The Twenties in Western Canada ed. by S.M. Trofimenkoff (review)

REVIEWS 203 and Quebec,provinces withoutprovincialhistories because eachliveswith a visionof the past,cloudedby cultural and economic imperialisms that have little to dowith provincehood, orwith today. W.L. MORTON Trent University The Twentiesin WesternCanada.Papersof the WesternCanadianStudies Conference, March •972. Editedby s.M.TROFIM•.N•ZOFF. Ottawa,HistoryDivision ,NationalMuseumof Man, I972. PP.vi, 259.$2.95. This publication is a testimony to the rapid expansion of Canadianhistorydepartments overthelastfewyears. Eachof thetenpapers dealswith thedecade of the •92os;sevenof themare on topicsfrom the historyof the prairieprovinces .Sucha concentration on a decadeof regionalhistorywould have been impossible a few years ago. This volumealsoattests to the highlevelof scholarship of junior historians. The sources rangewidely,theresearch isthorough, andtheanalysis clear.Politicalhistory isstillthemajorinterest, if these papers arerepresentative, but the scope of politicalhistoryhasbeenbroadened to includepressure groupsand socialstructures. It would be misleading to fall backon the reviewer's clichd aboutthequalitybeinguneven because thedifferences areless remarkable than the consistently highlevelof scholarship. It isalsopossible, however, to discern someof the limitations of the trainingin moderngraduateschools. Eachpaper dealswith a limited topic- the One Big Union, the Co-operative Union, the PeaceMovement,the defeatof prohibitionin Manito,ba,the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan, French-language education,politicalregionsin Alberta, the career of T.A. Crerar, the western farmer in Canadian literature, and antiOriental prejudicein BritishColumbia.The authorsknowa greatdeal about their subject, but theyare lessconfident whentheytry to placetheir topicin the perspective of westernCanadiansociety, in the decade.The meticulous footnoting ofevery detail, somuch apartofour•,HI• training, seems to'inhibit generalizations. Readerswill missthe stimulatingcomments of an Underhill on Jeffersonian democracy or of a Macpherson on a quasi-colonial community. It is not easy to seeanypatternwhichencompasses theaberration of theo}•t•andthenaivety of thepeacemovement with the pragmatism of the Wheat Poolsandthe ModerationLeague ,or with the nativismof the Klan and the attackson Frenchlanguage schools. Obviously the westwasnot a homogeneous regionand the decade wasnot a clearly-defined era.Thesepapersdo undermine over-simplified generalizations and soare a significant contribution to westernhistory. Thereislittle to suggest, however, that youngscholars areconcerned with more sophisticated interpretations of thewestasa region.Theyavoidanyassessment of the significance of theirtopicfor western history or theyacknowledge the problem almost asan afterthought in the finalparagraph. If thisisto be the 204 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW patternforhistorical scholarship in Canada, wecanexpect highlyprofessional studies, but we can alsoexpectthat mostof the readers will be professional historians. H. BLAIR NEATBY CarletonUniversity BrettonWoods Revisited. Editedby A.•C.I•. ACH•.SO•, J.F.CHANT, and M.v.J. P•,•½xeow•¾. Toronto, University ofToronto Press, I972.Pp.xxiv,•38.$7.5 o. The Bretton Woods Conference, heldin JulyI944,wasthebirthplace of the International MonetaryFund (mF or Fund) and the International Bankfor Reconstruction and Development (IBm)or WorldBank). On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Bretton Woods, Queen's University sponsored a conference of retrospective andprospective evaluation of the 'Bretton Woods twins.' The retrospective sections include papers bythose wellqualified to report. Bretton Woods grewfromtwoindependent seedlings-Keynes' I942 Clearing Union proposal intheUnitedKingdom andtheWhite-Bernstein proposals intheUnitedStates . The papers byKeynes' confidante andbiographer, Harrod,andby Bernstein aretherefore muchin order.The history andpolitics areputin careful perspective by Richard Gardner, and Raymond Mikesell evaluates the WorldBank's firstquartercentury. The reminiscences of foureminent Canadian veteransof BrettonWoods- Deutsch,Mackintosh,Plumptre,and Rasminsky serve tosupport Plumptre's image ofBretton Woods asan'^Be affair' in whichAmerican, British,and Canadianeffortswereof paramount importance . The retrospective papers havea common thread.No oneexpected thefund and the bankto develop exactly astheydid, but all weresurprised at their successful evolutioninto durableand activemultinationalagencies. The prospective papers byMundell andPrebisch, andtheassessments byP.-P.SchweitzerandHarryJohnson all suffer fromthepassage of almost foureventful years between theQueen's conference anddistribution of thevolume of proceedings. Would Mundell still be as confidentthat the us dollar was ending the first decade of a reignof at leastfiftyyears at the centreof a word dollarstandard ?Complaints aboutlackof worldleadership, especially on thepartof the fund,havestood the testof timeratherbetter,ashavethe statements about theinadequate levels of foreign aid.The conference itselfgaveriseto nobold proposals thatwould helpmuch withcontemporary problems. Perhaps thisis not of crucialimportance, giventhe general opinion at the conference that nothing assupranational in scope asthefundandbankcouldhavecome to fruition if BrettonWoodshad not takenplacein mid-I944. The editorshave contributeda fourteen-page introduction,bringingthe story ofthe•MFuptotheendof•97• andidentifying themain characters and themes of theQueen's conference. Ashistory, thisvolume hasnothing likethe scope oftheI•F'sofficial history ofitself. Nevertheless, these counterpoised re- ...