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

This book presents new, little-known material and contributes to a new understanding of familiar material by treating it in an original and stimulating way. Indeed, it does each of these things in a way that is both impressive and daunting. Effectively a painstaking synthesis of the entire history of Canada-us interactions from the beginnings to, literally, the present moment, Dispersed Relations engages the whole of the relationship, however defined. Drawing upon his long career as a historian of the United States in Canada, Stuart is much more than up to the massive task he sets for himself. Most studies of Canada-us relations focus upon governmental and stakeholder analyses, sometimes within an apt historical context. Stuart does this, certainly, and he does so with a historical understanding that is deep and precise, but he also treats what he calls the cultural and social realms in ways that are both extensive and detailed. These concerns are usually ignored in favour of the political and economic, or highlight personal relations between prime ministers and presidents, so seeing them treated as the coequal considerations they are is refreshing.

The superior scholarship here is the book’s greatest strength. Stuart knows the literature of Canada-us history generally, and us history in particular. That is no surprise. But the great strength of Dispersed Relations is that its reference base is also utterly contemporary and also utterly thorough. For every point he makes, Stuart backs up his assertion with note after note of contemporary references, and these are drawn from a wide range of publications. Most impressively, Stuart has scoured the newspapers, demonstrating time after time that a particular crisis or issue garnered just the reactions he sees in the one country or the other. This feat is especially impressive, throughout, in its implications for Canada-us interactions in the present century, and particularly since 9/11.

By moving well beyond the political and economic realms, and by positing its subject as ‘Upper North America’ (rather than the usual Canada and the United States – nation-states), Dispersed Relations both reconsiders previous books on Canada-us relations and considerably extends their treatment. Indeed, the synthetic scope of Stuart’s manuscript makes previous attempts pale by comparison.

Tellingly, after this book was very favourably reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada, Michael Adams – a person who has asserted Canadian cultural difference from Americans as directly as any recent commentator – took the trouble to respond and assert, again, his differing view. Condescending to Stuart’s book, Adams asserts that its appeal is to those ‘seeking the case for essential similarity,’ that ideological stance and preferred outcome determines analysis (June 2008). While doubtless such things matter here – witness only the historical ubiquity of anti-Americanism among English Canadians as a cultural trait, detailed in Stuart’s book in myriad ways – Adams’s repost is ironically indicative of the strength and complexity of the analysis found in Dispersed Relations. Whatever generalizations might be drawn, Stuart’s work confirms the historical variety, intimacy, and persistence of Canadian–American relations – cultural, economic, political, and social – which have demonstrated both difference and similarity as our two societies have evolved in Upper North America. Steeped as it is in historical insight, thorough in its analyses, Dispersed Relations is an outstanding book and ought to be read by any student of Canada-us relations.