Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History 0774834439, 9780774834438

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Provocation
1 The Limits of “Brotherly Love
2 Asian Canadians and the First World War
3 Race, Empire, and World Order
4 Language, Race, and Power
5 Race, Gender, and International “Relations”
6 Race, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations
7 “Belated Signing”
8 Romanticism and Race
9 “Awakening Africa”
10 Crisis of the Nation
11 “Red Indians” in Geneva, “Papuan Headhunters” in New York
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

DOMINION OF RACE

DOMINION OF RACE

Rethinking Canada’s International History

Edited by Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren

© UBC Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Dominion of race : rethinking Canada’s international history / edited by Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7748-3443-8 (hardcover). – ISBN 978-0-7748-3445-2 (PDF). – ISBN 978-0-7748-3446-9 (EPUB). – ISBN 978-0-7748-3447-6 (Kindle) 1. Race – Political aspects – Canada – History – 20th century.  2. Race – Social aspects – Canada – History – 20th century.  3. Canada – Race relations – History – 20th century.  4. Canada – Foreign relations – 20th century.  I. Madokoro, Laura, editor  II. McKenzie, Francine, editor  III. Meren, David, editor FC104.D64 2017 305.80097109’04 C2017-900054-3 C2017-900055-1

UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A reasonable attempt has been made to secure permission to reproduce all material used. If there are errors or omissions, they are wholly unintentional and the publisher would be grateful to learn of them. UBC Press The University of British Columbia 2029 West Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 www.ubcpress.ca

Contents

List of Illustrations / vii Acknowledgments / ix Introduction: Writing Race into Canada’s International History / 3 LAURA MADOKORO and FRANCINE McKENZIE

A Provocation: Anti-Asian Exclusion and the Making and Unmaking of White Supremacy in Canada / 25 HENRY YU



1 The Limits of “Brotherly Love”: Rethinking CanadaCaribbean Relations in the Early Twentieth Century / 38 PAULA HASTINGS



2 Asian Canadians and the First World War: Challenging White Supremacy / 54 JOHN PRICE



3 Race, Empire, and World Order: Robert Borden and Racial Equality at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 / 73 FRANCINE McKENZIE

Contents

vi



4 Language, Race, and Power: French Canada’s Relationship with Haiti in the 1930s and 1940s / 94 SEAN MILLS



5 Race, Gender, and International “Relations”: African Americans and Aboriginal People on the Margins in Canada’s North, 1942–48 / 112 P. W H I T N E Y L A C K E N B A U E R



6 Race, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations: From Imperialism to Internationalism in Canada, 1940–60 / 139 DAN GORMAN



7 “Belated Signing”: Race-Thinking and Canada’s Approach to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees / 160 LAURA MADOKORO



8 Romanticism and Race: Escott Reid, the Department of External Affairs, and the Sundering of Canada-India Relations, 1952–57 / 183 RYAN TOUHEY



9 “Awakening Africa”: Race and Canadian Views of Decolonizing Africa/ 206 KEVIN A. SPOONER



10 Crisis of the Nation: Race and Culture in the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle of the 1960s / 228 DAVID MEREN



11 “Red Indians” in Geneva, “Papuan Headhunters” in New York: Race, Mental Maps, and Two Global Appeals in the 1920s and 1960s / 254 DAVID WEBSTER

Conclusion: Race and the Future of Canadian International History / 284 DAVID MEREN

Selected Bibliography / 301 Contributors / 309 Index / 312

Illustrations

So it’s a family like us ... one crisis after another! / 139 “Dr. Pelletier, I presume!” / 244 Deskaheh displays the two-row wampum / 261 Deskaheh as a logo / 261 Deskaheh with the Six Nation Council’s lawyer, George P. Decker / 261 Dressed in feathers, the Garlow delegation leaves the House of Lords, 1930 / 269 Papuans as a tribal people “dressed in feathers” / 274 Papuans meeting the Upper Volta ambassador / 274

Acknowledgments

This volume brings together Canadian scholars who have independently been writing about race and Canada’s international history. It is the result of many conversations among contributors, editors, and readers and as such, many acknowledgments are due. We are particularly grateful to the Canada Program at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs at Harvard University for supporting the initial conversations in May 2013 that ultimately led to the development of this volume. Thanks to Helen Clayton for her administrative and logistical support in organizing the workshop that brought everyone together. Julie Gilmour, Kristine Alexander, and Ben Herzog participated in the original workshop and made important contributions to our understanding of the specific ways in which race has affected Canada’s international history. Thanks to Erez Manela, Steffan Rimmer, Mary Sarotte, Mary Siegelberg, Michael Szonyi, and Heidi Tworek for their critical comments on the papers and for bringing a larger global context to bear on the discussion. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their attentive and constructive reading of the manuscript. The substance of our initial conversations led us to think about an edited volume, and Emily Andrew of UBC Press encouraged us in this regard. Although Emily has since taken up new challenges elsewhere, her enthusiastic support for this volume throughout its gestation was the latest example of her commitment to the vitality of international history in Canada, for which

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Acknowledgments

we express our profound thanks. This is, of course, a commitment shared by UBC Press, and we wish to gratefully acknowledge Nadine Pedersen and Katrina Petrik for overseeing the production of this volume. Thanks to Robyn So for copy-editing the manuscript and Adrian Mather for preparing the index. The editors, as well as the contributors to this volume, have each benefited from the assistance of the staff of the numerous archives, libraries, and research institutions listed in the references of this volume, and rightfully acknowledge the help that contributed to the realization of the works contained in this collection. Finally, as the editors, we express collectively our thanks to the contributors for their enthusiastic collaboration throughout the period during which this collection was being produced. Laura Madokoro wishes to acknowledge the support of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coun­cil of Canada in pursuing research for this project, as well as Francine and David for their unflagging enthusiasm and encouragement. Francine McKenzie is particularly grateful to Laura and David for their dedication, patience, and insights, which were invaluable to the collection and informed her own conception of Canada’s international history. Finally, David Meren expresses his thanks to his two coeditors for such an intellectually gratifying collaboration, acknowledges the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and appreciates deeply the insights he obtained from the students who attended his graduate seminar on race and Canadian international history at the Uni­ versité de Montréal while this volume was under preparation. Together, we hope that Dominion of Race will contribute to the ongoing rethinking of Canada’s international history, and that it will take its place in broader discussions – in Canada and abroad – at a time when debates over race, and the necessity of unpacking and dismantling the structures of power linked to it, have taken on renewed prominence, and appear more urgent than ever.

DOMINION OF RACE

Introduction Writing Race into Canada’s International History LAURA MADOKORO and FRANCINE McKENZIE

In 1950, UNESCO declared that there was no scientific basis to the belief that subsets of Homo sapiens belonged to different races. It acknowledged, however, that the “myth of ‘race’” had “caused untold suffering.”1 UNESCO’s unequivocal explanation did not convince all; restatements in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s revealed both resistance to the refutation of race and an evolving understanding of the concept.2 Today, there are daily reminders of the tenacity of racial beliefs, the prejudices they beget, and the violence that ensues.3 While we worked on this collection, the editors were reminded of the legacy of race and racism following terror attacks in France (specifically, the shooting of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, a weekly satirical magazine, on January 7, 2015, and coordinated attacks, including an assault on concertgoers at the Bataclan Concert Hall on November 13, 2015) and racially charged incidents in the United States (including confrontations in Balti­more, Ferguson, and Staten Island over police violence toward African Americans; the vicious attack on churchgoers in Charleston in 2015; and the racially charged atmosphere accompanying the election of Donald Trump). In some cases racial difference seemed to be the paramount reason for the violence. In others, the source seemed to be a complex combination of race, religion, and gender. While Canadians might look on such examples as evidence of the complicated impact of racism elsewhere, ideas about race as well as racial prejudice have also left a deep mark on Canada’s past and are very much a current

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reality. Over half of all hate crimes committed in Canada in 2013 were “motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity.”4 As we went to press, we were saddened by the tragic killing of six innocent men as they prayed in their mosque in Quebec City. In a 2014 poll, 62 percent of Canadians were worried about an increase in racism.5 Mistrust of and assaults on Muslim Canadians,6 along with persistent calls throughout the Conservative government’s time in office (2006–15) for a national inquiry into the fate of missing and murdered Indigenous women are palpable reminders of the prevalence of race and racism in Canada today. They make the notion of a postracial world nearly impossible to fathom. Yet, for many, the post– Second World War period seemed to herald just that, as evidenced by the 1950 UNESCO declaration and the spirit that animated the construction of the postwar order. Race was meant to be a thing of the past. Discrediting the concept of race did not end racist modes of thought. They persist, although they can be masked by seemingly objective ideas like national security or the absorptive capacity of the economy. In the international realm, race has defined hierarchies of power and privilege, upheld exclusive barriers, and shaped relations between peoples and governments. Sometimes the connection has been explicit, but more often it has been embedded in ritualized diplomatic forms, bureaucratic policy processes, and seemingly rational conceptions of national interest. Informed by the cultural turn in international history, there is a growing global literature on the impact of race on the international community as well as on national foreign policies. Yet, the literature on Canada’s international history has not kept apace. This is the first collected volume to explicitly address the topic of race and Canada’s international history. Although the contributors to this volume each engage with issues surrounding race in different ways, they share the starting premise that race is a social construction. It is the result of an essentializing logic that informs the creation of an “other” against which one defines oneself and one’s larger community. Race is used to justify the selective inclusion of people in an imagined community who enjoy a position of power over those marginalized within or considered “outside” this community. But ideas of race have not been static; they have changed over time. The challenge is to historicize race and explain what people thought race meant and how this set of beliefs affected policies, practices, and world views. This is the challenge that the contributors to this volume take up. Integrating race as a causal variable and a methodology makes possible new and essential interpretive possibilities in Canada’s international history.

Introduction

5

The contributors reveal that reading Canadian international history through the prism of race means showing a greater sensitivity to the production of knowledge, including historiographical knowledge. This requires an ongoing recognition and response to the narrative consequences that flowed from the “forgetting” of Canada’s imperial past associated with the liberal-nationalist current dominant in the historiography of Canadian international history. Contributors have paid attention to what they are producing to avoid perpetuating what Henry Yu refers to in his provocation in this volume as the “narrative violence ... of white supremacy.” A study of race allows historians to excavate the ideologies that informed Eurocentric and ethnocentric notions of Canada’s national identity (both British and French); it challenges the appropriateness of the nationstate as a frame of reference and repositions Canada relative to global currents and a global context; it connects cultural conditions to foreign policies, relations between states, and contacts between people; it shows how international and transnational dynamics unfolded within Canada and rethinks the domestic-external divide; it moves away from a preoccupation with status and stature to highlight the grassroots cultural and ideological agency of Canada and its peoples regarding the structures, norms, and dynamics of the global community. Using race as the prism of historical inquiry focuses attention on meaning rather than milestones, on embedded conditions rather than nationalist accomplishment. The contributions to this volume reconsider familiar terrain and en­large the scope of Canada’s international history by subject, geography, and methodology. In all cases, they destabilize conventional understandings of Can­ada in the world and reinterpret Canada’s international history. Even though the subject matter of many chapters will be familiar to students of Canadian international history – the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference, relations with the British Empire-Commonwealth, Canadian involvement in the United Nations, and the strained triangular relations between Can­ada, Quebec, and France – the meanings drawn from these reexaminations are not what readers of Canada’s diplomatic history have come to expect. They reveal racialized modes of thought previously unacknowledged or unexplored. They also underscore the ways in which racethinking informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt described race-thinking as seeing the world through a racialized lens that normalizes racial differences and perpetuates these seeming differences through words and actions that

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entrench and institutionalize a discriminatory system of beliefs.7 Racethinking has been pervasive in Can­adian society and has taken many forms. For example, Canada’s association with western Allies in the Cold War was reinforced by racial beliefs that interpreted nonaligned nations like India as untrustworthy and dis­honest, ideas that stemmed from Canadian diplomats’ conceptions of religious, cultural, and racial differences. Ideas of civilization, progress, and modernity were steeped in racial norms and expectations. These norms and expectations shaped relationships as well as the historiography on Canada’s international relations. One of the most pervasive normative assumptions in historical accounts has been about Canada’s special relationship with the United States. Rather than accept the primacy of Canadian-American relations, especially after 1945, this volume reveals a far-reaching and long-standing racialized as­ sociation with peoples and places beyond the North Atlantic region. The North Atlantic region was long constructed as the main space in which Canada’s interests were pursued, connections were established, and orientation in world affairs was defined. We take Canada’s positioning in another direction by querying the attachment to the North Atlantic region and probing the roots of identification that helped sustain affinity for the region, against which Canadian foreign policy took shape. Recent scholarship coming out of the British world school helps to explain the race-thinking that underpinned identities and the foreign policy alignments that they begat.8 Furthermore, this volume builds on works that have appeared in the last fifteen years that explore Canada’s relations with places long regarded as marginal, including the Caribbean, China, Congo, France, Haiti, India, Indo­nesia, Japan, and Korea. That Canada’s association with these countries has received scant attention until recently demonstrates the racial structures that informed the historiography. The chapters also expand on the actors, agents, and subjects that fall under the purview of Canada’s international history. Finally, the contributions employ a variety of methodologies. Some are theoretical; others are empirical. Some focus on elites, others on grassroots actors. Some put the state at the centre of their study; others displace it. This methodological diversity helps shed light on structures, processes, and individuals that perpetuated racial beliefs even as public attitudes appeared, at least superficially, to be shifting. The various methodological approaches are not contradictions; rather, they reveal the many inflections and manifestations of race in the Canadian context. Collectively, the contributions

Introduction

7

demonstrate that race, in its various guises, operated as context, structure, and ideology in the history of Canada’s international relations. Racial beliefs were folded into individual behaviours and world views, as well as into the frameworks in which bureaucrats, politicians, missionaries, and others operated and engaged with the world. All told, race has been a constant in Canada’s international relations, shaping policy, practice, identity, and alignment in both obvious and subtle ways. At the same time, the manner in which race informed beliefs and practices has varied widely.9 Our collection reveals the reach of race into white supremacist beliefs that affected who could and could not be included in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, the paternalistic regulation of relations between African American soldiers and Indigenous women in Canada’s North, the bureaucratic culture of the Department of External Affairs, resistance to endorsing the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and even the cherished identity of Canada as linchpin and helpful fixer. But whatever the particular impact on policy and practice, the underlying belief in racial differences established, institutionalized, and legitimized social, political, cultural, and international dynamics “to foster privilege and maintain subordination.”10 Notions of racial superiority and ideas of white supremacy that informed the outlooks of English- and Frenchspeaking communities across Canada resulted in the marginalization of Indigenous populations and a racial hierarchy at home, and they served as a crucial template for Canadian engagements abroad. As such, the purpose of Dominion of Race is not primarily to judge whether Canadian foreign policy was racist but to contest the assumption and affirmation (usually implicit) that Canada’s international history has been “raceless.”11 John Price’s Orienting Canada (2011) was the first major study of Canadian foreign policy to make racism, defined primarily in terms of white supremacy, its main object of study. This raises an important question: Why has it taken Canadian historians so long to address the role of race and Canada’s encounters with the world? The deceptively simple response is that Canada’s international historians avoided race because they did not view it as an important factor in explaining Canada’s engagement with other peoples and places. Certainly, the ways in which race was embedded in topics like trade and national security made it harder to see, a dynamic exacerbated by the masking rhetoric of duty, status, and benevolence. The role of race was further obscured by a tendency for people to become increasingly polite – meaning less explicit –

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about the topic of race over the course of the twentieth century. As notions of racial difference were discredited and revealed as social constructions, using overtly racist language or employing race as grounds for decision making became increasingly intolerable. After the Second World War especially, racial beliefs went underground and were internalized. As a result, changes in discourse that imply a shift away from race-thinking also need to be scrutinized. As Constance Backhouse has reminded us, the replacement of race with ethnicity was “more semantic than substantive.”12 Unearthing race as a causal force is all the more difficult when it is not named, is camouflaged – as it has been in trade and diplomatic negotiations, postwar immigration and refugee policies – or is eclipsed by explanations of policy decisions cast in terms of pragmatism, the national interest, or Whiggish narratives consigning race to a distant past. Finally, geography has played a role in this historiographical neglect. Studies differentiating Canada from the United States – in terms of power (middle power, superpower) and role (helpful fixer, linchpin, leader/hegemon) implicitly suggest that, whereas race was a defining part of American history, Canada’s international history was race neutral. But racial beliefs were present and powerful, even though they were not always stated explicitly. The persistent exclusion of race was also a result of historians’ preoccupations with nation-building questions, in particular, Canada’s development as a sovereign state and emergence as an autonomous international actor.13 The nationalist spirit that animated early research on Canadian foreign policy and the Department of External Affairs, as well as the focus on the nationstate as a category of analysis (particularly if it suggested the possibility of some kind of moral superiority over the United States), has defined and dominated historical scholarship on Canada in the world. The colony-tonation narrative and paradigm apply to the literature covering the period before 1939, in which the focus has been on relations with Britain and the Empire-Commonwealth, as well as the years since 1945, when Canada’s international historians focused on Canadian-American relations. The contributors do not deny the connection between the nation-building project and Canada’s involvement in world affairs, but we have taken up Yu’s challenge in his provocation in this volume to consider how integrating race as a factor of analysis and a subject of study changes “the meaning of the historical past for Canada.” All told, the contributors seek to understand how Canada’s international history in the twentieth century looks when race is written into our historical inquiries.

Introduction

9

The relative absence of race as a category of analysis in Canada’s international history to date contrasts with a global literature on race,14 as well as with studies that position race at the centre of innovation in international history.15 Historians are still interested in wars and conflict, heads of state, national security, and the rise and fall of great powers, but the field has changed fundamentally. According to Harvard historian Akira Iriye, who pioneered the introduction of culture into more traditional diplomatic history, the field has undergone “a sea change in the way historians understand, teach and write history.”16 In 2006, the Journal of Global History was launched with the aim of blurring, transcending, and redefining spaces in which history has unfolded, with an eye to seeing and explaining global change, reformulating (but not entirely dismissing) the “Western metanarrative,” and overcoming the “fragmentation” of history by place, theme, space, and discipline.17 American historians have led the way in opening up the field, as grassroots movements, substate groups and nongovernmental organizations, ideas and ideology, culture, diasporas, technology, health and disease, religion, gender, and the environment have all entered mainstream study. Engaging with race has been a crucial aspect of this exciting intellectual renewal.18 The result is a revised and refined understanding that accepts the racial underpinnings of the workings of international society, interstate and transsocietal relations.19 In Canada, much of the important work on race has taken place in the domestic context, as scholars unpack the racist underpinnings of both English- and French Canadian settler societies through analyses of the legal structures of racism, as well as the social exclusion of undesirable migrants. To date, scholars of international history have kept their distance from conversations about how race has been woven into Canada’s national fabric. Yet Patricia Roy, Irving Abella and Harold Troper, David Austin, Renisa Mawani, Mona Oikawa, Stephanie Bangarth, James Walker, Constance Backhouse, Sherene Razack, and Barrington Walker, to name a few, have worked tirelessly to highlight the nature of racism in Canada and to examine how race has shaped social relations between individuals, communities, and authorities; how it has intersected with issues of gender and class in profoundly transformative ways; how it has been perpetuated institutionally; and how it has informed the very nature of the country’s collective development, particularly through the exclusion and regulation of migrant groups and Indigenous peoples.20 In doing so, these scholars have drawn attention not only to the discrimination experienced by certain

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groups but also to the manner in which people have contested inequality and shaped the fabric of the nation. As such, race is understood as a critical component of Canadian history, not a tangential factor that scholars can engage with at will. Therein lies a key lesson for scholars interested in Canada’s international history. This volume is thus a beginning. There is more work to be done. Below we introduce the volume, explain its organization, and explain how individual contributions elaborate crosscutting themes. We leave it to David Meren’s conclusion to reflect on the possibilities for the next generation of historical studies on race and Canada’s international history.

Rethinking Canada’s International History The chapters are preceded by a provocation: a call to readers by Henry Yu to think differently about race and racism in Canada, specifically the narrative of progress that so many have embraced. A provocation may be understood as a deliberate act causing resentment, hostility, even anger. Some may take exception to his challenge of the notion that Canada’s history is a tale of progress from exclusion to inclusion, notably his claim that such a narrative is a product of the logic of white supremacy upon which Canada as a settler society is based. Others may reject his admonition that when historians approach questions of race as a matter of moral judgment, they ultimately serve to minimize, if not ignore, the structural dimension of how race has shaped Canada and its history. Still, Yu warns that “historical accounts that ... [do not account] for the agency of those who were racially excluded reinforce the narrative exclusions of white supremacy by adopting an analytical framework that ignores the primary agency of the excluded in fighting against their exclusion.” Such words remind us that provocation can be viewed in positive terms; indeed, an older definition emphasizes the act of calling or an invitation. Yu’s contribution to this volume should also be viewed in these terms, a summons to those interested in Canada’s international history to recognize the power of race as a structuring agent, not just historically, but of the present – not least in how the past is interpreted and the way in which such interpretations inform contemporary Canadian society. From the provocation, the volume moves chronologically through the twentieth century so that readers can discern for themselves how race, and the application of ideas about race, has shaped Canada’s international relations. The First World War is regularly identified as a milestone in Canada’s

Introduction

11

emergence as an independent international actor, while the Second World War is often seen as a turning point in the country’s history of racism. The structure of this volume, however, demands a critical rethinking of the degree to which these events interrupted or changed the way race manifested itself in Canada and the country’s relationship with the world. So, too, do the four key themes that emerge from the contributions in this volume: (1) the relationship between empire, identity, and liberal internationalism; (2) the tensions between individual, structure, theory, and practice; (3) the mutually constituted domestic and international spheres; and (4) the notion of marginalized terrain and space. These themes reflect the manner in which the contributors simultaneously engage with the historiographical foundations underpinning the field of Canadian international history while moving the field in new and exciting directions.

The Relationship between Empire, Identity, and Liberal Internationalism As the contributions to this volume make clear, understanding how race has shaped Canadian international history requires a comprehensive and critical exploration of empire as a structuring agent of this history.21 Indeed, an interest in questions of empire and the afterlives of empire dominates the analyses advanced by the contributors. This should not be surprising. Beyond serving as the framework and vehicle for the imposition of a racialized structure, the circuits and structures of the British Empire afforded opportunities for individuals and groups to challenge, resist, and counteract the diverse manifestations of race-thinking informing Canada and the imperial system of which it was a part. Empire left a lasting imprint on the mindsets and outlooks of Canadian diplomats, intellectuals, and traders long after Canada established itself as a sovereign international actor. This approach stands in stark contrast to the earlier historiography that traced the formation and development of the Department of External Affairs, the training of a fledgling diplomatic corps, and the evolution of Anglo-Canadian relations to produce a nationalist narrative in which obtaining control over foreign policy was a part of Canada’s maturation as an independent state. The attainment of independence was communicated implicitly by the nationalist historical project that wrote Britain out of Canada’s story after 1945. The contributions in this volume reconsider the displacement of Britain and the empire. Even once Canada had obtained complete control over its foreign policy, racial ordering continued to define the rank and position that

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Canada aspired to in the global community. Officials clung, consciously and subconsciously, to Britain and the Empire-Commonwealth as frames of reference and a belief system in which the impress of race was evident in defining interests, determining priorities, and articulating a Canadian identity. Kevin Spooner (Chapter 9) argues, for instance, that in the 1950s and 1960s, as European empires were collapsing throughout Africa and Asia, Canadian diplomats continued to assess developments based on their belief that “white privilege” needed to be protected. This was an approach that served British interests even as the Canadian identity was being decoupled from a British and racialized one – a process Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) explores: how Canadian identity evolved in the face of a transforming Brit­ish Empire, with a specific focus on the politics of imperialism, internationalism, and whiteness. Gorman explains how in Britain, the notion of Britishness as whiteness was challenged by postcolonial movements. Gorman notes that in Canada, a similar process unfolded, encouraged in part by international developments, including the changes occurring in Britain. Still, Canadian officials remained attached to this changing Brit­ ain, so much so that neo-imperial assumptions continued to guide Can­ adian involvement in world affairs as the British Empire transformed into the Commonwealth of Nations. David Meren (Chapter 10) develops the idea of the afterlife of empire in his examination of the triangular dynamic between Canada, Quebec, and France, not least in how this dynamic played out in the postimperial organization known as the Francophonie. Meren explores how French, Canadian, and Quebec officials approached relations with Africa as the new organization emerged. He maintains that the ebbing of formal imperial relations after 1945 hardly meant the end of the discriminatory mentality that was so foundational to the original colonizing impulse. Rather, the racial underpinnings of empire were reconfigured as people reimagined relationships within new institutional arrangements and worked to cast a particular Can­ adian (or Québécois) identity in global affairs. Overlying the imperial residue that characterized Canadian foreign pol­ icy over the course of the twentieth century was the country’s projected identity as a liberal international actor, helpful fixer, and middle power. In historical accounts of Canadian-American relations, this identity manifested itself as wise counsellor, staunch ally, and restraining force vis-à-vis the United States and its tendency to ideological dogmatism and inflammatory intervention. A self-congratulatory tone has accordingly permeated this

Introduction

13

literature: whereas Canada was a constructive and idealistic international actor, the United States was an imperial power in need of moderation. This aspect of the historiography is consistent with the broader tendency in Can­ ada to displace responsibility for race/racism onto the imperial authority, be it British or American. The liberal international interpretation has subtly, but profoundly, foreclosed studies of race in Canada’s international history when, in fact, race helped define those roles, as Ryan Touhey (Chapter 8) explains in his examination of Escott Reid’s time as high commissioner to India. Touhey explains how an imperial frame of reference and a Cold War geopolitical environment intersected and produced a Canadian effort to act as a bridge between the United States and India. According to Touhey, the bridge was a profoundly racialized metaphor, one born of unequal power relations. In the same vein, Paula Hastings (Chapter 1) explores Canadian imperial ambitions in the West Indies in the early 1900s, as the federal government pursued trade relations with the implicit assumption of Canadian racial superiority. Hastings argues that this sense of superiority foreshadowed the rise of liberal internationalism following the Second World War.

The Tensions between Individual, Structure, Theory, and Practice In accounting for the influence of race on Canada’s international history, a number of contributors draw attention, implicitly or explicitly, to the tensions between individuals and the structures, or bureaucratic cultures, they inhabited. The contributors then consider how these tensions contributed to disconnects between ideas about race and their application, or what Hastings describes as a racially inscribed tension. The dynamic interplay between intellectual, political, and social currents meant that individuals who thought one thing and said another were forced, because of the contexts in which they worked and made decisions, to reconsider previously held “truths.” This layered analysis offers a complex and nuanced reading of individual lives and the times in which they were lived. It contrasts significantly with the work of historians interested in the early history of the Department of External Affairs who explained the growth of the department and the development of its institutional capabilities largely by producing biographical studies that celebrated individual imprints.22 The importance of focusing on elites and prominent individuals is simultaneously challenged, circumvented, and reworked in the new international history. As David Reynolds has observed, diplomatic history is seen as “a

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relic of old-fashioned political history practised through a close and often uncritical reading of government documents and usually predicated on a ‘great man’ theory of history.”23 But in this volume, the contributors are not throwing out the great man babies with the diplomatic history bathwater. Many of the early, formative policy-makers and political leaders appear in this volume. Robert Borden and William Lyon Mackenzie King, two architects of Canadian foreign policy, figure prominently, as do well-known figures from the Department of External Affairs, including Lester Pearson, Escott Reid, Norman Robertson, Jules Léger, and Marcel Cadieux. Yet, because our working definition of international history includes all forms of contact, immigration officials also figure, along with missionaries, intel­ lectuals, and trade representatives. The volume also includes individuals such as Sainosuke Kubota and Wee Tan Louie (who enlisted in the Can­ adian Ex­peditionary Force despite the racial bar against Asian Canadians) and Harnam Singh (who fought for social justice in Canada and later for Indian independence). Crucially, in attending to an array of relationships, the motives behind various engagements become more complex. They are less clearly a product of institutional impetus and rational decision making. The possibility and potential influence of a diversity of world views becomes more pronounced. The challenge for historians is to penetrate and capture the mindsets of the people involved. It would be far too easy, and dangerously irresponsible, to simply attribute various acts to a racist mentality without delving further into the dynamics that animated policy-makers and interrogating the social and cultural norms that shaped the ways in which race was talked about and acted upon. Laura Madokoro (Chapter 7) achieves this, for instance, by employing Hannah Arendt’s concept of race-thinking in her analysis of the interplay between officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigra­ tion and Canada’s diplomats. Policy-makers and diplomats viewed world affairs through cultural paradigms that shaped how they established priorities, attributed causality, and explained the behaviour and agendas of their counterparts in other countries. Cultural paradigms, as they are used here, are broadly defined, encompassing politics, social life, and religion. This expansive definition is deliberate, in order to capture the many ways in which cultural paradigms simultaneously informed, and were informed by, the actions of individuals charged with formulating and implementing policy. Our focus is not on an individual’s capacity to generate policy so much as on the root causes, values,

Introduction

15

and world views that informed those policies. This helps us understand the extent to which individual actions were representative and symbolic of the times in which they lived and the degree to which they might be considered unorthodox and exceptional. Francine McKenzie (Chapter 3) investigates the work of race in multi­ lateral forums with an eye on the ways in which culture and notions of imperial power influenced individual politicians. In this case, McKenzie concentrates on how Canada’s evolving place within the British Empire informed Prime Minister Robert Borden’s approach to the meetings in Versailles. McKenzie insists that the idea of empire was Borden’s primary frame of reference. As a result, even though the Japanese initiative to introduce a racial equality clause into the covenant of the League of Nations dove­ tailed with Borden’s own interest in securing greater autonomy, McKenzie suggests Borden did not see racial equality as a way to promote Canada’s commitment to more meaningful and complete recognition. For him, racial equality was unfounded; he did not doubt the superiority of the British race. What Borden imagined to be possible was delimited by his racialized views of an international hierarchy of nations. Spooner (Chapter 9) explores the collective and institutional milieu in which foreign policies were articulated. Referencing sociologist Pierre Bour­­ dieu’s notion of habitus and recent interventions by historian Peter Jackson, Spooner suggests the notion of habitus provides the “means to reconstruct beliefs, identities, cultures at an individual or group level, in order to then assess interactions and associations with larger structures or fields that not only provide context but also come with their own set of rules and cognitive boundaries.” Spooner sees the concept of habitus as especially relevant given the relative stability of the personnel in the Department of External Affairs during the transformative first two decades of the postwar period, when Canadian officials began to work seriously toward developing bilateral relations with English-speaking nations in Africa, many of them former British colonies.

The Mutually Constituted Domestic and International Spheres Studies that include race reveal how the domestic and international spaces/ spheres, which are often assumed to be distinct, are, in fact, mutually constituted. Yu’s provocation explores the ways in which transnational movements of ideas about race reverberated domestically, in particular in legitimizing an allegedly democratic system of governance whose persistence rested on

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exclusion, marginalization, and disempowerment of some racially determined Canadians. Yu demonstrates the importance of acknowledging Can­ ada as a white settler society, which not only upheld a racialized order at home and abroad, but also developed internal and international practices and policies that were mutually constitutive and dependent. The symbiotic relationship between the domestic and international spheres has been especially pronounced in the exclusionary nation-building practices and decolonization processes that occurred within, and beyond, Canada’s borders. Canada exported notions of race just as it imported ideas and developments from other parts of the globe. Understanding how domestic and international spheres were conceptualized and populated is distinct from recent work on transnationalism, where scholars seek to write above, through, and beyond the nation. Instead, as a result of the powerful relationship between race, nation, and identity, the theme in this volume is that the nation-state still mattered, because people acted with the nation in mind in the international sphere. As such, it is important to consider how currents of thought moved across international borders. Although studies of decolonization rarely include Canada, some of the patterns and processes can helpfully be applied to Canada’s case. For example, Prasenjit Duara has observed that an emancipatory narrative was integral to the processes of decolonization. Within this process of decolonization he has detected a concurrent process of colonization of the periphery by the new metropole. While the emancipatory narrative was understated in English-speaking Canada because of the ongoing link with Britain and the Commonwealth, as well as the value many Canadians and anglophone elites associated with a British heritage, it was nonetheless triumphalist and marginalized people whose ethnicity, culture, and religion did not conform to those of the neo-imperializing core. Notions of emancipation have played a similar, yet distinct, role in nationalist narratives in francophone Quebec. Such narratives most often depict Quebec as a victim of imperial rivalry in North America, a tragic hero whose historic mission is to achieve independence and thereby overcome the consequences flowing from the British conquest. Until independence is obtained, the nationalist narrative serves as a chronicle of earlier failed attempts to do so and explores the parallels between the Québécois and diverse colonized populations.24 As in the English Canadian context, such narratives have tended to efface those individuals and histories that complicate and contradict this depiction of the white French-speaking majority.

Introduction

17

Yet, the relevance of decolonization to the Canadian context goes well beyond interrogating the narratives associated with the settler societies that emerged from European colonialism. David Webster (Chapter 11) highlights how Canada’s international relations informed the ongoing processes of decolonization in Canada. The paternalism and condescension that met Chief Deskaheh of the Six Nations of Grand River (Haudenosaunee Con­ feder­acy) as he appealed to London and the League of Nations for recognition, and Canada’s subsequent response to the decolonization of Papua New Guinea, were rooted in a racialized view that perpetually infantilized In­ digen­ous peoples. Evolving relations between nations and empires had a profound impact on the relationships between individuals and the state. John Price (Chap­ ter 2) explores the intersection between migration from China, Japan, and South Asia and the nature of Canada’s participation in the First World War. He surveys Asian Canadian communities during these critical years and documents a number of participants’ stories, comparing community participation and reactions to the war before analyzing their respective responses in the context of the transnational factors at play. Critically, Price highlights the manner in which individual life stories complicate notions of empire, loyalty, and the British world, further collapsing the conventional domestic and international divide. The marriage of apparently domestic issues with international relations reveals the porous nature of national borders, as well as the histories this distinction has hidden, even excluded. Whitney Lackenbauer (Chapter 5) examines how race, gender, and sex intersected with the federal government’s perception of its role in protecting and managing Indigenous peoples affected by northern defence projects during the Second World War and early Cold War. In identifying race as part of the Canadian government’s policy framework, Lackenbauer sees an immediate connection between the presence of these soldiers and the ongoing paternalism that characterized Canadian-Indigenous relations in the North during the heady modernist days of the Cold War. By analyzing how traditional security issues intersected with individual security issues in terms of social welfare for northern Indigenous peoples, Lackenbauer erases the conventional divide between domestic and international issues. Madokoro (Chapter 7) takes a similar approach to discuss the federal government’s initial participation in the drafting of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its belated signing. Officials in the

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Department of Citizenship and Immigration were worried about the impact that signing the Convention might have on the country’s ability to select (or refuse) migrants for admission. These reservations deterred the federal government from signing the Convention for over two decades. Importantly, because Canada was a key participant in the drafting of the Convention, these anxieties also informed the very character of the international community’s approach to refugee protection, limiting the scope of the Convention to the situation in Europe from 1951 to 1967. Though the Convention has long been considered peripheral to Canada’s international history, Madokoro emphasizes the significance of the 1951 Convention precisely because it reflects the profoundly racialized world views of Canada’s immigration officials, whom she treats as international actors. Given the far-reaching impact of the bureaucrats’ world views, her analysis challenges the notion that the Convention was marginally significant to the history of Canada’s international relations.

The Notion of Marginalized Terrain and Space How historians position Canada within the global community affirms, responds to, and reinforces the contested racial dynamics of the twentieth century. As noted in the discussion of the theme of empire, identity, and liberal internationalism, the earlier historiography on Canada’s international history focused almost entirely on the country’s external relations in the context of the shifting dynamics of the Anglo-American empire. Can­ ada’s relationships with other parts of the globe were dismissed or overlooked as peripheral to the story of the country’s evolving embrace of liberal internationalism. The normative focus on Canada and its relationships with Britain and the United States made studies of the country’s Pacific connections or its interests in Africa and Latin America appear quixotic at best. In historicizing race, not only can we explore previously unexamined relations, but we can also query the ways in which Canadians constructed mental maps that imposed a hierarchy of place, with some countries being more relevant to Canada. As Alan K. Henrikson has explained, a mental map is “the cognitive frame on the basis of which historians of international relations, like diplomats and others who think internationally, orient themselves in the world.”25 J.B. Brebner’s identification of Canada as a North Atlantic nation defined the mental map that dominated among foreign policymakers; it became even more entrenched as studies on Canada and the United Kingdom and Canada and the United States flourished.26

Introduction

19

This position validated Canada’s role as helpful fixer or linchpin. Webster and Sean Mills (Chapter 4) remind us that the mental maps, of the sort that informed Canadian international action, were coloured constructions. Men­ tal maps worked to erase, displace, and marginalize Indigenous peoples in Canada and concurrently defined, and provided the rationale for, the desired racial makeup of the country. Mills examines how French Canadians sought new connections following France’s defeat in the Second World War and traces the relationship between intellectuals in Canada and those in Haiti in the 1930s. Mills underscores how “student exchanges, correspondence circles, and official diplomatic visits sparked the imagination” of Canadian and Haitian intellectuals. Significantly, the cultural solidarity that French Canadian intellectuals envisioned with their Haitian counterparts was tinged by “a belief in the dire situation of the Haitian peasantry and its lack of culture and civilization.” Accordingly, Mills argues that accounting for the “complex ways in which intellectuals understood Haiti in the 1930s and 1940s is crucial to gaining insight into the complex ‘mental maps’ that French Canadians developed of the broader world.” These mental maps worked in many ways; they could be turned inward as well as outward. Even when Canada’s geospatial placement is revised, the impact of racethinking is evident in enduring notions of Franco-Québécois ethnocultural solidarity. Meren decentres the North Atlantic region to demonstrate “how the Global South was at the heart of events in the northern hemisphere, rather than being simply acted upon by First World actors.” According to Meren, the politics of the Global South, as well as the question of migration from its regions, were intertwined with constitutional questions, nationalist pursuits in English and French Canada, and Quebec and Ottawa’s relationship with the Francophonie and Gaullist France. Meren treats race as a formative influence in this dynamic, seeing questions of race as a way of under­standing the destabilizing impact of these numerous intersections. The question of race complicated how French and English Canadians articulated civic-based nationalisms, envisioned their identities, as well as those of Quebec and Canada, and framed their responses to decolonization in the French-speaking world. In a similar vein, and as Hastings demonstrates in her examination of Canadian trade interests in the West Indies and its closed immigration policies with regard to the same region, the far reach of the imperial imprint becomes even clearer when considering relationships that have conventionally been understood as marginal to understanding

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Canada’s international history. As Hastings explains, “The language of imperial sentiment and obligation, marked by anthropomorphic rhetoric and references to the special character of the Canada–West Indies connection, was born of racialized assumptions about Afro-West Indian inferiority and the necessity of Anglo-Saxon guidance in the region.” Hastings’ chapter and those by Price, McKenzie, Madokoro, and Meren draw attention to the importance of migration as a dimension of international history. Migration has long been treated as a field of study that was separate, or even marginal, from that of diplomatic history, but it sits comfortably in the more capacious embrace of international history. The normative and prescriptive functions of a white, Anglo, British, and Christian iden­tity were channelled internally and affected attitudes and policies to­ ward migrants and refugees. They were also projected outward, shaping the flows, barriers, norms, and power structures of global international relations. Hence, it was essential that immigration policy reinforced a foreign policy alignment with the United States, Britain, and western Europe. Acknow­ledging who was kept out and whose contact was highly regulated and circumscribed is essential to explorations of Canada’s international ac­ tion and its official identification with an Atlantic and European community. Attending to regions and relationships once regarded as peripheral to the history of Canada’s international relations is entwined with efforts to rethink the pervasive influence of empire, to unpack the rhetoric and philosophical underpinnings of liberal internationalism, to analyze the contexts and structures in which individuals operated and the tensions that resulted, as well as to engage with the question of marginalized lines of inquiry. The contributions in this volume do all this and more. Yet there is still a great deal of work to be done, as Meren discusses in the conclusion. One of our main objectives with this volume was to provoke a rethinking of race and Canada’s international history. We therefore invite readers to think further about how the contributions in this volume challenge received mythologies and accepted truths and complicate the role that race has played in shaping the Canadian nation, within and beyond its political and geographic borders. We also encourage readers to think beyond the nation. Because the Canadian literature has been insular, it has not contributed to a larger discussion about global and transnational history. When insights are of primary relevance to Canadian history and are presented as sui generis, they stand aside from studies that are transnational, international, global, and even comparative in conception. We hope to change that. Let’s keep this conversation going.

