Jack Granatstein introduces Reid and the forces that shaped his progressive idealism in the 1920s and 1930s. Hector Mackenzie assesses Reid's contribution to the creation of the United Nations in the mid-1940s, while David Haglund and Stéphane Roussel examine Reid's crucial role in the negotiations to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Greg Donaghy, Bruce Muirhead, and Alyson King write, respectively, about Reid as high commissioner to India, as an important influence on World Bank policy in the early 1960s, and, finally, as founding principal of York University's Glendon College.

India has become known in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia as ‘the world’s largest democracy’, a ‘natural ally’, the ‘democratic counterweight’ to China and a trading partner of ‘massive economic potential’. This new foreign policy orthodoxy assumes that India will join with these four states and act just as any other democracy would. A set of political and think tank elites has emerged which seek to advance the cause of a culturally superior, if ill-defined, ‘Anglosphere’. Building on postcolonial and constructivist approaches to international relations, this book argues that the same Eurocentric assumptions about India pervade the foreign policies of the Anglosphere states, international relations theory and the idea of the Anglosphere. The assertion of a shared cultural superiority has long guided the foreign policies of the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, and this has been central to these states’ relationships with postcolonial India. This book details these difficulties through historical and contemporary case studies, which reveal the impossibility of drawing India into Anglosphere-type relationships. At the centre of India-Anglosphere relations, then, is not a shared resonance over liberal ideals, but a postcolonial clash over race, identity and hierarchy. A valuable contribution to the much-needed scholarly quest to follow a critical lens of inquiry into international relations, this book will be of interest to academics and advanced students in international relations, Indian foreign policy, Asian studies, and those interested in the ‘Anglosphere’ as a concept in international affairs.

How has race shaped Canada’s international encounters and its role in the world? How have the actions of politicians, diplomats, citizens, and nongovernmental organizations reflected and reinforced racial power structures in Canada? In this book, leading scholars grapple with these complex questions, destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world. Dominion of Race exposes how race-thinking has informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. While the contributors reconsider familiar topics, including the Paris Peace Conference and Canada’s involvement with the United Nations, they enlarge the scope of Canada’s international history by subject, geography, and methodology. By demonstrating that race is a fundamental component of Canada and its international history, this important book calls for reengagement with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historical record.

The years 1942 to 1946 saw the acceleration of World War II, its conclusion and the construction of a post-war order that was to culminate in the Cold War. Andrew Baker here examines the expansion of US political and economic power and hegemony during this period, and the extent to which smaller states, particularly Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, contested this expansion. Through successfully outlining and defending their own notions of sovereignty, property and commercial rights, they were able to a make a significant contribution towards fashioning a post-war framework more conducive to states than empires. This analysis of the period immediately after World War II will appeal to researchers of history and international relations, as well as those interested in the political economy of the post-war world.

In York University: The Way Must Be Tried, Michiel Horn weaves archival research and interviews into a compelling narrative, documenting the development of an institution committed to helping professors and studies reach across disciplinary boundaries. He covers the challenges York has faced through the years - from the 1963 faculty "revolt," to the troubled search for a successor to founding president Murray Ross, to the budgetary problems that led to the resignation of President David Slater, as well as its many innovations and triumphs - including bilingualism at Glendon College, Osgoode Hall Law School's Parkdale legal clinic, and Canada's first concurrent Bachelor of Education program. The philosophies that guide the faculties of administrative studies, fine arts, and environmental studies, and the ground-breaking research done in science and engineering are explored in detail.

When it comes to upholding human rights both at home and abroad, many Canadians would like to believe that we have always been “on the side of the angels.” This book tells the story of Canada’s contributions – both good and bad – to the development and advancement of international human rights law at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) from 1946 to 2006. The CHR gave Canada the opportunity to forge a reputation as a human rights leader. This book scrutinizes this reputation by examining Canada’s involvement in a number of contentious human rights issues – political, civil, racial, women’s, and Indigenous, among others. It finds that Canada’s record was mixed, its priorities motivated by a variety of considerations, both domestic and international. An in-depth historical overview of six decades of Canadian engagement within the UN human rights system, On The Side of the Angels offers new insights into the nuances, complexities, and contradictions of Canada’s human rights policies.

