressive Conservative Party was …
Continue reading Listening in on Brian Mulroney and George H.W. Bush
Publication Notice | Canada and the World since 1867. Asa McKercher. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. This book is a history of Canada's role in the world as well as the impact of world events on Canada. Starting from the country's quasi-independence from Britain in 1867, its analysis moves through events in Canadian and global …
Publication Notice | Fighting with the Empire: Canada, Britain, and Global Conflict, 1867–1947. Steve Marti and William John Pratt. Eds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2019. Canadians often characterize their military history as a march toward nationhood, but in the first eighty years of Confederation they were fighting for the British Empire. From 1867 …
Continue reading Fighting with the Empire: Canada, Britain, and Global Conflict, 1867–1947
By David Webster, Bishop's University | Seventy years ago, delegates from Canada, the United States and ten European governments fulfilled the dream of many policymakers in Ottawa as they signed the North Atlantic Treaty. Signed on 4 April 1949, the pact marks the birth of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formalized a little bit …
Continue reading How a colonial dispute almost stopped NATO from forming
(Le message en français suit.) The Historical Section (PORH) is pleased to sponsor a two-day conference on the history of women and Canada’s international history on the theme, Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds: Women and the Search for Global Order, 1919-2019. Linking past and present, this symposium will explore how Canadian women have influenced Canada’s …
Continue reading Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds: Women and the Search for Global Order, 1919-2019
Members of the Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project (CFIHP) have begun a Petition to ensure the proper archiving of historical records, including intelligence files. Please read and consider signing at this link. Petition to Justin Trudeau Whereas: The Government of Canada promotes values of transparency and openness through the provisions of the Access to Information …
Continue reading Access to Information – Petition to Justin Trudeau
The Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project invites paper proposals for a one-day workshop on the history of Canadian foreign intelligence to be held in Ottawa on July 10, 2019. Paper topics might include (but are not limited to): The management structures governing foreign intelligence in Canada The organizations involved in foreign intelligence collection and analysis …
Continue reading CFP: Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project, Ottawa (July 10, 2019)
Publication Notice | The Selected Works of George R. Lindsey: Operational Research, Strategic Studies, and Canadian Defence in the Cold War. George R. Lindsey; edited by Matthew S. Wiseman. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. During a government career that spanned nearly the whole of the Cold War, George Roy Lindsey gained a reputation as …
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 …