Introduction

21

NOTES 1 UNESCO, “Statement on Race, Paris, July 1950,” in Four Statements on the Race Question (Paris: UNESCO, 1969), 33. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/ 001229/122962eo.pdf. 2 See M. Brattain, “Race, Racism and Anti-Racism: UNESCO and the Politics of Pre­ senting Science to the Postwar Public,” American Historical Review 112, 5 (2007): 1386–413 for an insightful account of the meaning of race in the UNESCO statement, as well as useful lessons about how historians should analyze race. 3 For a critique of postracial liberalism in the US context, see T. Wise, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity (San Francisco, CA: City Wise Books, 2013). 4 Statistics Canada, “Police-Reported Hate Crimes, 2013,” The Daily, June 9, 2015, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/150609/dq150609a-eng.pdf. 5 Canadian Race Relations Foundation, “Survey on Religion, Racism and Intergroup Re­lations in Canada,” news release, May 2, 2014, http://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/en/programs -3/capturing-the-pulse-of-the-nation-2/item/24976-january-2014-survey-24976. 6 The 2015 federal campaign was rife with identity politics that were racially provocative and fed on established structures of discrimination in Canada. This resulted in Muslim candidates having their campaign materials defaced with racial slurs and women wearing the Niqab being attacked. See A. Patis, “Candidate’s Signs Vandal­ ized with Racial Slurs,” BlackburnNews.com, October 7, 2015, http://blackburn news.com/london/2015/10/07/muslim-candidates-signs-vandalized-with-racial -slurs/; “Pregnant Muslim Woman Attacked by Montreal Teens, Police Say,” CBC News, October 2, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-police -muslim-woman-1.3253668. In the aftermath of the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, a Muslim woman in Toronto was attacked as she picked up her children from school, and the only mosque in Peterborough was destroyed by arsonists; see J. Chin, “Muslim Woman Attacked while Picking up Kids from Toronto School,” Huffington Post Canada, November 17, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/ 11/17/muslim-woman-attacked-school_n_8581002.html; C. Perkel, “Mosque Fire in Peterborough Was Hate Crime, Say Police,” Toronto Star, November 16, 2015, http:// www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/16/mosque-fire-in-peterborough-was -hate-crime-say-police.html. Such recent examples only scrape the surface of much deeper, more embedded racism. For a detailed list of incidents ranging from verbal and physical abuse to hate propaganda from 2013–15, see “Hate Crimes Map: Tracking Anti-Muslim Incidents Reported across Canada,” National Council of Canadian Muslims, http://www.nccm.ca/map/. 7 H. Arendt, “Race-Thinking before Racism,” Review of Politics 6, 1 (1944): 36–73. 8 P. Buckner and R.D. Francis, eds., Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, AB: Uni­ versity of Calgary Press, 2006); S. Ward, ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2001). 9 D.T. Goldberg, “The Semantics of Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, 4 (1992): 544. 10 C. Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Legal History/University of Toronto Press, 1999), 11. 11 Ibid., 13.

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12 Ibid., 7. Also, C. MacLennan, Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929–1960 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 13 L. Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014) explains the preoccupation with the nation evident in many historical traditions. 14 S. Razack, ed., Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); M. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); K. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875– 1980 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). 15 Since the late 1970s, the flagship journal Diplomatic History has published articles that examine and explain racial prejudice and racialized thought. 16 A. Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 8. For a memoir-style account of his own intellectual formation, see Chapter 1 of that title, “The Rise of Global and Transnational History.” Note that Iriye says he felt “comfortable enough” to describe international relations as intercultural relations at the 1978 meeting of the Society for Historians of Amer­ ican Foreign Relations. He began to use the word transnational in the late 1980s. 17 W.G. Clarence-Smith, K. Pomeranz, and P. Vries, “Editorial,” Journal of Global History 1, 1 (2006): 1–2. 18 M.L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); W. Anderson, Colonial Patholo­ gies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); P.G. Lauren, Power and Prejudice, The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988); J. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986); T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010); T. Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2015); M. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York: Penguin Press, 2008); M. Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008). 19 M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni­versity Press, 2008); A. McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 20 P. Roy, The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914–1941 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003); I. Abella and H. Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1982). D. Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex and Security in Sixties Montreal (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013); R. Mawani, Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871–1921 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009); M. Oikawa, Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); S. Bangarth, Voices Raised in Protest: Defending Citizens of Japanese Ancestry in North America, 1942–49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008); J.W. St.G. Walker, “Race,” Rights

Introduction

23

and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo, ON: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997); C. Backhouse, Colour-Coded; S. Razack, ed., Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); B. Walker, Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Other contributions of note are J. Boyko, Last Steps to Freedom: The Evolution of Canadian Racism (Winnipeg, MB: J. Gordon Shillingdon, 1998); J.W. Daschuk, Clearing the Plains Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2013); V. Satzewich and N. Liodakis, eds., Race and Ethnicity in Canada: A Critical Introduction (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2013); C. Haig-Brown and D. Nock, eds., With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); F. Iacovetta, ed., Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); and J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (To­ ronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 21 J. Samson, Race and Empire (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2005), 3, 103; S. Hall, “Conclusion: The Multicultural Question,” in Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Dias­ poras, Entanglements, ‘Transruptions,’ ed. B. Hesse (London: Zed Books, 2000), 222. 22 Some of the people who have dominated the early period – Canada’s “great men” – include O.D. Skelton, Loring Christie, Norman Robertson, Escott Reid, and, of course, Lester Pearson. At the centre of the policy-making activity was William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest serving prime minister, who acted as his own secretary of state of external affairs for most of his career and whose foremost preoccupation was to preserve national unity. These individuals inspired, and continue to generate, significant scholarly attention. See N. Hillmer, O.D. Skelton: The Work of the World, 1923–1941 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013); A. Chapnick, Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009); G. Donaghy and S. Roussel, eds., Escott Reid: Diplomat and Scholar (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004); J. MacFarlane, Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); J. English, Life of Lester Pearson (London: Vintage, 1990); J.L. Granatstein, Mackenzie King: His Life and World (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977); J.L. Granatstein, A Man of Influence: Norman A. Robertson and Canadian Statecraft 1929–68 (Ottawa: Deneau, 1981); C.P. Stacey, Mackenzie King and the Atlantic Triangle (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976); A. Lower, Loring Christie and the Genesis of the Washington Conference of 1921–1922 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966); R. Bothwell, Loring Christie: The Failure of Bureaucratic Imperialism (New York: Garland, 1988). 23 D. Reynolds, “International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch,” Cultural and Social History 3, 1 (2006): 76. 24 D. Meren, “Intervening with Abandon: The Conquest’s Legacy in the CanadaQuebec-France Triangle of the 1960s,” in Remembering 1759: The Conquest of Can­ ada in Historical Memory, ed. P. Buckner and J.G. Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 186–87.

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25 AK. Henrikson, “Mental Maps,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, ed. M.J. Hogan and T.G. Paterson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 177. 26 J.B. Brebner, North Atlantic Triangle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1945).

A Provocation Anti-Asian Exclusion and the Making and Unmaking of White Supremacy in Canada HENRY YU

On September 7, 2007, the federal government building at 401 Burrard Street, in downtown Vancouver, was quietly renamed in honour of Douglas Jung. As far as anyone could remember, it was the first time that a Chinese Canadian had been honoured through the naming of a building, park, or other permanent infrastructure by the federal government. The ceremony was relatively small and restrained, despite what many commentators considered its historic significance. Douglas Jung had been the first Chinese Canadian member of Parliament, elected in 1957, a signature achievement since Chinese Canadians had been stripped of the franchise almost immediately after Confederation. Chinese Canadians had only regained the right to vote and to run for office in 1947, ten years before Jung’s historic election as a Conservative MP. The restraint shown in the renaming ceremony was certainly due to the building having been named for another Con­ servative MP, Howard Green, less than a year earlier. The choice of Green, a proponent of nuclear nonproliferation and active in the peace movement at the end of his political career, had been controversial because of his earlier role calling for the removal and exile of Japanese Canadians from Can­ada’s West Coast. The Human Rights Committee of the Japanese Canadian Cit­ izens Association led a popular campaign criticizing the choice of Green, pointing out that his had been one of the most prominent and vehement voices of racism against allowing Japanese Canadians to return to their

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homes after the Second World War ended in 1945. They were legally prevented from returning for three years and seven months more, until April 1, 1949 – a period longer than their exile of three years and five months during the war. The most striking voice in the campaign against Green was a retired Tsaw­ wassen schoolteacher named Keiko Mary Kitagawa, whose family had been removed from their home on Salt Spring Island during the Second World War. The naming “triggered something deep in my memory,” and although Kitagawa had spent her life moving on from what had happened to her and her family, a friend’s quick check of old newspapers at the Vancouver Public Library reminded her of Green’s racial vitriol against “Japs,” both in justifying their initial removal and in prolonging their exile.1 Why, she asked in a letter to minister of public works Michael Fortier, after the Conservative Party and then–Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had led the Parliament of Canada in a formal apology and redress to Japanese Canadians in 1988, were they honouring a man who had so prominently and vehemently led the movement which they had acknowledged was wrong?2 After a year of controversy and a hearing at which arguments for both retaining and changing the name of the building were heard, the resultant choice to honour Douglas Jung – whose career so aptly represented a personal triumph over anti-Asian racism – seemed an elegant solution. Both Green and Jung had been members of the government during John Diefenbaker’s tenure as prime minister. Similar to Green, who had served as an officer in the First World War and then attended law school, Jung had served in the Canadian military during the Second World War and then attended law school, with support from his veteran’s benefits. The choice of Jung over Green appeared to be a slight – albeit telling – variation in the meaning of the historical past for Canada. Contained within the difference was recognition that Canada had been transformed from a society that explicitly and overtly used anti-Asian legislation and racial inequality as building blocks for the foundation of the nation, toward one that repudiated such tools. Newspaper stories recognized the quiet triumph signalled by the name change, in particular because the announcement, on September 7, 2007, took place on the same day as an eight hundred-guest reconciliation din­ ner marking the hundredth anniversary of the 1907 anti-Asian riots in Vancouver.3 The dinner was the culmination of six months of city-wide public events (including a large-scale symbolic Riot Walk along the original

A Provocation

27

route of the rioters) that focused on the Anniversaries of Change, which marked the transformation of Canada from the society built on the white supremacy displayed in the 1907 riots.4 These anniversaries included the sixtieth anniversary of the 1947 Citizenship Act that granted the franchise to nonwhites and the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 immigration reforms that removed racial preferences from immigration policy. The anniversary events included organizations and leaders from the Japanese Can­adian, Chi­­­nese Canadian, Indo-Canadian, First Nations, and urban In­ digenous com­­­munities, as well as the Vancouver District Labour Council (VDLC) representing all of the major unions in Vancouver. The VDLC was the contemporary version of the original umbrella organization within the labour movement that had been one of the main organizers of the 1907 riot. Anniversaries of Change provided a powerful symbolic context in Van­ couver for the renaming of the federal building for Jung. But was the renaming a quiet triumph over Canada’s racist past? Was it a coda in what Patricia Roy so evocatively described as the “Triumph of Citizenship”?5 Roy’s storyline, substantively documented, is compelling – anti-Asian politics marked the first century of provincial history in BC and shaped the politics of Canadian citizenship, first as a racially exclusionary process and then as one that recognized those who had been previously excluded. The story of Canada, in a sense, and its triumph, is that at one time we were racist, but we are no longer. Reactions to the renaming varied. Green’s son strenuously objected, saying, “My father was not a racist,” and that the attack on his father’s name was based on an “incorrect and unjustified slur.”6 He echoed justifications made in 1942, that removing Japanese Canadians from British Columbia was based “on concerns for Canada’s security at a time of war.” On the Canadian Army website discussion board, some veterans also debated the merits of the renaming, continuing the discussion for years. One poster, “54/102 CEF,” wrote in early 2009: The big hit on Green is he is identified as a poster boy for Country Wide Anti Japanese Sentiment on the West Coast that was accepted wisdom of the day ... The anti-Japanese era was a regrettable era, and the modern day efforts to ‘get even for the past’ is just as regrettable. Mulroney cleared the slate. Probably the better route is to name the building for a local hero with links to Asia. Has the bldg been renamed? Anyone? Times have changed and we have to change with them.7

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54/102 CEF’s assertions captured the understanding of many that parallels Roy’s story of the rise and eventual fall of racism and white supremacy in Canada. And suggesting that the building be named for a local hero with links to Asia was retroactively prescient (the renaming had actually taken place over a year earlier). Jung was just such a hero, as the renaming committee clearly realized. How history – and Canadian historians – should understand the actions of someone like Green is the question that animates this chapter. More generally, how should we understand race and racism in Canada’s historical past? The renaming of the Howard Green building is a useful starting point for approaching this question: Are we judging the past actions of people through an inappropriate and anachronistic moral lens if we now repudiate the anti-Asian racism they expressed? Around the time that 54/102 CEF was debating other Army veterans about Green’s merits, an essay appeared in the Journal of British Columbia Studies arguing that although “repugnant by today’s standards, Green’s comments were not exceptional for the time.”8 Placing them within the historical period in which they occurred led to a more nuanced understanding of Green’s actions: Should Green’s conduct regarding Japanese Canadians have led to the public shaming caused by the erasure of his name from the building at 401 Burrard Street? Historians argue that individuals need to be judged within the context of their time. Today, race is understood as a social construct and as an unjust motivator for action. This was not always so. Green’s critics focus on his actions prior to 1946, when, by today’s standards, his beliefs were indeed most reprehensible. Yet, this was also the period in which they were the most widely accepted.9

Is an historicism that interprets “racism” in the past through a lens that disallows moral judgment, because the current morality on racism was not the standard seventy years ago, the proper approach? Is racism an issue of morality that can only be adjudged through a retroactive democratic process? In other words, if many people believed in racism seventy years ago, then it was acceptable, and if many people do not believe in racism now, it is not acceptable? One analytical consequence of such an argument is that race becomes primarily a matter of morality, so that historical analyses become distorted with a laudable but misplaced attempt to avoid moral judgment. Racism becomes merely a moral value that we now reject, but by which we

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cannot judge those in the past. This claim, that the moral standards in one historical period cannot be used to judge the actions of those in another, is a common misapplication of historicism. Although a useful (albeit misguided) heuristic device for teaching students, it is not a useful analysis for understanding race and historical change in Canada. Indeed, this misapprehension about the equivalency of racism and morality is precisely one of the historical consequences of using anti-Asian political rhetoric and white supremacy as a strategy in Canada for creating political coalitions. Fomenting and agitating against Asians was a political process – one that created a false equivalence between morality and the acceptability of holding racist beliefs by a majority of voters – and was thus democratic and morally sound. Only by actively disenfranchising nonwhites (as accomplished by laws enacted immediately after Confederation in the 1870s, which took the vote away from Chinese, “Natives,” and other nonwhites) could the illusion be sustained that racism was a product of a democratic majority – and was thus morally agreeable. The number of nonwhites in British Columbia had always been large enough, for instance, that if allowed to vote, they would have immediately enfranchised enough voters to end this racially engineered body politic, which girded the ongoing delusion of white supremacy that was supported democratically (and thus morally) by a majority. In the first-past-the-post system of voting used in most municipal, provincial, and federal ridings in Canada, a small shift in a block of voters (just enough to cover the difference between the winner and the next candidate) is enough to change the result in a close election. This is one reason why minorities in a riding can make a difference in a close election. Disenfranchising nonwhites also disempowered them from affecting close elections, girding the remaining “white majority” that could be built around white supremacy. Newly arrived Europeans who may never have thought about being white until arriving in Canada could be convinced that their new privileges as majority Canadians were worth the exclusion of others. This toxic equation of racism, morality, and democracy – invented by white supremacist politics in the late nineteenth century – continues to infect historical narratives of Canada. It is a political process of disempowerment and empowerment that was fundamentally different from how white women and non–property owning whites eventually achieved the franchise. As in the United States and Britain, the expansion of the right to vote to women and non–property owners had not been predicated upon a process of disenfranchisement. The extension of voting rights to white women added to the electorate without subtracting voters, unlike the process in

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British Columbia after Confederation, when Chinese and Indians were disenfranchised in 1874, Japanese in 1895, and Hindus in 1907. Chinese men had voted in municipal elections before being disenfranchised. When the franchise was extended to women in 1917, it did not overturn the racial dis­ enfranchisement of Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, South Asian Canadians, or Indigenous peoples, so women classified as Asian and In­ digenous still could not vote. It is commonplace for histories of Canada to celebrate the expansion of democracy to women, as if all women received the vote in 1917, and to nonpropertied men, as if all nonpropertied men received the vote. But, as in the United States, the expansion of voting rights required a careful consideration of who would continue to not enjoy the franchise. Although a limited number of nonwhite Canadians were given the franchise (for instance, formerly enslaved African Canadians who were able to flee to Nova Scotia, Ontario, and other eastern provinces after the American Revolution and before the American Civil War, or Japanese Canadian veterans who fought for Canada during the First World War), the classification of nonwhites in general as outside the belonging of Canada as a nation was an integral element of the normative equation of whiteness and white supremacy with citizenry. The long history of defining Asians as perpetual aliens in British Columbia shaped the legal categories of citizenship and cultural categories of national belonging and unbelonging in Canada, just as ongoing exclusions of Indigenous peoples across Canada did. Who is Canada now and who were Canadians then? We continue to narrate and propagate a conceptual slip that reinforces the exclusions that took place through the gerrymandered democracy of white supremacy. For British Columbia to have a seemingly democratic majority that supported white supremacy, First Nations and Chinese peoples, who lived in large numbers around British Columbia in the 1870s, needed to be both disenfranchised and cleared from the best land and jobs. By the time of the removal of Japanese Canadians from British Columbia in 1942, the question of who was Canadian was based on a racially engineered notion of a moral majority in a white supremacist democracy –the majority was made up of whites who could vote. They did not have to take into account others’ perspectives because the others had no vote, therefore, no voice. That was the singular accomplishment of the mass politics (and self-serving historical narrative) of white supremacy, and we continue to naturalize its effects in our history, not only by accepting its basic premises about who was Canadian

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(and who was not), but also by accepting that such exclusions were moral at the time because the beliefs were held by a democratic majority. These misapprehensions about racism as a matter of morality and belief continue to haunt historiography in Canada because of the process by which antiracism as a political cause was also propagated as a matter of democratic majority belief. By the late twentieth century, the politics of white supremacy were eclipsed by the politics of antiracism. Often tied to social psychology theories about racism that focused on causal racial attitudes, antiracism, as both a moral and political process, was a matter of changing the beliefs of individual whites, so that a new democratic majority based on racial tolerance and acceptance could be created. The triumph of a democratic political process was accomplished by allowing nonwhites to become citizens and therefore able to vote against the white supremacist laws that had denigrated and excluded them. However, rather than analyze race in Canadian history only through the lens of morality and the right or not to judge the beliefs of majorities created through disenfranchisement, it would be more useful to return race to history – in other words, to embed it into the political processes of history. Colonization, settlement, and the creation of national polities based upon white supremacy were parallel and linked processes that helped found the settler societies of Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The political work accomplished through white supremacy, in other words, can be analyzed in a comparative and connective context with other settler societies, each of which moved from colonial status to nationhood. Each used and shared the tools of white supremacy to build independent nationalist imaginaries. We can perform this analysis without resorting to questions of moral judgment or to simplified debates about the heuristic value of historicism. Each of the former colonies used disenfranchisement of nonwhites to achieve the delusion of democratic majorities and belief in the morality of white supremacy. They created processes both in formal politics, through elections that excluded nonwhites, and in narratives, through equating national belonging with being white. Democracy, as well as commonsensical notions of what was widely accepted, could then be conceptually grounded on a limited set of white citizens, and nonwhites could be ignored as if they did not exist or were merely a negligible minority. The idea that nonwhites did not matter has been one of the most successful delusions accomplished by the narrative and legal violence of white supremacy. By limiting

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our analyses to the moral mechanisms of white supremacy, we lose sight of the fact that racial hierarchy is not just a set of beliefs, but also a set of legal, economic, and social arrangements that took a great deal of political work to both make and unmake. We misapprehend morality for politics. It took a great deal of work to deprive people of resources and dignity, especially if they were intelligent and self-respecting, and if they were, at the same time, working hard, formally and informally, to circumvent the mechanisms of racial hierarchy. The narrative violence of telling stories about Canadian belonging that replicate the political accomplishments of white supremacy is one of the most significant legacies of the politics of racialization. It is also challenging for historians (both amateur and scholarly) to understand how this narrative violence continues to work. To preclude from conceptual consideration whole groups of people who were a continual and significant presence in Canada long before Confederation, and to tell stories about the past as if they did not exist or were merely passive victims of racism – that is a triumph indeed of the violence that distorted storytelling perpetuates. The most important analytic consequence of thinking about the effects of race, or, more accurately, white supremacy, in Canadian history, is the realization that the conceptual question of who was a Canadian was the result of a political process built around racial categories and white supremacy. Using a different concept of who is a part of Canada’s history, repudiating the limited category put forth by white supremacists at the time – even if they were politically successful in building the formal mechanisms of law and citizenship around white supremacy – is a crucial and fundamental step. Limiting our analytical purview to the formal political processes invented at the time, in other words, replicates the limits and constraints built into political projects of racialization.10 To not apply our current understanding of broader social and political processes, in other words, is to read back into the past inappropriate analytical standards by accepting, de facto, the inadequate categories of the past. To assert that most Canadians were racist at the time, and, therefore, we are somehow judging them when we apply current standards of morality is to put blinders on and see only the triumphant accomplishments of white supremacy. As Tim Stanley and John Price each eloquently argue in Contesting White Supremacy and Orienting Canada, respectively, many people, both white and nonwhite, did not agree with white supremacy, not least the Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, IndoCanadians, and other Asian Canadians who knew exactly what was going

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on, because they did not have the privilege of blissfully ignoring the ways in which white supremacy redistributed the resources in Canadian society. We evade history when we understand racism as merely the context of the times. Rather, we need to understand how peoples excluded from the privileges of white supremacy continued to live and struggle (despite being erased from the narrative of Canada) and often created clever ways to circumvent the formal and informal processes of white supremacy. There are two historical transformations: (1) the gradual shift in the privileged thinking of Canadians who understood themselves immediately as Can­adian just because they were white (for example, white women of European ancestry who, before 1917, could not vote, could still imagine themselves as Canadian); and (2) the transformations wrought by those who had to struggle every day of their lives in Canada against the constraints of white supremacy, and who also in remarkable ways remade the country. Some of them, in enduring and persevering through the pervasive effects of racism in their everyday lives, countered its effects through the humanity of their forbearance. This second transformation merits more attention. By the early twentieth century, some of those who struggled had been taught in churches and schools to believe that they were also “Canadian” (if only in their minds). Shaped by an upbringing and education in Canada that preached the ideals of fair play and justice, even if such ideals did not apply in practice to them, many Asian Canadians through everyday experience could calculate with precision the hypocrisy and delusions of white supremacy. But still to this day, we do not calculate their numbers or evaluate their presence when we adjudge what was accepted wisdom. How are we to write the history of the past without replicating the exclusions of the past? How do we narrate the national story without reinforcing the delusions of race within the larger story of Canada? There continues to be a tension between two versions of Canada. One version is defined by narratives of history shaped by white supremacy; the other version is still incompletely narrated but shaped by Asian Canadians and others considered nonwhite, such as Indigenous peoples, who lived in the same society but were generally excluded both from formal politics and historical narrations. Despite these exclusions, however, they were often causal agents in transforming society through their reactions against and overcoming exclusion. That process took place not only in Canada, but also in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, because each built white supremacy in concert with the others. What remains uneven in Canada – in

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comparison to the other three settler colonies-turned-independent-nations – is how historians narrate the (still incomplete) dismantling of white supremacy. In Canada, antiracism as a political process has focused on changing the attitudes and beliefs of whites, thereby creating a new moral majority who should not believe in racism. This has had a narrative consequence. Without a broader awareness of stories about those who quietly pushed for the end of white supremacy, rather than just about those moral white Canadians who believed in antiracism, we are left with a narrative vacuum that presumes the gradual transformation in attitude of Canadians was a matter of generous good grace bequeathed upon those who were formerly left out. Seldom still are told the stories of those who struggled against exclusion. Yet, they were the agents who actually forced the changes that led to the dismantling of white supremacy.11 What would it look like to narrate the story of these transformations, in which they are activated by those who pushed for change, rather than continuing to tell the story as internal change by those who already enjoyed the privileges of being counted as Canadian? As Roy’s work details, even at the height of anti-Asian political agitation, there were, among those who enjoyed the privilege of being treated as “white” Canadians, opponents to the usage of anti-Asian political tools. Even as union organizers in Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Canada, and the western United States built labour movements defined by anti-Asian exclusion and white supremacy, many within their ranks believed that exacerbating racial hierarchies among workers, rather than uniting them, was a mistake. But more important for understanding the frictions encountered in the implementation of white supremacy were the array of opponents targeted by racism. Even though dis­­enfranchising them reduced their effectiveness in the arenas of formal politics and law courts, they nevertheless should be considered as political opponents of white supremacy who used alternative, often informal, means to struggle against the social and economic constraints produced by racial hierarchies. Even cultural practices such as sports – and other competitions in which “nonwhites” could “level the playing field” by forcing “white” Canadians to play by the same set of rules – were symbolically and affectively important (even if limited) means of fighting back. The Chinese Canadian soccer team from the 1910s to 1930s and the Japanese Canadian Asahi Tigers base­ball team from the 1920s to 1930s – which won multiple championships in Vancouver in fair head-to-head competitions – were fêted by their communities because of the symbolic and affective meanings of their victories. In a world where Asian Canadians were denied access to, and participation

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in, the political arena, triumph and belonging in the athletic arena was a not so subtle expletive to the proponents of white supremacy. How such moments of triumph inspired other forms of perseverance, resistance, and endurance cannot be underestimated. Taking serious account of the affective politics of such informal struggles is a crucial tool for analyzing the political work of Asian Canadians and others disenfranchised and excluded from formal democratic politics. Asian Canadians are misapprehended as silent victims of racism or as politically powerless because they were disenfranchised. Historical accounts that continue to narrate historical change without accounting for the agency of those who were racially excluded reinforce the narrative exclusions of white supremacy by adopting an analytical framework that ignores the primary agency of the excluded in fighting against their exclusion. By necessity, because they were not allowed in the legislature, courtrooms, and other formal bodies that made or implemented law, Asian Canadians operated informally, outside of institutions, thus leaving fewer archival traces, because quiet, informal meetings and unannounced agreements were the norm. As Lisa Mar details in Brokering Belonging (2010), middlemen served a crucial function as brokers, for example. During the 1960s and 1970s, a communitybased fight led by Chinese Canadian women against city planners’ attempts to raze Chinatown and the neighbouring Strathcona communities used dinner banquets as an effective political organizing tool.12 Other examples abound of the roles that community leaders, local organizers, and informal go-betweens played in creating political change, as scholars such as Lisa Mar, Timothy Stanley, John Price, Stephanie Bangarth, Jo-Anne Lee, Roy Miki, Audrey Kobayashi, Sadhu Binning, David Sangha, and community activists such as Hayne Wai, Stan Fukawa, Masako Fukawa, and many others have detailed. The process of migration was itself another effective tactic for evading the uneven application of anti-Asian laws and the uneven terrain of white supremacy by geographic region. By navigating the administrative practices that varied across both space and across time periods, and by astutely reading the exigencies and contingent variations between particular local communities, a migrant could take advantage of a single well-placed ally in one location or avoid a group of vehement racists in another. By focusing only on single geographic locations across time, instead of following migrants on their peripatetic journeys, we lose an analytical appreciation for the strategies and tactics that migrants wove through a network of locations across and around Canada and the Pacific.

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The inclusion of Asian Canadian history in Canadian history is not a matter of adding yet another community history to an array of multicultural histories. The history of Canadian immigration has never been persuasively displayed as a pantheon of ethnic communities whose various histories are considered of equal importance – British and French migrations have always taken precedence, and all other migrations pale in comparison. Indeed, the definitions of ethnic and immigrant result directly from this focus on the historical importance of Anglo-French migrations. In contrast, this provocation has argued that anti-Asian exclusion (along with the colonial dis­ possession and dislocation of Indigenous peoples) has been crucial to the politics of white supremacy, which was a fundamental element in the process of nation building for the settler nation of Canada, as it also was in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. I hope that the majority of historians in Canada will someday analytically see through the conceptual borders created by focusing only on the Canada defined by exclusion itself. Rather, we should see Canada as the complex society that actually existed, and which can be recognized only through the struggle of those who fought back against exclusion. In this light, the retelling of history is not a moral question; it is an issue of analytical rigour: we have yet to end the narrative violence of racial exclusion. At present, we have only incompletely repudiated the politics of white supremacy and its legacies. NOTES 1 N.M. Ibuki, “The Indomitable Spirit of Keiko Mary Kitagawa, Part 2,” Discover Nikkei, July 31, 2014, http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2014/7/31/indomitable -spirit-mary-kitagawa-2/. 2 Ibid. 3 “Green edifice to honour Douglas Jung,” Province (British Columbia), September 7, 2007. 4 Anniversaries Network, Change in Action, Brochure, 2008, http://www.history.ubc. ca/documents/faculty/yu/AofC_brochure_08_lores.pdf. 5 P. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941– 1967 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007). 6 “Green edifice to honour Douglas Jung,” Province. 7 54/102 CEF, “WWI Veteran’s Legacy Not Good Enough for Old Enemies,” message posted to Army.ca Forums, January 14, 2009, reply no. 7, http://army.ca/forums/index. php/topic,82954.0/nowap.html?PHPSESSID=7tl2crmn581csout4dmsmqncq4. 8 D. Heidt, “Howard Charles Green and Japanese Canadians,” BC Studies 164 (2009/ 10): 36. 9 Ibid., 50.

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10 For a now classic sociological interpretation of race and racism, originally published in 1986, that moves beyond the conception of race as attitudes or beliefs, see M. Omi and H. Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994). 11 For three recent monographs that embed historical changes about anti-Asian politics within a world of political contest that include Asian Canadians, rather than portray a world of politics in which they are largely absent, see L.R. Mar, Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885-1945 (New York: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2010); J. Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012); and T. Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011). 12 J. Lee, “Gender, Ethnicity, and Hybrid Forms of Community-Based Urban Activism in Vancouver, 1957–1978: The Strathcona Story Revisited,” Gender, Place and Cul­ ture 14, 4 (2007): 381–408; H. Wai, “Vancouver Chinatown 1960–1980: A Commun­ ity Perspective,” New Scholars, New Visions in Canadian Studies vol. 3, 1 (Seattle, WA: Jackson School of Politics, University of Washington: 1998).

1

The Limits of “Brotherly Love” Rethinking Canada-Caribbean Relations in the Early Twentieth Century PAULA HASTINGS

Special is the word often used to describe Canada’s trade relationship with the British West Indies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Geographical proximity, the desire to find alternate markets in the face of American tariffs, complementary demand for products not produced at home, and, most importantly, shared membership in the British Empire made the two regions logical trading partners.1 The imperial connection, as Mary Hill points out in her history of Canada’s Department of Trade and Commerce, went a long way in stimulating Canadian interest in the region. “Imperial sentiment was strong,” she writes, and “many Canadians felt a distinct obligation towards their cousins in the Caribbean.”2 Canada’s maritime trade with the West Indies dated back to the seventeenth century, but it was not until the final decades of the nineteenth century that this rhetoric of imperial obligation gained currency, particularly after the United States enacted the McKinley tariff in 1890, which increased duties on Canada’s agricultural products and left the Dominion government scrambling for new markets. That same year, Canadian minister of trade and commerce George Foster visited the islands to promote reciprocity, and a year later, Canada participated in the Jamaica International Exhibition to encourage trade relations.3 In his closing remarks at the exhibition’s conclusion, the honorary trade commissioner, Adam Brown, made plain Canada’s imperial duty to the West Indies: “Canada has gone into [the exhibition] heart and soul. She has gone as a big brother to lend a hand to a sister in this glittering

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sea – to educate the people and to inspire them with new life and activity.” In his opinion, the exhibition was a testament to Jamaicans’ interest in “lift[ing] themselves up” from the wretched conditions that had so long plagued the island. “Work and help yourselves,” Brown concluded patronizingly, and “you will have Canadians here to help you too.”4 To some West Indians, Canadian declarations of imperial obligation to the region were suspect, precisely because of their curious appearance immediately following the introduction of the McKinley tariff. As one shrewd observer pointed out in a letter to Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner in July 1891, while Canada enjoyed large commercial privileges in the United States market, Canadian ministers generally considered West Indian trade “to be of little account.” When a Jamaican delegation visited Ottawa in the mid-1880s to promote reciprocal trade relations, he continued, the delegation was “treated with scant courtesy.” At that time Jamaica was thought to have an “impoverished, non-consuming population of ignorant blacks.” Following the McKinley tariff, however, when Canada needed to find new markets for its surplus agricultural products, “the once-despised Jamaica loomed up in their imagination as a thrifty and prosperous island tenanted by loyal Britons.” Then it seemed to be “the most natural thing in the world” that Canada and the West Indies should be close trading partners.5 While this Jamaican observer’s skepticism of Canada’s professions of brotherly love was not universal – indeed, many West Indians and Can­ adians were genuinely interested in forging mutually beneficial trade relations – it nonetheless points to the racially inscribed tension that underlay these relations. The language of imperial sentiment and obligation, marked by anthropomorphic rhetoric and references to the special character of the Canada–West Indies connection, was born of racialized assumptions about Afro-West Indian inferiority and the necessity of Anglo-Saxon guidance in the region. As Peter James Hudson argues in his study of the Royal Bank’s ventures in the Caribbean, Canadian businessmen “saw their role as ‘the Big White Brother’ in the British West Indies, the paternalistic and benevolent protectors of the empire’s darker subjects in the hemisphere.”6 However, characterizing the Canada–West Indies relationship as special obscures the racialized ideas and practices and, consequently, the tensions that ordered these relations. A similar dynamic marks the "special" relationship between Haiti and Quebec that Sean Mills explores in this volume (Chapter 4). West Indian migration to Canada in the early decades of the twentieth century brought these tensions sharply into view. Hundreds of West Indians travelled north to visit or permanently join family members already residing

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in Canada or to find work, often as sleeping car porters on Canadian railways, labourers in Nova Scotia’s expanding coal and steel industries, and in domestic service. At the same time, the Canadian government sought to expand its long-standing commercial ties with the Caribbean, and commercial agreements were signed in 1912, 1920, and 1925. Improved steamship services facilitated this trade and, much to the frustration of Canadian immigration officials, also increased passenger traffic between the two regions. This chapter places the Canada–British West Indies trade relationship in dialogue with West Indian migrant (and would-be migrant) experiences in Canada to explore the ongoing tensions among commerce, migration, and race in the years bracketed by the trade agreements of 1912 and 1925. Trade and immigration are seldom examined in the same analytic frame in the historiography of Canada’s international relations, while studies of Can­ ada’s imperial and foreign trade policies do not consider how racialized thinking shaped these policies. Studies of the Canada–West Indies trade relationship are explained by domestic economic concerns, British imperial preferences, American tariff policies, fluctuations in the world economy, and advances in transport technologies and the expanding trade networks they generated.7 Yet trade and immigration, as John Price points out, “had always been integrally connected in treaty negotiations between states.”8 When British Columbia’s Chinese community and the Chinese government protested against the head tax on Chinese immigrants, they highlighted the contradiction of placing restrictions on Chinese migration while seeking unrestricted commercial relations. Canadian discrimination against Japanese and Indian immigrants similarly compromised Canada’s commercial relations with Japan and India. The implications of this discrimination reverberated in Britain, threatening the Anglo-Japanese alliance and forcing the imperial government to manage complaints from the Indian government. As British subjects, West Indian immigrants, like those from India, presented particular challenges for the Canadian government. West Indian politicians, journalists, and prospective migrants were always quick to draw attention to the contradictions and limitations of Canada’s brotherly love toward the British Caribbean, sometimes in ways that compromised commercial relations between the two regions. The growth of the Canadian economy in the first decade of the twentieth century created employment opportunities for West Indian migrants as industrial labourers in Toronto, Montreal, and Sydney, farmers and agricultural labourers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and domestic servants across

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the country. Despite labour demands, however, Canada’s Department of Immigration generally discouraged the immigration of peoples of African descent. The Immigration Act of 1910 expanded the exclusionary provisions of the 1906 act, granting the department more discretion to deport and deny entry to those immigrants considered undesirable.9 Section 38 allowed the governor-in-council to prohibit the admission of immigrants deemed “unsuited to the climate and requirements of Canada.”10 Shortly after its introduction, the department exercised the provision to curb the immigration of West Indian domestic servants and African American settlers bound for the Canadian prairies.11 Despite these efforts, Afro-Caribbean immigrants continued to enter Can­ada. At the time of the Canada–West Indies trade negotiations in 1912, Nova Scotia’s Dominion Iron and Steel Company was actively recruiting labourers from the West Indies. According to a Department of Interior report, in the fiscal years 1912–1915, more than two hundred AfroCaribbean migrants entered Canada annually.12 Many more were suspected of evading immigration officials and entering Canada covertly. In May 1914, the Department of Immigration received a report that West Indians were landing at various Maritime ports without inspection. Superintendent of immigration William D. Scott consequently asked L.M. Fortier, inspector of Agencies for the Maritime Provinces, to investigate. When Fortier met with customs officials at Bridgewater, Lunenburg, and Mahone Bay in June, he was surprised to learn that the officials were unaware that they were ex officio immigration agents and responsible for enforcing the provisions of the Immigration Act. Scott consequently issued a notice containing the act’s provisions, which was posted to all customs and shipping offices and distributed to masters and owners of vessels arriving at Canadian ports. When West Indians continued to gain entry by meeting the provisions of the act, the Department of Immigration issued instructions to customs, immigration, and steamship agents that “no West Indian negroes be admitted at all,” whether or not they complied with immigration laws. As L.M. Fortier advised, “every obstacle is to be put in their way.” If they meet all other immigration regulations, they should be rejected on the basis that they are likely to become “a public charge.”13 Steamship agents calling at Caribbean ports consequently refused to sell tickets for Canada to West Indians, which inspired concern among not only West Indians but also Canadians with commercial ties to the region. Elwyn P. Mousir, secretary of the Canada–West Indies League – an organization founded in 1911 to foster closer commercial relations

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between Canada and the West Indies – wrote to Superintendent Scott in August 1914: I understand that a few weeks ago instructions were given by the Depart­ ment to ships sailing from the West Indies that no passengers were to be accepted for Canada if they were coming here in search of employment. I should be very much obliged if you would kindly inform me whether this is correct, and also what led to this action being taken ... You will understand that this, if it is correct, may have very harmful effects upon Canadian trade.14

In his response, Scott was able to deflect the implication of racial prejudice by citing “labour conditions” in Canada, as thousands of workers had recently been laid off at Sydney Mines.15 But when the demand for coal and steel manufactures increased during the war, putting labour in demand, this explanation was no longer viable. The demand became so sharp by the summer of 1916 that the Department of Immigration was compelled to permit the entry of 1,000 West Indians of colour to work at the Dominion Steel and Coal Company. Yet, aside from this exception, the department continued prima facie to consider West Indians of colour as persons who were likely to become a public charge.16 Steamship agents continued to turn prospective West Indian migrants away, causing alarm throughout the West Indies. During the war, the issue was discussed in meetings of British Guiana’s Combined Court (the colony's legislature), the George­town Chamber of Commerce, and the Associated West Indian Cham­ber of Commerce. The former two associations passed resolutions to register their protest with the British and Canadian governments. Members of the George­town chamber recognized that Canada had the right to make its own laws with regard to immigration, but if Canadians hoped to consolidate and possibly extend their trade relations with British Guiana, they would have to amend their immigration policies to allow any class of West Indian to permanently take up residence in Canada if they so chose. Members concurred that it must be made plain to Canada that their restrictive immigration policies would adversely affect their trading relationship with the West Indies. The reciprocity treaty of 1912, as one member pointed out, “would not have been successful as it was or, in fact, would never have been passed had these regulations been in force.”17 It was hardly acceptable to promote trade relations under the banner of imperial friendship and then deny West Indians entry to Canada.