In the first major study of the Royal Canadian Navy's contribution to foreign policy, Nicholas Tracy takes a comprehensive look at the paradox that Canada faces in participating in a system of collective defence as a means of avoiding subordination to other countries. Created in 1910 to support Canadian autonomy, the Royal Canadian Navy has played an important role in defining Canada's relationship with the United Kingdom, the United States, and NATO. Initially involved with participation in Imperial and Commonwealth defence, the RCN's role shifted following the Second World War to primarily ensuring the survival of the NATO alliance and deflecting American influence over Canada. Tracy demonstrates the ways in which the Navy's priorities have realigned since the end of the Cold War, this time partnering with the US and NATO navies in global policing. Insightful, detailed, and grounded in solid historical scholarship, A Two-Edged Sword presents a complete portrait of the shifting relevance and future of a cornerstone of Canadian defence.

Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made a formidable stand that produced a veritable quagmire for a superior opponent--a stalemate much desired by the Allied nations. In the first book to cover this southern theater in detail, David Macri closely examines strategic decisions, campaigns, and operations and shows how they affected Allied grand strategy. Drawing on documents of U.S. and British officials, he reveals for the first time how the Sino-Japanese War served as a "proxy war" for the Allies: by keeping Japan's military resources focused on southern China, they hoped to keep the enemy bogged down in a war of attrition that would prevent them from breaching British and Soviet territory. While the most immediate concern was preserving Siberia and its vast resources from invasion, Macri identifies Hong Kong as the keystone in that proxy war-vital in sustaining Chinese resistance against Japan as it provided the logistical interface between the outside world and battles in Hunan and Kwangtung provinces; a situation that emerged because of its vital rail connection to the city of Changsha. He describes the development of Anglo-Japanese low-intensity conflict at Hong Kong; he then explains the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong and southern China for the period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Opening a new window on this rarely studied theater, Macri underscores China's symbolic importance for the Allies, depicting them as unequal partners who fought the Japanese for entirely different reasons-China for restoration of its national sovereignty, the Allies to keep the Japanese preoccupied. And by aiding China's wartime efforts, the Allies further hoped to undermine Japanese propaganda designed to expel Western powers from its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As Macri shows, Hong Kong was not just a sleepy British Colonial outpost on the fringes of the empire but an essential logistical component of the war, and to fully understand broader events Hong Kong must be viewed together with southern China as a single military zone. His account of that forgotten fight is a pioneering work that provides new insight into the origins of the Pacific War.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award (Holocaust Category) Winner of the Canadian Historical Association John A. Macdonald Prize Featured in The Literary Review of Canada 100: Canada’s Most Important Books [This] is a story best summed up in the words of an anonymous senior Canadian official who, in the midst of a rambling, off-the-record discussion with journalists in 1945, was asked how many Jews would be allowed into Canada after the war … ‘None,’ he said, ‘is too many.’ From the Preface One of the most significant studies of Canadian history ever written, None Is Too Many conclusively lays to rest the comfortable notion that Canada has always been an accepting and welcoming society. Detailing the country’s refusal to offer aid, let alone sanctuary, to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution between 1933 and 1948, it is an immensely bleak and discomfiting story – and one that was largely unknown before the book’s publication. Irving Abella and Harold Troper’s retelling of this episode is a harrowing read not easily forgotten: its power is such that, ‘a manuscript copy helped convince Ron Atkey, Minister of Employment and Immigration in Joe Clark’s government, to grant 50,000 “boat people” asylum in Canada in 1979, during the Southeast Asian refugee crisis’ (Robin Roger, The Literary Review of Canada). None Is Too Many will undoubtedly continue to serve as a potent reminder of the fragility of tolerance, even in a country where it is held as one of our highest values.