bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 44–45
The American Response to Canada since
1776 by Gordon T. Stewart, University of
Michigan Press, 1992, 218 pp., $35.00 US.
Reviewed by Greg Donaghy
Students of US foreign policy have largely ignored the question of the American relationship with Canada. In this sweeping and ambitious monograph, Gordon Stewart, a University of Michigan professor specializing in 19th-century Canadian history, attempts to rectify this glaring omission. The American Response to Canada promises “to take a fresh look at the primary sources and [to] assess whether there are some permanent features that have characterized the American response to Canada.” Consciously and deliberately, Stewart has set out to articulate a new interpretation of Canadian- American relations. Were instrumental in nature of the North American partnership.
The American Response to Canada traces the relationship from 1776 to the present. Convinced that most Canadian historians share the view that their country has suffered grievously at the hands of American imperialists, Stewart explores and rejects the notion that an expansionist impulse defined the American response to Canada. During its first 75 years of existence, he contends, the United States viewed its northern neighbour primarily with apprehension and suspicion, fearful that Britain would use it to clip the new republic’s wings. From these fears developed the first of the objectives that has characterized the American response to Canada: a strong desire to sever the ties linking Canada and Britain.
While this attitude lingered well into the 20th century, by the middle of the 19th century, Stewart suggests, a number of American politicians, officials and businessmen shared the view that geographical forces would draw Canada naturally and inevitably towards the United States. This, it seems, partly obviated the need for Americans to articulate an explicit imperial ideology. From about 1850 on, this faith in continentalism characterized the American response to Canada and provided a basis for a series of inconclusive and sporadic discussions between US officials and American business interests on how best to create and to manage an integrated North American economy. Clearly comfortable and confident when working with material from the mid-die of the 19th century, Stewart carefully documents the recurring plans to extend or to deny tariff concessions to Canada; the US market was apparently the only facet of their society that Americans thought of interest to Canada.
Such schemes, whether implemented or not, had little effect on Washington’s ability to achieve its objectives. Canada’s exertions, Stewart concludes, were instrumental in determining the nature of the North American partnership. It was Canada’s determination to achieve its own independence from Britain that fulfilled Washington’s long standing goal of excluding the British Empire from North America. Similarly, it was Canada’s persistence in seeking access to the American market that ensured the development of the closely integrated economy that characterizes the bilateral relationship today.
The American Response to Canada represents a useful reminder of the need to acknowledge Canada’s role in shaping its own North American destiny. Nevertheless, this work is marred by a number of problems.
Throughout it, for example, the ever dangerous and ambiguous term “imperialism” is employed freely. Inexactly, “economic adjunct” is presented at one point as an adequate definition for an “imperial relationship.” While Stewart rightly rejects American imperialism as the dominant characteristic of the US attitude toward Canada, he still pursues an essentially economic line of inquiry. As a result, he tends to dismiss as so much rhetoric the descriptions of partnership and friendship that have accompanied the development of the continental relationship. In doing so, he does not understand that many of these sermons and lectures are attempts, by people on both sides of the border, to define the terms of North American co-operation and integration. What these terms were, how they subsequently developed and how they were ultimately articulated are the kinds of precise questions that Stewart neither poses nor answers.
The notion that Canada can be treated as a coherent whole from 1776, towards which one set of prevailing attitudes is applicable, is open to question. For most of the 19th century and a good bit of the 20th century, the American attitude towards their northern neighbour was shaped by Canada’s imperial and Commonwealth connection. In striving so determinedly to focus on the American attitude to some geographic and economic entity called “Canada,” Stewart obscures the more substantial American interest in addressing the problems and opportunities present in Anglo-American relations.
Stewart’s preoccupation with North American economic developments leads him to underestimate the political dimension of the North American relationship. Thrown together by the Second World War, the Cold War and the broader struggle to shape a peaceful international order, both Canada and the United States have been forced to confront each other in a relationship that is partly defined by broader foreign policy goals. Absent from this study is any attempt to examine the impact that these kinds of objectives had on the attitudes of American policy-makers towards Canada. Surely, American policy toward Canada after 1945 began to include considerations that flowed, not from its North American concerns, but from its global responsibilities.
The first to consult a number of American records on Canada, Stewart has usefully unearthed much new material on this North American partnership. Still, he comes nowhere near meeting his proclaimed objective of having a fresh look at the primary sources. His bibliography suggests that he did not consult any Canadian archive and that he has neglected the papers of most of the 20th century American presidents, including, most remarkably, Franklin D. Roosevelt. This seems an odd oversight in a work devoted to the views of American policy-makers. Indeed, Stewart’s general approach to a perennial problem in American diplomatic history — who is making what decisions when? — is problematic. He refuses to define his group of decision-makers with any precision and, more frequently than not, substitutes the views of junior officials, publicists and lobbyists for the absent views of more influential individuais.
The American Response to Canada leaves unanswered the central question of how and why the architects of American diplomacy have remained so poorly informed about Canada. While Stewart may not provide a persuasive answer to this important question, he deserves to be recognized for raising it. He will be well-rewarded if this work succeeds in sparking the interest of American scholars and publishers in things Canadian.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 44–45. Read the rest of this issue →
