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| ISBN-13: | 9780870139574 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2012 |
| Series: | [MSU Press Canadian Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 422 KB |
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The American Response to Canada Since 1776
By Gordon T. Stewart
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 1992 Gordon T. StewartAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87013-957-4
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Canada is an odd case in the scholarly field of United States foreign relations because much more has been written by the Canadian side than the American. A basic characteristic of the U.S. foreign relations field in recent years has been the shift from American-centered research and interpretations to multiple perspective approaches. Research in the foreign country or countries, and incorporation of interpretations from those countries, are now viewed as essential elements in the scholarly analysis of U.S. foreign policy. The topic of Sino-American relations is perhaps the best-known example of this new approach as scholars such as Michael Hunt have called for a comprehensive effort to develop knowledge from the Chinese perspective. The journal Diplomatic History eagerly prints interviews given to select American scholars by Chinese diplomats who were involved in the diplomacy of the late 1940s when the great break in relations took place. Scholars keep hoping for better access to Chinese archives and libraries.
In the case of the cold war in Europe, much of the weakness in the literature stemmed from the fact that the major interpretations were based almost exclusively on American and western sources. George Kennan remarked that such an approach was akin to describing a boxing match with only one participant. Scholars such as Gaddis Smith are now committed to a systematic recovery of sources on the other side, and there is great hope that recent developments in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe will lead to a cornucopia of telling sources that will make our understanding of the 1940s and 1950s more sophisticated and complete. While relations with China and Russia stand out because of their status in the modern system of international relations, the multiple perspective approach is now considered commonplace and essential in studies of American foreign policy. In all cases, there has been ample documentation and interpretative richness on the American side but very little on the other end. The task of modern scholars has been to provide balance by bringing into play knowledge and perspectives from the foreign countries under examination.
Canada does not fit this pattern. In fact, it presents the opposite problem. Modern scholarship on Canadian-American relations has produced a torrent of writings from Canada but only a trickle in the United States. The subject has been of consuming interest to Canadian scholars since the 1930s. This attention reached a peak of fashion in the 1960s, when there was an outpouring of books and newspaper and magazine articles describing the manifold ways in which Canada had been on the receiving end of American imperialism. This theme became a central interpretative thread in modern Canadian history. In the aftermath of the 1914-1918 Great War, Canada began to disengage from the British Empire-Commonwealth and define her own identity and place in the international world. She became more assertive and autonomous in the 1920s and 1930s. Direct diplomatic ties with Washington were established in 1927 which enabled Canada to shape her own view of the relationship with the United States rather than have it mediated through Britain. Canada made her own declaration of war in 1939 in contrast to 1914 when she had entered as a colony of Britain.
Yet, as she was emerging as a more self-conscious North American state, Canada was becoming open to more influence from the United States in a range of economic, political, social and cultural spheres. At the outset, during the 1930s and 1940s, this interaction with the United States was seen as part of Canada's maturing process as she entered into bilateral policymaking and economic cooperation with the world's greatest economic and military power. By the late 1950s, however, many Canadians feared that American influence in, and over, Canada had become so intense that autonomy had been lost.
During the 1960s the United States was portrayed as an imperial power which had secured extensive control of Canada's economy and insisted on Canada following the American line in foreign affairs. The American influence on Canadian culture through radio and television and books and magazines was presented as an additional and dangerous dimension to the American empire's impact on Canada. While this view was popular in the 1960s and early 1970s, it relaxed in the 1980s. It is also worth pointing out that the more extreme views were usually made in non-scholarly works. But, it is still fair to say that a more carefully framed version of the American imperialism interpretation is still the dominant approach to the topic in Canada.
While this abundance of interpretation flourishes on the Canadian side, there is a dearth on the American. The analysis in this book seeks to restore some balance and perspective, which is required for a better and more complete understanding of the American response to Canada. In contrast to Sino-American relations, Canadian-American relations have the urgent task of further investigation of the U.S. position. In order to better understand that position, this analysis extends back to the founding of the republic to assess whether or not there are any deep structures to the relationship which run into modern times. For the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the case made rests largely on evidence in the usual printed sources, above all William Manning's four-volume set of documents Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Canadian Relations, 1784-1860. The heart of the analysis is based on research in the State Department numerical file for the 1910-1953 years, the period during which the crucial reorientation in relations took place. For the recent period I have relied heavily on the work of Canadian scholars and on the printed sources in such series as American Foreign Policy, Current Documents. Since the focus of attention is on policy thinking at the federal level, the story begins and ends amidst the public buildings in Washington D.C.
1.
