Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century (review)

This collection builds on a base of six papers that were delivered at the 1998 conference of the Australian Studies Association of North America. Seven of the eleven chapter authors or coauthors are based in Canada, including the editors - who clearly worked hard to integrate the various studies. Unlike some volumes that follow from conference proceedings, this book is far more than a bundle of disparate papers held together by binding. Instead, it coheres well as a series of intriguing studies of two Westminster-style democracies, in large part because chapter authors speak directly to each other. Again to the editors' credit, they have included a detailed index.

The backgrounds and interests of the coeditors reveal a great deal about the core focus. The writing skills and knowledge of diplomatic history of Margaret MacMillan, author of the widely acclaimed Paris 1919, are often in evidence. Her particular interest in the period surrounding the First World War is complemented by Francine McKenzie's grounding in the interwar years. Taken together, their joint introduction and individual opening chapters on these two periods set the stage for the rest of the book.

Describing Australia and Canada as 'linked by a shared past and by a common set of values,' the editors emphasize the two countries' imperial and Commonwealth connections, their role as middle powers on the international scene, and their early efforts to sort out relations with fading (UK) and rising (US) world hegemons. Initially, according to MacMillan and McKenzie, Australia appeared more hesitant than Canada to reject older ties to the British Empire, and to embrace the nascent American power. As MacMillan's chapter notes, Australia/US tensions were captured well in Prime Minister Billy Hughes's description of President Woodrow Wilson as 'the most self-centred of men,' and Wilson's depiction of Hughes as 'a pestiferous varmint.'

It was curious to read this volume in the midst of heated debates over US, UK and Australian military engagement in Iraq, and in light of Canada's March 2003 decision not to participate. The editors argue that ideas of nationhood are defined in large part by a country's external relations, since, in their view, the transition from colony to independent state turns on diplomatic 'self-governance.' Yet the internal partisan and intergovernmental dimensions of foreign policy are important elements in this picture. In contemporary terms, we might ask, how would Australia have acted on the Iraq question if it had had a Labour government in 2003? How would Canada have likely acted under a Conservative regime? Can we speculate on Canada's decision in the absence of an ongoing provincial election campaign in Quebec?

The collection provokes many such questions, each of which points towards fundamental similarities between Canada and Australia that strike even the most cursory observer. These parallels are on full display, alongside interesting variations, in chapters by Peter Russell on indigenous peoples, David MacKenzie on aviation policies, Wayne Reynolds on the politics of the atomic bomb, Frank Cain on Soviet defectors, and Galen Perras, Christopher Waters, Ann Capling and Kim Nossal, and Andrew Cooper on varied aspects of bilateral relations. For students of comparative politics, the Russell chapter is especially useful because it reviews the history of relations between states and Aboriginal interests in both countries, including at the judicial level, and addresses the recent interventions of the UN in this area.

Many of the public policy and diplomacy chapters detail how representatives of each country competed from time to time for UN Security Council seats, or for visibility and influence in other international forums. Yet the 'few warm feelings' these elites may have felt for each other (in Perras's words) seemed to result from intensive jockeying for position by roughly similar equals. In a larger global context, and away from specific diplomatic skirmishes waged by people who were paid to promote one country or the other, Canada and Australia come across...