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The day after the meeting of Georgetown’s Chamber of Commerce, British Guiana’s Daily Chronicle published a vitriolic editorial on Canada’s immigration policies. The contradiction between imperial commerce and imperial migration was made explicit: If Canada can petition the Imperial Government to devise means whereby she shall occupy a favoured position in our markets to the exclusion of all other parties [and then] she turns round and seeks to exclude from her land a great majority of the people of these colonies, she has been guilty of chicanery which these colonies will not easily forget.18

Imperialism that confined itself to commerce was a distasteful – even “sordid” – kind of imperialism.19 The Daily Chronicle urged the West Indian Chambers of Commerce to not only withdraw from the reciprocity arrangement of 1912 but also to institute a boycott on Canadian goods. Unless Canada was “prepared to receive our people she need not expect to receive our goods or have her goods received.”20 Similar protests were made in Barbados, prompting Canada’s trade commissioner in Bridgetown to register his concern in Ottawa. In June 1917, the Barbados Advocate admonished the Canadian government’s racist immigration practices: “The illegal discrimination now being practiced by the Canadian Authorities against coloured passengers from the West Indies to Canada is sowing the seeds of discontent which will be certain to ultimately develop into strong protest against closer connexion with Canada whether in the form of Trade or otherwise.”21 Canada’s trade commissioner in Barbados forwarded the article to Superintendent Scott and requested an explanation. In his response, Scott cited section 38 of the 1910 Im­ migration Act. He argued, paradoxically, that prospective immigrants were not “singled out solely because of their colour”; it was just that “persons of the African race” were not “suited” to the country.22 Because of the growing popularity of climatic determinism in the late nineteenth century (which stipulated that “Anglo-Saxon races could only live in temperate zones, while the Negro flourished in the tropics”23), this explanation provided Canada’s Department of Immigration with a convenient, pseudo-scientific excuse to keep Canada white. But not all were convinced. Climatic suitability, as the Daily Chronicle put it, was “a feeble mask to disguise a violent colour prejudice.”24 Canada’s racist immigration policies were all the more alarming dur­ ing the war, when thousands of West Indians were fighting the allied cause

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overseas. When the war broke out in August 1914, many West Indians travelled to Canada and Britain to enlist. Some joined fighting battalions with white soldiers, while others enlisted in Canada’s all-black labour battalion, formed in the summer of 1916. “It is well known to us here,” the Daily Chronicle reported, “that amongst the first to join the Canadian Regiments raised so soon after the outbreak of war were a considerable number of coloured Demerarians, who are today fulfilling as brave a role in the defence of the Empire in the trenches of France as any of the soldiers the King has enrolled under his honors.”25 It was a “reproach to the British Government,” argued E.G. Woolford, New Amsterdam representative for British Guiana’s Combined Court, that “soldiers of this colony whose services were acceptable to the British Government for the defence of the Empire should not be allowed to enter certain portions of it.”26 As John Price (Chapter 2) also shows in this volume in the context of the Asian Canadian experience, Canadians were fighting for freedom and justice overseas while betraying these same principles at home. At the same time, many West Indians did not think the issue should be pressed until the cessation of hostilities. The British and Canadian governments were preoccupied with the war and so the timing was not appropriate. At the encouragement of the acting governor of British Guiana, members of the Combined Court and Georgetown’s Chamber of Commerce agreed that the matter should be postponed, as did the Associated West Indian Chamber of Commerce.27 Yet the resolutions were not carried forward after the war. In the face of mass unemployment and rampant labour unrest throughout the Empire, Canada’s immigration policies – which became even more restrictive after the war – were more easily justified. The Department of Immigration’s often cited explanation that exclusion was born of economic necessity rather than racial prejudice (in all its veiled varieties) was more difficult for West Indians to dispute, at least until economic circumstances improved in 1923, and Canada once again courted British immigrants.28 The postwar recession also reduced Canada–West Indies trade. Despite the trade agreement of 1920, Canadian exports to the West Indies dropped, in millions, from $18.3 in 1921 to $13.6 in 1922, and to $13.2 in 1923. West Indian exports to Canada fell from $24.1 in 1921 to $14.5 in 1922, and then rose somewhat to $18.5 in 1923.29 Concerns about this decline led the Can­ adian and West Indian governments to investigate how the relationship might be improved, particularly through better steamship services. A small trade delegation was dispatched to the West Indies late in 1924, a trade

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conference was held the following summer in Ottawa, and a new agreement was negotiated. When the Canadian economy rebounded in the mid-1920s, and the government advertised a need for agricultural and domestic workers, prospective West Indian migrants once again made inquiries with the De­ partment of Immigration and Colonization (renamed in 1917), most often through Canada’s trade representatives in the West Indies. These representatives dealt not only with inquiries from West Indians interested in visiting or settling in Canada but also with the complaints of those refused tickets by steamship agents or turned away at the Canadian border. These trade representatives wrote regularly to the Department of Immigration and Col­oniz­ ation in Ottawa about particular cases, often emphasizing the difficult position in which they found themselves. Canadian immigration officials’ poor treatment of West Indian migrants, a product of enduring constructs of black peoples as “lazy, sexually over-active, criminally inclined, and genetically programmed for inferior status,”30 hampered the trade commissioner’s object of promoting Canada and fostering closer trade relations. Trade commissioners were agents of the Department of Trade and Com­ merce, not of Immigration and Colonization, so they were not equipped to deal with such inquiries. As Canada’s trade commissioner in Kingston, James Cormack, wrote to the deputy minister of immigration and coloniz­ ation in April 1925, “from time to time there is cropping up a peculiar situation which, I must confess, is very difficult for me to handle here.”31 The secretary of the local YWCA had recently brought a twenty-two-year-old Jamaican woman to Cormack’s office who had tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase a ticket to Canada, where she hoped to take up work in domestic service. The steamship agents in Kingston had refused to sell her a ticket unless she produced a permit from the Canadian government. In light of the Department of Immigration and Colonization’s ongoing efforts to attract immigrants for agricultural and domestic work, Cormack was somewhat confused by the government’s policy. It was “about as clear as mud.”32 Yet Cormack clearly recognized that immigration practices were contingent on assessments about a migrant’s colour. In introducing the case, Cormack disclosed in the first sentence that the young lady was “to all appearances white.”33 Like many other Jamaicans who had inquired at Cormack’s office, she was a British subject, possessed the funds necessary to purchase her ticket and to land, and planned to take up work in a field advertised as in demand in Canada. Having met the requirements, Cormack

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continued, “It puts me in a very awkward position here when they come and complain. All the time the people are reading that Canada wants desirable immigrants, and a closer rapprochement between Canada and the British West Indies is loudly advocated. Can I tell Jamaicans that they are not wanted in Canada?”34 Deputy minister of immigration W.J. Egan’s answer was yes. Being “to all appearances” white, which seemed to suggest a questionable whiteness, was apparently sufficient cause to land a prospective immigrant in the undesirable category. Egan told Cormack, however, that this could hardly be stated explicitly or publicly.35 As Cormack recognized, immigration officials’ discrimination against West Indians of colour was inopportune in the spring, summer, and fall of 1925 because Canada and the West Indies were in the midst of negotiating a trade agreement. West Indian delegates travelled to Ottawa in the summer to draft the agreement, and debates over its ratification were ongoing in the various West Indian legislatures in the fall. Only a few weeks after the trade delegates left Ottawa, the case of Mercy Ann Holness – a sixteen-year-old Jamaican girl who was reportedly mistreated by Canadian immigration officials – erupted in the media and cast a dark cloud over the trade negotiations. With her mother recently deceased and her father ill, Mercy Ann had travelled to Canada in the middle of August to live with her older sister in Toronto. According to the Toronto Daily Star (hereafter, the Star), she was “held practically as a prisoner for five days and five nights in the Montreal immigration quarters, fed on bread and tea and sardines, [and] refused leave to wire her sister in Toronto.”36 In an interview with the Star, her sister claimed that Mercy Ann had been detained on account of her colour. Immigration officials had apparently interrogated her about her parentage and “demanded to know whether she was not black.”37 Mercy Ann was eventually released and took up residence with her sister in Toronto. But the incident – which received considerable attention in Jamaica’s leading newspaper, the Daily Gleaner, and in the island’s legislative council, with both calling on the Canadian government to investigate and account for the girl’s mistreatment – prompted many Jamaicans to reevaluate their relationship with Canada. The allegations reported in the Star were later reprinted on the front page of the Daily Gleaner,38 to which the Department of Immigration quickly responded through Cormack. According to deputy minister Egan, Mercy Ann arrived in Montreal on the Canadian Forester on the evening of Thursday, August 13, 1925, and was examined by a board of enquiry the following day. She was held for five days because “Saturday and Sunday

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intervened” and the department consequently did not receive “assurances that she was to be looked after” by her sister until Tuesday morning. “I wonder if it is suggested,” Egan asked, “that the Department should allow girls of 16 to wander away by themselves without investigation as to their supposed destinations. Is the Department to be blamed for taking steps to protect girls arriving in this country unaccompanied by any adult?”39 To the charges that Mercy Ann was denied her baggage and fed on a meagre diet, Egan responded that the girl apparently declined the offer to have her baggage brought up by the steamship agent and chose to consume only bread and sardines despite the wholesome variety of other foods offered. Daily Gleaner editor Herbert George DeLisser roundly criticized and satirized Egan’s explanation. Mercy Ann “disdained her personal belongings. She wished for no change of raiment. She hadn’t a hair brush or a comb in the room in which she was put, but she wanted none of her own ... They spread dainties before her, but only sardines would she condescend to look upon. What a girl!” And what of the five-day delay? “On Friday, of course, [the immigration officials] had to prepare for the Saturday and Sunday’s rest, and on Monday, we presume, they had to recover from the consequences of that rest.”40 DeLisser took a more serious tone in drawing attention to what Egan had neglected to address: the immigration officials’ “strict enquiry into her racial origins.”41 Mercy Ann’s sister, Mrs. E.J. Dawes, had informed the Star that she and her sister “come of white parents,” but Mercy, according to the reporter who visited her at the immigration quarters, was “a dark-skinned girl” and thus was interrogated about her parentage and colour.42 To DeLisser and Mrs. Dawes, these questions were irrelevant and offensive. Why should they be raised when Mercy Ann was an English subject, born in a British dominion? A Jamaican of African and Jewish descent, DeLisser served as Daily Gleaner editor for forty years. He wrote novels, founded the annual journal Planter’s Punch, and served as chairman of the Institute of Jamaica, an organization dedicated to the promotion of Jamaican culture. He also served as the general secretary of the Jamaica Imperial Association, which, in affiliation with London’s West India Committee, aimed to develop the island’s commercial and agricultural potential.43 DeLisser’s observations about the Mercy Holness incident underlined the hypocrisy of British imperial relations. The bonds of empire that guided commercial relations did not apply to migration if the migrants in question were not of European descent. “We have understood for some time that Canada has shut her doors on West Indians,” DeLisser wrote, “and all the rubbish talked by hot-air politicians

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cannot disguise that fact.” Canadians had the right to decide who could enter their country, he continued, but they must not assume that “we are to be deceived by their professions of brotherly love; we are not quite the fools they take us to be.” 44 The brother metaphor had limited applicability and could just as easily be turned on its head: Big brothers bullied their younger siblings; they stole their possessions and refused to share their own. When Jamaica’s legislative council assembled on October 21, 1925, to discuss the proposed trade agreement with Canada, the Mercy Ann Holness case received considerable attention. Deputy minister Egan’s explanation, published in the Daily Gleaner the previous week, was thought inadequate. Council members resolved to press the Canadian government for a more detailed explanation of the girl’s experience, asking them to account in particular for the five-day detention. As they shifted the discussion to the trade treaty, some council members expressed similar misgivings about Canada’s big brother rhetoric. When Theophilus Wint, elected member for Saint Ann, who voted against the treaty, remarked that Jamaicans had heard a great deal about the great dominion of Canada, the big brother to the West Indies, he set off a debate about which anthropomorphism was more apt to describe Canada’s relation to the West Indies: the big brother or the big sister. Canada “was of such doubtful character that no one seemed to know its sex,” and thus Wint “preferred neither to say he, nor she, but it.” 45 Wint, the Daily Gleaner reported, was “very doubtful about that brotherly love” they had heard so much about.46 As the legislative council awaited a response from the Canadian government about the Mercy Holness incident, DeLisser continued to editorialize about Canada’s relationship with the West Indies. To him, Canada’s racial discrimination against West Indian immigrants called for a reevaluation of the Canada–West Indies commercial relationship. Upon close examination, was the proposed treaty really doing the West Indies any commercial favours? Was Canada’s big brother rhetoric masking what was in effect a bad deal?47 When it was announced in November 1924 that a Canadian delegation would soon visit Jamaica to initiate discussion of a new treaty, the implication that Canada would, in brotherly spirit, make sizable concessions to the West Indies, was bantered about – as it had been prior to the treaties of 1912 and 1920. The purpose of the visit, according to Nova Scotia delegate Hance Logan, “is not to drive a hard bargain, but to hold out to Jamaica, the big British brother to the South, the hand of friendship.”48 But West Indians should not, counselled Jamaican Theo McKay, permit this kind of imperial gush to cloud their judgment. “We should not allow sentiment –

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‘hands across the ocean,’ ‘trade within the Empire,’ ‘brothers under the flag’ ... to drug us into giving away much for little, into making a 25 year bargain which we will rue.” Jamaica had too often been bested in such negotiations, been a victim of “ill-digested and not-well-considered agreements.”49 But McKay had a point. The results of earlier trade treaties had been mixed for both Canada and the West Indian colonies, with some industries and regions faring better than others.50 The bonds of empire suggested that West Indians should trade with Canada rather than the United States, but to many West Indians, fostering trade relations with the United States made better commercial sense. The United States was geographically closer and, generally speaking, offered better transport rates and facilities, a substantially larger market for West Indian exports (with the exception of sugar, which was shut out of the US market for most of the twentieth century), and a wider range of manufactured goods at cheaper prices than what Canadian manufacturers could offer. For those colonies that produced primary export commodities other than sugar, like Jamaica, Trinidad, and some of the Windward Islands, the United States was a better trading partner.51 Echoing McKay’s perspective, DeLisser stressed that trade agreements were business propositions that need not have “sentimental slush” injected into them. As the Mercy Ann Holness case made clear, imperial sentiment was a sham; commercial agreements promoted in the name of such sentiment should be carefully scrutinized. “Canada is doing us no favour to trade with us on a preferential basis,” DeLisser averred, “for unless Canada received a preference in the British West Indies she would be completely shut out of our markets ... consequently there is no reason why the British West Indies should assume towards Canada a spaniel’s attitude, or why Canada should imagine that it is conferring more benefits upon these colonies than we confer upon the Dominion.”52 The Canadian government’s response to the legislative council’s query arrived early in 1926 and was put before the council on February 17. This time the response came directly from Canada’s Department of External Affairs. Under-Secretary O.D. Skelton assured the council that an investigation was conducted immediately after the Star published its report on Mercy Holness’s experience. The results of the investigation confirmed that the Star report was “completely at variance with the facts.” Skelton did not respond explicitly to the allegation that Mercy had been interrogated about her parentage and racial origins. He addressed the issue in a roundabout way, by stating that the handling of Mercy’s case was “identical in every respect with the course followed in other cases of unaccompanied young

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women, regardless of whether they come from the British Isles or elsewhere.”53 As to the question of why Mercy was held for five days, Skelton explained that it was an unfortunate consequence of the heavy volume of business going through the Department of Immigration and Colonization. Satisfied with Skelton’s explanation, Jamaica’s legislative council ceased discussion of the Mercy Holness incident. The council had, in fact, ratified the terms of the Canada–West Indies agreement a few months before it received Skelton’s response, which suggests that the Holness case did not seriously threaten the outcome of the trade negotiations. Yet West Indians’ criticism of Canada’s racialized immigration practices and their calls to the Canadian government to account for these practices were nonetheless significant. They underline the racial tensions that structured the Canada–West Indies relationship and consequently unsettle the conventional interpretation that Canada wooed the West Indies into a commercial agreement by emphasizing the bonds of empire. Canadian discrimination against West Indian migrants, as West Indian critics made plain, exposed the contradictions and hollowness of the imperial bond and the limits of brotherly love.

Conclusion The British imperial framework that linked Canada and the British West Indies was an historical fact. This framework gave rise to the imperial preference system and the characterization – both historical and historiographical – of the Canada–West Indies relationship as special. Problematically, however, the historiographical articulation of this characterization presumes the absence of racial ideas and attitudes. As colonial studies scholars have demonstrated over the past few decades, imperial relations were always ordered by the rule of difference, particularly along lines of race, gender, and class.54 Marked by conflict and contestation across these divides, imperial relations were always in a state of flux, of renegotiation. Examining early twentieth-century West Indian migration to Canada in the same interpretive frame as Canada–West Indies trade relations brings the contested and racialized dynamics of these relations into plain sight. It demonstrates that Can­ada’s role in the West Indies in the early twentieth century was not guided by imperial friendship and disinterested benevolence but by paternalism and self-interest. These racialized dynamics may well have implications for our understanding of Canada’s trajectory on the world stage during the twentieth century, especially with regard to the cultivation of Canada’s liberal internationalist

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tradition after the Second World War. While the big white brother metaphor may have lost currency in these postwar decades (at least explicitly), Can­ada’s early twentieth-century expressions of obligation in the British West Indies might be interpreted, in future research, as early expressions of the do-good image that emerged after the Second World War. Much like early twentieth-century declarations of Canada’s obligation in the West Indies, this do-good image belies – as the chapters by Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) and Ryan Touhey (Chapter 8) in this collection demonstrate – the racialized assumptions and practices that generated and sustained liberal internationalism post-1950s. The rhetoric of international relations may have changed in the postwar decades, but the racialized thinking of the prewar years remained in evidence well into the latter half of the twentieth century. NOTES 1 J.H. Momsen, “Canada-Caribbean Relations: Wherein the Special Relationship?” Political Geography 11, 5 (1992): 501–13; B. Tennyson, “The British West Indies and Mackenzie King’s National Policy in the 1920s,” Journal of Caribbean History 24, 1 (1990): 65–88; N.C. Quigley, “The Bank of Nova Scotia in the Caribbean, 1889–1940,” Business History Review 63, 4 (1989): 797–838; S. Carrington, “The United States and Canada: The Struggle for the British West Indian Trade,” Social and Economic Studies 37, 1/2 (1988): 69–105; R. Chodos, The Caribbean Connection: The DoubleEdged Canadian Presence in the West Indies (Toronto: Lorimer, 1977); R.A. Shields, “Canada, The Foreign Office and the Caribbean Market 1884–1895,” Dalhousie Review 58, 4 (1978–79): 703–22; and P.K. Newman, “Canada’s Role in West Indian Trade Before 1912,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 14, 1 (1960): 25–49. 2 O.M. Hill, Canada’s Salesman to the World: The Department of Trade and Commerce, 1892–1939 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977), 277. 3 Foster describes his trade mission in George E. Foster Family Papers, West Indies, Description and Travel, 1890–1921, Library of Archives Canada (LAC), MG 27 II D7, vol. 106. Canada’s participation in the Jamaica Exhibition is outlined by Honorary Commissioner Adam Brown in Report of the Honorary Commissioner representing Canada at the Jamaica Exhibition, held at Kingston Jamaica, 1891 (Ottawa: Brown Chamberlin, 1891). 4 A. Brown, lecture at Exhibition Hall (Jamaica), April 22, 1891, and in “Dominion of Canada. Full Report of the Lecture Delivered in Exhibition Hall by Adam Brown,” Daily Gleaner, April 25, 1891. On efforts to expand Canadian trade with the West Indies during the 1890s, see also LAC, Department of Trade and Commerce fonds, RG 20, vol. 1085, file 793; and RG 20-A-1, vol. 1090, file 1234; vol. 1157, file 5346; and vol. 1172, file 5870. 5 I.N.F., “A Canadian Flirtation,” Daily Gleaner, July 13, 1891. 6 P.J. Hudson, “Imperial Designs: The Royal Bank of Canada in the Caribbean,” Race and Class 52, 33 (2010): 38. See P. Hastings, “Territorial Spoils, Transnational Black

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Resistance, and Canada’s Evolving Autonomy during the First World War,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 47, 94 (2014): 443–70. 7 Hill, Canada’s Salesman to the World; Carrington, “The United States and Canada,” 69–105; Newman, “Canada’s Role in West Indian Trade Before 1912,” 25–49; Shields, “Canada, The Foreign Office and the Caribbean Market,” 703–22; B. Tennyson, “The British West Indies,” 65–88; G. Donaghy and B. Muirhead, “‘Interests but no Foreign Policy’: Canada and the Commonwealth Caribbean, 1941–1966,” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, 3 (2009): 275–94. 8 J. Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 15. 9 See N. Kelley and M. Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Can­adian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); V. Knowles, Stran­ gers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration Policy, 1540–1997 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1997), 85; and R. Winks, The Blacks in Canada (Montreal/Kingston: McGillQueen’s Press, 1997), 306–7. 10 Immigration Act, 1910, S.C. 1910, s. 38. 11 R.B. Shepard, Deemed Unsuitable: Blacks from Oklahoma Move to the Canadian Prairies in Search of Equality in the Early 20th Century, Only to Find Racism in their New Home (Toronto: Umbrella Press, 1997); A. Calliste, “Race, Gender and Canadian Immigration Policy: Blacks from the Caribbean, 1900–1932,” Journal of Canadian Studies 28, 4 (1993/94): 134. 12 Department of the Interior, Annual Reports (1912–15), quoted in Calliste, “Race, Gender and Canadian Immigration Policy,” 135. 13 L.M. Fortier to W.D. Scott, July 27, 1914; June 30, 1915; and August 8, 1914, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 1, file 81066. 14 E.P. Mousir to W.D. Scott, August 29, 1914, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 1, file 81066. 15 Scott to Mousir, September 6, 1914, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 1, file 81066. 16 Scott to Fortier, August 10, 1916, and Fortier to Scott, June 14, 1916, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 2, file 81066. 17 Minutes of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, August 3, 1916, as reported in the Daily Chronicle (Demerara, British Guiana), August 4, 1916. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 “Discrimination against Coloured Emigrants for Canada,” Barbados Advocate, June 26, 1917, quoted in O’Hara to Scott, July 17, 1917, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 2, file 810666. 22 Scott to W.W. Cory, November 16, 1916, RG 76, vol. 566, part 2, file 81066. 23 M. Lake, “The White Man under Siege: New Histories of Race in the Nineteenth Cen­ tury and the Advent of White Australia,” History Workshop Journal 58 (2004): 45. 24 “Canada and the Coloured People,” Daily Chronicle, August 4, 1916. 25 Ibid. 26 Quoted in ibid. 27 Clements to Governor General of Canada, December 8, 1916; Annual Report of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, 1917, quoted in “Canada and the Colour Question,” West India Committee Circular, October 4, 1917.

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28 West Indian protests against Canada’s restrictive immigration policies, as documented in the records of the Department of Immigration, decreased markedly in the years immediately following the end of the war. See LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, parts 1–3, file 81066. 29 Tennyson, “The British West Indies,” 68. 30 J.W. St.G. Walker, The West Indians in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1984), 9. 31 Cormack to Egan, April 9, 1925, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 3, file 81066. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Egan to Cormack, April 24, 1925, LAC, RG 76, vol. 566, part 3, file 81066. 36 “Immigrant Girl Held Virtually as Prisoner,” Toronto Daily Star, August 21, 1925. 37 Ibid. 38 “Jamaica Girl Held the Same as Prisoner,” Daily Gleaner, September 23, 1925. 39 W.J. Egan, quoted in “The Other Side,” Toronto Daily Star, August 22, 1925, and reprinted in Daily Gleaner, October 17, 1925. In a letter from Egan to J. Cormack, October 1, 1925, as reproduced in the Daily Gleaner on October 17, 1925, under the title “Letter from Canada,” Egan encloses and asks Cormack to send to the Gleaner the Department of Immigration and Colonisation’s version of the Mercy Holness story, as recounted in the Star article of August 22, 1925. 40 “Mr. Egan Explains,” Daily Gleaner, October 17, 1925. 41 Ibid. 42 “Immigrant Girl Held Virtually as Prisoner,” Toronto Daily Star. 43 Herbert George DeLisser, Biographical Notes Collection, National Library of Ja­ maica, Kingston. See also W. Adolphe Roberts, Biographical Sketches of Six Great Jamaicans (Kingston, JA: Pioneer Press, 1952), 104–22. 44 “Mr. Egan Explains,” Daily Gleaner. 45 “Canada-W.I. Treaty is Ratified by the Legislature,” Daily Gleaner, October 23, 1925. 46 Ibid. 47 “Information Wanted,” Daily Gleaner, October 24, 1925. 48 Logan to Cormack, October 15, 1924, reprinted in “Coming Visit of Canadian Delegation,” Daily Gleaner, November 5, 1924. 49 U. Theo McKay, letter to the editor, Daily Gleaner, July 13, 1925. 50 See Hill, Canada’s Salesman to the World, 148–56, 273–78. 51 See Carrington, “The United States and Canada,” 101. 52 “Information Wanted,” Daily Gleaner. 53 O.D. Skelton to the Governor of Jamaica, December 5, 1925, reprinted in “Statement of Canadian Under-Secretary Before Jamaica Legislature,” Daily Gleaner, February 20, 1926. 54 P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

2

Asian Canadians and the First World War Challenging White Supremacy JOHN PRICE

In an era of declared multiculturalism, both the Canadian government and Asian Canadian communities have highlighted stories of soldiers from their communities in Canadian military endeavours. As evidenced by commemorations of the First World War, such efforts continue as they do in other northern countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Although important as correctives to conventional military narratives, adding the stories of serving Asians to the roster of the Allied war effort can at times obscure more than it illuminates. In this chapter, I provide an initial survey of Asian Canadian communities during the First World War by documenting a number of participants’ stories, comparing community participation in and reactions to the war, and analyzing the respective responses in the context of the transnational factors at play. The results suggest that the respective Japanese, Chinese, and South Asian communities demonstrated diverse and divergent reactions to the war that were closely linked to their positions within Canada and also to the respective positions of their homelands in the context of global coloniality. An outpouring of imperial sympathy marked the onset of war in early August 1914, and the Canadian government moved promptly to create a Can­adian Expeditionary Force. Prompted by patriotism and adventure, many of British heritage stepped up to defend their homeland and the empire. But for those of Asian heritage in British Columbia, nothing was that easy.

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The War and Asian Canadians He believed he was fighting for justice, but his life ended in the hangman’s noose on November 14, 1916, in Mandalay prison in British Burma. Born in India, in 1884, in the village of Sahri, Hoshiarput, Harnam Singh had soldiered in the British Indian army for eighteen months before leaving India to take up a job with an electric tram company in Hong Kong.1 Three years later he left to seek his fortune in Canada, arriving in Victoria in August 1907. Like many others coming to Canada, the border between Canada and the United States was an imaginary line, and he crossed it frequently, both to pursue educational opportunities in Seattle and to organize for what would become his lifelong dream – India’s freedom from British rule. Moving to Vancouver in 1909, Harnam Singh came into contact with other Indian expatriates, including G.D. Kumar, Taraknath Das, and Bhai Balwant Singh, all of whom had concluded that the systemic discrimination faced by Indians in Canada derived from India’s colonized status in the British Empire. He had joined the Hindustan Association in 1909 and helped establish the Swadesh Sewak Home in New Westminster that taught English to the many Sikh residents in the area. It also became an incubator for revolutionary anticolonialism, which fused with the movement for social justice, leading to the creation of the Hindustan Association of the Pacific Coast in 1913, often better known by its flagship journal, Gadar (Mutiny), to which Harnam Singh contributed essays and cartoons. This fledgling revolutionary, anti-imperial movement would attract significant support within the Indian communities in Amer­ ica. Indeed, to the British Criminal Intelligence Office at the time, it seemed “that a considerable proportion of the Indian settlers in America look upon armed rebellion in India as both desirable and practicable.”2 The arrival of the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru, carrying 376 Indian passengers seeking entry into Canada in May 1914, and the virtual imprisonment of the passengers on the ship until its expulsion two months later, cemented Harnam Singh and many other Indo-Canadians’ conviction that justice was not to be had in Canada or anywhere in the British Empire until India became independent. During the Komagata Maru saga, Harnam Singh and three others crossed the border at Sumas, Washington, to meet with their comrades in the United States and to purchase arms for an up­ rising in India. Even though it was legal to purchase such weapons, US authorities arrested Harnam Singh and his companions. With the assistance of Canadian authorities, the United States placed Harnam Singh under detention, accusing him of having illegally entered the United States, and finally deported him to India on September 26, 1914.

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By this time, the British had declared war on Germany and hundreds of Indian residents in the Pacific Northwest had heeded the call to take advantage of the war and raise the flag of revolution in India. Fearful of losing control and wary of the revolutionaries’ call to ally with Germany against the empire, the British Indian government passed continuous repressive measures to deal with the perceived crisis. Arresting thousands, the British moved quickly to try and convict those it considered threats. Harnam Singh had escaped detention when the ship deporting him to India arrived in Yokohama. From there he travelled to Thailand (Siam), which was to be used as a rear base to conduct revolutionary propaganda among the fifteen thousand British Indian troops based in Burma. Harnam Singh travelled into northern Burma where he carried out covert education with the Indian troops. To the Muslim soldiers he passed on the Ottoman caliphate’s directive to fight the British Empire. British authorities arrested Harnam Singh at the Burma-Thai border. Despite a successful escape, he was recaptured and tried in the Burma conspiracy trial. The Canadian government dispatched a Victoria policeman, Ezra Carlow, to testify against him. Found guilty, Harnam Singh faced the gallows on November 14, 1916. The point of this story is to emphasize that not all British subjects were dedicated to the empire or to the fight against Germany and the AustroHungarian Empire. To be sure, revolutionaries such as Harnam Singh were a very small minority when we consider that nearly 1.5 million Indians served in the British forces during the war. Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss this ostensibly insignificant minority. They were among the first to identify the organic link between empire and racism; they acted as harbingers of global antiracism and retained strong support in the diasporic communities whence they came. In the wake of the Komagata Maru incident and exodus of many men back to India to take up arms, less than two thousand South Asians remained in Canada. Among them were some who felt obliged to take up arms in the cause of empire. John Baboo Singh decided to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force and he joined the 44th Battalion in early 1916, in Winnipeg. Arriving in France in early 1917, he joined in the battle at Vimy Ridge, where he suffered a severe leg wound. After several operations, he returned to Canada in late 1917 and was discharged shortly thereafter. His wound left one leg shorter than the other, and he required a cane to walk. He lived in Victoria with his family until his death in July 1948.3 His story remains the exception, as it appears only a dozen or so South Asians joined the war from Canada. These men fought in many of the major battles of the war including the Somme, Ypres,

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and Vimy Ridge. That so few South Asian soldiers joined the Canadian forces is not surprising given the small size of the community and the experiences at the hands of Canadian and British authorities. Yet those who wanted to enlist also faced the structural impediment of an unofficial colour bar in the military, particularly in British Columbia. Numerous scholars have identified that Canadian racism historically has been obscured by a shroud of silence.4 In this volume, as Paula Hastings’ study (Chapter 1) of Canada’s relations with the Caribbean during this same period underscores, the Canadian government’s penchant for obscuring its racist policies while simultaneously securing them meant that confusion reigned regarding recruitment of racialized peoples, including First Nations, during the war. The general yet unstated policy was that peoples of colour (racialized Indigenous peoples [First Nations, Metis, and Inuit], Asian Can­ adians and African Canadians) were not to be enlisted.5 However, the lack of specific regulations on the matter, and the diverse desires among the affected communities, meant that individual cases of enlistment did occur and, in some cases, led to the initial formation of segregated units of First Nations and African Canadian contingents that were later disbanded. The case of Japanese Canadians who wanted to join the Canadian military illustrates the hurdles faced by people of colour in this era and gives pause to the belief that the war had much to do with freedom or democracy.6 A soldier peers out of a photograph from the past, an army uniform accentuating the gentle eyes and fine features of a young man, Sainosuke Kubota.7 Born in Japan, Kubota came to Canada as a lad of fifteen to seek his fortune. In late 1915, when he was twenty-years old, he read the clarion call to arms carried in the Japanese language community newspaper Tairiku Nippō, (Continental Times). Working as a cook on Mayne Island, a transit point half way between Victoria and Vancouver, Kubota gladly left his job and headed to Vancouver to join the Japanese Volunteer Corps. The idea of such a corps had taken shape six months earlier as community leaders discussed how the community should relate to the Canadian war effort. Yamazaki Yasushi, who had pursued the legal case for the franchise with Homma Tomekichi in 1900 and later became editor of Tairiku Nippō, began to promote the creation of a corps of Japanese volunteers. On August 9, 1915, Yamazaki convened a meeting of community leaders at the offices of the newspaper, at which time the committee agreed with Yamazaki’s view – forming a Japanese Canadian contingent within the Canadian Expeditionary Force would be an important step in proving community loyalty to Canada and winning the franchise. Not all were convinced – for

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some the responsibility to fight only came after Japanese Canadians obtained the vote, not before. This remained a powerful argument that cut both ways. A day after the community meeting, Yamazaki wired Robert Borden in Ottawa, informing him that Japanese Canadians were prepared to enlist “to fight for King and Country.” Borden, who would go on to uphold the global colour line in the postwar settlement (as Francine McKenzie discusses in Chap­ter 3), replied, expressing appreciation for the telegram and informing the group that he would pass on the information to the minister of militia and defence. In the absence of a definitive reply, the group mulled over what to do and decided to push ahead, encouraged by Robert Colquhoun, a businessman and commanding officer of a reserve unit. On December 21, 1915, two community newspapers ran advertisements appealing for volunteers to join the Canadian army.8 Kubota and others responded, and by January 1916, over one hundred recruits had begun informal drilling under the watchful eye of Robert Colquhoun. The chief of the general staff, Sir Willoughby Garnons Gwatkin, had informed Yamazaki and Colquhoun that the militia had not authorized the formation of a formal Japanese volunteer corps. Undaunted, Yamazaki intensified recruitment efforts, housing the men in a rooming house and raising funds in the community to support the nascent corps. In late January, Lieutenant General Sam Hughes inspected the corps, in­ fusing them with excitement and optimism about their eventual acceptance into the army. They continued drilling despite having no weapons with which to train but on March 4, the minister of militia informed Yamazaki and Colquhoun that he could not authorize a Japanese Canadian battalion. Frustrated by the lack of movement, the volunteers reacted badly to taunts from others in the community and even went so far as to ransack the offices of the Kanada Shimpō (Canada News) when the newspaper criticized the corps for beating up one of its critics. The delay in gaining authorization and the negative media coverage of the March events prompted Yamazaki to travel to Ottawa in the hope of gaining recognition for the corps. This trip proved futile, and in the end the minister of militia informed Yamazaki that the corps could not be integrated. The ostensible reason was lack of faith that the community could form a whole battalion of one thousand men. However, the real reason, as James W. St.G. Walker documented twenty-five years ago, was abiding racism within the armed forces.9 Canadian recruitment policy in the First World War lifts the “curtain which typically covers Canadian racism” revealing the complexities involved in discriminating when officially it does not exist.10 For example, the

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militia council initially refused enlistment of First Nations peoples on the grounds that “Germans might refuse to extend to them the privileges of civilized warfare.”11 The chief of the general staff, Gwatkin, told commanding officers that personnel selection was their prerogative but proffered the additional perspective: “Would Canadian Negroes make good fighting men? I do not think so.”12 When challenged by African Canadians who wanted to enlist, the government asserted that there was no legislation or regulations preventing them from joining. Even when individual army officials stated that people of colour were welcome, the reality faced by those wanting to enlist demonstrated that systemic racism, often unstated in laws or regulations but deeply rooted in the culture of military institutions and attitudes of commanding officers, could have the same effect in creating a colour bar in the military. As the war dragged on and casualties mounted, however, the need to increase recruitment led to even further confusion. It initially appeared the military would allow the formation of a First Nations battalion and an African Canadian platoon, but local commanders undermined both proposals.13 Out of the confusion eventually came a military council decision to form a black labour battalion. As recruitment pressures mounted, local recruiting centres and commanders began to actively enlist people of colour. Thus, in May 1916, when the Japanese Volunteer Corps was disbanded, word quickly circulated that Alberta units were accepting Japanese Can­ adian recruits. Sainosuke Kubota, who had enough money for a train ticket to Calgary, was immediately recruited and eventually joined the 175th Overseas Battalion. In a memoir written forty years later, Kubota recalled, “One week later I was made the person in charge of recruiting Japanese Canadians living in Alberta and recruited five people. Next I was sent with first lieutenant Jones to recruit in Vancouver. In Vancouver and Steveston we gathered 21 people, all of whom wanted to be wearing a uniform when they left Vancouver.”14 Kubota then went to the Skeena region with Jones, where they recruited another twenty-three Japanese Canadians. According to Kubota, the “white people looked at us with surprise,” when the rookie soldiers departed the city in uniform. Kubota and his battalion went to the front and fought at Vimy Ridge and at Rheims. Injured, Kubota recovered in England. In July 1918, he returned to Canada where he became active in the movement for the franchise and lived a long and productive life. Other Japanese Canadians were not so lucky. Tamotsu Mikuriya, who also enlisted in Calgary with the 175th battalion, fought at Vimy Ridge and later suffered gas poisoning and shell shock, succumbing to his injuries.15 He

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was one of over two hundred Japanese Canadians who fought in the war, nearly all of them recruited in Alberta or other provinces. Fifty-four made the ultimate sacrifice, more than double the rate for the Canadian Exped­ itionary Force as a whole. In the community as well, the war became a means to building ties between communities, as a caption from a photo of white and Japanese Canadian women illustrates: “The women of many lands are today doing their share in fighting the Hun by working at home for the soldiers overseas. Above is shown a number of Japanese ladies of Vancouver with Canadian friends who are helping their ‘boys’ by knitting.”16 Japanese Canadians were not alone in their aspirations to serve. Wee Tan Louie’s determination to join the army is today legend.17 He was the third son of Chew Je Nuey and Lau Sze.18 When he was fourteen years old, he left his Shuswap home to work as a cattlehand on the Douglas Lake Cattle Ranch. After war broke out in 1914 he longed to enlist, but the colour bar in British Columbia meant that Chinese were not recruited. However, in 1917, his elder brother Wee Hong managed to enlist in Kamloops. According to the family history, Wee Tan decided his best chance for enlisting was to go to Alberta. So he saved enough money to buy a horse and travelled through the Rockies, a journey of three months, in order to enlist in Calgary on February 20, 1918. His name anglicized to William Thomas on his recruitment papers, they also indicated he was drafted under the Military Service Act, yet he had actually volunteered.19 Fleet of foot, he became a runner in the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion, serving in France, Holland, and Belgium. Wounded in action, he rehabilitated and returned to Canada in 1919 and was discharged from the service in April of that year. The war, states the family history, “made Wee Tan Louie a Canadian.”20 Using his war wages as his capital, Wee Tan Louie began a taxi service and engaged in the transportation business in British Columbia’s interior for the rest of his life. In 1931 he married Lillian Jim of the Little Fort Jim family. Wee Tan and Lillie remained in Ashcroft and consciously acculturated the family to local life. Somewhere between thirty and two hundred Chinese Canadians joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force.21 Chinese Canadians faced discriminatory barriers to enlistment, as had Japanese Canadians, which partly explains the relatively low enlistment rates. However, a comparison of coverage of the war in the Tairiku Nippō and the Dahan Gongbao (Chinese Times), a Vancouver-based community newspaper, reveals an important distinction in their respective news coverage in relation to the war. In the case of the former, the newspaper offered extended coverage of the war, both in

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relation to Canada and to Japan. In the case of the Dahan Gongbao, however, there was very little coverage of the war. This can be partially explained by the very different positions the two countries occupied in relation to the constellation of imperial forces. In the case of Japan, its leaders had aligned that country with Great Britain, and in 1902 the two powers signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a strategic military agreement that recognized their respective imperial claims in China and Korea and required them to come to the aid of the other in case of war involving more than one other power.22 The treaty was renewed in 1905 and 1911 with some modifications. On the basis of the treaty, the Japanese government responded positively to the British government’s request to seize German possessions in China and the Pacific Islands north of the equator. Australia would seize those islands south of the equator. The alliance manifested itself in British Columbia with the arrival of Japanese warships to protect the coast from possible German attacks. The province’s premier, who had earlier denounced any reliance on Japan as foolhardy, neatly reversed himself and welcomed the Japanese squadrons and their officers to Victoria.23 The war offered a temporary bridge between the two countries, one which the Japanese government and the Japanese commun­ ity were eager to use for their own purposes. Japan’s consul in Vancouver, Ukita Goji, travelled to Victoria, British Columbia, in July 1917 to cohost, with the shipping company Nippon Yusen Kaisha, a reception on board the large oceanliner Fushimi Maru for delegates to the Union of BC Municipalities then meeting in Victoria.24 Still, this did not stop some government officials from continuing to attack Asian Canadians. The BC minister of education, J.D. MacLean, declared before delegates to the Civic Improvement League, many of them Union of BC Municipalities delegates, that “the foreign sections in the cities of British Columbia are the great breeding-grounds for disease,” and “those Ori­ entals are in contact with citizens of every class every day”; thus new building regulations were essential.25 Provincial commissioner of Fisheries J.P. Babcock, in a similar fashion, exclaimed, “The housewife should not be obliged, as she has been in many cities on this continent, to pass through the slums of Chinatown and the dark corners of the waterfront to buy fish.”26 The following summer, Victoria’s residents woke up to the spectacle of a huge Japanese cruiser anchored off Ogden Point. The Japanese government had provided Prince Arthur of Connaught, a grandson of Queen Victoria, with trans-Pacific passage on their flagship, the Kirishima, which arrived in Victoria Harbour on July 24, 1918. The ship, with a crew of 1,100