On the east wall of the old Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., there is a historical plaque intended to remind the American public about the nature of the United States' relationship with Canada. The plaque was placed there by the Kiwanis Club of Washington on 20 April 1929 to commemorate the signing of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 and was one of several such projects undertaken in the 1930s. Six years later another historical tablet was unveiled on the site of the old British Legation to honor the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1818 which had removed most British and American naval forces from the Great Lakes. This unveiling was marked by a dedicatory speech from Undersecretary of State William Phillips, who served as the first American Minister to Canada when direct diplomatic ties were established in 1927. The purpose of these historical plaques and the accompanying ceremonies was to present a benign view of the U.S. relationship with Canada. Speeches in connection with the Rush-Bagot Agreement invariably turned into paeans of praise for the undefended border, a version of North American history that was at odds with the wars, invasions and border tensions throughout the late eighteenth and the first three quarters of the nineteenth century. The tablet on the old Treasury Building describes the Webster-Ashburton Treaty as having "developed and strengthened the friendship between the United States and Canada" thereby cheerfully ignoring the fact that Canadians regarded the treaty as a piece of aggressive land-grabbing by the United States.
This benign view of the American relationship with Canada was a construct of the 1930s and 1940s and was one cultural aspect of the cooperative relationship that developed as a consequence of the Depression and World War II. This rosy account is inadequate, however, as a view of the entire historical relationship since 1776 or even of the modern relationship since 1945. In spite of all the scholarly writing that can be marshalled to illustrate the shallowness of the good neighbor metaphor as the over-arching motif to describe the American response to Canada, this approach to the topic has proved to be remarkably resilient in the popular culture of the United States and even in political circles that should be better informed.
It must be added immediately that this popular, conventional wisdom about the Canadian-American relationship is not without some scholarly sanction. At the time these plaques were unveiled, there was a major scholarly enterprise underway which, when completed in 1945, gave support to the notion that the relationship between the United States and Canada (because of its peaceful and cooperative nature) was exceptional in the competitive world system. The enterprise was the twenty-five volume series on Canadian-American relations sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace under the general editorship of James T. Shotwell. The theme of the series was that the American relationship with Canada had been exemplary, providing a salutary lesson for the war-torn world of the first half of the twentieth century. If the proper lessons could be learned from this relationship, a brave new world of international relations would emerge in which rivalry and wars would be replaced by cooperation and arbitrated settlement of disputes. As Shotwell phrased it, the series would demonstrate "the way in which statesmanship and common sense have ultimately built up a technique for the settlement of disputes between the United States and Canada which can and should furnish a model to all the world."
Within many of the individual monographs of the series, the conclusions were rooted in the view that U.S. relations with Canada were special because of the shared determination of both countries to develop a new kind of international cooperation. The final page of Charles Tansill's volume, which covered the 18751911 period, is a telling example of this didactic outlook. Tansill's account ends with a description of the Canadian outbreak of anti-Americanism over the issue of trade reciprocity in the 1911 election. The Taft administration had negotiated a reciprocal trade agreement with the Liberal government of Wilfrid Laurier. During the election campaign in Canada, the agreement was presented by the Conservative opposition as an attempt to break Canada's links with the British Empire and as a step in the direction of annexation of Canada by the United States. This opposition cry was helped by some careless speeches in the United States by President Taft (who talked about Canada being "at the parting of the ways") and by Champ Clark, soon to be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, who declared that he hoped "to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions clear to the North Pole." The fact that Canadians could be so agitated about American expansionist designs was an awkward fact for Tansill to deal with, especially since the 1911 reciprocity issue was the culminating topic in his narrative. But to keep in harmony with the overall direction of the series, Tansill preferred to end his book with the observation that such storms were bound to blow themselves out because there remained a fundamental convergence of interests and values between the two countries. Americans and Canadians shared the same dream of a new world order; they spoke a common language ; they indulged in the same traditions in their public and private lives; they were knitted by ties of blood and by economic circumstances. It was inevitable, Tansill summarized, "Canadian-American discord would disappear when the two countries were challenged by forces that threatened their way of life."
Tansill's book was published in 1943, and his view of Canadian-American relations was molded by the overwhelming fact of the war against Germany and Japan. The entire series was affected in its final conclusions by the development of cooperation between the two countries in the late 1930s and during the war years. The scholarship in each of the volumes was sound, but the series presented Canadian-American relations in teleological terms to illustrate the emergence of modern international cooperation. This theme was all the more compelling because several of the scholars who participated in the project and the general editor himself were the intellectual products of both countries.
