This Kindred People: Canadian-American Relations and the Anglo-Saxon Ideal, 1895-1903 (review)

In This Kindred People, Edward P. Kohn admirably summarizes the Anglo-American rapprochement that took place between the Venezuela Crisis of 1895 and the settlement of the Alaska Boundary in 1903, and discusses the complicating and complicated role that Canada played in that evolving relationship. This is territory well trodden by diplomatic historians, but Kohn adds a new dimension to an old account by exploring 'a nexus of intellectual and diplomatic history.' He argues that 'Anglo-Saxonism' – a 'common lexicon of racial superiority' over 'blacks, Asians, Jews, and Slavs' – made rapprochement possible because for 'many North Americans,' it 'provided a way to moderate resentment' about past differences and 'to emphasize their common destiny upon the continent and their common mission throughout the world.'

Although Kohn identifies a number of prominent men as Anglo-Saxonists, he never pretends that the doctrine directly influenced British, American, or Canadian decisions (to the limited extent that Canadians participated in such decisions) about the Venezuela and Alaska boundaries, the Panama Canal, America's imperialist war with Spain, or Britain's in South Africa. Instead, he contends that 'while rarely finding its way into diplomatic dispatches, Anglo-Saxonism provided a general framework for the nations of the North Atlantic Triangle during the rapprochement.' Kohn's argument that Anglo-Saxon discourse smoothed national differences to build Anglo-American-Canadian amity is not always convincing, but his fascinating evidence suggests that he has a case worth considering. And Kohn's frequent caveats suggest that he understands that his thesis must be tentative. For example, in an absorbing discussion of Anglo-Saxonist discourse as a Canadian rationalization both for the us war with Spain, and for the British Empire's war in South Africa, he admits that, 'certainly, many English Canadians supported the war because of other motivations, such as imperialism, loyalty to Great Britain, and perhaps even anti-Americanism.'

This Kindred People demonstrates the broad limitations of most intellectual history, even when written by renowned masters of the genre like Richard Hofstadter or Carl Berger. Kohn draws his evidence from the usual suspects, elite males who wrote newspaper editorials, articles for elite quarterlies, and private correspondence to other elite males. He does not attempt to determine how representative these sources might be. Instead, he asserts repeatedly (29 times in 205 pages) that his quotations prove that 'many' Canadians, 'many' Americans, or 'many English speaking North Americans' held Anglo-Saxonist beliefs. Two sentences thirteen pages apart illustrate this technique: 'many Canadians accommodated their often anti-American views through the medium of Anglo-Saxon rhetoric,' and 'many English Canadians utilized Anglo-Saxon rhetoric to accommodate their views to the reality of international affairs.'

If Kohn's intellectual history is bold but not entirely successful, his diplomatic history is accomplished but less than original. Other historians have investigated the Anglo-American rapprochement from 1895 to 1903 from every possible perspective, and there remains little to add. To create an illusion of innovation, Kohn sets up other historians as straw men. In his otherwise worthy summary of the Alaska Boundary Dispute, for example, he asserts that 'Canadian historians' have worked 'within a very narrow framework,' blinded by nationalist indignation at American bullying and British betrayal. But when he cites the guilty 'Canadian historians,' Kohn disinters long-dead fall guys O.D. Skelton, J.W. Dafoe, and Donald Creighton, who published in 1921, 1931, and 1944 respectively. (To his credit, Kohn allows in his endnotes that Canadian historians Norman Penlington and David Hall pretty much got things right in the 1970s and 1980s.) Kohn's claim for the novelty of his chapter, it would seem, has little more substance than Canada's claim to the Alaskan panhandle!

Kohn deserves praise, however, for his effective use of eight political cartoons. All come from Canadian newspapers – then as now, 'Canadian-American relations' loomed larger in Canada than America. Kohn uses the cartoons as evidence, rather than simply...