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men and armed with eight fourteen-inch guns, had brought the prince across the Pacific from Japan at speeds exceeding twenty-five knots an hour.27 The prince had visited Japan in 1906, to invest the Emperor Meiji with the Order of the Garter in recognition of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The alliance had endured, and when the prince again visited Japan in 1918, the Japanese government offered him transportation across the Pacific. After arriving in Victoria, the prince took leave of his Japanese comrades the next morning, July 25, 1918, and “the wind carried for miles the lusty cheers from the Emperor’s sailors.” The Daily Colonist opined that Japan’s courtesy in providing such a marvellous ship was “an indication of the friendship which prevails between the British and Japanese peoples.”28 China, on the other hand, was a semicolony in the throes of revolution. The Chinese republic had formed after the Double Ten (10.10) revolution of 1911 toppled the Qing dynasty. The republic’s Parliament only convened in April 1913, by which time intense infighting between the leader of the revolution, Sun Yat-sen, and the military official, Yuan Shikai, erupted, leading to the 1913 summer rebellion and Sun’s flight from China. Yuan was confirmed as president on October 6, 1913, and he subsequently purged the Parliament of Sun supporters. New institutions, including the Council of State, had only begun to meet when Germany declared war on Great Britain, France, and Russia. The new republic, beset with continuing internal strife, faced Japan’s seizure of German-controlled Qingdao in September 1914 and its “Twenty-One Demands” the following year. In this context, it was understandable that China should remain aloof from the war. Yet the war had come to China. For the Vancouver-based Dahan Gongbao, devoted to China’s independence, the war held little attraction. However, the Chinese government did declare war on Germany in 1917, fearful of being left out of any peace agreement. Even prior to this declaration of war, Chinese labourers were being recruited. On April 2, 1917, the Empress of Russia arrived at William Head quarantine station, adjacent to Victoria Harbour. On board were nearly two thousand labourers who had travelled in cramped quarters on their threeweek journey across the Pacific from Qingdao.29 From Victoria, they would travel by either rail across Canada or ship via the Panama Canal and on to Europe. They were the first of a total of eighty-five thousand Chinese workers on their way to England and France as labour battalions. The British Empire’s huge losses in 1916 had prompted a rapid and expanding search for resources as manpower was channeled into cannon fodder at the front. Sir John Jordan, British ambassador in China, suggested raising a force of

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“10,000 coolies,” to support the British war effort.30 This was one part of a grand strategy to bolster the war effort. Yet the treatment of the Chinese while in Canada – kept in quarantined camps for weeks and transported in sealed railcars across the country – was hardly what one might have expected given their status as valuable allies in the war effort. Xu Guoqi, the author of the most authoritative study of the corps, concluded, “Canadians, as a whole, treated the Chinese in Canada badly and treated the Chinese labourers on their way to France even worse.”31

Conscription and Beyond The need for further resources prompted the Borden government to resort to conscription despite massive opposition in Quebec. When the Mil­ itary Service Act was passed in 1917, the regulations initially did not allow exemptions for First Nations peoples or other racialized groups. However, on January 17, 1918, the Borden government passed PC 111 that exempted both “Indians” (First Nations) and Japanese.32 On March 2, 1918, a further amendment was added exempting anyone without the right to vote.33 And on June 12, 1918, a further (but unnecessary) exemption for South Asians was added (PC 1459). Among those who suffered from the delays and ambiguities of the conscription regulations was Sokichi Hemmi. The Daily Col­ onist reported he had been arrested for failing to report for his physical examination and had appeared in court on July 5, 1918.34 A Christian, Hemmi was able to recruit the local Christian minister to go to bat for him, and eventually his case was dismissed.35 The major swings in recruitment policy – from discouraging enlist­ ment and then encouraging it, to conscription followed by exemptions – combined with the decentralized recruitment process meant that numerous peoples of colour, particularly First Nations, entered the Canadian army. Those who remained in Canada also found themselves in new roles. As the war drained men from the labour force into the military, and with military demand pushing economic growth, many Asian Canadians found employment in the mills, mines, or waters of British Columbia. For others, farming became a viable alternative, and many expanded the small businesses they were already operating. Mayo Singh and Kapoor Singh, for example, established and managed a sawmill, near Duncan, British Columbia, in 1918. The mill employed an ethnically diverse group of workers and gave rise to a small but stable South Asian community, sustained in these difficult times by the passage of a small concession allowing wives and children of South Asian residents in the dominions to join their husbands.36 The

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community, centred on the sawmill and later named Paldi after Mayo Singh’s native village, came to include families of Chinese, Japanese, European, and South Asian heritage.37 Japanese Canadians held a large proportion of fishing licenses on the coast, became a significant force in the lumber industry, particularly in logging, and were a key element in the agricultural workforce. This caused a continual backlash among some whites. For example, in the early years of the war, Kahachi Abe, Japan’s consul in Vancouver was constantly writing to municipal and provincial authorities to prevent a whites-only policy from being implemented in hotels and among pool hall operators.38 Chinese restaurant owners had to continually contend with protests, including in 1916 when Vancouver’s mayor and alderman complained that of approximately $1000 in meal vouchers for those on relief issued in February, over $600 worth of the vouchers had been used in Chinese restaurants!39 Asian Canadian barbers in Victoria defied a Wed­ nesday afternoon closing bylaw and were dragged into court where they faced fines of $10.40 Municipal authorities in Vancouver ordered Chinese vendors of market produce in that city to stop using pocket scales to weigh produce.41 This harassment, a continual nuisance during the war, was for the most part constrained, but the end of the war and the advent of returning soldiers would lead to a major assault against Asian Canadians.42 Despite the harassment, Asian Canadian communities in the latter stages of the war found themselves in a stronger position than previously. Many partook in the escalating labour actions of the era. For example, on July 17, 1917, hundreds of mill workers, the majority of Chinese heritage, who produced shingles, went on strike.43 The strikers, white and Chinese alike, united around the common demand for an eight-hour day. Instrumental in organizing the action was the Chinese Labour Association, formed in 1916 and with a membership of five to six hundred members within a year or two.44 Also present in the mills was One Big Union, which in the case of the 1917 strike, actually produced Chinese language leaflets. The mainstream labour journal, The BC Federationist, remarked that if unions could be “as sure of some of the married white workers as they are of the Chi­nese, there would be no difficulty in enforcing union conditions through­out the jurisdiction ... But at that, it’s a sight for the gods.”45 The employer threatened to replace the Chinese workers with white women, the only other labour source available at the time, given the war.46 Although unsuccessful in gaining the eight-hour day, the strike was a vector pointing toward a new dynamic in class solidarity. Chinese workers in Massett, British Columbia, engaged in a job action in August 1918 that saw thirty thousand salmon

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that had been caught go unprocessed. According to press reports, seventy Chi­nese and Indians had “tied up the plant” over wages.47 The war’s aftermath has been characterized as one of a labour revolt, and Asian Canadian workers were very much part of the upsurge leading to the founding of One Big Union and the 1919 general strikes. The Chinese Shingle Workers Union, affiliated with the Chinese Labour Association, struck the shingle mills on the West Coast in March 1919.48 The mill employers attempted to cut wages by 10 percent, provoking the walkout involving hundreds of workers, mainly of Chinese heritage. Negotiating on behalf of the Chinese Shingle Workers Union were Feng Shengguang and Lei Gen.49 Japanese Canadian workers began to organize as well, and in May 1920, Japanese and Chinese workers joined white workers who had gone on strike at Swanson Bay.50 Jobs, increasing solidarity across communities, and pride in wartime contributions gave Asian Canadian communities a new-found confidence and many began to call for the franchise. This was part of a general challenge to white supremacy on a global scale that occurred after the war. It would be met both locally and internationally with a violent reassertion of power by an Anglo-American alliance determined to preserve a racialized imperial hierarchy.

The Franchise and Resurgent Racism In 1917, white women in British Columbia won the right to vote after a referendum and that year’s provincial election that saw the Liberal Party replace the Conservatives. Interestingly, only men voted in the referendum on whether women should get the vote, casting 43,619 in favour and 18,604 opposed.51 Whether this was a reflection of an enlightened male constituency or a quest for racial solidarity requires further research.52 On the federal level, the question of enfranchisement had come to the fore during the First World War mainly because of the Conservative government’s declining support as the war dragged on. The Borden government went to the polls in 1917 with conscription (the Military Service Act had been introduced on August 29, 1917) as the main issue. To bolster support, Borden brought in three measures related to voting rights: He disenfranchised aliens of enemy countries naturalized after 1902 (affecting a large group of Ukrainian Canadians); he allowed soldiers’ votes to be apportioned to any riding; and he gave the franchise to women who were British subjects with a relative serving in the Canadian or British military. Although some historians have suggested this was “a fundamental step towards securing the vote for all women in Canada,” 53 this was not necessarily the case, as we shall see.

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As early as 1917, the Canadian Japanese Association engaged the ser­ vices of Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper to press their case for the franchise on the provincial level.54 This initial campaign was unsuccessful. The Chi­ nese community also pressed for the franchise on the federal level in 1919 and 1920, with little to show for it.55 In 1919, Japanese Canadian veterans launched their campaign to gain the franchise for those who survived the war, initially with some success. By February 1920, Japanese Canadian veterans had petitioned the members of the BC legislature to grant them the right to vote. A delegation then met with the cabinet. At the table with the Japanese Canadian veterans was A.M. Whiteside, their lawyer, and Ian Mackenzie, a captain and veteran representing the Vancouver branch of the Great War Veterans Association (GWVA), who, according to press reports, pressed the government to accept that the veterans had fulfilled the essentials of citizenship and should be extended the franchise.56 The legislature debated the new franchise bill that included a clause enfranchising Japanese Canadian veterans during its second reading in March 1920, and immediately Member of the Legislative Assembly for Fort George W.R. Ross expressed his opposition to enfranchisement of Japanese Can­ adians, for it “involved serious matters of policy and was not in conformity with the policies of the past.”57 The bill, pointed out Ross, did not grant the franchise to “Hindus and other East Indians, British subjects, who served the Empire in the war, nor to those Indians of the Province, many of whom enlisted and served overseas.” The debate intensified on March 11, when the MLA for Delta, J.A. MacKenzie, asserted that the Vancouver GWVA did not represent the majority opinion of returned soldiers, to which the MLA for Alberni, R.J. Burde, burst out, “Hear, hear.”58 Outside the legislature, women’s organizations lined up with the GWVA to actively pursue the issue. The Women’s Canadian Club formally endorsed a protest letter against enfranchisement for Japanese Canadian veterans. At its root, stated the woman’s group, the issue was one that concerned “the very woof and fabric of the Anglo-Saxon civilization.”59 They strongly disapproved of any measure granting the vote to the “Japanese or Chinese on any grounds whatsoever,” because to do so fundamentally meant the “jeopardizing of our racial traditions and the undermining of Christianity.” BC premier John Oliver told the press that the proposal had been included in the new franchise act only because of a request from the GWVA. Debate resumed in the legislature on March 16, 1920. The MLA for Fernie, A.I. Fisher, argued that at the Paris Peace Conference, the “Japanese representatives made every effort to have their nationals placed upon the

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same footing as those of the other countries,” and “Japan would never cease her efforts to have her people admitted into other countries on equal footing with the nationals of those countries.”60 While Fisher stated he was ready to pay tribute to Japan’s war efforts and to those men who enlisted with the Canadian forces, “he failed to see why the Provincial Legislature should adopt other than a stand for a white British Columbia,” given that the peace conference had refused to accede to the demands made by Japan. Kamloops MLA F.W. Anderson, however, objected to this line of reasoning and argued that the veterans should have the right to vote. The bill subsequently moved into committee. In the meantime, debate surfaced in letters to the editor. C.T. Dupont of Saanich queried the numerous women’s organizations opposing the vote for returned Japanese soldiers: Had they not “fought for them shoulder to shoulder with their own men, and left hundreds buried in Flanders Fields?”61 The indefatigable Harry Hastings, of Chinese and British heritage, also chastised those opposed and warned that China would become important. That country was “still putting her faith in the Anglo-Saxon, but the unreliability of the Anglo-Saxon had been shown up at the peace conference by the Japanese demand for racial equality, failing which she insisted upon her Shantung compact, and the Allies threw over China.”62 A week later, Burges J. Gadsden, in a letter to the editor, argued for the franchise: “The color of a man’s skin is not a matter for consideration in this case, and no comrade could call the blood they (the Japanese) so freely shed anything but as red as his own.”63 As the debate surged, an unsigned article, “Japanese and Enfranchisement – Why Many Women Are Opposed,” appeared in the April 4, 1920, edition of the Daily Colonist. Declaring that “woman is the guardian of the race’s chastity, and, as Anglo-Saxons today there is a duty devolving upon us ... Three things we stand for, as the mothers of this generation and of the generations yet unborn – The purity of the white race, the standards of Anglo-Saxon civilization and the ethics of Christianity.”64 As pressure mounted on Oliver’s government, the premier delayed passage of the bill while he conferred with the GWVA. A delegation appeared before cabinet on March 13, 1920. The next day Oliver announced that he would withdraw the clause enfranchising Japanese Canadian veterans “upon representations of the members of the GWVA of Vancouver, the same body that first pressed for it, and upon the recommendation of whom it had been included in the first place.”65 What is interesting in this story is that some white folks and even an MLA clearly expressed solidarity with the veterans. The premier was apparently predisposed to support the measure. However, the alliance of returned

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veterans’ organizations with those representing white women effectively killed any chance the proposal may have had. Japanese Canadian veterans were determined that their sacrifices not be forgotten, however, and a few days before the BC premier withdrew the franchise clause, veterans and supporters gathered in Stanley Park to unveil a memorial to those who had served.66

Conclusion The defeat of enfranchisement of Japanese Canadian veterans was a watershed in the history of racism and marked a turning point in both British Columbia and Canada. It marked the determination of white supremacists to regain control after Asian Canadians had made economic and political inroads during the war. This was a dynamic equally apparent in the response to Haudenosaunee diplomacy at the League of Nations that David Webster (Chapter 11) explores in his contribution to this volume. In making the decision to go to war in 1914, the British Empire unleashed forces over which it had limited control. The unintended consequences were significant. Japan’s imperial aspirations led to further expansion in China and in the South Pacific as it took over former German possessions. Though worrisome to both the British and American governments, little could be done given the demands of the war in Europe. Those demands also obliged the British and their allies to mobilize peoples of colour, particularly as the war continued and casualties mounted. This caused some confusion in colonial settler states, Canada being a case in point. The Canadian government was reluctant to allow racialized people to enlist in the armed forces. But here, too, the unintended consequences of the war made themselves felt. Some men from these communities demanded the right to enlist. Some minority groups, particularly the Japanese Canadian and African Canadian communities, also saw advantages to enlistment, although even in these communities there was never consensus. Nevertheless, such pressures had an impact on the military, creating confusion in the existing exclusion policy as informal as it might have been. Skyrocketing casualty rates further exacerbated the tensions. For the Chinese and South Asian communities, however, the situation differed. A strong current of antipathy to the war shaped the responses in these communities, a differential closely related to the colonized status of the homelands. Many still contributed to the war effort by working in war industries. The end of the war brought new dynamics, including the need for imperial regimes to deal with the unintended consequences. The denial of the franchise to Japanese Canadians was but one reflection of a

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general movement, driven by the emerging Anglo-American alliance, to reassert white supremacy on both local and global levels. NOTES 1 This brief account of Harnam Singh’s life is based on S. Sohi, Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); I. Singh and S. Chakravarty, The Gadar Heroics: The Forgotten Saga of Overseas Indians Who Staked Their Lives to Free India from the British (New Delhi: India Empire Publications, 2013). 2 Criminal Intelligence Office, “Draft Circular,” Simla, April 1914, 14, British Library, L/P&J/12/1- Public and Judicial (S) Department. 3 I thank Sharanjit Sandhra for background information on John Baboo and other Sikh veterans. David Gray researched the Sikh soldiers’ story in preparing a documentary film, Canadian Soldier Sikhs: A Little Story in a Big War (Metcalfe, ON: Grayhound Information Services, 2012), accompanied by a website of the same title, http://canadiansoldiersikhs.ca/. 4 C. Backhouse, Colour Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/University of Toronto Press, 1999); J.W. St.G. Walker, “Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo, ON: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997). 5 J.W. St.G. Walker wrote an insightful article on this nearly twenty-five years ago, “Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of Visible Minorities in the Canadian Expeditionary Force,” Canadian Historical Review 70, 1 (1989): 1–26. 6 Community historians have been mainly responsible for telling the stories of Japan­ ese Canadian efforts to enlist during the war. See R. Ito, We Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First and Second World Wars (Stitts­ville, ON: Canada’s Wings, 1984); K. Kishibe, Battlefield at Last: The Japanese Canadian Volunteers of the First World War, 1914–1918 (Toronto: Kaye Kishibe, 2007); G.G. Nakayama, Issei: Stories of Japanese Canadian Pioneers (Toronto: NC Press, 1984). The most important Japanese language source for this period is S. Toshiji, Kanada iminshi shiryo (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1995–2001), 1–3. See also K. Miyoko, Yellow Soldiers (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1983). 7 Kubota’s story comes from Ito, We Went to War and a short memoir by Kubota, “Reminiscences of Sainosuke Kubota,” September 30, 1958, UBC Japanese Canadian Research Collection, II/7/1, 3. My thanks to Linda Reid, Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, for bringing this article to my attention. 8 Quoted in Ito, We Went to War, 20. 9 Walker, “Race and Recruitment in World War I,” 7. 10 Ibid., 3. 11 Ibid., 5. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 11. 14 Kubota, “Reminiscences of Sainosuke Kubota,” 3.

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15 Correspondence of Tamotsu Kuriya to his parents in Japan, 1916–17. My appreciation to Takamura Hiroko for sharing this original correspondence. 16 Vancouver Daily Sun, February 27, 1918. 17 This story is derived from a family history written by S.B. Louie, The Golden Journey (S.B. Louie, n.d. [1992?]). Many thanks to Edna Chow, Wee Tan Louie’s niece, for providing me with a copy of the family story. See also Department of National Defence, Fighting for Canada: Chinese and Japanese Canadians in Military Service (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2003). 18 Wee Tan Louie’s father, Chew Je Nuey (hereafter, Ah Chew), was born in 1838 in Kaiping (Hoy Ping-Canton). He left his impoverished family at the ripe age of eleven, setting off for Guangzhou (Canton), where he eventually boarded an Amer­ ican ship bound for San Francisco to make his fortune in the gold fields. Fortunes were hard to find, and when the gold fields ran dry Ah Chew found his way to British Columbia, first to Victoria and then to Yale. When gold there ran out, Ah Chew walked 480 miles from Yale to Barkerville, landing there in 1863. He later homesteaded in the Shuswap area. 19 Wee Tan Louie’s enlistment documents are available online at http://www.bac-lac. gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918 -cef/Pages/image.aspx?Image=470472a&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fdata2.archives. ca%2fcef%2fgpc009%2f470472a.gif&Ecopy=470472a. 20 S.B. Louie, Golden Journey, 55. 21 The Chinese Military Museum estimates two hundred Chinese Canadians joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Part of the challenge in documenting these cases is that Chinese recruits would use Anglicized names when enlisting, making them difficult to identify. 22 The alliance terms can be found at “The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, January 30, 1902,” Japan Centre of Asian Research, National Archives of Japan, http://www.jacar.go.jp/ nichiro/uk-japan.htm. 23 See P. Roy, Boundless Optimism: Richard McBride's British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), 262–65. 24 “Delegates Visit Japanese Liner,” Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), July 11, 1918. 25 “Orientals are Health Menace,” Daily Colonist, July 11, 1918. 26 Ibid. 27 “Victoria Greets Royal Visitor,” Daily Colonist, July 25, 1918. 28 Ibid. 29 The story of the Chinese labourers and their journey across Canada is told in J.R. Dawson, “The Chinese at William Head, A Photograph Album,” British Columbia Historical News 16, 4 (1983): 18–20; P. Johnson, Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872–1959 (Victoria, BC: Heritage House, 2013); X. Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 30 L.H. Yin and J.R. Crampton, “The Chinese Go West in WW I” (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), 3, http://www.heritageworldmedia.com/downloads/pdfs/War%203%20 Draft_1.pdf. 31 X. Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front, 73.

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32 Walker, “Race and Recruitment in World War I,” 19. 33 Ibid. 34 Daily Colonist, July 6, 1918. 35 His family story is told in A. Switzer and G. Switzer, Gateway to Promise: Canada’s First Japanese Community (Victoria, BC: Ti-Jean Press, 2012), 243–45. 36 The resolution, passed on July 24, 1918, at an imperial war conference with Newton Rowell attending in Borden’s absence, embraced the right of the dominions to discriminate against Indians emigrating to white settler colonies, an injustice highlighted by the Komagata Maru episode of 1914. However, Part 3 of the resolution stated: “Indians already permanently domiciled in the other British countries should be allowed to bring in their wives and minor children on condition (a) that not more than one wife and her children shall be admitted for each such Indian, and (b) that each individual so admitted shall be certified by the Government of India as being the lawful wife or child of such Indian.” 37 R.A. Rajala, “Pulling Lumber: Indo-Canadians in the British Columbia Forest In­ dustry, 1900–1998,” B.C. Historical News 36, 1 (2002/2003): 2–13. The story of Paldi is told by J. Mayo, Paldi Remembered: 50 Years in the Life of a Vancouver Logging Town (Duncan, BC: Paldi History Committee, 1997). 38 See K. Abe to Mayor McBeath, of Vancouver, March 16, 1916, and K. Abe to Premier R. McBride, March 3, 1915, and related matters in “Matters Relating to Restric­ tions on Immigration and Exclusion in the British Dominion of Canada,” pp. 6126– 266, Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, vol. 14, file 3–8-2–20. 39 “Oriental Issue Becomes Live Issue with Civic Fathers,” Vancouver Daily Sun, March 31, 1916. 40 “Oriental Barbers Violated Closing Law,” Daily Colonist, August 20, 1918. 41 “Hits Chinese Peddlers,” Daily Colonist, June 26, 1918. 42 It is beyond the scope of this essay to document the postwar attacks but they would culminate in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923. 43 Dahan Gongbao (Chinese Times), July 19, 1917. Gillian Crease undertook pioneer research on this topic using Chinese-language sources in the 1980s; see her article “Exclusion or Solidarity? Vancouver Workers Confront the ‘Oriental Problem,’” BC Studies 80 (1989–90): 24–51. My thanks to Xie Chuning for her assistance in translating Dahan Gongbao materials. 44 H. Con et al., From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart / Multiculturalism Directorate, Depart­ ment of the Secretary of State, 1982), 130. 45 British Columbia Federationist, July 27, 1917, quoted in Crease, “Exclusion or Soli­ darity,” 39. 46 Dahan Gongbao (Chinese Times), July 24, 1917. 47 “Chinaman Blamed for Waste of Salmon,” Nanaimo Free Press, August 15, 1918. 48 Dahan Gongbao (Chinese Times), March 7, 1919. 49 See Dahan Gongbao (Chinese Times), May 27, 1919. 50 Accounts of this strike are carried in M.M. Ayukawa, Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891–1941 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 94–95.

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51 S. Wade, “Helena Gutteridge: Votes for Women and Trade Unions,” in In Her Own Right: Selected Essays on Women’s History in B.C., ed. B. Latham and C. Kess (Victoria, BC: Camosun College, 1980), 190. 52 The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council had worked closely with women in 1915 to prevent Asian Canadians from working in hotels and restaurants in Vancouver. See Wade, “Helena Gutteridge,” 191–93. 53 K. Pickles, Female Imperialism and National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002), 49. 54 This correspondence is contained in “Matters Relating to Restrictions on Immigra­ tion and Exclusion in the British Dominion of Canada,” pp. 6402–15, Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, vol. 14, file 3–8-2–20. 55 For details, see P. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1854–1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 39–41. 56 Ito, We Went to War, 72. 57 “Diverse Views Upon New Elections Act,” Daily Colonist, March 7, 1920. 58 “Opposes Franchise for the Japanese,” Daily Colonist, March 11, 1920. 59 “Oppose Votes for Japanese,” Daily Colonist, March 17, 1920. 60 “Protest Against Proposed Franchise,” Daily Colonist, March 17, 1920. 61 “Japanese as Voters,” Daily Colonist, March 21, 1920. 62 “The Menace of the East,” Daily Colonist, March 23, 1920. 63 “Japanese Comrades,” Daily Colonist, April 4, 1920. 64 “Japanese and Enfranchisement – Why Many Women Are Opposed,” Daily Colonist, April 4, 1920. 65 “Japanese Will Not Secure Franchise,” Daily Colonist, April 15, 1920. 66 “Japanese Memorial in Stanley Park,” Daily Colonist, April 10, 1920.

3

Race, Empire, and World Order Robert Borden and Racial Equality at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 FRANCINE McKENZIE

For six months in Paris in 1919, David Lloyd George, prime minister of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau, premier of France, and Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, assumed unprecedented powers as they strove to restore a peaceful world order. They concentrated on two main pieces of the settlement: the peace treaty with Germany and the League of Nations. But Paris attracted the champions of many causes, some long-standing, some conveniently reawakened by the circumstances and outcome of the war. While the “Big Three” (often with representatives of Italy and Japan in what was called the Council of Five) met day after day in the Quai d’Orsay, individuals, groups, and smaller states lobbied to include their interests and priorities in the peace settlement. Ho Chi Minh petitioned for Vietnam’s independence from France. Poles, Slavs, and Arabs sought statehood. Greece wanted to expand its territory. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa wanted to assume control of German colonies, whereas W.E.B. DuBois, the Harvard-trained sociologist and human rights activist, wanted to transfer German colonies in Africa to the League of Nations. The Suffrage Associa­ tion of the Allied Countries pressed for votes for women. Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, lobbied for social justice for labourers worldwide. More than simply taking advantage of the conference to air grievances and jockey for advantage, some of these interests had the potential to alter the structures of power and territorial divisions of the prewar international order as well as the norms that legitimized that order.

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But most of these groups were ignored or deflected. Ho’s petition went unanswered.1 The Council of Five did not meet with DuBois’ Pan-African Con­ gress, although DuBois was able to talk with some of Wilson’s advisors.2 Representatives of the Suffrage Association were allowed to make several presentations, including to the League of Nations commission.3 Gompers was redirected to work on a commission on labour that resulted in the establishment of the International Labor Organization (ILO).4 Not all groups and causes were easily contained or marginalized. The Japanese proposal to include racial equality as part of the peace settlement was well publicized and widely supported. Because Japan was a member of the Council of Five, the issue was raised in deliberations on the peace settlement and the League of Nations. Japan’s representatives to the conference pressed their case despite opposition from Britain and the United States. In the end, the outcome was the same as for the other special interests. De­ spite months of lobbying, the relevance of racial equality to the ideals and mandate of the League of Nations, and significant support among national representatives at the conference, there was no mention of racial equality. But it is worth revisiting this supposedly marginal moment. Exam­ining the short but intense history of racial equality at the Paris Peace Con­ference allows us to reconsider just how innovative the postwar order was. Canada’s involvement in this episode also provides an opportunity to re­consider its participation in the Paris Peace Conference, studies of which have typically focused on the significance for Canada’s development as an independent state. Rather than ask how participation advanced Canadian interests and its international standing, we can consider how Canada contributed to the postwar settlement and better understand the nature of its engagement in the international community and the kind of influence it wielded. Historians have written about the Japanese lobby for racial equality, as well as the specific details of Wilson’s veto, although it is not usually regarded as a particularly significant or telling event. Naoko Shimazu has written the most thorough account of this aspect of the Peace conference; Margaret MacMillan discusses it briefly, acknowledging the long-term significance of its defeat; Paul Gordon Lauren has written about it from a human rights perspective; and Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds have examined this moment to explain how deeply entrenched were racist ideas and a racially divided and stratified conception of international relations.5 In most accounts of the conference, it gets fleeting mention.6 Most historians are satisfied by Shimazu’s explanation that the racial equality proposal was linked to Japan’s

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desire to be recognized as a great power. He described Japan as “an arrogant and insecure power, dismissive of, yet sensitive to, international opinion”; affirming racial equality would implicitly acknowledge Japan as an equal great power.7 Historians have also linked the backlash to the proposal to concerns about Asian emigration to the North American West Coast, Australia, and South Africa. This episode receives even less attention in historical treatments of Can­ adian involvement in the Paris Peace Conference. Most studies of Canada at the conference focus on issues related to its emergence as an independent international actor, such as the number of representatives that Canada sent to Paris and the way in which Canadian representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles.8 Historians generally agree that the Paris Peace Conference was a milestone on Canada’s road to independence.9 Borden’s involvement in the racial equality proposal is known but little discussed. George Glazebrook described in two pages Borden’s efforts to find a compromise that would preserve Japan’s dignity but not infringe on Ottawa’s ability to exclude Asian immigrants.10 Martin Thornton’s study of Robert Borden at the peace conferences deals with this particular issue in less than one page.11 Recently, John Price has written about Borden’s involvement, which he characterized as “one of the darker moments of Canadian diplomacy.”12 In some ways a study of the racial equality proposal reinforces the dominant Canadian narrative about Canada’s evolution from colony to nation. Because people believed that the proposal would have implications for immigration, and dominion governments set their own immigration policy, dominion representatives effectively determined the response to the proposal for racial equality for the entire British Empire. When domestic jurisdiction and international affairs intersected, the authority of the dominions prevailed. But there is more to it. This is a moment that reveals how Borden saw the British Empire as a frame of reference and was informed by an imperial ideology within which racial beliefs, as well as gendered norms, shaped his understanding of international relations. Scholarly preoccupation with issues of status and recognition – which were important to Can­ ada’s participants in Paris, including Borden – overlooks the meaningful ways in which the government of Canada, its officials, and individual Can­ adians engaged in international affairs through immigration policy and contributed to a global discourse about race, both of which were connected to the racial equality proposal. Scholars have also tended to ignore the importance of race in validating and shaping Canada’s demand for international

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recognition. In addition to asking what Canada got out of the Paris Peace Conference, we can ask what Canada contributed to the conference and the structure, dynamics, and norms that subsequently defined international relations.

Canada’s Involvement in Racialized World Affairs up to 1919: Empire and Immigration, War and Peace Prior to the war, the international community was defined by power, hierarchy, empires, and a high degree of interconnectedness, especially through culture, economics, and the movement of people. A racial ideology informed the regulation of the international order, defining beliefs about what was natural, just, and legitimate in world affairs. A racialized conception of relations between states was evident in social Darwinist ideas about survival of the fittest that legitimized competition (and wars) among states and empires and presumed that such competition would uphold the existing Westerndominated racial hierarchy.13 But there was anxiety about the resilience of race when tested on the battlefield. While some people, like Theodore Roose­ velt, were confident that white dominance would be retained, others envisioned a time when the nonwhite races would rise up and overturn that hierarchy and the order that went along with it.14 For example, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford, believed that war would result in the deaths of “the most virile,” which would lead to “racial destruction and the domination of the ‘unfit.’”15 Doubts about British masculinity, and the ability of British men to sustain the empire, were particularly acute following the experiences of the Anglo-Afrikaner War (1899–1902).16 Such doubts were also evident in Canada.17 Japan’s defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05 further eroded confidence in the established racial structure of the international community. Japan’s demonstration of military power jarred the white supremacist racial sensibility. However, Japan’s acceptance as a great power was not only advanced by destabilizing Western racial logic, but also by affirming a flexible conception of race in which Japan could be acknowledged as an honorary white nation. This was done while also upholding Japan’s distinctive racial superiority.18 Japan’s challenge to and validation of a racialized hierarchy of states was evident when the government of Japan protested its nonwhite classification in 1902: “The Japanese belong to an empire whose standard of civilization is so much higher than that of Kanakas, Negroes, Pacific Islanders, Indians, or other Eastern peoples, that to refer to them in the same terms cannot but be regarded in the light of a reproach, which is

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hardly warranted by the fact of the shade of the national complexion.”19 Such arguments fortified the racial thinking that defined the international hierarchy even as it contested a rigid white supremacist logic. American and British officials in turn adapted their racial ideology to recognize Japan as a great power without rejecting their fundamental belief in white supremacy, and the norms and structures that flowed from it.20 There were opponents to the racialized purpose and structure of the inter­ national community. From the mid-nineteenth century, people and groups belonging to transnational movements and international organizations proposed alternative international orders, for example, by calling for the eradication of its racist underpinnings.21 Many peace advocates believed that an end to racial discrimination was integral to the attainment of social justice and a common humanity, without which peace could not be said to exist.22 The meeting of the Universal Races Congress in 1909 was premised on the belief that racial prejudice fuelled international tensions and that better understanding between East and West, as well as between “so-called white and so-called coloured peoples,” would engender more cooperative and peaceful international relations.23 Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s prime minister, was invited to join the movement as an honorary vice president, a position that entailed no commitment, “financial, official or otherwise,” but which would lend “invaluable moral support ... to this profoundly humanitarian and wholly non-party undertaking.”24 If the light responsibilities were not inducement enough, the invitation added that there was already a long list of luminaries to which Laurier would presumably wish to attach his name.25 Laurier declined on the grounds that “I have made it a rule absolute not to belong to any organization, however meritorious the object of it may be.”26 Laurier rebuffed subsequent appeals to draw in the entire federal Parlia­ ment. Choosing to stand aside, whether in an official or personal capacity, in effect endorsed the status quo of the international community. Laurier’s decision also meant that no Canadian official was present to explain Canada’s racially selective immigration policy, which, along with the other so-called white dominions, received sharp attention at the 1911 Universal Races Congress.27 Racial differentiation and discrimination were powerfully impressed on world geopolitics through restrictive immigration policies.28 Canada’s immigration policies actively reinforced the global colour line that W.E.B. DuBois had earlier decried. The head tax on Chinese immigrants ($500 per person in 1903) and the continuous journey rule that applied to India were meant to be exclusionary, but trickles of migrants continued to arrive in Canada. The arrival of Asian immigrants was not always

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unwelcome. In 1906, when a small group of illegal Japanese migrants had been smuggled into Canada aboard the Suian Maru, Canadians were more curious than indignant, and after paying small fines, the migrants were allowed to stay. Historian David Sulz attributes this reaction to an increased Canadian interest in Japan after its defeat of Russia in 1905.29 But one year after the Suian Maru incident, the backlash against Asian immigrants turned violent on the West Coast, culminating in race riots in Vancouver in 1907.30 This was partly a response to a spike in Japanese immigration following the imposition of American restrictions on Japanese migration to California.31 The Canadian minister of labour was subsequently sent to Japan to negotiate a secret immigration treaty (the gentlemen’s agreement) in which the Japanese government would restrict emigration. Adam McKeown has written about the ways that Asian migration was impeded, and he concluded that the Japanese government agreed to restrict the movement of its people because “broad segments of the Japanese public and officialdom shared with white settler nations a commitment to the idea of sovereign power over immigration control and the racial integrity of nations.”32 Afterward, the numbers of Japanese immigrants to Canada declined.33 In Canada, attitudes toward Japan as a country and Japanese people were not entirely fixed, ranging from “optimism and fascination” to “hostility and suspicion.”34 Robert Borden, then leader of the opposition, stoked the alarmist interpretation. Even though the number of Chinese and Japanese immigrants was small, he claimed that “immigrants had poured in from Asia in large volume.” 35 He singled out Japanese immigration as a particular menace. He noted with alarm that “Japan had awakened” and that the Pacific was a “magnificent highway” by which Japan could reach Canada.36 He likened the arrival of Japanese migrants to an invasion, with the potential to overwhelm British Columbia. He expressed alarm that they would displace European settlers and insisted that the province must be “occupied by a large and thorough British population.”37 In contrast to the veiled nature of post-1945 discussions surrounding immigration that Laura Madokoro (Chapter 7) and David Meren (Chapter 10) explore in this collection, the racial underpinnings of Borden’s approach to immigration – and in turn his conception of the future of Canada – was openly and unapologetically racist. Borden criticized the Laurier government for concluding the 1907 immigration agreement with Japan because the onus rested with the government of Japan to restrict migrants at its end. On a matter “so vital” as immigration, Canada must have “freedom of judgement as perfect and unfettered as that exercised by Great Britain herself.”38 When the Anglo-Japanese alliance was

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being renewed shortly before the start of the First World War, Borden, now prime minister, restored Canadian control over Japanese immigration. As he explained in his memoir, “The only sure guarantee of protection from Japanese immigration was the retention of the power ... to legislate and regulate whenever it became necessary.”39 Despite Borden’s concerns, Can­ ada’s immigration policy effectively excluded Asian peoples up to and during the war, such as in 1914, when 376 South Asians aboard the Japanese ship Komagata Maru were not allowed to disembark. During the war, when eighty-five thousand Chinese labourers moved across Canada en route to the European battlefields, they were placed under armed guard and prohibited from disembarking at any point until they arrived in Halifax (six weeks later). They subsequently sailed for France.40 Despite Canada’s limited ability to define foreign policy or conduct foreign relations, its racially restrictive immigration policy upheld “the cultural macro categories that divided the world into East and West, civilized and uncivilized.”41 Borden’s understanding of Japanese immigrants as threatening to Can­ ada’s British identity also informed his view of Japan as an international actor. He feared a rising and expansionist “yellow peril.” He anticipated a struggle – revealing a Darwinian conception of world politics – through which Japan could become a dominant global force. As he explained it, It is the great question of world politics which must be worked out on the Pacific ocean in the years to come, it is the great question of the influence, perhaps domination, that the mighty nations of the Orient, aroused to modern methods and organized as they have not been organized before, will exercise over the destinies of the world, especially on the Pacific.42

Restricting Japanese immigrants, however, was a sensitive geopolitical matter because Japan and Britain had concluded an alliance in 1902. There­ fore, Borden wanted to shore up Canadian authority over immigration policy without antagonizing Japan. He reassured critics that Ottawa would exercise its control over immigration without giving offence to “the great and friendly nation with whom the treaty has been negotiated.”43 Similarly, he acknowledged that Japan was a powerful actor in the world community and an ally of Britain, and Canada by extension. He described Japan as a “great nation ... the ally and friend of Great Britain” that should be treated with respect. The “renown of her soldiers as well as her statesmen is worldwide.”44 He insisted that the goal was for harmonious relations between peoples and governments.45 Canada benefitted from Britain’s alliance when

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Japanese ships helped to defend Canada’s West coast during the First World War. After the war, there was a more definite shift toward seeing Japan as a friend and ally. Canadians began to talk about Japan as “the British of Asia.”46 Grafting Britishness onto Japan's international persona blurred pre­ war racial distinctions. It showed that anxieties about racial difference could be overcome by reconstructing Japan as an honorary white nation. Although the First World War prompted a redefinition of dynamics and processes within the British Empire and emerging Commonwealth, thereby enhancing the input of the dominions and supporting a discrete Canadian identity, it did so without undermining the value of the association with Brit­ ain, at least in Borden’s mind. The historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper have reminded us that “historical trajectories are more complicated than a movement toward nation-states.”47 That was certainly the case with Can­ada. Despite the strains of Anglo-Canadian relations in wartime, Borden never doubted Canada’s association with a common British cause – to defend democracy, liberty, the rule of law. Borden gazed out at the wider world through an imperial lens, and it was from the perspective of the British Empire that he imagined Canada’s ongoing evolution. Borden’s enduring faith in the British race also informed his understanding of the causes of the war. He singled out Germany’s leadership and autocratic political culture as the principal causes of German militarism. He also believed that Germany’s decision to go to war stemmed from the racialized thinking of Germany’s leaders, who had assumed that the British political system was weak and ephemeral. It was not just democratic orders that were weak, in German eyes, but the entire British race.48 But for Borden, the experience of the war proved the falsity of German assumptions of British racial deterioration. He credited Britain’s ability to withstand the Ger­man onslaught to a “characteristic of the race,” such as the capacity for selfcriticism, which, in turn, he linked to a democratic political order.49 He disputed the German characterization of the war (at least insofar as Borden understood it) as a struggle in which the British goal was to “crush Germany and to terminate her national existence,” by insisting that Britain had peaceful intentions.50 The contrast between Germany and Britain was stark, and Borden made sense of their seemingly different national characteristics in terms of distinct racial formations, which, in turn, were upheld by con­ trasting gendered conceptions of Germany and Britain as war maker versus peace­ maker. Germany was militaristic and bent on world domination, whereas Britain’s relative military unpreparedness for the conflict was a reflection of a righteous masculinity, which revealed “that our empire desired

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peace and harboured no aggressive purpose.”51 By associating Britain with peace, Borden claimed peace as a cause and the peace conference as a space for law abiding, cooperative, and constructive men to shape a new international order.52 The experience of the war also changed Borden’s understanding of the causes of peace. He was not a pacifist,53 but neither did he believe “brute force shall be the highest right.”54 Germany would have to change fundamentally – to “cast out the unclean spirit of militarism and the sordid lust for world domination” – if peace was to last.55 He placed faith in the League of Nations, despite its imperfections, as the way to regulate international relations according to “right and justice.”56 Borden’s legal training reinforced his belief that international law and arbitration were the means to resolve disputes. Treaties were the antithesis of force as regulators of world affairs.57 Historian Leo Braudy has identified this type of pacificism (not the same as pacifism, which condemned all wars absolutely) as one of three strands of masculinity that emerged in response to the destabilization of militarized masculinity during the First World War. As he explained it, pacificism accepted “the possibility that war was not the only way to deal with conflicts between nations.”58 But Borden also believed that cooperation among the strongest countries was essential to preserving peace. In this way, ideas of dominance continued to shape his understanding of how the international system should work, albeit redirected toward cooperation among the strongest and in the interests of avoiding wars.59 He explained this in a speech in London toward the end of the war: the goal of the world’s strongest nations was to act together “to preserve the world’s peace that war will be impossible.”60 Tapping into Anglo-Saxonist ideals, Borden believed together Britain and the United States could combat German militarism.61 His regret was that they had not joined forces early enough to prevent the start of the war. He was confident that the two English-speaking countries now realized “their responsibility and duty for the world’s peace are not less than their world-wide power and influence.”62 What did this mean for Borden’s understanding of the purpose of the Paris Peace Conference generally and Japan’s racial proposal specifically? His world view was informed by belief in racial determinants of national characters, the legitimacy of race in defining an international hierarchy of states, a commitment to masculinity that upheld peace and lawful resolution of disputes, and attachment to the empire. But these beliefs were fluid, and there was tension among them. So even while Borden sought greater recognition for Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, he upheld a conservative

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international order in which race and masculinity continued to legitimize power, structures, and principles of the international community. Gendered norms upheld dominance as the aim of interstate relations even though the cause of peace and belief in racial difference naturalized a particular hierarchy of power, as well as the exercise of power through negotiation, arbitration, and law. Britain’s geopolitical alignment with Japan and then the entente powers of the First World War also had to be taken into account. Hence Borden saw Japan as threat and ally. His outlook blended admiration and anxiety, and a sense of familiarity as well as an othering of Japan, and resulted in a policy that acknowledged Japan’s power and position while seeking to neutralize the acceptance of racial equality at the Paris Peace Conference.

