Dispersed Relations: Americans and Canadians in Upper North America (review)

The scholarly literature on Canadian-American relations has traditionally focused on interactions between the two governments. More recently, historians have begun to broaden their lines of inquiry by looking at the relationship between peoples, cultures, communities, and regions. Stuart’s Dispersed Relations emerges from this growing interest in transnational and borderlands history.

Stuart devotes one part of the book to each of his four themes—culture, society, economics, and politics. Each part begins with a history of Canadian-American relations in the relevant area, a synthesis of Stuart’s extensive reading in the secondary sources. He then moves to current events, providing a lucid description of recent history and the present situation, basing his analysis on media sources, government publications, and interviews. Stuart has not created a new analytical framework but rather has employed the tools of different disciplines—including history, political science, and sociology—to answer his central question about the nature of the Canadian-American relationship.

Stuart’s combination of approaches is highly successful. Because much of the scholarly literature has employed a government-to-government framework, differences between the two countries are exaggerated. By widening the scope, Stuart shows that despite occasional political conflict, the two countries have tightly interwoven cultures, societies, and economies. In short, the relationship is much closer, more complex, and more intense than many scholars have recognized.

Stuart’s ideas are not original; concepts surrounding transnational history and borderlands have been floating around the scholarly community for years. But Stuart has brought them together and applied them to the Canadian-American relationship in a sustained way. The book could mark a new point of departure for the study of Canadian-American relations. Scholars must continue to study the conflict and cooperation between the two governments, since there is still much we do not know. But to these studies we must add examinations of social, cultural, and economic linkages between Canada and the United States.