There are numerous examples from the 1920s to the 1950s, including such well-known figures as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to illustrate the migration of Canadian scholars to the United States. James T. Shotwell was a typical example of this phenomenon. Born in Strathroy, Ontario and educated at the University of Toronto, Shotwell grew up in a culture heavily influenced by the United States, noting in his autobiography that he had been an avid reader of "the great American magazines"—Century, Scribners, Harpers, and Atlantic. Part of his family lived in the United States (Michigan and Kansas) and thus presented an instance for the mingling of the Canadian and American peoples that had been taking place throughout the nineteenth century. (This was the theme of one of the basic books in the Carnegie series, The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples, 1940, by John B. Brebner and Marcus Lee Hansen.) Shotwell proceeded to Columbia for graduate study and from there entered government service. He was on Woodrow Wilson's team of experts at Versailles in 1919 and from that beginning became an influential figure in the 1920s in the movement which propounded the ideals of internationalism. In March 1928, he met with French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to discuss a proposal for the "outlawry of war" as part of the background discussions which led to the signing of the Kellogg-Briand pact later that year. Following the signing of the pact, which would depend on the moral force of world opinion if it was to have any impact, Shotwell praised its significance in his War as an Instrument of National Policy and Its Renunciation in the Pact of Paris. He viewed his own career as a confirmatory sign of the new direction in international affairs because it also had successfully crossed a national boundary. He had joined the Canadian academic migration to the United States and the ease with which he and others became part of American society contributed to
an awareness of the growth of a North American nationality in which old loyalties are cherished not for provincial exclusiveness but for the maintenance of the enduring virtues which embody the ideals of human rights and freedom expressed in the history and institutions of both Canada and the United States.
In the preface to his volume, Charles Tansill fittingly remarked that Shotwell "symbolizes as no one else can, the essential unity of the Canadian and American peoples."
It was in this social and intellectual context that the Carnegie series was conceived and completed. The lessons Shotwell drew from his own life, the influence of his commitment to internationalism, and the impact of World War II combined to make it seem obvious that mutual understanding and friendly collaboration were the hallmarks of U.S. relations with Canada. Shotwell and Tansill recognized that there had been misunderstandings and tensions but they concluded that this dimension to the relationship was outweighed by the fact that the United States and Canada had now become good neighbors and an example of how international arbitration could be routinized. Shotwell's own experience convinced him that nationalism (with its destructive impact on the world scene) had become outmoded. When his Ontario relations moved to Michigan and Kansas "we thought no more of it than if they had moved out of Middlesex into the adjacent county of Lambton." Thus, for personal as well as idealistic reasons, Shotwell envisaged the Carnegie series interpretation of Canadian-American relations as a scholarly brief to prove the new internationalism had been born. It was a worthy goal but, in terms of scholarship, the results were tainted. The generalized summaries of the series were often at odds with the evidence in the monographs.
This was the case with the Tansill book on the 1875-1911 period. The volume ended on a pious note about the underlying harmony between the two countries instead of analyzing the results that the Taft administration had hoped to achieve by reciprocity and the related Canadian fears of American expansion. The same point can be made with respect to several of the most successful books in the series. A.L. Burt's account of the years leading up to the War of 1812—during which a United States army invaded Upper Canada and declared it a conquered country—did not fit the internationalist outlook.
While the War of 1812 could easily be put into a separate category as the culmination of the post-revolution tensions between Britain and the United States rather than a pointer to the future, subsequent monographs also drew attention to the rivalries and tensions, and even threats of war, between the United States and the northern British colonies. A.B. Corey's The Crisis in Canadian American Relations describes the rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in the late 1830s and early 1840s which led to border tensions and convinced the British and colonial authorities that there was a danger of American invasion on behalf of a democratic uprising. Lester B. Shippee's account of the Civil War years showed how deteriorating Anglo-American relations and the activities of Confederate agents in Canada kept alive the old Canadian fears of attack from the south. The post-war publicity given to the Irish-American Fenian plans for an invasion of Canada enabled Canadians to sustain such a view of the United States. So much so, in fact, that a perceived threat from the U.S. was one of the factors that led the British North American colonies to join and become the Canadian Confederation in 1867. Both periods of tension came to an end with treaties rather than war—the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 and the Treaty of Washington in 1871. Nevertheless, the tales told in these books show how the Shotwellian image of the relationship was limited by its own time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The American Response to Canada Since 1776 by Gordon T. Stewart. Copyright © 1992 Gordon T. Stewart. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Page,
Acknowledgements,
A Note on Terminology,
I - Introduction,
II - "Tendencies to Bad Neighborhood" 1783-1854,
III - "A Second Empire" 1854-1892,
IV - "Broad Questions of National Policy" 1892-1911,
V - "An Object of American Foreign Policy since the Founding of the Republic" 1911-1988,
VI - ASSESSMENT,
Selected Bibliography,