Borden and Racial Equality Proposal at the Paris Peace Conference Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George had different ideas about how to construct a peace settlement. For Clemenceau, the key was French border security and curbing Germany’s military and economic clout. Lloyd George wanted to restore a balance of power. Wilson alone reimagined a world order that revolved around the League of Nations and the “Fourteen Points” with which he was personally associated. Even though the war had destabilized ideas about race,63 undoing the global colour line, let alone addressing the issue of racial discrimination within countries, was not a priority for any of them. But Japan had made clear before its delegation arrived in Paris that they would press for a reconsideration of the racist underpinnings of international relations. The Japanese government and media highlighted the importance of racial equality to a stable international order. As an article in the Asahi, a Japanese national daily, noted, “No other question is so inseparably and materially interwoven with the permanency of the world’s peace as that of unfair and unjust treatment of a large majority of the world’s population.”64 British and American officials expected that exclusionary immigration policies, then most prominently in place in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and Canada, would come under attack.65 Instead of calling out racist immigration policies, the Japanese delegation lobbied for the affirmation of the principle of racial equality. Hence they proposed that the draft of Article XXI of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which dealt with equality of religions, should include a reference to racial equality. It made sense to add racial equality to the covenant, as the League of Nations was supposed to make international relations more democratic, transparent, and principled. Baron Makino, a former foreign

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minister for Japan, presented the proposal to the full League of Nations Commission on February 13, 1919: “The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord, as soon as possible, to all alien nationals of States members of the League equal and just treatment in every respect, making no distinction in law or in fact, on account of race or nationality.”66 Harold Nicolson described this as “a painful amendment.”67 Jan Smuts, who led South Africa’s delegation and was a towering personality at the conference, wrote that the proposal sparked general dismay.68 Robert Cecil, the British Empire delegation representative to the commission, suggested that the proposal was too controversial and should be postponed, which earned him a stinging rebuke from Wellington Koo, the Chinese delegate. Koo’s priority at the conference was to block Japanese claims to Chinese territory, but on this question he made common cause with Japan. French, Romanian, Czech, and Brazil­ ian officials also supported the proposal, but a majority backed Cecil’s proposal to delete Article XXI entirely.69 When Wilson read out the latest iteration of the covenant of the League of Nations, he made no mention of racial equality.70 Although discussion of the League was largely shelved for the next month because Wilson had returned to the United States, behind the scenes, Makino and Viscount Chinda, the Japanese ambassador to London, met with British and American officials, as well as other representatives of the British Empire to find a compromise. Australia’s prime minister, Billy Hughes, emerged as the most determined and outspoken opponent. Under no circumstances would he accept the principle of racial equality, which he believed threatened a white Australia policy.71 He described his opposition in terms of “slap the Jap.”72 Makino and Chinda assured Hughes that racial equality would have no implications for immigration policy.73 Makino also advanced his case in the media, insisting that racial equality was essential to simple justice. He denied that other countries would have to confront Asian immigration as a result of the proposal: “We do not wish to impose our laboring classes as immigrants upon any of our associate countries.” But he did not back down when he insisted that “no Asiatic nation could be happy in a League of Nations in which a sharp, racial discrimination is maintained.”74 Hughes was not reassured and threatened to keep Australia out of the League of Nations. Hughes was well known for his brusque diplomatic style and relentless championing of Australia’s interests even if he had to lock horns with Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. In fact, Hughes’

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anticipation of a hostile reaction to racial equality resonated with Amer­ ican officials who feared a backlash in California.75 Hughes’ willingness to object openly allowed other delegations to take a back seat on a proposal that sparked widespread alarm in the dominions and the United States.76 As Nicolson put it, Hughes rescued Wilson “by the skin of his teeth.”77 Borden did not approve of Hughes’ behaviour even though, like Hughes, he wanted to ensure Canadian control over immigration. But this did not translate into straightforward opposition to the racial equality proposal. Antagonizing Japan was dangerous and ill-considered. He believed that co­ operation among the strongest powers, which included Japan, was essential to the stable governance of the international community. Borden therefore sought a compromise. His efforts began on March 25, 1919, when he brought together Dominion prime ministers to discuss the Japanese proposal. Japan’s delegates arrived later, and the discussion focused on the word equality, about which there was disagreement. Borden came up with a reworded proposal that shifted the emphasis away from racial equality to “the equality of nations and the just treatment of their nationals.”78 Hughes stormed out of the meeting.79 Borden noted in frustration in his diary: “Hughes would consent to nothing.”80 It was no surprise that Borden endorsed national equality. This recast version was highly relevant to Canada and its goal to redefine relations between Britain and the dominions on the basis of “equality of nationhood.”81 Borden and Smuts also met with William Massey, the New Zealand prime minister, in the hope of breaking down Hughes’ support within the British Empire delegation.82 A few days later, Borden met with Hughes privately to seek Australian support for the revised version. Borden believed Hughes would be more accommodating, but his confidence was misplaced.83 One week later, Borden, Cecil, and Makino met at the Hotel Astoria to consider Japan’s proposal, and that same day Borden debated the terms of the proposal with Botha, the prime minister of South Africa.84 Borden and Botha met again with Japanese delegates on April 10. Borden also met with Sir Robert Garran, Australia’s solicitor-general, who was filling in for an ailing Hughes. Borden impressed upon him “the difficult situation in which the Japanese Government finds itself at present.”85 The Japanese campaign came to a head at a meeting of the League of Nations commission on April 11, when Japan proposed a revised version that, like Borden’s, called for the inclusion of national equality in the covenant. Pressed to a vote, the amendment passed 11–6. President Wilson, who was chairing the meeting, overturned the result. As he explained,

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amendments required unanimous support to pass, but there had been “definite opposition” (from the United States, Britain, and Poland) to this one.86 Even though previous questions had been decided by a simple majority vote, Wilson’s veto stood. Nicolson maintained that this act “left even him [Wilson] with an uneasy feeling inside.”87 The Japanese delegation tried again at a subsequent plenary meeting. Makino called for a declaration of racial equality and just treatment, “making no distinction ... on account of their race or nationality” to be written into the conference proceedings. He explained the importance of the proposal to people’s faith in the “justice and righteousness of the League of Nations.”88 Delegates were impressed by Makino’s statement. One Can­ adian official described Makino’s plea for equal treatment of all peoples as “strong and dignified”89 No vote was taken. Makino expressed the “poignant regret” of Japan at the outcome.90 Japan’s efforts were not exhausted. The campaign shifted to the Inter­ national Labor Organization (ILO), the international organization established at the Paris Peace Conference with a mandate to promote social justice for labour. Japan proposed new wording for one article to assure all foreign workers and their family members of “the same treatment as the nationals of that country.”91 Once again, Borden was involved in redrafting the amendment to make it more widely acceptable. That meant ensuring that the principle did not transgress domestic authority: “Migration, tariff, etc. are internal questions, about which a foreign nation cannot ask for an inquiry and decision by the League.”92 He did this in consultation with an unnamed Japanese official and George Barnes, the British labour leader and chair of the commission.93 His proposal stipulated that “conditions of labour should have due regard to the equitable economic treatment of all workers lawfully resident therein.”94 As diplomat and historian George Glaze­brook remarked, this was a “general exhortation which might do some good, and committed a government to nothing.”95 Japan refused to accept the clarifying statement and the matter was dropped. There is a tangent to the story of Canadian representation to the ILO that sheds light on the racialist logic that propped up Canada’s claims to a higher standing in world affairs. In a significant way, it also informed the Can­adian responses to decolonization explored by Dan Gorman, Kevin Spooner, Ryan Touhey, and David Webster in this volume (Chapters 6, 9, 8, and 11 respectively). Although Canada was accorded full membership in the League of Nations, Canada and the other dominions would not be admitted as full contracting parties to the ILO and would not be allowed to sit

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on the executive council. Arthur Sifton, the minister of customs and inland revenue who represented Canada on the ILO commission, was indignant. While he could accept that the biggest powers would have a permanent voice, he could not accept the inequality of representation that gave Canada a lower standing than Portugal, Cuba, Uruguay, and Liberia. His position was also shaped by racial prejudice whereby the insult to Canada was made even more galling because nonwhite countries would enjoy a higher standard of representation. As he wrote to Borden, Canadians would “say in their somewhat frank manner that they will see the Japanese and Italian delegates and their respective governments individually and collectively sizzling in the lowest depths of Hell before they will agree to accept a standing inferior to the negroes of Liberia.”96 Racial beliefs were folded into calculations about Canada’s place in the international community. Even though it was making its debut, Canada’s British identity elevated its standing. Borden insisted that Canada and the dominions must have membership on the same terms as the League of Nations; eventually he prevailed. Glazebrook explained Borden’s involvement in the racial equality proposal as trying to “work out with the Japanese some innocuous formula that would save the autonomy of the one and the pride of the other.”97 But Borden’s efforts to find a compromise over the racial equality proposal, as well as his redrafting of texts linked to equality of treatment for foreign workers, should not be mistaken as an early manifestation of helpful fixing or honest brokering. John Price has denounced Borden’s efforts because they watered down the Japanese proposal.98 That was precisely his intention: to neutralize a proposal that he believed threatened Canadian authority as well as its British identity. But his actions were also determined by recognition of Japan as a great power and ally of Britain (and Canada). His attempts to neutralize the racial equality proposal, in its various iterations, confirmed that race continued to legitimize the principles and structure of international relations. Racial norms also informed Canada’s quest for its own recognition as an individual international actor inside the British Empire, below the greatest powers but far from the bottom of the racial hierarchy.

Conclusion Canada became a more full-fledged international actor at a time when the international order was sustained by and, in turn, reinforced racial norms. Because of the widespread acceptance of race, little effort was made to camouflage racist modes of thought. Borden’s participation at the Paris Peace

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Conference, as well as other public statements during his career, revealed how he made sense of world affairs in terms of racial hierarchies, racially determined values, and a racialized conception of a collective identity in Can­ada and the British Empire. His conception of race was not the only source of norms that shaped his understanding of world affairs. He also differentiated between different types of masculinity that were couched in racialized national containers: aggressive, antidemocratic, militaristic Germany versus law-abiding, peacemaking, democratic Britain. Gen­dered and racial views about the structures and dynamics of international relations were in turn embedded in Borden’s overarching imperial ideology. This world view was flexible, responding to new circumstances, like the ascendency of Japan, the Anglo-Japanese alliance, and the urgency of making peace rather than war. Ideas of race and masculinity were fluid, both having been destabilized by the war, but they were largely preserved, albeit in a reconstructed form. The result was that Borden worked to revise the Japanese proposals for racial equality to permit ongoing cooperation with Japan while also upholding the legitimacy of a racialized hierarchy and enforcing discriminatory barriers to preserve a British identity for Canada. The same could be said of the overall peace settlement. Despite the possibility to create a new international system, the Big Three were more conservative than reformers. As a result, the racial and gendered normative foundations of the international order remained largely intact even as new international institutions were established, old empires collapsed, and new nations emerged. It is important to keep the global geopolitical context and ideological underpinnings in mind when considering Borden’s assiduous efforts to shore up Canadian authority and advance its status as a self-governing dominion with individual representation in newly formed international organizations. While Borden referred to Canada as a nation, his goals cannot be explained solely in terms of a deterministic nationalist account that involved detachment from Britain. The recalibration of Anglo-Canadian relations did not require a repudiation of Canada’s British heritage but an affirmation of it. British race pride (and racial anxiety) was entrenched in the nation-building process, clearly seen through immigration policies. Af­fi rming an identity that was British reinforced the demand for recognition and a position in the international hierarchy above others. Canada’s preoccupation with its own status was validated by racial beliefs. The dominant narrative describing the transition from colony to nation has over­ shadowed the racial underpinnings of Canada’s involvement in world affairs

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even though racial ideas sustained the conviction that Canada should have a distinct international standing, situated in a specific racial hierarchy. Borden’s involvement in the racial equality proposal at the Paris Peace Conference is a doubly marginalized moment in the history of the conference and in Canada’s involvement in it. But its marginalization did not make it unimportant. Like Canada’s relations with the Caribbean, explored by Paula Hastings in Chapter 1, this episode complicates Canada’s association with the British Empire and reveals an early but meaningful kind of agency that Canada exerted in the international community. It is too easy to exclude, and exonerate, Canada from the dynamics and structures of the international community on the grounds that it was too small or too parochial to make a difference. Canada influenced international affairs, although perhaps not in the places and ways historians have previously considered. Re­ directing our historical gaze also opens up the possibility of exchange with other scholars of international history. While McKeown’s study of global immigration, Lake and Reynolds’ transnational history of the global colour line, and new imperial histories like Burbank and Cooper’s have all taken Canada’s experience into account, most international histories bypass Can­ ada. The exceptionalist and nationalist nature of Canada’s international history has impeded dialogue with international historians.99 Exploring the synergy and relevance of Canada to international history and of international history, broadly cast, to Canada’s history – as the study of race does – will hopefully allow Canada’s international historians to join in a global conversation. NOTES 1 M. MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001), 67. 2 S. Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 30. 3 I.C. 159, Peace Congress: Paris, Secret, March 11, 1919, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Borden Papers, MG 26-H. 4 MacMillan, Peacemakers, 104. 5 N. Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (Lon­ don: Routledge, 1998); MacMillan, Peacemakers, 330; P.G. Lauren, “Human Rights in History: Diplomacy and Racial Equality at the Paris Peace Conference,” Diplomatic History 2, 3 (1978): 257–78; M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008).

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6 For example, A. Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (Bas­ ingstoke, UK: MacMillan, 1991); M.F. Boemeke, G.D. Feldman, and E. Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Washington, DC: The German Historical Institute; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 258–59. 7 Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, 2, 7–8. 8 Such matters occupy considerable space in Borden’s own accounts of the war and peace conference. See R. Borden, Canada in the Commonwealth: From Conflict to Co-operation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), and H. Borden, ed., Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs, 2 vols. (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1938). 9 N. Hillmer and J.L. Granatstein do not adopt a deterministic view of the transi­ tion from colony to nation but nonetheless conclude that Canadian involvement, Borden’s signature on the Treaty of Versailles in particular, “was another step toward international recognition” and that Canada was “more a nation, and less a colony.” N. Hillmer and J.L. Granatstein, Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World into the 21st century, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2008), 67–68. M. MacMillan also notes the enduring uncertainty about how exactly Canada had become an “international person” but nonetheless maintains that over the course of a decade, in which involvement at the Paris Peace Conference was key, Canada had defined itself as “a separate nation with its own interests and goals.” M. MacMillan, “Sir Robert Borden: Laying the Foundation,” in Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909–2009, ed. G. Donaghy and K.R. Nossal (Kingston, ON: School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, 2009), 37–38. 10 G.P. De T. Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 71–72. 11 M. Thornton, Sir Robert Borden: The Peace Conferences of 1919–23 and their After­ math (London: Haus, 2010), 91. 12 J. Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 27–28. 13 For an example of this outlook, see the “Dying Nations” speech of the British prime minister, the Marquess of Salisbury, in 1898: “You may roughly divide the nations of the world as the living and the dying ... The living nations will gradually encroach on the territory of the dying, and the seeds and causes of conflict amongst civilized nations will speedily appear.” R. Menning, ed., The Art of the Possible: Documents on Great Power Diplomacy 1814–1914 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1996), 266. 14 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 75, 102–3. 15 L. Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (New York: Knopf, 2003), 420. 16 C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 49. 17 M. Moss, Manliness and Militarism: Educating Young Boys in Ontario for War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 45–49. Moss identifies immigration and industrialization as the deeper causes that people associated with a crisis of masculinity. 18 Y. Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 7–11.

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19 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 9. 20 Theodore Roosevelt accepted Japan in this way, claiming that it was “in the same rank as ‘Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav or Magyar.’” In Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms, 9. According to Antony Best, British officials treated Japan as “an honorary European Great Power” but were nonetheless anxious. In A. Best, “Race, Monarchy and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922,” Social Science Japan Journal, 9, 2 (2006): 174, 184. 21 A. Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 6. Irive presents a revised conception of international affairs by focusing on state- and nonstate-based international organizations. “International organizations ... assume that there is another world, one that is produced by forces that cut across national frontiers. These forces create networks of shared interests and concerns that go beyond national interests and concerns,” ibid. 22 The British and American Peace Societies, established in the early nineteenthth century, opposed slavery. The American Peace Society sent William Wells Brown, a former slave, to the 1849 peace congress held in Paris. He was mostly well received, but not all approved of his presence. M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 34–35. 23 G. Spiller, General Secretary, Universal Races Congress, to Laurier, February 28, 1911, LAC, Laurier Papers, microfilm C-855, file 182158. According to Lake and Reynolds, they believed that “greater understanding would lead to international peace”; Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 259. See also P. Rich, “‘The Baptism of a New Era’: The Universal Races Congress and the Liberal Ideology of Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 7, 4 (1984): 534–50. 24 Spiller to Laurier, January 1, 1910, LAC, Laurier Papers, microfilm C-855, file 165357. 25 Ibid. The postscript read: “By the present date over sixty Members of the Hague Court and of the Second Hague Conference; many present and past Ministers and Ambassadors; more than half-a-dozen European Presidents of Chambers and Senates; over seventy Professors of International Law; the President, Treasurer and Secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and various other persons of distinction, have already expressed their sympathy.” 26 Laurier to Spiller, February 2, 1911, Laurier Papers, microfilm C-855, file 165357. 27 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 253. 28 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line; A. McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Immigration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 29 D. Sulz, “Transitional Relations: Japanese Immigration and the Suian Maru Affair, 1900–1911,” in Contradictory Impulses: Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Cen­ tury, ed. G. Donaghy and P.E. Roy (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 56. 30 J. Gilmour, Trouble on Main Street: Mackenzie King, Reason, Race and the 1907 Vancouver Riots (Toronto: Allan Lane, 2014); Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line. 31 G.A. Johnson and G.R. Perras, “A Menace to the Country and the Empire: Perceptions of the Japanese Military Threat before 1931,” in Contradictory Impulses, 65.

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32 McKeown, Melancholy Order, 200. 33 Ibid., 203. 34 Sulz, “Transitional Relations,” 58. 35 Speech delivered September 24, 1907, in R.L. Borden, The Question of Oriental Im­ migration, Speeches (in Part) Delivered by R.L. Borden, MP in 1907 and 1908 (n.p., 1908), 4–5. Borden highlighted a portion of a government report which had concluded that the problems associated with Chinese immigration applied with even greater force to Japanese immigrants. 36 Speech delivered to the House of Commons, January 28, 1908, in Borden, The Question of Oriental Immigration, 12. 37 Speech delivered September 24, 1907, in Borden, The Question of Oriental Immigration, 4. 38 Ibid. 39 H. Borden, Robert Laird Borden, 1:397. 40 X. Guoqi likened the treatment of Chinese labourers to that of prisoners and suggested it was not only inhumane but possibly criminal. X. Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 56–59, 73, 76. 41 McKeown, Melancholy Order, 8. 42 Speech delivered January 28, 1908, in Borden, The Question of Oriental Immigra­ tion, 11. 43 Speech delivered September 24, 1907, in Borden, The Question of Oriental Immi­ gration, 8–9. 44 Ibid., 11. 45 Speech delivered January 28, 1908, in Borden, The Question of Oriental Immigra­ tion, 31. 46 J. Meehan, The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929– 1941 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), 3. 47 J. Burbank and F. Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 2. 48 R.L. Borden, “Is the British Race Decadent?” in The War and the Future (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), 70; Borden, “The Gospel of Force,” in The War and the Future, 90–91. 49 Borden, “Conditions of Peace,” in The War and the Future, 100. 50 Ibid., 98. 51 Borden, “Lessons of the War,” in The War and the Future, 104–5. 52 Sluga explains how men appropriated female roles, for example, by giving birth to nations and making peace, and as a result international affairs continued to be underwritten and legitimized by masculine norms. “Masculinities, Nations and the New World Order: Peacemaking and Nationality in Britain, France and the United States after the First World War,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. S. Dudink, K. Hagemann, and J. Tosh (Manchester, UK: Man­ chester University Press, 2004), 248. 53 Moss claims that Ontarians viewed pacifism as “a foreign notion” and “a rejection” of manliness. Manliness and Militarism, 141.

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54 Borden, “The Gospel of Force,” 89. 55 Borden, “A Speech before the Canada Club and the Canadian Association at London, England,” August 1, 1989, in R L. Borden, Manifestos (Ottawa: J. de L. Taché, 1918), 20. 56 Borden, House of Commons, September 2, 1919, in Borden, Manifestos, 10. 57 Borden, “Conditions of Peace” and “Lessons of the War,” 99, 111, 112; Borden, “A Speech at London, England,” July 31, 1918, in Borden, Manifestos, 16. 58 Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism, p. 416. 59 As John Tosh explained, hegemonic masculinity need not be patriarchal at its core and can entail the dominance of men by men. “Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender” in Masculinities in Politics and War, 53. 60 Borden, “A Speech at London, England,” 16. 61 Borden, “A Speech before the Canada Club and the Canadian Association at London, England,” 18. 62 Borden, “A Speech at the Canadian National Exhibition,” September 2, 1918, in Borden, Manifestos, 29. 63 D. Ekbladh, “Introduction: Legacies of World War I Commemorative Issue,” Dip­ lomatic History 38, 4 (2014): 698. 64 Asahi, December 18, 1918, quoted in Lauren, “Human Rights in History,” 260–61. 65 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 281–82. 66 Lauren, “Human Rights in History,” 264. 67 H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965), 145. 68 J. Smuts to M.C. Gillett, March 31, 1919, in W.K. Hancock and J. van der Poel, eds. Selections from the Smuts Papers (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 4:95. 69 Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality, 21. 70 Lauren, “Human Rights in History,” 264–65. 71 C. Bridge, William Hughes: Australia: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919–23 and Their Aftermath (London: Haus Publishing, 2011), 83. 72 Lauren, “Human Rights in History,” 266. 73 Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, 24. 74 Makino, quoted in “Japan’s Position: A Frank Statement,” Daily Mail, April 3, 1919, 2, in Sifton Papers, LAC, vol. 15. 75 Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, 24. 76 Bridge has argued that Woodrow Wilson capitalized on Hughes’ opposition, which served American interests very well: “Hughes was Wilson’s willing catspaw.” Bridge, William Hughes, 86. He also cites the private reminiscences of Harold Nicolson and Colonel House, to bolster his interpretation; ibid., 86–7. Lake and Reynolds agree with this view. Global Colour Line, 301–2. 77 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 145. 78 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 297–8. 79 Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, 25. 80 Diary, March 25, 1919, Diary Transcripts, 318–459, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 450. 81 Borden, “Speech on the Treaty of Peace,” September 2, 1919, 15. Equality of Nations was enshrined as the basis for Commonwealth relations in resolution IX of 1917.

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82 Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, 26. 83 Diary, March 31, 1919, Diary Transcripts, 318–459, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 450. 84 Diary, April 7, 1919, Diary Transcripts, 318–459, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 450. 85 Garran, quoted in Diary, April 10, 1919, Diary Transcripts, 318–459, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 450. 86 Peace Conference: British Empire Delegation, April 21, 1919, 27, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 428, file 5. 87 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 146. 88 Makino quoted in D. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 704. 89 Diary, 28 April 1919, Foster Papers, LAC. 90 Makino, quoted in D. Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, 704. 91 Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, 80. 92 Borden, Suggested Amendments, n.d., LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 431, file 50. 93 Diary, April 27, 1919, Diary Transcripts, 318–459, LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 450. 94 Resolutions, n.d., LAC, Borden Papers, vol. 431, file 50. 95 Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, 81. 96 Sifton, Memo, April 29, 1919, LAC, Borden Papers, vol 444, file 141. This passage reads quite differently from the more diplomatic texts quoted in Glazebrook, Can­ ada at the Paris Peace Conference, 76, 78. 97 Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, 72. 98 Price, Orienting Canada, 27–28. 99 Antony Hopkins has referred to this as the determination to exert “historiographical independence.” A. Hopkins, “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History,” Past and Present 164 (1999): 214.

4

Language, Race, and Power French Canada’s Relationship with Haiti in the 1930s and 1940s SEAN MILLS

On a warm summer evening in July 1940, Montreal’s French-speaking elite gathered at the Palestre nationale for a celebration of Canadian-Haitian friend­ship. It had been less than a year since Canada had declared war on Ger­many and, only weeks earlier, with the northern part of France occupied, the French government had retreated to the resort town of Vichy and signed an armistice with the Germans. The fall of France and the establishment of the Vichy government weighed on the minds of those gathering for the event. Although the Vichy regime initially attracted a great deal of support in nationalist circles, France’s defeat and surrender also meant that French Canada was cut off from its primary cultural metropole. Looking outward for new connections, Haiti – seen as the other French-speaking society of the Americas – was attracting unprecedented attention. Student exchanges, correspondence circles, and official diplomatic visits sparked the imagination. Articles, radio addresses, and public lectures articulated the ideological foundations of the rapprochement. French Canadians remarked on Haitians’ “melodious accent of the soft spoken France,” and noted that, like French Canada, Haiti was “French in spirit and heart.”1 Echoing the familial metaphor that Paula Hastings (Chapter 1) refers to in her exploration of English Canadian depictions of the Caribbean, Haiti was “a brother nation by virtue of its French language and culture,” and “a living witness to the universality and profoundly human character of our civilization.”2 With France in crisis, Haiti symbolized the enduring nature of French culture, and

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the ties that French Canadians developed with Haiti helped to demonstrate that, rather than being derivative of France, their society formed an important entity in its own right. When crowds gathered in the hall in downtown Montreal on this July evening, it was in this climate of excitement and anticipation. The evening’s guests arrived in a room decorated in the colours of the Haitian and Canadian flags, and the festivities began with French Canadian and Haitian songs and poetry. The Canada-Haiti Committee had been founded only two years earlier and, in addition to organizing this event, it would go on to organize many more celebrations. On this summer evening, the keynote address was delivered by Maurice Audet, a missionary who had been working in Haiti for eight years. When Audet took the stage, he began by stating that because he had lived in Haiti for so long, he was “to the greatest extent possible, of ‘Haitian’ heart and soul.”3 He believed that it was his responsibility to bring his knowledge of the country to the Canadian public, and he used his first speech to launch an attack on European racial theory. Haitians’ achievements in the realms of culture, science, literature, and diplomacy, he argued, acted as definitive proof that blacks were not racially inferior. Social Darwinism and other theories of racial hierarchy needed to be abandoned, and French Canadians needed to recognize that they had much in common with Haitians. Drawing upon Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin, who had set out in the nineteenth century to demonstrate the “equality of human races,” Audet maintained that it was “an honour for Canada to maintain relations with a people that has achieved such great things, in the spiritual, material, intellectual, moral and economic realms.” Haiti, Audet declared, could become an “admirable example for Nations that have lost their sense of human dignity by upholding the nefarious doctrine of the inferiority of certain Races.”4 Had this been Audet’s only speech about Haiti, one could have concluded that by spending time in the country he had learned the falsity of ideas of racial superiority. But Audet’s mid-July speech would not be his last word on the subject. Only a few months later, he returned to the Palestre nationale to deliver another lecture, this one entitled “The Problem of the Haitian Proletariat.” In both tone and content, the two speeches could not have been more different. Whereas the first speech spoke of the need to overcome racial stereotypes and natural hierarchies, this new talk focused on the Haitian masses and discussed the fundamental differences between “civilized” and “uncivilized” populations. Audet’s depictions of the country were profoundly shaped by class, and his lauding of the elite stood beside his denunciation of

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the peasantry. Drawing upon at least some of the racial theories that he claimed to debunk in his first lecture, he portrayed the Haitian peasantry as children, with untamed sexual desires and infantile linguistic skills.5 “Lost in the depth of the tropical bush,” he told his audience, “were three million souls, maligned, as the Egyptians once were, with five hideous plagues: Super­stition, licentiousness, ignorance, Protestantism, and the most abject of poverty.” Rather than being the equals of French Canadians, Haitians were now depicted as needing the firm guidance of a more evolved and advanced culture. Haiti’s poor peasants, he declared, “raise their arms desperately toward you, yelling ‘Help! Help!’”6 Delivered only a few months apart, at first glance, Audet’s two speeches seem to stand in stark contrast to each other. The most laudatory praise was articulated alongside the most vile condemnation, and the fundamental equality of Haitians was placed beside a discussion of their essentialized difference. Although seemingly self-contradictory, Audet was expressing the dominant cultural discourse about Haiti in French Canada. Since at least the 1930s, increasing manifestations of cultural solidarity had brought French Canadian and Haitian intellectuals together, always around the belief that Haiti and French Canada had a special bond based on language and religion, a bond that was understood through metaphors of family. Yet this discourse was always also shaped by a belief in the dire situation of the Haitian peasantry and its lack of culture and civilization, symbolized by the persistence of both Vodou and Creole. The Haitian elite, speaking perfect Paris­ ian French and acting with refined manners, embodied the best of French civilization, whereas the abject situation of the peasantry reinforced the belief in French Canada’s responsibility to help evangelize the country’s poor. This dual representation of Haiti, as both connected to French Canada by ties of language and culture yet fundamentally different and less civilized, cemented the ideological foundations of French Canada’s modern relationship with the country. Haiti would come to represent both French civilization as well as its radical negation. Understanding the complex ways in which intellectuals understood Haiti in the 1930s and 1940s is crucial to gaining insight into the complex “mental maps” that French Canadians developed of the broader world.7 Until recently, studies of Quebec’s international connections have generally focused on the province’s relationship with France and the United States. Important as these two countries have been to its development, Quebec has always existed in a broader world that included the societies of the Global

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South. This chapter will look to the construction of a dual discourse on race and language that shaped encounters between French Canadian and Haitian intellectuals in the 1930s and then during the Second World War, colouring as it did the ways in which French Canada would come to see Haiti in subsequent decades. Often conceptualized through the use of metaphors of the family, Haiti was seen to be similar to French Canada, but not equal. While educated Haitians demonstrated the potential universality of French civilization, lower class Haitians were understood to be sexually deviant and child­ like, devoid of complex thoughts and emotions. Understandings of Haitians were therefore always multiple, with the French-speaking elite being seen far differently from the Creole-speaking masses, a split discourse that began in the 1930s and that would crucially inform attitudes toward migrants from the 1960s onward. These representations were never totalizing, and there were always those who refused such civilizing rhetoric, but they were nonetheless powerful and remarkably enduring. And a central component of the uneven racialization of Haitians (the simultaneous celebration of the elite and the reviling of the peasantry) was the perceived connection between language and race.

The 1937 Congress and Its Aftermath In June 1937, eight thousand delegates gathered in Quebec City, eager to talk about the importance of the French language and French Canadian culture. The first event of its kind since 1912, the congress brought together church and voluntary organizations from across the continent to discuss the state of the French language and the Catholic religion, and it acted as a prolonged spectacle demonstrating the wide reach of the French Can­ adian nation.8 The atmosphere in Quebec City’s historical old town was filled with excitement. The conference’s motto, “Protect our French heritage” – displayed prominently throughout the town, in shop windows, and on buttons and signs – reminded delegates of their central mission. Public buildings were draped with banners, new lights were put up, and the city assumed a festive air. The thousands of delegates on hand for the event filled the city’s streets and cafés, bringing Quebec City’s somewhat staid atmosphere to life.9 Most of these delegates were from across North America and Europe, but an important delegation from Haiti also participated. Al­ though Haitian delegates represented a relatively small proportion of those in attendance, they nevertheless stood out and made their presence felt. On every possible occasion – from official speeches to ceremonial toasts –

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the Haitian delegates portrayed Haiti as a fundamentally Catholic and francophone country, one that was connected to French Canada by way of language and culture.10 When the Haitians took to the stage in Quebec City, the very presence of black French-speaking delegates disrupted the traditional composition of the public sphere.11 True, in the early twentieth century, the occasional book by a Haitian writer was published in Montreal, some Haitian poetry and fiction circulated in Montreal’s literary circles, and Haitian intellectuals occasionally addressed French Canadian audiences.12 But these fleeting contacts did not amount to a major form of exchange, and at the 1937 congress the Haitian delegates stood out. The quality of their French dazzled many observers, including some who remarked that their French was better than that of many French Canadians. Through their very presence, with their linguistic skills and refined manners, they embodied what French Can­ adians saw as the best of the French language and French civilization.13 The Haitian delegates did everything they could to highlight the francophone nature of their society, and they did not miss an occasion to discuss how the French language drew them closer to French Canada. Haitian delegate Jules Thébaud, for example, took the floor on behalf of Haiti to talk about the need to strengthen ties between the two societies with the same “FrancoLatin genius.”14 Haitian delegate Dantès Bellegarde, one of the most wellknown intellectual figures of his generation, insisted on the French nature of Haitian society. He made no secret of his opposition to emerging noiriste ideas in Haiti or his disdain for Haitian Creole and Vodou, insisting that rather than being attached to Africa, Haiti was “an intellectual province of France.”15 French culture was universal, Bellegarde argued, and in its universalism it tied Haiti to other French-speaking societies around the world, including French Canada.16 The speeches of the Haitian delegates had an important effect. At the congress and in its aftermath, French Canadian writers began describing the relationship between the two societies in the same terms that the Haitian delegates had used, imagining Haiti as part of a broader family of French civilization. Haiti was a “brother society” of the same “mother country.” To understand how black intellectuals could be received so warmly in French Canadian intellectual circles at a time when Canadian society as a whole was fundamentally structured by various forms of racial exclusion,17 it is necessary to look at how race was partly understood through the prism of language. Despite marginalization at home, French Canadian nationalists nevertheless believed that they formed part of a broader French civilization,

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and this civilization remained inextricably tied to the racial politics of the French empire. Although the obvious racialization of nonwhite peoples in France and its colonies persisted, the idea of French universality held out the belief that it was possible to acquire civilization, and thus whiteness, and one of the chief vehicles for doing so was through the mastery of the French language. Looking in particular at the French Antilles, but with conclusions that apply more generally, Frantz Fanon sought to make sense of the relationship between language and race in the context of the French Empire. Mastering a language, he argued, signified much more than merely learning the tools of communication; it meant “above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” Speaking French therefore represented a way to escape the negativity associated with blackness. “The negro of the Antilles,” Fanon argued, “will be proportionately whiter – that is, he will come closer to being a real human being – in direct relation to his mastery of the French language.”18 This same representation of the French language – particularly Parisian French – as the embodiment of whiteness and civilization was continually articulated at the 1937 congress and afterward. The Haitian delegates to the 1937 congress were understood in reference to this complex relationship between race and language. As a result, in the eyes of French Canadian observers, the Parisian French of Haitian intellectuals came to be understood partly through racial metaphors, and the mastery of the French language was seen to break down racial barriers. The French language, it was implied, helped Haitians and French Canadians overcome racial differences and see themselves in a united struggle to preserve their threatened civilization amidst the hostility of an English- and Spanish-dominated hemisphere. French Canadian writers articulated over and over again their belief that the culture and learning of elite Haitians undid any negative association with their blackness. Racism against the delegates, or Haitian elites in general, was profoundly unjust, they argued, precisely because of their refined manners and linguistic skills. Writing about the 1937 congress in Le Monde ouvrier, journalist Éva Circé-Côté lashed out at a delegate from Louisiana who refused to receive his honorary doctorate because he did not want to share the stage with a black Haitian delegate. “Why blame those whom the sun has tanned,” she argued, demonstrating the conflation of race and culture, “if they have a fine intellect, free and proud?”19 She could not understand how such racism could persist in the face of the refined nature of the Haitian delegates.20 Amidst the flurry of exchanges and visits that followed the congress, French Canadian travellers noted their surprise at the quality

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of French spoken by Haitians.21 When Auguste Viatte, a Swiss-born professor at Laval University, recalled the superb quality of French that he had heard spoken in Haiti, others cited him repeatedly as proof of a sentiment that they themselves were feeling. He stated: “If I closed my eyes, if I did not know that I was sitting under palm trees among ebony faces, how could I imagine myself anywhere else but in a Parisian salon!”22 That black intellectuals could speak with such refined French – nearly identical to the French heard in Paris – was a continual surprise, itself revealing the low expectations of a presumed black inferiority. In recounting her visit to Haiti in 1940, poet Reine Malouin discussed the friendship and hospitality to which she had been treated there. “If I had been afflicted with this moral handicap called ‘racial prejudice,’” she wrote, “it would have soon vanished upon contact with the refined minds, broad intellects, delicate and distinguished manners, courtesy, kindness, perfect education, and the greatness of soul of the people I met, and that I was discovering and quickly learning to love.”23 That the Haitians with whom she had contact conformed to idealized gender norms only added to the sense that adopting Western norms could loosen the negative associations with blackness. As Malouin explained, Haitian women “are devoted, motherly and willingly volunteer to work for charities. Their initiatives, either as collectives or in private, are remarkable.”24 For Malouin, the maternal nature of Haitian women allowed her to better see Haiti through the prism of her own culture. Traditional gender roles therefore combined with the refined language of the country’s elite to embody Western civilization and to undo race and racism. French Canadian priest Jules-Bernard Gingras visited Haiti in the late 1930s, and in his published account of the country, he too further articulated the association of language, culture, and whiteness. Between French Canada and Haiti, he argued, it was impossible “to dream of a more perfect unity.” Gingras expressed the complex mixing of racial, class, and language stereotypes that prevailed about Haiti when he explained how, through their adoption of French ways, Haitian elites had come to shed the black aspects of their culture, producing “something surprising: a black elite that has essentially become an elite of Latin, if not to say French, culture.” The culture of blackness still remained implanted among Haiti’s popular classes, Gingras maintained, but the masses had the good fortune of being able to look up to such a brilliant elite for models of learning and respectability. As he explained, the educated class had “considerably evolved toward higher

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forms of life, thought, and belief.”25 Like his other French Canadian counterparts, Gingras understood Haiti from within the frameworks that he had developed of his own society, and he had learned greatly from the Haitians with whom he had direct contact. The French language and its association with race had brought the elite of the two societies together. The realities of Haitian society, particularly the Creole language and Vodou religion of its people, were seen by the Haitian delegates in 1937 to be an embarrassing truth that nevertheless needed to be explained to their French Canadian counterparts. When in Canada, Dantès Bellegarde spoke of the backward and superstitious nature of the Haitian peasantry,26 and Philippe Cantave, a Haitian intellectual and future diplomat, maintained that Creole was merely a patois that, according to him, was “simply French gone wrong or, as a Swiss person once said, ‘French put back in its infancy.’”27 French Canadian writers took their lead from their Haitian counter­parts who frequently dismissed the country’s popular culture, and they would begin speaking in similar terms about the Haitian peasantry. For Monsignor Camille Roy, who had travelled to Haiti with Philippe Cantave in the 1930s, the Haitian peasant was simple and one-dimensional. Roy argued that the peasant “is cheerful, without many worries, like people whose future is assured. He likes to wander, laugh, have fun with simple things. And when he works, how slowly, how indifferently he performs!” For Roy, Haitian peasants were sexually deviant, intellectually inferior, and in need of firm moral guidance.28 Others harboured similar sentiments, at times expressing them in harsher terms. When Audet, with whom I opened this chapter, spoke at the Palestre nationale three years after the 1937 congress, he argued that Haitian peasants were lingering in a “psychological state of the primitive,” one that was undoubtedly related to the fact that they did not speak French, “but Creole: a degenerated form of French.”29 If the mastery of the French language was thought to reflect the civilized nature of the Haitian elite, an absence of such proficiency became bound up with a broader set of representations tied to sexuality and immorality, as well as to a generalized lack of culture. Metaphors of the family were also mobilized for representations of the Haitian peasantry, but rather than pointing to horizontal relations between equals, they were premised upon the necessity of paternalist power. The initial contours of the relationship between French Canada and Haiti were being forged through intellectual exchanges and boat tours, official speeches, and receptions. The emerging connections were imagined in both familial and racial terms, and they were shaped by the persistence of a dual

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discourse about Haiti that recognized both its strangeness and its familiarity. The contacts that were initially made during the 1930s flourished with the outbreak of the Second World War. In the face of the considerable ideological and social disorder that the war entailed, French Canadian and Haitian nationalists sought stability and allies. The idea of a special connection uniting French Canada and Haiti would again be put to use, and this time with more lasting effect, as the sense of familial solidarity between the two societies would lead to the belief that French Canada needed to play an active role in sending large numbers of missionaries to evangelize the country’s poor.

The Second World War The outbreak of the Second World War had a profound effect on both Que­ bec and Haiti. In Quebec, new industries emerged to meet Canada’s war needs, and the federal state acquired drastic new powers over the country’s economic and political life. With Ottawa’s new wartime powers, French Canadian nationalists were wary of the growing power of the federal government. This feeling of isolation became especially severe in the spring of 1940 with the fall of France, which had important cultural ramifications in Quebec.30 Quebec had relied heavily on cultural exchanges with France, and by cutting Quebec off from its cultural metropole the war acted as a catalyst for the large-scale expansion of Quebec’s publishing industry, helping to create the conditions in which it would begin expanding its cultural relations with other societies. French Canadian nationalists would begin looking toward Latin America in general, and Haiti in particular.31 Just as the war years had a great effect on Quebec, so too did they mark an important moment of transition in Haiti. Against a backdrop of political turmoil and shifting alignments, the Catholic Church began to wage an antisuperstition campaign against the country’s peasantry. The 1940–42 campaign formed part of a long history that saw the Catholic Church and the Haitian state attempt to regulate and reform the Vodou practices of Haitian peasants, enforcing antisuperstition laws against the spiritual practices of rural Haitians. Collectively, these laws, as Laënnec Hurbon has argued, had the effect of “producing the marginalization of the peasantry” and removing it from the exercise of formal political power.32 Although the antisuperstition campaign of 1940–42 fit into a long history of repression, it also represented something new. The Church, initially with the full support of the Haitian state, set out to purge Haitian Catholicism of Vodou influences. Waged in an atmosphere shaped by a fear of the influence of

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Protestantism and the “impurities” of Catholicism, soldiers, priests, and allied peasants destroyed sacred sites, demanded that peasants make declarations of faith, and ordered “the public burning of vodou masks, artifacts, and paraphernalia in the churchyards.”33 According to the Catholic newspaper La Phalange, the antisuperstition campaign was a “spiritual blitzkrieg.”34 The early war years were shaped by this antisuperstition campaign, but so too were they shaped by the shifting political alignments that would see a new president, Elie Lescot, come to power in 1941. Lescot’s government worked to consolidate elite rule in the country, and this elite rule (even if promoting American economic control) was articulated in French. It was these elite who sought to build ties with French Canada in the 1940s. As Quebec became a centre of French-language cultural production, an increasing number of Haitian students who would have previously travelled to France began studying in Quebec’s universities, and connections were forged throughout Quebec’s civil society in general.35 In Quebec City, the Society of Friends of Haiti as well as a “hospitality room for Haitians” were founded, and new correspondence circles began linking the school children and Catholic youth movements of the two countries. By 1943, there were already three hundred people participating, and both the president of Haiti and the rectors of Laval University and the Université de Montréal had given their endorsement.36 By 1944, forty Haitian students were enrolled in Quebec’s schools, with many funded by scholarships from the Quebec government.37 In the student newspaper at the Université de Montréal, Le Quartier Latin, Haitians wrote about their experiences in Quebec and about French Canada’s connections to Haiti. Haitian doctor Pierre Salgado wrote that in Quebec he had “found France, France in North America.” But he did not find just any France. He had found a version of France that had “stayed pure, faithful to its eternal traditions, loyal to its language, culture, and civilizing mission.”38 For Philippe Cantave, “The harrowing situation of our former mother country, France, compels us – along with French Canada – to fulfill ... a noble mission, that of being ... a centre of French culture in America.”39 French Canada and Haiti, in other words, needed to save the French language and culture at this moment of crisis, and it was with this project in mind that Haitian president Elie Lescot undertook an official visit to Canada. Lescot arrived with his nine-person delegation at the beginning of Oc­ tober 1943, with the dual goal of promoting closer ties between the two countries and helping reinforce French Canadian support for the war.40 At

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his many public events in Montreal and Quebec City, Lescot appealed to his audiences with reference to the connections of language and culture that tied Haiti’s fate to that of French Canada. At official receptions, Lescot spoke about how the two societies had been affected by the fall of France and about how they needed to rally together to ensure the survival of French culture and civilization in the Americas.41 In Quebec City, Lescot received an honorary doctorate from Laval University, and in his address he stated that he “could not help but feel a strong emotion at the thought of the common traditions of the two collectivities in the Western Hemisphere, which are the loyal and vigilant guardians of a timeless French culture.”42 Amidst the protocol of the official visit, Lescot spoke about the common project of defending the French language in the Americas, but his trip was about more than abstract expressions of solidarity between two like societies. While in Canada, Lescot also made a point of visiting the Oblats de Marie Immaculée, a religious order that had begun missionary work in Haiti earlier that year. This missionary work was born not only out of the expression of solidarity between Haiti and French Canada, but also out of the connected discourse about the moral deviancy of the peasant population and its lack of civilization. The specific circumstances that led to the entry of French Canadian missionaries into Haiti were complex, involving a struggle for power between the Haitian government and the Catholic Church. Partly to help recruit new clergy into roles that France could no longer fulfill because of the war, and partly because of the feared pro-Vichy positions of French priests, Lescot began talks to replace French bishops with bishops from the United States. But when he appointed Father Louis Collignon as bishop of Les Cayes in southern Haiti, he helped to ensure that French Canadians would be central to this new missionizing drive. Collignon was from Lowell, Massachusetts, and he had received his ecclesiastical training in Canada. In his drive to recruit new missionaries, Collignon looked to Franco-Americans, but he also naturally looked north to Canada. Although individual French Canadian missionaries had been working in Haiti for decades, 1943 would mark the official moment when French Canadian missionary orders would begin their entry into the country. From this point on, French Canada would be one of the major sources of new missionaries for Haiti.43 The dual discourse about Haiti, that it was a related society but nevertheless one in profound need of civilizing guidance, helped build the ideological justification for this new influx into the country.

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The narrative of the importance of Haiti and the responsibilities of French Canadians to the country would be repeated over and over again by French Canadian religious orders. As Audet had put it in 1940, in the face of the perceived spiritual degradation of the Creole-speaking peasantry, French Canadian missionaries needed to accept their responsibilities toward the country. Jules-Bernard Gingras had similarly talked about the need for a “peaceful invasion” in 1941, arguing that it was necessary for French Canadians to begin working in the country.44 And in many other ways, those who spoke about the relationship between Quebec and Haiti were paving the way for missionary activity. When it came to the discourse of missionaries, Haitians were thought of less as “brothers” or “sisters,” but rather as “children” whom French Canadians needed to “adopt.”45 When Lescot was in Canada, vicaire générale Father Anthime Desnoyers gave a speech in his honour, articulating the paternalist language operating within and across societies that was central to the missionary endeavour. “Since last January,” he stated, “Mgr. Collignon has worked with you toward the Chris­tianization and moral development of your people.” And he went on: “It will always be an honour for our Congregation to evangelize your people under your esteemed protection and kind benevolence.”46 After the original invitation at the beginning of 1943, the French Can­ adian missionary presence in Haiti continued to grow. In addition to the Oblats de Marie Immaculée, the Soeurs de la Charité de Saint-Louis, the Soeurs de Sainte-Anne, the Frères du Sacré-Coeur, and the Soeurs grises de Saint-Hyacinthe headed to the country.47 Haitian doctor Louis Roy – who would be exiled to Montreal in the 1960s – travelled to Canada in 1944 to recruit the Soeurs de Saint-François d’Assise to work in Port-au-Prince’s sanatorium.48 The Pères de Sainte-Croix arrived in Haiti in 1944, and they were put in charge of the diocese of Cap-Haïtien, as well as the Collège Notre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours, a school standing high above Cap-Haïtien that had been founded in 1904, a petit séminaire, and a noviciat. Monsignor Albert-F. Cousineau of the Pères de Sainte-Croix would become the bishop of CapHaïtien in 1951.49 The Soeurs missionaires de l’Immaculée-Conception arrived in Haiti in 1943, and they took up the role of looking after the elderly and impoverished children, the sick and the infirm, as well as education and administrative duties.50 Others would soon follow suit, and together they set out to remedy what they saw to be the spiritual degradation of the Haitian people. Ultimately, French Canadian missionaries would play a major role in creating and circulating narratives about Haiti and Haitians throughout French

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Canadian society. By 1944, historical and linguistic ties had become entangled with the French Canadian project of missionizing the country, and a new chapter in French Canadian and Haitian relations had begun.

Conclusion By the time the war had come to an end, the world in which both French Canada and Haiti existed had significantly changed. In the second half of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, an atmosphere of optimism swept across North America. In the new world order that emerged out of the ashes of war, rising living standards and increasing prosperity fuelled efforts of many French Canadians to pursue cultural connections with other parts of the French-speaking world. And Haiti continued to be a pole of attraction. Dip­ lomats, intellectuals, government workers, and others continued travelling between the two countries, keeping alive the dream that important trade relations could develop, but it would take decades for their hopes to be realized.51 A young André Patry, who would later go on to become an important figure inside the Quebec government working to develop Quebec’s international relations, wrote his thesis at Laval University on the potential for developing economic ties between Haiti and Canada. He was forced to conclude that although commerce between the two countries had certainly grown during the war – Canadian flour and paper were exported in significant quantities, and Canadian books began to be sold in Haiti – Haiti’s poverty and the predominant economic influence of the United States ensured that Haiti would not be “a significant market for Canada.”52 With the war’s end, the United States resumed its dominant economic position in the hemisphere, and France reclaimed its role as the centre of francophone culture.53 But the new links and contacts that had been forged with French Canada would not go away, and government officials, travellers, and others would continue to see Haiti as an outpost of French civilization in the Americas. Haitian students would continue travelling to Canada for their studies, and a slow trickle of migration brought others to Canada. Yet it was the large-scale entry of French Canadian missionaries into Haiti that would greatly change the relationship between the two societies. The number of French Canadian missionaries continued to grow, and the role of French clergy continued to decline. The situation was so dramatic that French diplomats fretted constantly about the loss of influence of the French clergy, seeing French Canadian missionaries as agents of Amer­ icanization rather than what they really were: cultural and religious actors deeply committed to a broader French and Catholic culture. Twenty-eight

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per­cent of clergy in Haiti were French Canadian by the mid-1950s, and in no other country would French Canadian missionaries have as significant an impact.54 While French Canadian missionaries had a large influence in postwar Haiti, so too did they shape developments at home. In missionary journals and travel narratives, French Canadians talked about and related their stories to fellow French Canadians about their adventures in the country, their efforts of evangelization, and their reflections upon both the wider world and themselves. The narratives that they produced would ultimately find a far greater circulation and have a greater impact than the elite connections forged during the 1930s and 1940s, and they would have a profound and lasting influence on French Canadian culture. The narratives of civilization and savagery, tied closely to conceptions of race and language, would shape French Canada’s interactions with Haiti in the postwar years and beyond. When Haitians increasingly began migrating to Quebec in the 1960s and afterward, their reception would be shaped by the dual discourse produced about them in this earlier period, and the legacy of these early interactions would help to create the complex terrain upon which Haitian activism and intellectual work would develop in the decades to come.







NOTES This chapter is drawn from A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016). For research funding, I would like to thank the SSHRC SRG program, the FRQSC team research program, as well as the Connaught New Researchers program at the University of Toronto. 1 Rév. Père Cornelier, “Le Canada, une nouvelle fois, honore Haiti dans la personne de son chef. Discours du Recteur de l’Université d’Ottawa,” Cahiers d’Haïti (April 1944), 8. All translations in this chapter are my own. I use French Canada when referring to the broader pre-1960 imagined community and Quebec when referring to the province of Quebec. 2 Monsignor Cyrille Gagnon, quoted in E. Lescot, Avant l’oubli (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie H. Deschamps, 1974), 473. 3 M. Audet, Haïti: Le réveil d’une race (Laprairie: Impri­merie du Sacré-Coeur, 1940), 9. For details on the evening and on the Canada-Haiti Committee, see the documents printed following Audet’s speech, “Le Comité Canada-Haïti” and “Compte Rendu,” 29–32. 4 Ibid., 28. See also A. Firmin, De l’égalité des races humaines. Anthropologie positive (Montreal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2005 [1885]). 5 M. Audet, Le problème du prolétariat en Haïti: Le pays des contrastes (Montreal: Librairie du Devoir, 1940), 23–25.

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6 Ibid., 29; original emphasis. 7 I borrow the concept of mental maps from D. Webster, Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009). 8 According to Martel and Pâquet, Conferences on the issue of the French language took place in 1937 and 1952 in Quebec City, and another in 1957. They were organized by representatives of religious and nationalist circles, and followed the tradition of giving preeminence to the Catholic clergy, political representatives, and members of the middle-class elite. Businessmen and workers were largely absent from these gatherings, at least among the organizers and speakers.

M. Martel and M. Pâquet, Speaking Up: A History of Language and Politics in Canada and Quebec, trans. Patricial Dumas (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2012), 78–80. 9 Deuxième congrès de la langue française au Canada, Québec 27 juin – 1er juillet 1937, compte rendu (Quebec: Imprimerie de L’Action Catholique, 1938), 74. 10 D. Hippolyte, “La Langue française en Haïti,” in Deuxième congrès de la langue française au Canada, Québec 27 juin – 1er juillet 1937, mémoires, tome 1 (Quebec: Imprimerie du Soleil, 1938), 97; D. Bellegarde, “Haïti et la culture française,” in ibid., 101. For a look at radical political movements in Haiti in this period, see M. Smith, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 11 As Philippe Cantave stated in a speech in Quebec City in 1938, it was surely “a revelation for many in Canada to hear a coloured man speaking only French, as they are used to the reverse, to hearing them speak only English.” Le vrai visage d’Haïti (Mont­ real: Gérard-U. Maurice, 1938), 9. 12 In 1910, for example, Benito Sylvain delivered a number of lectures in Quebec City and Montreal to French Canadian audiences; see Cantave, Le vrai visage d’Haïti, 31. In 1933, Haitian intellectuals Dominique Hippolyte and Dantès Bellegarde were invited by the Association canadienne-française pour l’avancement des sciences to speak in the province, and Bellegarde published some of his works in Quebec. See M. Lacroix, “La francophonie en revue, de La Nouvelle Relève à Liberté (1941– 1965). Circulation de textes, constitution de discours et réseaux littéraires,” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 14, 2 (2011): 41; J. Des Rosiers, Théories caraïbes: Poétique du déracinement (Montreal: Triptyque, 2009), 175; F. Voltaire and S. Péan, “Contributions dans le secteur de la culture,” in Ces Québécois venus d’Haïti – Contribution de la communauté haïtienne à l’édification du Québec moderne, ed. S. Pierre (Montreal: Presses internationales polytechnique, 2007). 13 É. Circé-Côté, “La langue française (1937),” in Chroniques d’Éva Circé-Côté. Lumière sur la société québécoise, 1900–1942, ed. A. Lévesque (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2011), 245–6. The article was originally written under the pseudonym J. Saint-Michel and published in Le Monde ouvrier, July 17, 1937. 14 J. Thébaud, quoted in Deuxième congrès de la langue française au Canada, Québec 27 juin – 1er juillet 1937, compte rendu, 345. 15 Bellegarde, “Haïti et la culture française,” 101 (original emphasis).

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16 Ibid. 17 See J. Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011); A. Calliste, “Canada’s Immigration Policy and Domestics from the Caribbean: The Second Domestic Scheme,” in Race, Class, Gender: Bonds and Barriers, ed. Jesse Vorst et al. (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1991), 136–68; C. Back­ house, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); J.W. St.G. Walker, “Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada (Waterloo, ON: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/ Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997). 18 F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967 [1952]), 17–18. 19 Circé-Côté, “La langue française (1937),” 247–48. 20 Ibid. For a discussion of Circé-Côté’s ideas, see A. Lévesque, Éva Circé-Côté, librepenseuse, 1871–1949 (Montreal: Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 2010). 21 For the exchanges that followed the congress, see A. Gabriel, “En vue de l’action: Portrait de la communauté haitienne au Québec,” Document du SJRM de la Province du Canada français (2009), http://www.cjf.qc.ca/userfiles/file/Haiti_Portrait-pour -action.pdf, 5; D. Bellegarde, “Voyage d’amitié (suite et fin),” Cahiers d’Haïti (1945), 15. Bellegarde gave four lectures at the Palestre nationale on Cherrier Street in Montreal, all organized by the Societé du Bon Parler Français, and he also spoke to the Alliance française at the Ritz Carlton. For a discussion of the rapprochement between Quebec and Haiti, and Haitian intellectuals visiting Quebec in the late 1930s, see Cantave, Le vrai visage d’Haïti; BANQ-Q, P456, Fonds Famille Magnan, “Closer relations with Haiti urged. Dantès Bellegarde Sees Opportunity for Mutual Advantage in Friendship,” Montreal Gazette, September 16, 1938, 18. 22 Viatte, quoted in Audet, Haïti: Le réveil d’une race, 20. 23 R. Malouin, Haïti, l’île enchantée. A travers la vie (Quebec: Institut St-Jean-Bosco, 1940), 25–29. 24 Ibid. 25 J-B. Gingras, “Trois ... regard sur Haïti,” L’oeuvre des tracts 265 (1941): 4, 13, 9. 26 D. Bellegarde, “Voyages d’amitié,” Cahiers d’Haïti, February 1945, 12–13, 29. 27 P. Cantave, “La vie française en Haïti,” Le Quartier Latin, December 20, 1940, 2. 28 C. Roy, quoted in Audet, Le problème du prolétariat en Haïti, 14. 29 Audet, Le problème du prolétariat en Haïti, 14, 25. 30 In a detailed and sensitive study, Éric Amyot demonstrates the wide support that Pétain and the Vichy regime received in Quebec, especially in the early years of the war. As the conflict progressed, however, increasing numbers of Quebeckers began to back the Free French forces of Charles de Gaulle, although a certain sympathy for Pétain and the traditional values that he represented remained. É. Amyot, Le Québec entre Pétain et de Gaulle: Vichy, la France libre et les canadiens français 1940–1945 (Anjou, QC: Fides, 1999). 31 As Maurice Demers has shown, the war years acted as a considerable spur to the efforts of many Quebec intellectuals to imagine Quebec as a Latin society of the Americas. On the broader question of Latinité, see I.S. Podea, “Pan American Senti­ ment in French Canada,” International Journal 3, 4 (1948); D. Gay, “La présence du Québec en Amérique latine,” Politique 7 (1985); M. Lacroix, “Lien social, idéologie et

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cercles d’appartenance,” Études littéraires 36, 2 (2004); M. Demers, Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Relations between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014). 32 Hurbon, quoted in K. Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 365. Original citation found in L. Hurbon, Le Barbare Imaginaire (Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1988), 143. I have learned greatly from Ramsey on the broader question of religion in Haiti. 33 Smith, Red and Black in Haiti, 49. 34 Quoted in D. Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 182. 35 L-M. Fouchard, “Haïti, centre de rayonnement Français en Amérique,” Le Quartier Latin, March 19, 1943, 8. For references to some Haitian students studying in Quebec in the 1930s, see Cantave, Le vrai visage d’Haïti, 28–29. 36 A. Patry, “La visite énigmatique du président d’Haïti en 1943,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 18, 3 (2010): 175; P. Cantave, “Relations epistolaires entre le Canada et Haïti,” Le Quartier Latin, April 2, 1943, 8. “Compte-Rendu de la Soirée Littéraire et Musicale, donnée par les Amis d’Haïti, et présidée par Me Ernest Tétreau, c.r., Président du Comité Canada-Haïti,” in Audet, Haïti: Le réveil d’une race, 31–32; P. Juneau (propagandiste général de la J.E.C) à Monsieur R. Anjou, Cap Haïtien, Haïti, January 27, 1944, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, fonds JEC, 2/4, SSS50, SS1, S18, P65; “Le Cercle de Correspondance Canado-Haïtienne,” in Audet, Haïti: Le réveil d’une race, 30. See also L. Bienvenue, Quand la jeunesse entre en scene. L’Action catholique avant la Revolution tranquille (Montreal: Boréal, 2003). 37 Bellegarde, “Voyages d’amitié,” 8; C. Gagnon, “Le peuple Haïtien et le peuple FrancoCanadien, frères par la langue, la culture et la religion,” Cahiers d’Haïti (November 1943): 3. 38 P. Salgado, “Paroles haïtiennes,” Le Quartier Latin, November 13, 1942, 4. See also Fouchard, “Haïti, centre de rayonnement Français en Amérique.” 39 Cantave, “La vie française en Haïti,” 2. 40 Patry, “La visite énigmatique du président d’Haïti en 1943.” 41 Fouchard, “Haïti, centre de rayonnement Français en Amérique,” 8. 42 E. Lescot, “L’Homme égale l’homme à quelque race qu’il appartienne,” Cahiers d’Haïti, November 1943, 4. 43 B.G. Plummer, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 148; Smith, Red and Black in Haiti, 50; Joseph Sachot, Fondation des missions oblates en Haïti (Lowell, MA: Province Saint-JeanBaptiste de Lowell, 1950). Kate Ramsay writes that Lescot came to see the church’s antisuperstition campaign as “a political ploy on the part of the predominantly French church hierarchy to obstruct his efforts to install a mission of the American Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Haiti and ultimately to destabilize his government.” Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law, 194–96. Archives Deschatelets, Mission Oblate Haïti, 1942–1960. Procure des Pères Oblats. Les Cayes, April 1, 1960, 3; Jean-Claude Icart, “Le Québec et Haïti: Une histoire ancienne,” Cap-aux-Diamants: La revue d’histoire du Québec 79 (2004): 31.

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44 Gingras, “Trois ... regard sur Haïti,” 14. 45 H. de Beaumont-la-Ronce, Une Aurore sous les Tropiques, ou Les Sœurs de SaintFrançois d’Assise en Haïti, 2nd ed. (Montreal: Thérien frères limitée, 1950), 53. 46 Rév. Père A. Desnoyers, “Nous sommes vos Oblats,” Cahiers d’Haïti, November 1943, 15. 47 Sachot, Fondation des missions oblates en Haïti, 25. 48 Beaumont-la-Ronce, Une Aurore sous les Tropiques, 273. 49 L. Groulx, Le Canada français missionnaire. Une autre grande aventure (Montreal: Fides, 1962), 427–28; “50 ans d’éducation au Collège Notre-Dame du PerpétuelSecours,” Orient 10 (1954). 50 Groulx, Le Canada français missionnaire, 434. 51 Bellegarde, “Voyages d’amitié,” 8; E. Lescot, “Réponse de son Excellence le Président de la République,” Cahiers d’Haïti, April 1944, 10; Cornelier, “Le Canada, une nouvelle fois, honore Haïti dans la personne de son chef.” 52 A. Patry, “La République d’Haiti comme débouché pour le Canada” (thesis, Université Laval, 1945), 18. 53 From 1946 to 1949 alone, twelve Quebec publishers faced bankruptcy. M. Lacroix, “La francophonie en revue, de La Nouvelle Relève à Liberté (1941–1965),” Globe: Revue internationale d’études québécoises 14, 2 (2011): 47. 54 Henri Goudreault, “Les missionnaires canadiens à l’étranger au XXe siècle,” Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique (S.C.H.E.C.), Sessions d’étude 50, 1 (1983); W.W. Arthus, La Machine diplomatique française en Haïti (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 135.

5

Race, Gender, and International “Relations” African Americans and Aboriginal People on the Margins in Canada’s North, 1942–48 P. W H I T N E Y L A C K E N B A U E R

Scholars have shown that the Second World War had a transformative impact on Canada and Aboriginal peoples, (re)shaping social discourses and even the physical and cultural geographies of interaction.1 This global war reached to some of the remotest corners of North America, with military development projects bringing an unprecedented influx of outsiders into northern regions. The militarization of the Canadian Northwest set off a sovereignty panic in Ottawa, prompting Vincent Massey’s famous claim in early 1943 that a US “army of occupation [had] ... apparently walked in and taken possession ... [of the North], in many cases as if Canada were unclaimed territory inhabited by a docile race of aborigines.”2 Massey’s analogous comment, reflecting on the broad Canadian-American relationship, also played upon a stereotypical image of Indigenous peoples. Aboriginal populations were racially marginalized, defined as inferior, and dominated by a government determined to both regulate and protect them from outsiders. A close look at government correspondence from the period suggests that who moved into the North and what international relationships ensued with the “docile” Aboriginal peoples in the region worried government officials during the war and early Cold War years. Historians William Morrison and Ken Coates, in their study of the construction of the Alaska Highway, note that

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at the root of the mythology surrounding the northern defense projects is a legend which is essentially male, and white: a force of Americans and Canadians set aside their work in the south and came north to accept the challenge of conquering the subarctic in one of the greatest construction endeavours of the twentieth century. Like so many myths, it contains much truth, but ignores much of importance.3

Scholars have begun to displace this myth in recent decades, highlighting how Aboriginal peoples played pivotal roles in opening the Northern frontier for development. Even the best scholarship that deals with gender, race, and sex, however, still tends to isolate each as a separate category of analysis. Male-female, white-black, and white-Aboriginal typologies are readily mobilized, but seldom are these categories brought into dialogue.4 Narrowing the lens and exploring government views of Aboriginal women and African American males in the context of Northern development during and after the Second World War affords “an opportunity to explore the reciprocity between interpersonal and international relations”5 and to raise issues about the intertwined and interdependent nature of racial and gen­ der categories. State-sponsored surveillance and regulation of inter-racial relationships reflected how officially legitimized gender hierarchies influenced international policy-making in the early Cold War, reminding us that race cannot be understood in isolation of other categories. In this case study, the nexus between gendered, racial, and sexual constructions of the so-called other offers a means (as the editors suggest in the introduction to this volume) to scrutinize, explain, and define ideas of race and show how they were implicated in policies, practices, and norms. By examining the externalization of African American men’s and Aborig­ inal women’s bodies on the ethnosexual frontier on the margins of northern North America, this chapter reveals how the political meaning of racial categories became a salient factor in diplomatic decision making. African American battalions were problematic because they were required for the successful prosecution of the war effort, and remote areas of North America – by virtue of their isolation – offered the political advantage of rendering their presence out of sight and therefore out of mind. They were still described as oversexed and immoral. But the local Aboriginal women with whom they came into contact were supposed to possess similar characteristics. Therefore, as a result of the presence of the soldiers in the North,

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several racial and gender ideas operated concurrently. Yet, by the late 1940s, amid mounting Canadian sovereignty concerns stemming from the on­ going militarization of the Arctic, the lines were drawn more starkly. The idea of the African American male, laden with racial and sexual stereotypes, represented a readily identifiable other that could be placed in sharp contrast to the pure Inuit women of the Canadian North. Therefore, gendered and racialized concerns about African American units made the transition from the local, interpersonal agenda of the Canadian Northwest during the Second World War to high-level international exchanges in the postwar period. The discourse thus underwent an interesting shift. The image of the dirty Aboriginal woman was conveniently expunged from foreign policy discussions in the late 1940s. Rather, it was implied that African American males represented a primary threat to the health of Aboriginal Canada. This represented an important transition. If women were traditionally seen as blameworthy for the spread of venereal disease (VD), now it was men. And this shift in gender assignment was facilitated by the incorporation of a racial variable. By absolving white society of responsibility for introducing VD to the North, Canadian policy-makers could focus their energies on ensuring that “their” Aboriginal peoples were safe from disease-ridden African Amer­ican males. Inuit women were not dirty but pure, needing paternal protection by their Great White Father. Thus, by racializing masculinity using African Americans, men could be held responsible for the spread of diseases usually blamed on women. Recent historical work that explores the intertwined social constructions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality provides theoretical frameworks in which to situate and interrogate these interactions. For example, Joane Nagel’s important work on ethnosexual intersections demonstrates how sex and sexuality are integral to our conceptions of race, ethnicity, and nation – “to define who is pure and who is impure, to shape our view of ourselves and others ... [and] to leave us with a taste for some ethnic sexual encounters and a distaste for others.”6 In the Canadian context, the complex interplay between gender and race has long factored into non-Aboriginal people’s construction of the Aboriginal other. Historian Sarah Carter has demonstrated how representations of women (and concomitant racial hierarchies) entrenched cultural presumptions and imagery during the late nineteenth century in the Canadian West and maintained distinctions between dominant and subordinate populations. Discursive processes fomented new notions

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of spatial and social segregation and embodied a normative discourse regulating behaviour and articulating norms of femininity. Aboriginal women, for example, were characterized as squalid and immoral, “dissolute, dangerous, and sinister, in comparison to their fragile and vulnerable purewhite counterparts.”7 Other scholars have shown that Euro-Americans held a range of attitudes toward Aboriginal women depending on context, and that complex typologies more adequately represent how the dominant society characterized the “other.”8 Stereotypes and myths remain “fundamental to identifying the links between imagery, popular thinking, and government policy.”9 In the following case study, the federal government’s concerns about the effects of outsiders on northern Indigenous women, compounded by the presence of African American troops in the region during the Second World War, led to tenuous discussions between high-level American and Canadian officials. The intersection between traditional security issues (the need for northern military infrastructure) and individual security (the welfare of Aboriginal women) was brought into sharp relief. Women’s and men’s bodies became symbols of danger – the spreading of venereal disease – and, ultimately, objects of bureaucratic scrutiny. In the early Cold War, these issues converged in diplomatic discourse, revealing a complex racialized and gendered framework for policy formation in which Inuit women needed protection from African American men. Cynthia Enloe and other feminist scholars have questioned the absence of women in disciplinary international relations, interrogating stories of how people experience international politics and militarism and, in turn, theorizing how gender structures geopolitical practice – and vice versa. “If we employ only the conventional, ungendered compass to chart international politics, we are likely to end up mapping a landscape peopled only by men, mostly elite men,” Enloe observes. “The real landscape of international politics is less exclusively male.” Her interrogations of the militarization of daily human interactions expose how power in international relations “depends upon sustaining notions about masculinity and femininity.” Unfortunately, she notes that “a fictional James Bond may have an energetic sex life, but neither sexuality nor notions of manhood nor roles of women are taken seriously by most commentators in the ‘real’ world of power relations between societies and their governments.”10 Adding the variable of race further complicates and enriches our understanding of “the consequences of international diplomacy on regional, local and human levels.”11

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The Canadian Northwest at War: Setting the Context “Prior to the Second World War,” strategist R.J. Sutherland wrote, “Canada’s northern regions represented, not a military frontier, but a vast and impenetrable strategic barrier.”12 Official historian C.P. Stacey had noted in 1940 that “on the Dominion’s northern territories those two famous servants of the Czar, Generals January and February mount guard for the Canadian people all year round.”13 From another senior officer’s perspective, there was “nowhere to go” in Canada’s North, “and nothing to do when you get there.”14 In short, defence planners imagined the region as an unpopulated realm or a geopolitical terra incognita. Sparse Indigenous populations, which remained unsettled from the standpoint of a British settler society world view, did not factor into defence equations whatsoever. The war changed this. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States officially joined the Allied cause and the Northwest became a hotbed of activity. Alaska seemed vulnerable to attack and was a vital connection to the Soviet Union. As a result, Canada and the United States entered into bilateral agreements to build Northwest Staging Route airfields from British Columbia to Fairbanks, the Alcan (later Alaska) Highway, and a Canol oil pipeline in the northwest corner of the continent. The Canadian government did not have enough resources to build these installations itself, even on its own territory, so the American Corps of Engineers swept into the country to manage the tasks. Although the western Subarctic, stretching through the northern boreal forest and forest-tundra transition from Alaska to Hudson Bay, might have looked unoccupied on southerners’ maps, the Northwest has been the homeland to Aboriginal groups for millennia. By the 1940s, most Athapas­ kan societies practised a mixed economy, blending traditional subsistence lifestyles with fur trade opportunities. Despite their relative isolation, these cultures had already adjusted to the presence of traders, miners, whalers, policemen, and the odd bureaucrat, but the sudden flood of newcomers contracted to undertake wartime construction projects was unprecedented (at least since the Klondike Gold Rush).15 In 1941, the Yukon Territory boasted a total population of 4,914, of whom 1,508 were Aboriginal. Accord­ ing to the same census, 9,456 of the 12,028 people living in the Northwest Territories were of Aboriginal descent,16 as was a majority of northern British Columbia’s population. The influx of modern, mechanized construction crews shocked local inhabitants. “Natives stood (usually from great distance) and stared in wonder as the line of bulldozers grunted, snorted, and crashed their way through

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traditional hunting and trapping grounds,” historian Dick McKenna described. “Most had never seen anything like it before and were amazed by the power of the great big mechanical monsters.”17 Kaska elder Amos Dick, of Ross River, Yukon, recounted to me how, as a young boy of about thirteen, he was hunting in the bush near his community when he heard a tremendous noise. Soon he witnessed strange men crashing through his people’s lands on their caterpillar tractors. They were building the Canol Road, completely unannounced to the local peoples.18 A zealous journalist writing in 1943 painted a condescending picture, steeped in the stereotypically racist language of the day, of a somewhat similar “contact” scenario: One place an Indian coming down his old pack trail met a cat coming up. Just as he came into view the Negro operator rolled his old white eyes, shoved in the clutch and three jack pines flew into the air and rolled over the bank. The savage left and tarried not in the leaving. When he finally came to the trading post he was only to gasp, “Big black devil he come!”19

Ross River resident Mike Powaschuk passed along the story from another local elder who had recounted that the Natives thought the men who came to build the Canol were “all mechanics – they were all covered in black stuff!”20 Many of the visitors to the Northwest during the Second World War were African Americans. At this point in the war, the United States Army still clung to the belief that African American men were not suitable for combat and thus assigned them to segregated construction units.21 The exigencies of war meant that thousands were sent to the Northwest, despite official policy that “Negro units” would not be sent to “extreme northern climates.”22 Both the US and Canadian governments were apprehensive about the situation: the US assistant chief of engineers recognized that it was “unwise for diplomatic reasons” to concentrate all of the “Negro units” in the north “since the Canadians also prefer whites” – an obvious reference to conversations with Canadian officials whose race-thinking made them reticent to allow African American battalions into a “sparsely populated region” with minimal state authority to control their behaviour.23 Nevertheless, a shortage of available construction units left no other option. By the end of 1942, nearly four thousand African American soldiers were deployed in Northwest Service Command spanning Alaska, the Yukon, Northwest Ter­ ritories, and northwestern British Columbia. They represented more than 28 percent of the total number of American troops in the region.24

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This set the stage for an interesting set of interactions that bridged the domestic-external divide. A marginalized population (African Americans) was deployed to a marginalized territory, where it interacted with another marginalized population (Aboriginal people). By linking illicit inter-racial sex (and prostitution) to heightened state administration, the state saw the need to regulate sexuality which, in turn, entrenched ideas about racial differentiation and the need for paternal control. As historian Joel Williamson argued, in difficult times the race card is played to artificially draw clear lines of responsibility and obfuscate the impotencies of the dominant society.25 The intense conjunction of gendered, sexualized, and racial attitudes may offer some explanation as to why African American soldiers were singled out as responsible for introducing venereal disease in the Canadian Northwest during the war. During the era under study, women rather than men were generally blamed for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Apart from issuing prophylactics to soldiers, direct government efforts were focused on identifying individual women carrying VD and taking prescriptive action against them alone.26 In this case, however, African Amer­ ican men were set apart as a distinct category of threat and subjected to specific paternal authority given prevailing racial ideologies. The dominant racial constructions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries constructed African American men as indolent, lazy, immoral, and promiscuous. Extensive scholarship on these racialized tropes has demonstrated how these stereotypes tell us more about the racist assumptions of the commentators than they do about past realities. In this particular case, historian Lael Morgan’s careful research reveals how African Amer­ ican workers in the Northwest represent a striking example of substantive contributions to the war effort that defied racial stereotypes.27 At the time, however, the experiences of African Americans in the Canadian North – and, equally significant, perceptions of these experiences in Ottawa – showed that racial thinking was not just an American phenomenon: it was a Canadian one as well. Canadian federal officials certainly considered the situation more problematic than Morgan leads us to believe, worrying that the presence of African American soldiers would generate anxiety and popular controversy among Canadians living in the main population centres down south. Indeed, African American interactions with local townspeople in some Canadian centres led to protests and even brawls – episodes that generated unsavoury media and political attention.28 Accordingly, American official policy tried to limit the employment of African Americans

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to isolated areas, where they came into contact with Aboriginal peoples who lived in the region. Historians Ken Coates and William Morrison argue that sex and alcohol served as the primary mediums of social interaction between Aboriginal people and southern visitors (both American and Canadian) in the wartime Northwest, the former all too often used as a way to procure the latter. “The attitude toward sexual relations with Native women ... generally started with racist assumptions,” they explained, “particularly that they had different attitudes toward sex, place[d] little value on virginity, thought nothing of promiscuity, and so forth.”29 This racialized gender construction may have legitimized their conquest by white men and absolved the males of responsibility for their own actions, but this bias did not extend in an uncomplicated way to African American men. Police and military reports from along the Alcan (Alaska) Highway highlighted Aboriginal women’s promiscuity, including several incidents in Whitehorse involving Aboriginal prostitutes as young as fifteen. In stereotypical terms, Aboriginal women who came into contact with southern men were considered “dirty, unsanitary, and disease ridden.”30 All women were potential carriers of VD, but these nonwhite women were most dangerous to men and to Canadian society more generally.31 The twist in this particular context, however, was that the African American male soldiers sojourning in their midst were tarred with the same brush. Existing scholarship has highlighted the shared Indian-black experience of racial marginalization, pathologies of racism, and racial interaction through sexual liaisons.32 Appropriate forms of sex were monogamous, marital, reproductive – and white. Both groups were stigmatized accordingly. The idea that African American males were dirty and oversexed was already entrenched in North American discourse before the Second World War. Wartime statistics merely reinforced this accepted reality. African American units had the highest rates of VD in the US armed forces: up to 30 percent of recruits could be infected and allowed to serve.33 When they came north to the Northwestern frontier, sexual health became a serious concern to government officials. If African American males were popularly depicted as hyper-sexual, then Aboriginal women themselves might be susceptible to harm from contact. In reality, the problem of VD in the North had historical antecedents well before the Second World War and the influx of African American battalions into the region. Historian William Morrison has shown how sexual

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relationships between Inuit women and American or European whalers and traders were common and even encouraged by Inuit husbands in the early twentieth century.34 According to anthropologist Diamond Jenness, crew members “frequented” Inuit women “whose moral code permitted them the same freedom as prevailed among the Polynesian islanders in the days of Captain James Cook.”35 Indeed, Dorothy Harley Eber describes a “half Inuk, half black” trader – obviously a product of one of these relationships – who travelled along the Arctic coast in the 1920s and 1930s.36 These non-Native whalers also introduced sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, which increased mortality rates (particularly of infants) and left widespread sterility.37 By 1927, the head of the Northwest Territories medical service reported that the effects of gonorrhea on Aboriginal women in the north were “quite marked.”38 Thus, the federal government tried to quash what it considered debauchery and immorality wherever possible. The influx of American troops into the Northwest during the war precipitated or heightened concerns. “The four black battalions had just settled up north when the War Department issued a memo on how such units should be used in a country such as Canada,” historian John Virtue recounts. It set specific limitations for their service in “strategically important friendly foreign territories,” including rigid discipline by white officers.39 To placate the head of Alaskan Command, who worried about inter-racial liaisons, Coates and Morrison observe that “efforts were made to keep the races separate.”40 African American troops were not allowed near settlements, and “all houses, tents, buildings, or shelters, owned, occupied, or used by Indians or mixed breeds regardless of the blood percentage were declared strictly off-limits.” In practice, Coates and Morrison note, “such regulations were hard to enforce, particularly away from the major centres.”41 To load and unload the barges carrying the fifty-five thousand tons of equip­ment needed to build the Canol pipeline, the US Army’s 388th Engin­ eer Battalion (Separate) – consisting of 26 white officers and 1,238 black enlisted men – was sent to Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald in June 1942. Oblate priest William Leising recalled that “children ran to the school windows – the teacher’s head above their little ones – straining to see ‘all those tanned men’ marching in squads to the river to unload pipe.” The soldiers “had set up their tents that night on the bend of the street known as ‘Ax-handle Alley,’ deep in the poplar wood south of town.”42 An optimistic memorandum from the Fort Smith RCMP later that month stated that “the Negro personnel are not mixing in any way with the local natives,” but interracial liaisons soon became obvious.43 RCMP officials at Fort Smith warned

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locals in general “not to get too friendly or talkative with the coloured troops” and discouraged any “intimate situations” with African American men.44 They kept close watch and sent detailed reports to Ottawa. Local residents seem to have ignored authorities’ warnings and orders to segregate from the African American visitors. “Here at Fort Smith happy Negroes joined with redmen, half-breeds and trappers in tripping the light fantastic to the tune of squeaking fiddles, swinging their aboriginal partners,” Philip Godsell wrote in The Romance of the Alaska Highway. North­ erners introduced the African Americans to their style of square dancing and, “in return, coloured troops – the kuskitayweasuk, or black meats, as the Indians called them – reciprocated and dusky hepcats entertained their redskin hosts with an open-air concert by their fifteen-piece Negro band.”45 Despite the language that typified the racial lenses through which commentators like Godsell saw the world and that was indicative of the broader racial structure of power in Canada, the underlying story reveals a cultural exchange that was positively perceived by Northerners and the soldiers. Local histories, such as Sandra Dolan’s history of Fort Smith, shed additional light on how residents perceived these interactions. “At first the local people, most of whom had never seen a black person, were scared of the American soldiers, but they began to pity them,” she notes. Eventually, with money surging into the area, community members began offering the soldiers meals, warm clothing, handicrafts, and clothes-washing services. Mary McNeill Heron recalled that her father became well acquainted with two of the African American soldiers and invited them over for dinner in appreciation of their help in fixing one of his taxis: “I don’t know why but as soon as we had finished eating and doing the dishes, my mother said in Chipewyan, ‘You girls go in the bedroom.’ So we went to the bedroom and stayed there.” They were very polite, she observed, and for years after the war sent letters to the McNeills.46 Canadian federal officials became more concerned about the downside to budding relationships when VD rates grew steadily among the Aborig­ inal populations that came in contact with the construction crews. By the fall of 1942, African American soldiers had registered formal complaints with their officers, subsequently passed along to the RCMP, about contracting gonorrhea and other VDs from “local native girls.”47 The Division of VD Control at the Department of Pensions and National Health closely monitored the situation in the Northwest Territories, Fort Smith in particular, where conditions were “more serious than at any other point in the Mackenzie District.”48 The large number of African American men in that

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particular area, coupled with the high rate of VD in the segregated battalions, made them a focus of attention and intense suspicion – a subject of biopolitical control. Dominant societal stigmas still held women generally responsible for the transmission of VD. This allocation of guilt perpetuated a longstanding tradition of blaming predatory women with lax morals for entrapping men and spreading disease.49 A similar logic prevailed in the Canadian North­ west. A concerned US Medical Corps surgeon in Fort Smith, trying to cope with VD cases in his district, believed that ambiguous Canadian laws were hindering efforts to control and even incarcerate the women who caused the scourge. “If we wait until one woman has infected two men and so on down the line,” Lt.-Col. Byron J. Smith explained, “it will mean that we will have a mess on our hands in a short time.” He encouraged RCMP cooperation similar to that in Fort McMurray, where they had helped the army “in placing two infected half-breeds in Sackatoon [sic] for four to six months and as a result we have had no new cases.”50 The RCMP in Fort Smith duly noted that the only relevant legislation in the NorthwestTerritories to cope with VD cases was the Criminal Code, which did not allow the police to order suspects to undergo medical examinations based on uncorroborated soldier testimonies (as the US army wanted). In cases involving status Indian women, however, “the matter could be easily handled, as the Indian Act Regulations provide for the control of venereal diseases.”51 The coercive, paternalistic powers available to officials through the Indian Act, which imposed state controls over most aspects of the lives of First Nations people (status Indians) who fell under its provisions, could ensure conformity with federal ideals. “Half-breed” (Métis) women, who fell outside this particular form of statutory subjugation, were another matter. In the case of Métis or non-status Indians, the government had more circumscribed legal and regulatory controls to survey, identify, constrain, and punish when it came to enforcing boundaries to preserve perceived health and security imperatives. African American men also faced scrutiny for their lack of discipline when it came to sexual health. Cpl. R.C. Gray, the RCMP officer-in-charge in Fort Smith, found fault in US Army regulations: I do not wish to criticize this army, but as they have prophylactic stations available for use, and if the men do not avail themselves of this service, there must be some lack of discipline, otherwise they could be punished for not taking the necessary precautions as supplied, and further the lack of

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co-operation lies at their end, as in practically every case the man concerned refused to divulge the name of the woman involved. I do not see where we can be expected to work with them when they do not come forward with the necessary information.52

By failing to cooperate with Canadian authorities, these soldiers were complicit in the spread of disease and of questionable integrity and reliability. African American units remained in the Canadian Northwest as garrison and maintenance units until the end of the war. Canadian government officials closely monitored the numbers of women in areas close to these units, but their attempts to curtail interactions proved impossible. An examination of declassified wartime police records suggests that most of the alleged prostitutes who catered to African Americans in the area were Aboriginal women (often referred to in memoranda as half-breeds or Métis). When apprehended by the authorities, these women were promptly removed from the district in hopes that this would stop the scourge of VD and not further erode the effectiveness of the work crews.53 The war effort was the primary motivation for state intervention, but this was inseparable from state efforts to control and regulate women’s bodies. Although there are no reliable statistics to gauge the actual number of wartime cases, particularly by ethnic group, broad testimonies revealed that it was an alarming phenomenon. “Venereal disease is assuming ever larger proportions as a serious health problem and a menace among the Indian population,” the Indian Affairs Branch report for 1944 explained. “In parts of the North where it was hitherto almost unknown, with the influx of population to these areas, it is now a distinct menace.”54 The menace remained at war’s end, but its personification soon shifted from women to men.

Postwar Prognostications Indian Affairs gave their northern health officials particular instructions to bring VD under control after the war. “The wide distribution and isolation of Indians and Eskimos enormously increase the difficulty of an adequate venereal disease control campaign,” its 1946 report concluded, but “prompt and energetic treatment was arranged in all reported cases.” Provincial authorities assisted in diagnosing and treating gonorrhea and syphilis cases to manage the situation in northern areas.55 Now these regions assumed heightened importance. As relations cooled between the West and the Soviet Union in the years after the war, the threat of a transpolar attack on North

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America became conceivable. The United States expressed renewed interest in military projects in the North to defend against its new communist foe. As the bilateral military bond between Canada and its southern neighbour tightened, basic agreements for shared continental defence took shape. In 1947, the Canadian Cabinet Defence Committee authorized American authorities to perform maintenance at certain airfields and weather stations, allowing the US military to return to the Canadian North once again.56 The Canadian government’s paternalism toward Inuit women did not abate, as its approach to managing interactions between US military personnel revealed. Although “neither the United States nor Canada looked on the North as a place to be protected because of some intrinsic value,” strategist Kenneth Eyre astutely observed, “it was seen as a direction, an exposed flank.”57 Despite framing the Arctic as a vast, empty strategic space, decision makers still had to acknowledge that an Indigenous population called the region home. In 1946, geographer Trevor Lloyd recommended that Canadians should “see that none of the contemporary military activity in the Arctic is allowed to touch the lives of the Eskimos.”58 In practice, this wishful thinking proved impossible – particularly when investing in measures to protect Inuit was hardly a high priority in Ottawa or Washington. During the Cold War era, northern military projects were, as Kevin McMahon described, beachheads of modernism: sites of wage employment, new housing, and Western technologies, and sources of disruption to Northern ecosystems and traditional patterns of life.59 Although not primarily designed to bring Aboriginal peoples under state control, the impacts of military modernism through defence initiatives – conceived from afar and implemented locally – had far-reaching impacts.60 Prior to the war, Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) had been a temporary fishing spot for the Inuit of southern Baffin Island, but had never hosted a yearround settlement. Its first permanent incarnation was Crystal Two, an air base and weather station at the head of the bay and a stop on the Crimson Staging Route, the series of bases and depots that the United States established (with Canadian approval) to facilitate the transfer of planes and other material from North America to Europe during the Second World War. By the time the Crystal Two station became operational in 1943, the installation was “virtually obsolete” for wartime purposes.61 Nonetheless, for Inuit drawn to the new settlement, the arrival of the Americans marked a turning point in the history of the region. Food, cigarettes, and movies (usually

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Westerns) are common elements in Inuit narratives of their encounters with armed service personnel. Before the war, the only qallunaat (non-Inuit) that most Inuit had seen were the Hudson’s Bay Company employees at the local trading posts. They had never seen mechanized vehicles like bull­ dozers. “When they started unloading the ship, their vehicles just started moving on the ground even though they were made of metal,” Tomassie Naglingniq recounted. “Looking back, we must have thought they were from the moon.”62 The US presence, which heightened anxiety about Canadian sovereignty over its remote regions, also led officials in Ottawa to contemplate how best to enhance their paternalistic control to address medical challenges and American critiques of Canada’s apathetic and even negligent delivery of services to Inuit. For example, American medical assistance to Inuit also proved a watershed in setting expectations for government services in the Arctic. US military officials operating in the region frequently criticized Ottawa for the poor state of health care in the region.63 By contrast, the Americans seemed eager to help local people. “I always used to get snow-blind when I was young,” Ooleepeeka Nooshoota recalled. “I went to the base to see the doctor. They had me lying there for a long time. They were putting some kind of ointment that looked like water into my eyes. Ever since then my eyes have been fine.”64 In a similar fashion, Saami Qaumagiaq remembered the compassion of American doctors who treated him during the war: When there were Inuit here working for the Americans I was in the hospital ... up there. The Americans had a doctor who treated me while I stayed in the hospital ... My mother and I slept at the hospital. I don’t remember how long we stayed ... They took me to the doctor when I became sick. He admitted me right away. The Inuit that were here would go to the doctor. This was how I was able to see the doctor and get admitted.65

This was hardly a hostile invasion force. Indeed, elders recall disappointment when US Army air force personnel were replaced by a token Canadian staff sent to oversee the base in 1944. While the Americans tended to give out things like food for free, the Canadians insisted that Inuit pay. The jump in the price of a carton of cigarettes from $1 to $5 was a source of particular unhappiness.66 In 1947, American authorities returned in strength (four hundred personnel) to refurbish runway no. 1 at Frobisher Bay.67 This drew in more

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Inuit from the dispersed camps throughout the Qikiqtani region – and also led to displacement of Inuit out of concern for inter-racial contact. Simonie Michael lived at Ukiallivialuk, an outpost camp fifty miles from Iqaluit, before moving to Frobisher Bay to work. When news arrived that about two hundred Puatiki (African Americans) would arrive, local authorities pressured Inuit to move to a nearby island called Ukalirtulik.68 “We were forewarned about the Black people arriving, telling us that they were going to mingle with our women,” Michael explained: That is what the Police Officer told us, because they would interfere with our women, he told us to move to the Island. We had to discuss better options, before Apex, we didn’t even have any mode of transportation to move, we had absolutely nothing to move ourselves with! So our men formed their own group and my wife’s father, Itorcheak, became the community leader. The Americans were located up there and Inuit would be located down there, I mean we were not that far away from each other. Perhaps a good walking distances to the end of the point of Iqaluit and that’s how we got there, by walking. The white men were living up there and we lived down here, we didn’t amalgamate in one place. There was a sign; the RCMP officer made a sign stating ‘Do Not Enter Inuit Land’ by anyone and when you go up a distance at the edge if Iqaluit area, there was another sign saying the same thing, that there were to be no entrance to Inuit land. If you entered Apex through Apex Hill or from the south side, it said the same thing, ‘Do Not Enter Inuit Land’ all the way up to Iqaluit, even before we settled in Apex. When they put up those signs, we wanted to make Apex our settlement. Even when we advised them about wanting to move, we were stuck for quite a long time because we didn’t have the means to move, to get off the Island. We didn’t have the material to build our own house, qarmaq, I mean there was totally nothing! Those were the major problems for us!69

They found Ukalirtulik “impossible to live in,” with no water, harbour, or easy access to work on the mainland. They gathered scrap packing material and boxes to make houses, which were not insulated and only warmed by makeshift heaters furnished out of powdered milk tins.70 While men were taken each day by boat to the air base for work, the women and children were confined to the island. This strict segregation left long memories, suggesting that the state was imposing constraints on a people that

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placed a high regard on the ethic of noninterference and an open and welcoming attitude to outsiders.71 In a more conspiratorial reading, an observer might construe the alleged threat posed by African American men as a justification to legitimize a temporary policy of race-based residential segregation to regulate the behaviour and movement of Inuit. Whatever the case, “that’s the time when [Inuit] realized they didn’t have control of their own lives anymore ... when they had been moved down to that island,” one Inuk told Mélanie Gagnon. “That sort of marked the beginning of when white people took control of their lives.”72

Wartime “Lessons” and Postwar Policy Although historian Lael Morgan stressed that the contributions of African American soldiers in the Northwest were immediately forgotten at the cessation of hostilities,73 a closer examination reveals that their participation left a definite postwar legacy – an unfavourable one in the eyes of Canadian policy-makers. The question of African American males in the Canadian North reemerged as a contentious bilateral issue in 1948 when US authorities contacted the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa about using African American units for Northern construction work owing to the apparent unavailability of white troops. While authorities in the Northwest Territories and Department of National Health and Welfare had no problem with this proposal – with the proviso that the US government ensure that the personnel had no contagious diseases and had adequate health supervision – senior officials in other federal departments urged caution. Brooke Claxton, the minister of national defence, felt that there might be criticism if “negro troops were introduced to the lower St. Lawrence” in Quebec.74 The undersecretary of state for external affairs, Escott Reid, added his “own view that the request not to use coloured troops at Mingan should also be extended to [Fort] Chimo, as both these places are in the province of Quebec, where the presence of U.S. coloured troops in peace-time might be misunderstood and misrepresented.”75 Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson concurred, as did Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, who “fully agree[d] that the presence of coloured troops in any part of Quebec would expose us to undesirable criticism” in light of federal-provincial debates over title to provincial lands.76 Unpacking the official policy and views of senior politicians beyond these basic statements is difficult, but the statements laid bare the clear connection between domestic conditions and Canada’s foreign policy. They also point to the complex way in which, to

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paraphrase Lord Durham, race informed the interplay between two settler societies warring in the bosom of a single state, a dynamic David Meren (Chapter 10) alludes to in his contribution to this volume. The situation was most acute at Fort Chimo (Kuujjuaq), a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post on the east side of the Koksoak River near Ungava Bay in northern Quebec, until the Second World War brought the construction of a US Air Force base (Crystal One) on the west side. Although the Americans turned the airfield over to the Canadian government after the war, they remained as custodians, planned to reopen the Crystal One facilities as a weather station in 1946,77 and set to work extending the airstrip. Similar to the situation at Frobisher Bay, Canadian authorities decided to move the Inuit camp near the base when African American soldiers were slated to arrive. Local historian Dorothy Mesher explains: In the summer of 1946 my family was pushed around some more. It was explained to us that about 800 American G.I’s were coming in to work on extending the landing strips and that it would be necessary that all the women and children be out of there. That meant us! ... The reason that we were given to justify our move back to Old Kuujjuaq ... was that there would be hundreds of black labourers coming in to work on extended air strip. It is interesting that they never thought we were in danger before, but somehow or other, at this time, these large numbers of black men seemed to constitute a possible threat of rape.78

Mesher recounted that none of the soldiers she encountered at the Amer­ ican base “ever tried to make any sexual advances to me,” and she recalled very positive interactions between the young Inuit women and the military personnel.79 Nevertheless, Canadian officials obviously had a different assessment of the threat posed by African American battalions and treated them as a distinct problem to be avoided wherever possible. The Canadian ambassador in Washington passed along a message to the US State Depart­ ment on May 4, 1948, “that our conditions regarding medical examinations are dictated by the fact that the native population in the north is very susceptible to white men’s diseases and the incidence of venereal disease in the Mackenzie District, N.W.T., following the assignment of coloured troops to the Canol project, was very discouraging.”80 The peculiar wording, “white men’s diseases,” aside, the message was clear: African American men were associated with VD, were responsible for infecting Aboriginal women during the Second World War, and would have to be closely monitored.

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Perceptions were, of course, more important to decision makers than reality. Although VD in the region predated the Second World War, Ottawa officials now seemed to blame African American males for introducing VD to the Arctic as a whole. When the matter of sending black troops to Northeastern air bases resurfaced again in 1949, Canadian policy-makers found themselves in a quandary. Some African American troops had reached Frobisher Bay the previous year, and owing to “the control exercised by the United States Army authorities and arrangements made with the local RCMP, undesirable contact between the troops and the native Eskimo population was prevented.” But Hugh Keenleyside, the deputy minister of mines and resources, remained hesitant in a letter to the Department of External Affairs on April 23, 1949: We are guided by the feeling that it would be very difficult to justify a refusal to permit coloured troops to do labour work for the United States Army at Fort Chimo which is in the Province of Quebec when we are granting such permission at Frobisher Bay ... because practically identical conditions prevail at the two places. We cannot say that any settled part of the Province of Quebec might be affected by coloured troops at Fort Chimo. The only people there are the Eskimos who are wards of the Dominion Government – at least so they were proved by a Supreme Court action initiated by the Quebec Government. The only question, then, is whether some interest unfriendly to the Administration might endeavour to cause embarrassment by alleging that the Administration is not being sufficiently careful in protecting the welfare of the natives.81

The federal structure, as well as legal ambiguities and prevalent patronizing views vis-à-vis Inuit peoples – who were often characterized as children in need of the government’s protective wing – made decision making complex. By portraying Inuit women as innocents in need of protection from predatory African Americans, civil servants and politicians were able to claim a leadership role as moral and physical stewards of the Canadian North. According to this logic, a failure to intervene to protect Indigenous populations from African American soldiers’ sexual licentiousness not only imperiled Inuit women, and hence the collective future of Canada’s northern population, but it also imperilled the federal government’s paternalist responsibilities (and arguably its sovereignty). This mindset, which endowed the state as a natural ruler with the right to intervene and preside over Inuit affairs, was itself a form of colonial power that drew stark colour lines in the

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Canadian Arctic. Although the Canadian government granted the US Air Force permission to conduct repair and maintenance work on its north­ eastern airfields, it insisted on ministerial approval prior to new construction or the use of African American soldiers. For his part, Pearson proved highly reluctant to approve the use of segregated African American units, particularly in Quebec – apparently in fear of political backlash in that province more than personal racial antipathy toward African Americans.82 In the face of serious Canadian reticence, the United States agreed to use only white engineer troops in Quebec. Nevertheless, Canadian officials became increasingly worried that American diplomatic requests to use African American units could place them in a politically and diplomatically intractable position. Consistent with the shift from overtly racist language to more subtle, veiled manifestations of systemic racism that is tracked throughout this volume, domestic political pressures and perceived health threats to Aboriginal peoples led senior Canadian policy-makers to insist that US officials cease making formal requests to use, or to discuss the use of, African American troops in the formal diplomatic record. But in this instance we can see how the silence that surrounds race arose. At the Oc­tober 1949 meeting of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the Canadian section emphasized that “there is nothing to be gained in making proposals to the Canadian Government for the use of such troops in Canada, at least in peacetime, owing to the political and health problems to which such proposals give rise.”83 Quietly, reading across the grain of the documentary record suggests that Canadian officials also worried that the questions that invariably arose could undermine Canada’s international image as an open society. The issue continued to make its way onto the official record for a short time, as the Canadian government continued to find ways to discourage African American segregated units from reaching the North. In the end, however, President Truman’s decision to integrate the US military in 1948 made African American personnel entering Canadian soil more difficult to oppose. RCAF air vice marshal Arthur Lorne James reported to External Affairs in August 1950 that the US Air Force (USAF) general commanding Amer­ican units in Newfoundland and Labrador, Maj.-Gen. Lyman P. Whitten, informed him that “apparently as a result of the U.S. Government’s non-segregation policy, varying numbers of negro personnel are nowadays being included in all normal U.S.A.F. units.” In recent weeks, Whitten reported, he had “received some 45 negroes for posting in various units in Newfoundland.” The authorities in the province, including the attorney

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general, were “apparently not particularly happy about the situation,” but they decided that it was “[un]desirable to raise any objections.” It was not that the Canadian officials at various levels did not want to object; they simply did not see how they could without creating bad publicity for Canada in the United States. Pearson recognized that there was simply no way to oppose African American personnel on Canadian soil, “so long as there [were] no negro units.”84 A desegregated American armed forces would, and did, erase the political volatility of such matters once and for all in 1954.85 This was not a case of Canada becoming racially progressive, but rather of the issue no longer being presented to officials in a format that allowed them to distinguish between African American and other military personnel. African American soldiers, and their perceived threat to Inuit health and welfare, disappeared as a category for bilateral discussions when the Americans abolished their system of segregated units. Accordingly, it is beyond the scope of this particular case study to explore the broader influence of racial thinking about African Americans and Aboriginal peoples, particularly after 1954. When the American military ceased to draw lines between African Americans and other Americans serving overseas, Canada had no means to impose boundaries between its citizens and African Americans as a distinct racial category isolated from other Americans. Instead, Canada’s efforts at constraining interactions between qallunaat men and Inuit women in the Far North over the next two decades had to rely on regulatory mechanisms without recourse to distinct racial categories among the nonAboriginal Canadians and Americans working in the region.

Conclusion Using grounded evidence, this chapter tried to illustrate how inter-racial sex and sexual morality could be pivots around which international relations could and did turn, revealing how the state could rationalize intervention to assert authority over bodies (sexual encounters), generate or perpetuate truth discourses about responsibility for venereal disease (health), and construct the North as a biopolitical space where people’s relation to power became obvious. In turn, the domain of inter-racial sexual relations serves as a space in which an inward-looking process of the Canadian state (re)consolidating power over Aboriginal peoples was supplemented by an outward-looking one that shaped its relationships with the United States and with Americans. In an insightful review article, Jacqueline Jones likened the attempt to discuss race and gender as discrete categories of historical analysis to trying

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to study a fast flowing river by scooping up the water with one’s hands. She explained: Historians now simply add race and gender into the mix of social signifiers that drive American society ... All of these characteristics ... reveal less about a person’s ‘objective’ status and more about the larger political meaning attached to that person’s situation in any particular time and place. And it would be foolish to try and disentangle these social identifiers from one another ... In fact, studies of racial and gender ideologies are successful only to the extent that they include consideration of a whole host of factors at work simultaneously. Social historians, then, juggle contingencies, and the more the better.86

Were controversies over VD, African American units, and Aboriginal women driven by simple racism? Were postwar decisions by a patronizing federal government that sought to protect Inuit women from outsiders driven by a similar ideology? If such questions are framed “in stark either-or fashion,” as Jones predicted, they obscure the “rich complexity” and “intertwined systems of power on display.”87 The politics of ethnosexuality88 played out in physical interactions on Canada’s northern frontiers and in broader regulatory and policy strategies. By identifying African American men as the source of sexual peril, the Canadian state also promoted its moral superiority, endowing authorities with the right to protect marginal subject populations – particularly Aboriginal peoples. Ironically, by Indigenizing sexual violence – by conflating a reconceptualization of African-American-Aboriginal relations in the Northwest as potential health and welfare threat to Inuit in the Northeast – Canadian officials unwittingly undermined prevailing gender stereotypes about responsibilities for venereal disease. The case study also reveals a subtle nationalizing of bodies. In segregated units, African American men could be the subjects of segregation from Canadian Aboriginal women. By othering bodies, grouped by racial category, Canadian authorities created a pretext to assert political control and power, with changing internalities and externalities foregrounded in perceived government responsibilities legitimizing their actions. This produced interesting forms of state selfrationalization, framed by racialized and gendered discourses. In this case, state power clearly was not dedicated to the erasure or elimination of Aboriginal people89 but to the protection of their bodies – albeit through assertions of state sovereignty. Ultimately, the government’s actions could

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be viewed as a form of subjugation under pretext of protection, with interracial sexual relations serving to justify the state’s regulation of relationships (real or hypothetical) between African American men and Indigenous women. Uncovering and analyzing official discourses about race and gender, and bringing these into dialogue with the practice of Canadian-American relations on various scales, can enhance our understandings of power relations, the logic behind state decision making, and the unintended consequences when dominant but competing ideological assumptions take official form. This case study has revealed how, during and after the war, the militarization of Northern Canada was both gendered and racial, creating new sites of international relations that were framed and informed by prevailing ideologies, assumptions, and stereotypes. Although African American soldiers performed tasks intended to bolster continental security, racial thinking led Canadian authorities to construct them as potential threats to North­ern peoples. The international movement of bodies – racialized bodies – had implications for both local and international relationships and systems of authority and control. In short, this temporally and geographically confined case study provides specific insight into how race animated the decisions taken by decision makers in their engagement with both Canadians and with the world – a main theme of the book as a whole. In interrogating common modes of racialization, power relations, and the racialized and gendered logic behind state policy-making, it confirms that racial paradigms had ongoing relevance during and after the Second World War. Gender, sex, and race converged, with assumptions about inter-racial relations at the micro-level ultimately shaping international relations. This study also draws attention to local relationships, often marginalized or overlooked by diplomatic historians, that might encourage a deeper and more complicated engagement with myriad forms of international relations in the Canadian context. When read in isolation, these examples risk being dismissed as anecdotal, insignificant, or trivial. Collectively, they call upon us to more fully incorporate intersecting categories such as gender, sexuality, and race into our understandings of Canada’s engagement with and place within the broad world. By interrogating the diverse factors that constitute domestic and international spheres, and reading how these shape and influence Canadian policy, even the forbidden frontiers of interracial sexual interaction can remind us of the international political con­ sequences of marginalized populations coming into contact – in this case on the geographical margins of North America.

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NOTES An early version of this chapter appeared as “Politics of Race, Gender and Sex,” in J. Oakes and R. Riewe, eds., Aboriginal Connections to Race, Environment and Traditions (Winnipeg, MB: Aboriginal Issues Press, 2006), 3–16. 1 S. Sheffield, Red Man’s on the Warparth (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); K. Coates and W. Morrison, Working the North: Labor and the Northwest Defense Projects 1942–1946 (Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 1994). 2 V. Massey, What’s Past Is Prologue (Toronto: Macmillan, 1963), 371. 3 Coates and Morrison, Working the North, 113. 4 On the inseparability of race and gender and the racial construction of sexuality, see J. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; E. Brooks Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17, 2 (winter 1992): 251–74; T. Liu, “Teaching the Differences among Women from a Historical Perspective: Rethinking Race and Gender as Social Categories,” in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 2nd ed., ed. V.L. Ruiz and E.C. DuBois (New York: Routledge, 1994), 571–84; and A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1995). Examples of the richness of an approach reflecting these interrelationships include J. Hammond, Oversexed, OverPaid and Over Here (St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1981); J. Dowd Hall, “‘The Mind that Burns in Each Body’: Women, Rape, and Racial Violence,” in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. A. Snitow, C. Stansell, and S. Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 328–49; K. Coates and W.R. Morrison, “The American Rampant: Reflections on the Impact of United States Troops in Allied Countries during World War II,” Journal of World History 2, 2 (1991): 201–21; B. Bailey and D. Farber, The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); S.O. Rose, “Girls and GIs: Race, Sex, and Diplomacy in Second World War Britain,” International History Review 19, 1 (1997): 146–60; and E. Boris, “‘You Wouldn’t Want One of ‘Em Dancing with Your Wife’: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II,” American Quarterly 50, 1 (1998): 77–108. 5 P. Goedde, “Feature Review: Women and Foreign ‘Affairs,’” Diplomatic History 23, 4 (2002): 696. 6 J. Nagel, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1, 9. 7 S. Carter, Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 159. See also Carter, “Categories and Terrains of Exclusion: Constructing the ‘Indian Woman’ in the Early Settlement Era in Western Canada,” Great Plains Quarterly 13, 3 (1993): 147–61; A. McGrath and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race and Policy: Ab­ original Women and the State in Canada and Australia,” Labour/Le Travail 38 (Fall 1996): 37–53; S. Carter, L. Erickson, P. Roome, and C. Smith, eds., Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women’s History (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2005); and L. Erickson, Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law and the Making of a Settler Society (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011).

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8 S.L. Smith, “Beyond Princess and Squaw: Army Officers’ Perceptions of Indian Women,” in The Women’s West, ed. S. Armitage and E. Jameson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 63–75. 9 A. Marcus, Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), 3. 10 C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Pol­ itics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 1, 4, 7. 11 J. Engel and K.C. Engel, “Introduction: On Writing the Local within Diplomatic History – Trends, Historiography, Purpose,” in Local Consequences of the Global Cold War, ed. J.A. Engel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 2–3. 12 R.J. Sutherland, “The Strategic Significance of the Canadian Arctic,” in The Arctic Frontier, ed. R. St.J. Macdonald (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 256. 13 C.P. Stacey, The Military Problems of Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1940), 5. 14 Quoted in G.R. Lindsey, “Strategic Aspects of the Polar Regions,” Behind the Head­ lines [Canadian Institute of International Affairs] 35, 6 (1977): 1. 15 K. Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); K. Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). 16 Coates and Morrison, Working the North, 15. 17 D. McKenna, “The Alaska Highway: From Rocky Mountain Tote Trail to Modern Highway,” The Yukoner Magazine 31 (2006): 50. See also J. Virtue, The Black Soldiers Who Built the Alaska Highway: A History of Four U.S. Army Regiments in the North, 1942–1943 (Jacksonville, FL: McFarland, 2012), 68–70. 18 Author interview with Amos Dick, Quiet Lake, Yukon, 2004. 19 Quoted in K. Coates and W. Morrison, The Alaska Highway in WW II: The U.S. Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 73. 20 Author interview with Mike Powaschuk, Ross River, Yukon, 2004. Other local Indigenous people referred to the African Americans as Tipiskowinninew or “midnight man.” W.E. Griggs, The World War II Black Regiment That Built the Alaska Highway: A Photographic History, ed. P.J. Merrill (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 11. 21 This policy of placing African Americans in noncombat missions lessened over the course of the war. See, for example, U. Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, 1966); P. McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army: Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II (Santa Barbara, CA: Clio Books, 1983); A. Bielakowski, African American Troops in World War II (New York: Osprey, 2007); C. Moore, Fighting for America: Black Soldiers – the Unsung Heroes of World War II. (New York: Presidio Press, 2007); and N. Wynn, The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). 22 Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops, 438. 23 Brig.-Gen. C.L. Sturdevant, quoted in L. Morgan, “‘Miles and Miles ...’ Remembering the Black Troops Who Built the Alcan Highway,” in Three Northern Wartime Projects,

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ed. B. Hesketh (Edmonton, AB: Canadian Circumpolar Institute and Edmonton and District Historical Society, 1996), 151; and Virtue, Black Soldiers, 57. 24 Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 433, 438–39, 609. 25 J. Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). 26 Coates and Morrison, Alaska Highway in WW II, 212. 27 Morgan, “Miles and Miles,” 150–61. 28 See documents in Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 85, vol. 865, file 8327; Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 439; Coates and Morrison, Working the North, 48–53. 29 Coates and Morrison, Alaska Highway in WW II, 149 30 K. Coates, “The Alaska Highway and the Indians of the Southern Yukon, 1942–50: A Study of Native Adaptation to Northern Development,” in K. Coates, ed., The Alaska Highway: Papers of the 40th Anniversary Symposium (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1985), 161–62. 31 R. Mawani, “‘Educational Prophylaxis’: Venereal Disease Control and the Regula­ tion of Sexuality in British Columbia and Canada, 1900–1930” (master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1996). 32 J.F. Brooks, ed., Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002). 33 Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 277–78. 34 W. Morrison, Under the Flag: Canadian Sovereignty and the Native People in North­ ern Canada (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1984), 71–74. 35 D. Jenness, Eskimo Administration: II. Canada (Montreal: Arctic Institute of North America Technical Paper no.14, 1964), 13. 36 D.H. Eber, Images of Justice (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 51. 37 Jenness, Eskimo Administration: II. Canada, 14. 38 See LAC, RG 85, vol. 1407, part 1, file 530–79. 39 Virtue, Black Soldiers, 66. 40 Coates and Morrison, Alaska Highway in World War II, 81. 41 Ibid. 42 W. Leising, Arctic Wings (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 82. 43 Secret Memo, Cpl. R.C. Gray, Fort Smith Detachment, June 26, 1942, LAC, RG85, vol. 865, file 8327. 44 Coates and Morrison, Alaska Highway in WWII, 140. 45 P. Godsell, The Romance of the Alaska Highway (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1944), 172, 195. Also quoted in Virtue, Black Soldiers, 114. 46 S. Dolan, Wooden Boats and Iron People: The History of Fort Smith, NWT (Fort Smith, NT: Mary Kaeser Library Board, 2011), 60, 62. My research has yielded insufficient information to explore further the development of Indigenous ideas about African American men and their bodies. 47 Privett to RCMP Fort Smith, September 14, 1942, LAC, RG 85, vol. 1407, part 1, file 530–79; and Swift to RCMP Fort Smith, September 21, 1942, LAC, RG 85, vol. 865, file 8327. For additional US Army complaints about VD rates, see the documents in LAC, RG 85, vol. 910, file 10712, and LAC, RG 85, vol. 913, file 10893.

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48 Gibson to Miller, September 22, 1943, LAC, RG 85, vol. 1407, part 1, file 530–79. 49 See J. Cassel, The Secret Plague: Venereal Disease in Canada, 1838–1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). 50 B.J. Smith, September 6, 1942, LAC, RG 85, vol. 1407, part 1, file 530–79. 51 Cpl. R.C. Gray to Inspector A.G. Birch, September 12, 1942, LAC, RG 85, vol. 1407, part 1, file 530–79. 52 Ibid. 53 See the documents in LAC, RG 85, vol. 865, file 832. 54 Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report 1944 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1944), 154. 55 Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report 1946 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1946), 205. 56 For detailed studies of this era, see S. Grant, Sovereignty or Security? Government Policy in the Canadian North, 1936–1950 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988) and P. Kikkert, “Pragmatism and Cooperation: Canadian-American Defence Activities in the Arctic, 1945–1951” (master’s thesis, University of Waterloo, 2009). 57 K. Eyre, “Forty Years of Military Activity in the Canadian North, 1947–87,” Arctic 40, 4 (1987): 294. 58 T. Lloyd, “Frontier of Destiny – The Canadian Arctic,” Behind the Headlines 6, 7 (1946): 8. 59 K. McMahon, Arctic Twilight (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1988). 60 See, for example, M. Farish and P.W. Lackenbauer, “High Modernism in the Arctic: Planning Frobisher Bay and Inuvik,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, 3 (2009): 517–44; and P.W. Lackenbauer, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment,” Environmental History 12, 3 (2007): 920–50. 61 See R. Eno, “Crystal Two: The Origin of Iqaluit,” Arctic 56, 1 (2003): 72. 62 M. Gagnon and Iqaluit Elders, Inuit Recollections on the Military Presence in Iqaluit (Iqaluit, NU: Language and Culture Program of Nunavut Arctic College, 2002), 39. Historian Mélanie Gagnon’s collection of Iqaluit elders’ memories provides poignant insight into how the military presence at Frobisher Bay transformed lives of Baffin Island Inuit. 63 R.Q. Duffy, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 51–52. 64 Gagnon and Iqaluit Elders, Inuit Recollections, 37. 65 Gagnon and Iqaluit Elders, Inuit Recollections, 40–41. 66 Gagnon and Iqaluit Elders, Inuit Recollections, 97, 99. 67 S.M. Meldrum, Frobisher Bay: An Area Economic Survey, 1966–1969 (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1975), 34. 68 Another elder referred to it as Ukaliqtuqtuuq or “Rabbit Island.” Gagnon and Iqaluit Elders, Inuit Recollections, 105. 69 M. Akavak and M. Akpalialuk, interview with Simonie Michael, January 26, 2005, Qikiqtani Inuit Association, Iqaluit, quoted in P.W. Lackenbauer and R. Shackleton, “Inuit-Air Force Relations in the Qikiqtani Region during the Early Cold War,” in De-Icing Required: The Canadian Air Force’s Experience in the Arctic, ed. P.W. Lacken­bauer and W.A. March (Trenton, ON: Canadian Forces Air Warfare Centre, 2012), 76.

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70 Ibid. 71 For a basic introduction to Inuit culture and values, see Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, The Inuit Way: A Guide to Inuit Culture, rev. ed. (Ottawa: Pauktuutit, 2006). 72 Interview with M.M., 1998, quoted in M. Gagnon, “Les militaires américains à Crystal 2 (Frobisher Bay) dans les années 1940: Perspectives inuit,” (mémoire du MA. université Laval, 1999), 107. 73 Morgan, “Miles and Miles,” 150, 159–61. 74 Memorandum from Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to Secretary of State for External Affairs, April 30, 1948, reprinted in Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), Documents on Canadian External Relations (DCER), vol.14: 1948, ed. H. Mackenzie (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1994), 1631. 75 Ibid., 1631–32. 76 Ibid., 1632 (marginal note). 77 Memorandum from Secretary, Canadian Section, PJBD, to Secretary, Cabinet Defence Committee, August 31, 1946, DCER, vol.12: 1946, ed. D.M. Page (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1977), 1573. 78 D. Mesher with R. Woollam, Kuujjuaq: Memories and Musings (Duncan, BC: Unica, 1995), 55–56. This relocation did not meet with resentment or resistance, and Inuit returned to the new townsite that fall after the African American workers left. 79 Mesher, Kuujjuaq, 59. 80 Secretary of State for External Affairs to Ambassador in United States, May 4, 1948, DCER, vol.14: 1948, 1632. 81 Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, April 23, 1949, DCER, vol.15: 1949, ed. H. Mackenzie (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1995), 1608. 82 Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to Minister of National Defence, April 13, 1949, DCER, vol.15, 1949, 1607. 83 Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, April 23, 1949, DCER, vol.15: 1949, 1609. 84 Memorandum from Defence Liaison Division to Under-Secretary of State for Ex­ ternal Affairs, August 25, 1950, and marginalia, DCER, vol.16: 1950, ed. G. Donaghy (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1996), 1506–07. 85 R. J. Stillman, Integration of the Negro in the U.S. Armed Forces (New York: Praeger, 1968), 40–56; M. MacGregor, Jr., Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1981); and R. James, Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 86 J. Jones, “Race and Gender in Modern America,” Reviews in American History 26, 1 (1998): 220–21. 87 Jones, “Race and Gender in Modern America,” 221. 88 See Nagel, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, 255. 89 On this theme, see S. Morgensen, “The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now,” Settler Colonial Studies 1, 1 (2011): 52–76.

6

Race, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations From Imperialism to Internationalism in Canada, 1940–60 DAN GORMAN

So it’s a family like us ... one crisis after another!1

“Once again within our time and generation, the nations face the solemn challenge history has thrust upon them. To build, amid the parting clouds of war, a peace which shall be real and indivisible.” Set to the melodramatic backdrop of exploding fireworks and Niagara Falls, these are the opening words of the Canadian National Film Board’s 1945 film Now – The Peace.2

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The documentary presents an optimistic vision of a new postwar world order, highlighting the creation of the United Nations (UN) and the international humanitarian work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilita­tion Administration (UNRRA) and the United Nations Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture. In contrast, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film, Black Narcissus, portrays the ambivalence with which many Britons confronted the postwar years. The film concerns a group of British nuns who struggle to establish a convent in the remote Himalayas, succumbing to isolation and cultural misapprehensions with local villagers.3 It ends with the nuns departing into a monsoon, a stark visual symbol of the political rains which were beginning to wash away the British Empire itself. These cinematic mise-en-scènes establish this chapter’s historical context. Canadians and Britons were confronted with the simultaneous decline of the Empire-Commonwealth and rise of international governance after 1945. One aspect of these interconnected developments was the emergence of an international discourse of greater racial equality.4 The increasingly divergent positions taken by Britain and Canada on racially inflected questions at the UN and within the Commonwealth reflected the decline of British­ ness, defined here as a flexible and shifting engagement with British historical and cultural identities, the symbols and practices used to express them, and a loose sense of whiteness.5 Britain’s postwar Labour government sought a transition from “an empire sustained by territory into a commonwealth based on influence.”6 Canada embraced the emerging discourse of liberal internationalism embodied by the UN after the war. Each of these positions deemphasized the racial nature of the prewar empire, including the homogenous identity of whiteness that had underpinned the British world. The politics of race did not disappear in the postwar years, however; if anything, decolonization brought race to the forefront of international politics. This was certainly true in Britain, which dealt with both the end of empire and the arrival of nonwhite immigrants from the “new Commonwealth,” but it was also true in Canada. Postwar Canadian governments were concerned with the Cold War implications of decolonization in Africa and Asia and participated in UN-sanctioned peace enforcement operations in the decolonizing world. Ideas of resistance emanating from the decolonizing world found supporters in English and (especially) French Canada. Above all, shifting patterns of postwar Canadian immigration began to dissolve conventional public attitudes about home and abroad, making questions of race both domestic and foreign policy considerations.7

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Questions of race also shaped debates within both the Commonwealth and the UN after 1945. While the global imperial identity of whiteness prevalent in international politics in the early twentieth century declined after 1945, it remained an important element in postwar British and Can­ adian debates about racial equality in the Commonwealth, immigration, and the structure of the postwar international system.8 Canadian ideas of liberal internationalism especially, used to shape Canada’s self-image as a postracial state, were predicated upon assumed notions of colour blind­ ness which buried lingering racial divisions within Canada. Prewar ideas of whiteness continued to implicitly inform majority opinion on Canada’s identity and international policies into the 1960s. As José Igartua has demonstrated, however, this English Canadian sense of a racially defined British identity was gradually replaced in these decades by an ethnically opaque civic nationalism.9 The latter was expressed through the creation of an array of national symbols. One consequence of this realignment of English Canadian national identity was a collective failure to adequately account for the racial elements of Canada’s history. Another was an underlying tension in postwar Canadian immigration policy between civic-minded notions of liberal tolerance and the continuation of racial discrimination.10 The lingering but largely implicit discourse of whiteness in public affairs contributed to the marginalization of nonwhite Canadians and to Canada’s cautious engagement with the global decolonization of European empires after 1945. Canadian ambivalence about race was apparent in the marked passivity that characterized governmental and nongovernmental responses to the international discourse of greater racial equality. Rather than active confrontation with the systemic racial divide, faith was placed in liberal internationalism, associated strongly with Canada’s imperial past, to bring about gradual positive change as part of a broader, progressive universalist project. Accordingly, this chapter traces the transition from imperialism to internationalism in postwar Canada. It examines this transition first within the realm of the Commonwealth, where the main racial questions were immigration and apartheid in South Africa, and then within the United Nations, where Canada especially took on an active role. Postwar Commonwealth racial politics and the crisis over South Africa from 1960 to 1961 is the focus of the chapter’s first section. British and Canadian racial and international world views came to a head over the question of South Africa, whose adoption of apartheid in 1948 presented a fundamental challenge to the ideal of a multiracial Commonwealth. With particular attention given to Prime

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Minister John Diefenbaker, this first section illustrates the complex, occasionally contradictory role of race in government decision making in the 1950s and early 1960s. Race also shaped the internationalism of private nongovernmental actors. The chapter’s second section assesses the United Nations Association in Canada (UNA-C) and its leading postwar figure, Willson Woodside. Woodside was a Canadian journalist and political activist, and one of the foremost Canadian supporters of the UN as the linchpin of a more effective postracial international order. The UNA-C embodied the desire for international peace and a Canadian vision that peace depended on a shift from older panimperial identities based on race to new, allegedly postracial international affinities. Seen in tandem, debates over race within the Commonwealth and United Nations after 1945 and the actions of both governmental and nongovernmental actors reveal how the emergent discourse of liberal internationalism was shaped by the racial politics of the era.

The Commonwealth and Questions of Race Historians of the British Empire and the former settlement colonies have developed the concept of the British world as a heuristic device to express “the largely consensual and bottom-up aspects of Britishness and the British experience abroad.”11 Britishness constituted a shared cultural-ethnic identity of whiteness, a racialized group identity which combined bonds of AngloSaxon kinship with the assumption that the global privileges enjoyed by many Britons reflected their industry, skills, and talents.12 While Britishness as a transnational identity was most apparent in the settlement colonies, it was racially permeable in that some nonwhite British subjects laid claim to elements of it as well.13 This racial identity had begun to unravel well before 1945, but the process accelerated after the war. As the moorings of Britain’s global power came undone in the postwar years, more and greater rifts opened up between it and the Dominions. The open split between Canada and Britain over Suez, when the former sided with the United States over Eden’s imperial folly, was only the most public instance of the apparent decline of “British race patriotism” as a political factor in world affairs.14 Ideas of a common British identity predicated on ideas of whiteness were further eroded in Britain itself through the arrival of nonwhite Common­ wealth immigrants, a development which began symbolically with the arrival of the Empress Windrush from Jamaica in 1948.15 Britain, too, became a postcolonial state in the postwar decades, as what Andrew Thompson calls

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new Commonwealth immigration transformed it from a country where racially homogenous identities of Britishness prevailed into a more diverse and polyethnic society.16 This was anything but a smooth transition, as demonstrated by the Notting Hill riots of 1958, the reluctance of white landlords to rent flats to black applicants, social-problem films like Basil Deardon’s Saphire (1959), and, most notoriously, Enoch Powell’s 1968 “rivers of blood” speech.17 Powell’s alarmist speech marked the end of popular evocations of Britishness as a white racial identity. The fact that far-right racist organizations such as the English Defence League have appropriated older national symbols has only further marginalized connections between nationality and race in Britain. As the Daily Telegraph reported in 2012, almost a quarter of English respondents to a poll carried out by the think tank British Future identified the flag of St. George as a racist, rather than national, symbol.18 Canada underwent a parallel transformation in the postwar era, though for different reasons. There, too, the prewar hegemony of Britishness as a component of English Canadian national identity began to dissolve.19 A cultural attachment to British values, history, and symbols lingered through the 1950s, particularly among elites, as demonstrated in Neville Thompson’s study of Maclean’s journalist and Canadian imperialist Beverley Baxter.20 Britishness as the core component of an English Canadian identity receded, however, not least in its earlier, more racially explicit variant.21 Unlike in Britain, the arrival of nonwhite immigrants to Canada and the trauma of decolonization did not dramatically alter the domestic status quo in these years. Canadians had not yet begun to interrogate their own history of internal colonialism. The painful, and still incomplete, reckoning with the state-sanctioned practice of sending First Nations children to residential schools was still in the future. Most immigrants to Canada in the early postwar years still came from Europe, especially Britain and Italy.22 Canada’s amended Immigration Act of 1952 allowed the minister of immigration to bar applicants on the basis of nationality and made filling Canada’s labour force needs its first priority. Domiciled citizens could sponsor applicants, especially dependent relatives, a practice used especially by Italian immigrants in the 1950s. The Canadian government also agreed in 1956 to small annual numbers of emigrants from new Commonwealth countries (150 from India, 100 from Pakistan, and 50 from Ceylon).23 In general, however, as Laura Madokoro explores in Chapter 7, the Immigration Act maintained an effective colour bar on immigration to Canada. This fact brought Canada criticism from new Com­mon­wealth

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states and, at least before it passed its own more restrictive immigration legislation in 1962, from Britain itself. Overall, fewer than 5 percent of immigrants to Canada in the 1950s were nonwhite, non-European applicants. In view of these factors, the decision by John Diefenbaker, perhaps the last leading Canadian political figure to identify publicly with Britain and the Empire, to oppose Harold Macmillan and stand with the Afro-Asian opposition to South Africa’s continued membership in the Commonwealth at the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference looks less striking than it did at the time.24 Indo-South African disputes in the UN General Assembly over the prejudicial treatment of Indians in South Africa naturally spilled over into Commonwealth Affairs.25 Diefenbaker had a self-proclaimed “deep and abiding emotional attachment to the Commonwealth.”26 He also subsequently became a firm advocate of “One Canada.” In his contentious 1967 Progressive Conservative leadership convention speech attacking the policy of deux nations, which identified English and French Canadians as Canada’s founding nations, Diefenbaker argued that Canada should “not deny equality to those whose surnames are not of the parent races [English or French].”27 These somewhat contradictory convictions, indicative of the evolving English Canadian identity and the racial thought associated with such identity, shaped Diefenbaker’s response to the debate over South Africa at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conferences in 1960 and 1961. South Africa’s 1960 referendum resulted in the apartheid nation becoming a republic and brought its suitability as a Commonwealth member under intense scrutiny. Diefenbaker portrayed the potential inclusion of a republican South Africa through the lens of race. Consistent with the value he attached to the Commonwealth, including its utility as a vehicle for liberal internationalism, he opposed the adoption of sanctions against South Africa by India, Malaya, Ghana, and Nigeria as “a disservice to peaceful international relations by limiting the opportunities for the healthy interchange of goods, ideas and people, which is the best hope for breaking down barriers of ignorance and prejudice.”28 Canada’s 1960 Bill of Rights, which proclaimed “the dignity and worth of the human person” and affirmed “human rights and fundamental freedoms,” furthermore implicitly rejected racialist politics. Racial politics could also sometimes collapse under the weight of their own specious logic. Diefenbaker, as part of his broader anticommunist beliefs, for instance, supported the rights of Eastern Europeans, demographic groups which were both racial minorities and white.29 Given this racial political context, Diefenbaker thus counselled a diplomatic approach regarding South Africa. He understood that by pressuring

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South Africa to withdraw its application for Commonwealth membership at the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in the face of the institution’s declared multiracial character, the Commonwealth avoided a potentially fatal vote. Had the question come to a vote, Britain and the white Dominions would have been placed in the uncomfortable position of having to either rebuke one of their fellow British member states, or further antagonize the nonwhite member states. Rather than a direct confrontation, what was required was a meaningful response to the global rise of antiracism, but one that would minimize disruption and leave the Commonwealth intact. Diefenbaker’s defence of the principle of racial equality as the basis of the new Commonwealth spoke to the new tenor of racial discourse in postwar international politics, one where rhetoric outpaced structural reforms. As a supportive Globe and Mail editorial noted, in a “world where white skins are few and dark skins are many,” the Commonwealth must stand as “an organization which sees all men as having equal rights and equal dignity, and which now has to all intents come out and said so. What the Com­ monwealth formerly accepted as a general guide, it has now made a basic and determining principle.”30 After the Second World War, the Common­ wealth sought to rechristen itself as a multiracial international organization. While it retained vestiges of the older ideals of “greater Britain”31 from which it had evolved, the Commonwealth, like the UN, took its place among an emerging liberal internationalist world of multilateral organizations. A leading figure in this transformation was India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The British were not oblivious to these changes. Harold Macmillan himself was no Colonel Blimp on racial questions. The debate about South Africa’s place in the Commonwealth had been precipitated, after all, by Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” tour of Africa in 1960, in tandem with international revulsion to the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960.32 Neverthe­ less, Macmillan felt his hands were tied. As he told his cabinet after South Africa announced its decision to leave the Commonwealth, “There was a real risk that continued controversy on this issue might have led to the disintegration of the whole association in its present form.”33 Macmillan was also constrained from taking a decisive and principled stand on South African apartheid by what he and his government perceived to be Britain’s remaining national interests in the region. These included continued British access to the Simon’s Town naval base in wartime and keeping South Africa in the sterling zone.34 For Britain, geostrategic interests trumped questions of racial equality in the final accounting.

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Without pressing national interests in South Africa, and notwithstanding the restrictive provisions of Canada’s immigration policies that remained in place at the time, Diefenbaker was able to make racial concerns his top priority in debates about apartheid. Canada’s Department of External Affairs summarized the new place of race in international relations in preparatory documents for the 1961 Commonwealth conference: World opinion has now generally accepted the undesirability of racial discrimination. This has, in its development, been mixed up with “anticolonialism,” particularly in Africa south of the Sahara. There is a claim that government must be by the Africans, i.e. the black Africans, and outside the Union this is resisted only in the Portuguese territories. The other great powers involved have accepted the inevitability of the process, and remaining differences relate only to timing, and to the rights of white minorities.35

Diefenbaker’s 1961 stand thus expressed the prevailing international view: South Africa was a pariah state, and its continued membership in the Com­ monwealth would compromise the institution’s bonds of multiracialism. Here, in the ultimate renunciation of whiteness in its grotesque South African manifestation, was the end of Britishness as a shared racial identity within the British world.

Willson Woodside and the United Nations Association of Canada Canadian commentary on the Commonwealth reflected not just lingering ties of Britishness; it was also framed as an analysis of Canada’s broader place in the world. The idea that imperialism was cognate with internationalism shaped much coverage of Canada’s relationship with the UN. A 1947 story in Maclean’s magazine asserted that Canada had displayed a “peculiar talent for mediation” at the UN General Assembly.36 The story highlighted Canadian interventions on postwar disarmament and international relief, where Canada proposed an advisory committee to adjudicate the sharing of aid provision. The story was one of many of the period that played up Canada’s apparent role as an honest broker capable of mediating international disputes. The UN, Bretton Woods institutions (themselves UN specialized agencies), and Nuremberg tribunals were created as what Elizabeth Borgwardt calls “transitional regimes.”37 They were designed to bridge the gap between the material destruction and demographic dislocation of the immediate

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postwar international arena and the aspirational goals of international peace and economic stability, which politicians, planners, and activists wished to implement in the new world order. Lester Pearson certainly shared these ideals. As he declared in 1966, “all Canada’s postwar international policies testify to our belief in the conceptions of interdependence and internationalism ... the middle powers also have their own position of responsibility. They are and will remain the backbone of the collective effort to keep the peace as long as there is fear and suspicion between the great-power blocs.”38 Canada did not always live up to these ideals in the UN’s early years. Australia’s delegate accused Canada of being “servile” to the United States in 1948.39 Arnold Beichman, UN correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, asserted that “at the UN Canada is regarded as a country without a sense of driving urgency. Your people give the impression they are waiting for instructions which never come.”40 Canada refused to take sides between India and Pakistan in the ongoing Kashmir dispute in 1948 when it had a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 1948. It did, however, provide personnel to monitor the UN-supervised plebiscite recommended by the UN Commission on India and Pakistan.41 If Canadian claims to middle power status were more rhetoric than reality, however, it does not follow that the internationalist aspirations of politicians, bureaucrats, and opinion leaders of the day were so much hot air.42 This point can be demonstrated through an examination of journalist and broadcaster Willson Woodside, one of the most prominent Canadian advocates of the United Nations and international cooperation in the two decades after 1945. He reflected British ideas of a shared white identity in his advocacy within Canada for the United Nations, both as a journalist and as executive director of the United Nations Association of Canada (UNA-C). Woodside’s career is instructive in that he represents the turn to internationalism taken by many English Canadian opinion makers in the postwar period. This turn took place amidst UN debates over decolonization, where questions of race and international relations were at the forefront. Woodside was born in Portage la Prairie, in 1905, and grew up in Saskatoon and Calgary before moving to Toronto.43 After graduating from the Uni­ versity of Toronto with an engineering degree in 1929, he worked as a miner and engineer. For much of the 1930s he travelled regularly to Europe, first as a University of Toronto engineering demonstrator, and then, from 1934, as a freelance writer on international affairs. He wrote for Harper’s, Readers Digest, and Star Weekly and became the foreign editor for Saturday Night.

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During the Second World War he was a member of the Allied press corps in Europe, broadcasting nightly for CBC radio following Lorne Greene’s Voice of Doom war news.44 After the war, he continued his journalism career, writing a regular column on international affairs for Saturday Night. Woodside was a proponent of what the historian Guy Ortolano describes as technocratic liberalism, “an optimistic faith in progress and reform, in which talented individuals worked through existing institutions to benefit society.”45 In the Canadian context, this made Woodside a quintessential “progressive” conservative. In a 1954 by-election, he stood as the Progressive Conservative candidate for the Trinity riding of Toronto to replace Liberal Lionel Conacher, who had died in a softball game on Parliament Hill in May. Woodside lost the election, and apart from this campaign, he spent his career seeking to influence international affairs as a private citizen.46 He became an active member of the UNA-C, serving as its national director from 1958 to 1966. He was also vice-president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations in 1962.47 The UNA-C had twenty-six branches across the country in 1951 and twenty-nine by 1961.48 Following the pattern established by interwar nongovernmental pressure groups such as the League of Nations Society in Canada and the League of Nations Union in Britain, the UNA-C pursued a broad-based publicity campaign in the postwar years.49 The major elements of this work were educational initiatives. Its members disseminated material on the UN to schools, sponsored model UN programs, published a newsletter, delivered public lectures and broadcasts, cultivated press and political opinion leaders, undertook youth outreach activities, and celebrated an annual UN week held in October.50 Woodside also supported a UN flag campaign in 1961.51 In addition to its educational work, the UNA-C organized publicity campaigns and fundraising events, including an event, in 1951, in Toronto where teenage taggers canvassed for donations dressed in the costumes of the UN’s then sixty member states. The UNA-C fielded questions and inquiries about the UN from members of the public and ran an outreach operation which included radio and broadcasts, a regular periodical (The United Nations in Action), an overseas correspondence campaign, essay and poster contests, newsreels, and participation in the World Youth Forum.52 UNA-C leaders also moved in and out of national and public service appointments, establishing a Canadian public-private network of pro-UN personal connections and generating international discussion of UN initiatives.

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A representative example was Maj.-Gen. E.L.M. Burns, chair­­­man of the UNA-C national executive from 1952 to 1954 and Ottawa branch president. Burns also served as chief of the UN Truce Supervisory Organiza­ tion in Palestine from August 1954 until the Suez Crisis in November 1956, whereupon he headed the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) until he returned to Canada as a government adviser on disarmament in 1959.53 The UNEF idea, as developed by Pearson and UN Secretary General Dag Hammar­ skjöld and supported energetically by the UNA-C, prompted a reevaluation in Britain and elsewhere of the possibility of providing the UN with a permanent security force.54 UNA-C members such as Woodside and Kathleen Bowlby, its longtime national secretary, gave innumerable speeches to community groups across the country.55 Along with Woodside, Bowlby was a guest on a Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) Citizens Forum organized by the UNA-C in Ottawa in 1950. They argued that the UN’s machinery provides states with “experience in cooperation” and pointed to its economic and social work as its greatest success.56 The UNA-C was accordingly a strong proponent of the emerging practice of international development, sponsoring a conference on foreign aid and development in Ottawa in May 1954.57 These liberal internationalist arguments assumed a leadership role for Britain and the former Dominions, and underemphasized global racial divisions in their stress on international cooperation. Woodside’s internationalism reflected his wartime journalism experience in Europe. In a 1947 article for the International Journal, Woodside wondered what strange perversity keeps people from making a hundredth part of the effort to mobilize public opinion for peace-making as for war-making? To build support for the war, it was considered necessary to have, on top of all the concentration of effort by press, radio, movies, public speakers, and posters, a special Wartime Information Board. No one seems to dream that commensurate opinion-building effort is necessary to secure the peace.58

Through his journalism and UNA-C activism, Woodside took it upon himself to carry out such a campaign. He believed power was the essential element in international politics. Woodside, however, had greater faith in the ability of international organizations to maintain international security than did realists like the American political scientist and author Hans

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Morgenthau. The latter criticized the “undefined principles of justice” which the UN professed, and believed it was incapacitated from acting on political issues due to American-Soviet tensions.59 While Woodside believed in the importance of robust national defence provisions, they were for him a necessary but not sufficient basis for collective international security. In his view, the British Commonwealth and Em­ pire had proved its worth as a vehicle for espousing freedom through its wartime cooperation. While the Soviets would use the UN to secure a period of peace for the purposes of consolidating power in their newly occupied territories, he told the Empire Club in 1946, the Empire-Commonwealth and its global allies would seek to use the UN to ensure global peace through the propagation of freedom.60 There was a clear racial logic at work here, with the legacy of AngloSaxonism shaping Woodside’s postwar international vision. Woodside was also a moralist, claiming the Allies occupied the higher ground because they did not use atomic power in Europe during the war. He made no mention of Japan here, a silence which clearly indicates the racialized outline of Woodside’s internationalism and which echoed the earlier Western rejection of Japanese claims to racial equality at the Paris Peace Conference that Francine McKenzie (Chapter 3) explores in this volume.61 In answer to a question from an audience member as to whether God could be used as a weapon for peace at the UN, Woodside pointed out that UN members had many gods. Here he implicitly evinced a secular cosmopolitanism, differing from the Christian pacifism which had often flavoured prewar internationalism. Like the Canadian nationalist Arthur Lower, who wrote hopefully in 1940 of “Anglo-Saxonism united” in the aftermath of the Ogdensburg Agree­ment that established a common North American defensive front, Wood­side became convinced after the war of the merits of Atlanticism.62 Woodside believed the project of international cooperation should begin with the Atlantic Pact nations and build outward to incorporate the Marshall Plan countries and the British Commonwealth. These liberal internationalist views, predicated on the assumed primacy of Anglo-Saxon nations, were conventional among the world federalist, Atlanticist, and Commonwealth communities after 1945. Where Woodside was more forward-looking was in his appreciation for the possibilities of public diplomacy. He advocated working through church groups, radio propaganda, and other “soft power” tools to build greater support for the project of international cooperation.63 His appreciation of public diplomacy was shared by a small but growing number of other Canadian internationalists after the war. The International

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Student’s Service, for instance, launched the International Summer Sem­ inar in 1948, bringing together 130 Canadian and European students in Ploen, West Germany, in an effort to diminish Germans’ isolation.64 Although Woodside was sympathetic to the idea of world federalism, which blossomed in the Anglo-American world in the late 1940s and 1950s, he was also a more practical internationalist, attracted instead to the idea of internationalizing existing alliances, namely the Atlantic union of the war years. Alongside other Canadian foreign policy figures, Woodside thus signed the American federalist Clarence Streit’s Declaration of Atlantic Unity (1954), which urged NATO member states to coordinate their political, defence, and trade policies.65 The idea of international federalism spoke to the ideals of cosmopolitanism, universality, and, thus, by implication, multiracialism in a more comprehensive way than could the Commonwealth. Read another way, how­ever, the presumptive universalism of world federalism, extrapolated as it was from racialized Western notions of international cooperation, maintained an assumed racial hierarchy.66 It was no coincidence, given this ideational connective tissue, that ideas of world governance attracted that prewar tribune of world history, Arnold Toynbee. The idea of world government was a placeholder idea for a broad array of postwar internationalists in the English-speaking world. This was especially true for private citizens like Woodside, who believed deeper and broader international cooperation was the only means of preventing further global catastrophe and addressing an increasingly complex set of interconnected global economic and social problems.67 He and many other internationalist activists could trace their intellectual origins to interwar liberal internationalism. In October 1945, a group of prominent American internationalists led by Streit, Wall Street lawyer and Franklin Delano Roosevelt confidant Grenville Clark, and Justice Owen Roberts issued the “Declaration of the Dublin Conference.”68 Dissatisfied with a UN they felt incapable of managing the new atomic threat, the Dublin Conference delegates argued for a world organization with limited but robust “power to control the atomic bomb and other major weapons and to maintain world inspection and police forces.”69 Woodside was more confident in the UN as a potential global planning body, writing in his diary in 1946 that it could facilitate a “World TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority],” a government-directed engine for modernization.70 He was nonetheless frustrated that the UN had not moved far enough toward a true world government, writing the following year during debates over Palestine that “this tagging of delegates with names of [their]

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own country [is] a relic of absolute nationalism.”71 By the early 1960s Wood­ side pressed the importance of a more cosmopolitan outlook on UNA-C members, especially on issues of race and colonialism: The Charter still proclaims that the UN cannot interfere in matters of domestic concern to its member-states. But the peoples of the world are rewriting this section year by year, with their insistence that the treatment of people, whether in Angola or South Africa, in Hungary or Tibet, in Algeria or Arkansas, is a matter of concern to the whole world.72

With these ideas in the international air, Diefenbaker’s stand on South Africa at the 1961 Commonwealth Conference looks ever more of its time. As the earlier discussion of South Africa reveals, however, race remained a clear global problem. Like the majority of his contemporaries, Woodside was not immune from seeing the world through a racial lens. His favourable impression of the Indian diplomat Sir Ramaswamy Mudaliar at the 1945 San Francisco conference reflected patronizing racial assumptions: “It is an enlightening experience to hear the highest strivings of liberal western civilization expressed in perfect English by an Asiatic.”73 The association Wood­side made of linguistic skills with degrees of civility echoed those same associations made about Haitian elites who spoke Parisian French, as Sean Mills explains in Chapter 4. What was understood to be a refined manner of speech (whether in French or English) could transcend “the negativity associated with blackness.”74 Writing in Saturday Night in October 1945, Wilson recognized that Japan’s military victories over the British, French, and Dutch had decisively ended “the era of white supremacy in Asia.” Like many West­ ern internationalists, however, he felt that the colonial powers should return to the region in a tutelary role. If the colonialism of white supremacy was no longer acceptable, he believed a reformed colonialism of paternal governance was still necessary: “What right have the European powers to reassert their interest in and control of these Asiatic territories at all? Certainly they can no longer assert any inherent right of superiority to rule these people. They can only stay there a while longer, with any moral justification ... [by] helping these people over the last lap towards autonomy or full independence.”75 Fifteen years later, in the diary he kept as an observer during the 1960 UN General Assembly, he commented approvingly on “well-dressed, well-educated and well-mannered African diplomats at the UN,” and wondered if world discrimination would be lessened if more Africans were not “dirty, uneducated and uncultured.”76

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While these views reveal the racial assumptions upon which Woodside’s international outlook was based, he never actively considered race as an international governance issue requiring direct remedy. Rather, he held that global racial divisions would be dissolved through the progressive universalism of liberal internationalism. In asserting the ameliorative powers of a universal UN, Woodside and the UNA-C sought to solve problems of global racial divisions and discrimination not by confronting them directly, but by pursuing international structural reforms through which they believed all global inequalities would be lessened. In taking this position, Woodside and the UNA-C were travelling on the same train, though in different carriages, as advocates of the Commonwealth such as Diefenbaker.

Conclusion Britain and Canada addressed questions of race and international governance in different, if sometimes complementary, ways between 1945 and the early 1960s. Partly this reflected Britain’s attitude as a great power. Despite Britain’s economic difficulties and its inability to project military power around the world as it once did, demonstrated most abjectly by its imperial collapse in Asia between 1941 and 1942, it nonetheless still possessed veto power at the UNSC and a global presence, albeit diminished, through empire, atomic, and then nuclear power.77 These great power considerations led Britain to pursue a more realist course at and toward the UN, despite the anticolonial criticism to which it was subjected, and which only increased after the General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960 and the emergence of the Group of 77 in 1964.78 Canadians were more optimistic about the UN. Unlike South Africa, Canada could portray itself internationally as a postracial state, however inaccurate this position may have been given both its restrictive immigration policy and its continued colonial relationship with its First Nations that Laura Madokoro, David Webster, and Whitney Lackenbauer explore in this volume (Chapters 7, 11, and 5 respectively). This postracial universalism was an important element of the international activism of the UNA-C, as well as Canada’s opposition to apartheid in South Africa. As one of the Canadian delegates at the 1949 Commonwealth Relations Conference organized by the Canadian Institute for International Affairs observed, the UN allowed his government “to have a policy to which no racial or religious group in Canada could have any serious objections.”79 For Paul Martin, a frequent Canadian representative to the UN who helped broker the 1955

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expansion of UN membership, the UN was a “practical necessity” in a new, multiracial international system.80 He told an American UN Association audience in 1964 that “the new states have been among the most zealous in bringing about the fulfillment of the charter aims of equal rights and selfdetermination of peoples and in encouraging respect for human rights without distinction as to race, colour or creed.”81 This was not the case for the British, dealing with racially charged cases of decolonization in Africa and Asia and with new Commonwealth immigration at home. The tenor of these deliberations about race and decolonization reflected the broader acceptance within both the Commonwealth and the UN in this period that the world was one composed of “races.” This was especially the case in debates concerning South Africa, which dominated proceedings in both venues in the two decades after the Second World War. In this sense, at least, advocates of multiracial unity and those of racial segregation ironically continued to speak the same language.



NOTES Thank you to Heidi Tworek for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, as well as to Matthew Stubbings. Support for this project came from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. 1 United Nations Association in Canada, Newsletter, 13, 2 (October 1961), University of Guelph Archival and Special Collections, Willson Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40. 2 Now – The Peace, National Film Board (NFB) of Canada, Producer Stuart Legg, 1945, http://www.nfb.ca/film/now_the_peace/. 3 Black Narcissus, DVD, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1947; Criterion, 2010); W. Webster, Englishness and Empire: 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–67. 4 See M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Coun­ tries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 5 See P. Ward, Britishness since 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004); and R. Samuel, Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London: Routledge, 1989). 6 P. Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945 (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 151–52. 7 R. Gendron, Towards a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006); S. Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activ­ ism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); K. Spooner, Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960–64 (Vancouver:

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UBC Press, 2009); F. Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006); P. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007). 8 Lake and Reynolds, Global Colour Line, 347–49, 52. 9 J. Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 194571 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006). 10 L. Madokoro, “‘Slotting’ Chinese families and refugees, 1947–1967,” Canadian Historical Review 93, 1 (2012): 25–56; A. Mountz, Seeking Asylum: Human Smug­ gling and Bureaucracy at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); N. Sharma, Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of “Migrant Workers” in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). 11 B. Attard and A. Dilley, “Finance, Empire and the British World,” Journal of Imper­ ial and Commonwealth History 41, 1 (2013): 2. On Britishness and the British world, see S. Howe, “British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems, and Killing Fields,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, 4 (2012): 691–725; S. Potter, “Empire, Cultures and Identities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain,” History Compass 5, 1 (2007): 51–71; and K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw, and S. Macintyre, eds., Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cul­ tures (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 2007). 12 B. Schwarz, Memories of Empire, vol. 1, The White Man’s World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 13 See S. Bannerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Em­pire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and A. Spry Rush, Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 14 S. Ward, “Worlds Apart: The ‘British’ Prime Ministers at Empire’s End,” in Re­ discovering the British World, ed. P. Buckner and R.D. Francis (Calgary, AB: Uni­ versity of Calgary Press, 2005), 399–400. 15 See W. Webster, “The Empire Comes Home: Commonwealth Migration to Britain,” in Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century, ed. A. Thompson (Ox­ ford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 122–60. 16 A. Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005), 216–23; see also C. Waters, “‘Dark Strangers’ in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–1963,” Journal of British Studies 36, 2 (1997): 207–38; K. Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); J. Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 17 W. James, “The Black Experience in Twentieth-Century Britain,” in Black Experience and the Empire, ed. P. Morgan and S. Hawkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 373–82; Saphire, DVD, directed by Basil Deardon, (1959; Criterion Eclipse, 2010); B. Schwarz, “‘The Only White Man in There’: The Re-Racialisation of England, 1956–68,” Race and Class 38, 1 (1996): 65–78; A. Whipple, “Revisiting the ‘Rivers of Blood’ Controversy: Letter to Enoch Powell,” Journal of British Studies 48, 3 (2009): 721–23.

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18 “St George’s flag is a racist symbol says a quarter of the English,” Daily Telegraph, April 22, 2012. 19 P. Buckner, “Canada and the End of Empire,” in Canada and the British Empire, ed. P. Buckner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 119–24; J.E. Iguarta, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); C.P. Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada (Montreal/ Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); and A. Smith, “Canadian Prog­ ress and the British Connection: Why Canadian Historians Seeking the Middle Ground Should Give 2 ½ Cheers for the British Empire,” in Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History, ed. C. Dummitt and M. Dawson (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 75–97. 20 N. Thompson, Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936–1960 (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2013). See also P. Phillips, Britain’s Past in Canada: The Teaching and Writing of British History (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 137–50. 21 D. Gouter, “Constructing the ‘Great Menace’: Canadian Labour’s Opposition to Asian Immigration, 1880–1914,” Canadian Historical Review 88, 4 (2007): 549–76. 22 British immigrants accounted for 44 percent of total immigration from 1946 to 1950, and 27 percent from 1956 to 1961. Italian immigrants rose from 4.5 percent to 18 percent in these same periods. See N. Kelley and M. Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 319. 23 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 334. 24 Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, South Africa – Consequences of Withdrawal from the Commonwealth, March 17, 1961, The National Archives (TNA), Cabinet Papers (CAB)/129/104. 25 P. Henshaw and R. Hyam, The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 146–67; L. Lloyd, “‘A Family Quarrel’: The Development of the Dispute over Indians in South Africa,” The Historical Journal 34, 3 (1991): 703–25. 26 J. Diefenbaker, One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, The Years of Achievement, 1957–1962 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1976), 187. 27 Diefenbaker, “One Canada, One Nation,” speech to the Progressive Conservative Convention, Toronto, September 8, 1967, in Diefenbaker, “Those Things We Treasure: A Selection of Speeches on Freedom and in Defence of Our Parliamentary Heritage” (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972), 149. 28 Diefenbaker to Tunku Abdul Rahman, September 8, 1960, quoted in Those Things We Treasure, 214. 29 G. Stevenson, Building Nations from Diversity (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 23, 175–76, 209. 30 “South Africa Withdraws,” Globe and Mail, March 17, 1961, 6. 31 D. Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860– 1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 32 L.J. Butler and S. Stockwell, eds., The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and Brit­ ish Decolonization (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

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33 H. Macmillan, quoted in Cabinet Conclusions, “Meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, 1961 – Union of South Africa,” TNA, CAB/128/35. 34 Hyam and Henshaw, 252–54, 264–71. 35 “Meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, London, May 3–13, 1960, and Prep­ arations for the 1961 Meeting,” Documents on Canadian External Relations, Vol. 27 – 356, DEA/50085-H-40. 36 “‘The Man with a Notebook’ [Blair Fraser], Backstage at Ottawa: Jack Canuck, Dip­ lomat,” Maclean’s, January 15, 1947, 15. 37 E. Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cam­ bridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), 9. 38 Lester Pearson, “The Identity of Canada in North America, address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors,” Montreal, May 19, 1966, 4, 13, copy held in Guelph University Archival and Special Collections (GA), Willson Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A065 009 Correspondence – Pearson, 1948–1966. 39 “Action Must Follow,” Globe and Mail, October 27, 1960, 6. 40 Ibid. 41 H. Mackenzie, “Knight Errant, Cold Warrior or Cautious Ally? Canada on the United Nations Security Council, 1948–1949,” The Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7, 4 (2009): 461–62. 42 A. Vibert Douglas, “Report on UNESCO – What will Canada do?” Queen’s Quar­ terly 42, 1 (1955): 99; UNA-C Newsletter 10, 9 (June 1959), GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40; A. Chapnick, The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005). 43 “Trinity Riding: Novices, Defeated Veterans in Race,” Globe and Mail, November 6, 1954, 15. 44 W. Woodside, “Finishing the Job,” The Empire Club of Canada Addresses (Toronto, Canada), April 8, 1943, 456–57; University of Guelph News Bulletin, June 13, 1974, GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A063001. 45 G. Ortolano, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Pol­ itics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 64. 46 “Name Woodside Trinity Candidate for By-Election,” Globe and Mail, July 29, 1954, 5. 47 The Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, “The Monthly Letter,” January 1959, 8. 48 UNA-C Newsletter, Labour Day 1961, GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40. 49 See H. McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Cit­izen­ ship and Internationalism, c. 1918–45 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2012); and R. Veatch, Canada and the League of Nations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 42–44, 46–49. 50 “Materials on the UN,” United Nations Association in Canada Newsletter 12, 4 (December 1960), GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40; UNA-C, The U.N. in Your High School: A Student Handbook (Toronto: UNA-C, 1962); “United Nations Day,” Toronto Star, October 22, 1948, 14; “37 Nationalities to Sing Carols at Woodgreen,” Toronto Star, December 14, 1948. 51 W. Woodside, “UN, November 1960 [diary],” GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A063002, box 1.

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52 “Tag Day Saturday for United Nations,” Toronto Star, April 12, 1951, 9. 53 E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1962), 7, 186–206. 54 E. Johnson, “A Permanent UN Force: British Thinking after Suez,” Review of Inter­ national Studies 17, 3 (1991): 252–53; V. Micheles Dean, “Whose UN Is It?” UNA-C Newsletter 9, 8 (August 1958), GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40. 55 See, for instance, “This Side of the Iron Curtain,” Toronto Star, October 5, 1946. 56 CBC Citizens Forum: The Challenges of Achieving Peace, Feb 16, 1950 – roundtable radio forum organized by Ottawa branch of UNA-C: http://www.cbc.ca/player/ play/1801209538. 57 UNA-C, “Conference on Canadian Aid to Underdeveloped Countries Held at the Chateau Laurier Hotel, Ottawa, May 27–28, 1955,” (Toronto: United Nations Associ­ ation in Canada, 1956); E. McInnes, “Canadian Opinion and Foreign Policy,” Queen’s Quarterly 43, 4 (1955–56): 513. 58 W. Woodside, “UN Progress?” International Journal 2, 2 (1947): 118. 59 H. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Peace and Power, 3rd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1965 [1949]), 481, 498. 60 W. Woodside, “The Russian Riddle,” February 21, 1946, The Empire Club of Can­ ada Addresses, (Toronto, Canada), 253–55, http://speeches.empireclub.org/60439/ data?n=7. 61 J. Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 95–99, 114–15, 140. 62 A. Lower, quoted in R.D. Francis, “Historical Perspectives on Britain: The Ideas of Canadian Historians Frank H. Underhill and Arthur R.M. Lower,” in Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity, ed. P. Buckner and R.D. Francis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 318. 63 W. Woodside, “Winning Without War,” February 7, 1952, The Empire Club of Canada Addresses (Toronto, Canada), 239, http://speeches.empireclub.org/60118/ data?n=1. 64 M. Long, “An Experiment in International Education,” Queen’s Quarterly 55, 4 (1948): 410–11. 65 C. Streit, “Declaration of Atlantic Unity,” Freedom and Union, October 1954. Other Canadian signatories to the Declaration included Woodside’s UNA-C colleague Sidney Smith, president of the University of Toronto; labour leaders George Burt, Canadian director of the United Automobile Workers, and A.H. Mosher, president of the Canadian Congress of Labour; George Ferguson, editor of the Montreal Star; Queen’s University professor Arthur Lower; Alistair Stewart, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)’s Foreign Affairs spokesman; and Diefenbaker, then the Conservative Party’s foreign affairs spokesman. 66 See B. Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009), ch. 5. 67 M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 2012), 230–35.

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68 G. Clark, “The Dublin Declaration,” quoted in J.F. Bantell, “The Origins of the World Government Movement: The Dublin Conference and After,” Research Studies 42, 1 (1974): 22–23. 69 Bantell, “Origins of the World Government Movement,” 20. 70 W. Woodside, diary, October 27, 1946, Woodside Papers, GA, UN Assembly 1946, XM1 MS A063002, box 1, diary. 71 W. Woodside, diary, October 3, 1947, GA, Woodside Papers, UN Assembly, September 27 – October 3, 1947, XM1 MS A063002, box 1, diary. 72 UNA-C, Newsletter, 12, 7 (March 1961), GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A064 078, box 5, file 40. 73 Woodside, “UN Progress?” 121. 74 W. Woodside, “Difficulties of White Man’s Return to Indo-China and the [Nether­ lands] Indies,” Saturday Night, October 20, 1945, 12. 75 Ibid., 13. 76 Woodside, diary, November 15, 1960, GA, Woodside Papers, XM1 MS A063002, box 1. 77 B. Harrison, Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom, 1951–1970 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2009), 95–97, 540. 78 General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 (Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples); C. Lee, ed., Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010). 79 F.H. Soward, ed., “The Changing Commonwealth: Proceedings of the Fourth Un­ official Commonwealth Relations Conference, September 8–18, 1949,” (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1950), 91. 80 “16 Nations made new UN Members,” Globe and Mail, December 15, 1955, 1; “Candidates for UN Membership,” Times (London), December 2, 1955, 8; “New Members Join UN,” Times (London), December 16, 1955, 8. 81 Paul Martin, “Some Reflections on the Twentieth Year of the United Nations,” Speech to Pittsburgh United Nations Association, October 20, 1964, GA, Woodside Papers, XMI MS A064 078, box 5, file 37.

7

“Belated Signing” Race-Thinking and Canada’s Approach to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees LAURA MADOKORO

Canada is separated by a vast ocean from other countries in close contact with the refugee problem, and therefore approaches the subject with modesty and even humility. There is no serious refugee problem confronting the Canadian Government, but it would offer its assistance in securing compromises and in improving the draft Convention. – Leslie Chance, Canadian Representative to Economic and Social Council, July 1951

In 1944, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, “the ‘idea’ of race does not belong in the history of ideas.”1 She noted that only in the late nineteenth century “were dignity and importance accorded to it as though it had been one of the major spiritual contributions of the Western world.”2 In historicizing how race came to be an accepted, and defining, way of thinking about the modern world, Arendt argued that “up to the fateful days of the ‘scramble for Africa,’ race-thinking had been one of the many free opinions which, within the general framework of liberalism, had argued and fought with one another to win the consent of public opinion.”3 Race-thinking, where race animates world views without doing the heavy ideological work of racism, demarcated difference but it didn’t rationalize discrimination and the

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subjection of peoples. According to Arendt, imperialist ambitions, particularly in Africa, transformed race-thinking into an ideology of racism.4 The notion of race-thinking is a critical lens through which to consider postwar approaches to the assistance of refugees and displaced persons and, in particular, the development of the 1951 United Nations Convention Re­ lat­ing to the Status of Refugees. The 1951 Convention is widely recognized as the most important piece of international law ever developed to safeguard the rights of refugees. It defines a refugee as a person outside their country of origin due to persecution or a fear of persecution and outlines state responsibilities to provide individual protection and safeguard the rights of refugees. Article 33 is considered groundbreaking for its nonrefoulement clause, which prevents signatories from returning refugees to their countries of origin if they are at risk of persecution. Although refugee advocates championed, and continue to defend, this innovative solution to guaranteeing protection for refugees, the Convention has been roundly criticized for its narrow focus on individual persecution, a product of the focus on Cold War Europe.5 Refugee situations involving people who moved in the wake of Japan’s defeat in 1945, the millions upset by the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, as well as the rise of communist states in Asia, were deliberately written out of the Convention’s definition of refugees to assuage fears that signing the Convention might lead to obligations to admit racially undesirable migrants. Drafters, for instance, determined refugees in postpartition India and Pakistan to be “national refugees” who did not need the protection of the international community.6 As a further guarantee against the admission of undesirable migrants, until the Convention was amended by Protocol in 1967, signatories had the option of limiting the Convention’s temporal and geographic scope to events occurring in Europe before 1951. These limiting clauses were understood to be a way of getting governments to commit to the Con­ vention without forcing them “to sign a blank check and to undertake obligations towards future refugees, the origin and number of which would be unknown.”7 All the original signatories to the Convention chose to limit its application to the European theatre. Canada chose not to sign at all, even as Canadian officials paid lip service to notions of racial equality and equality of treatment in other domains. The difference between rhetoric and practice was particularly marked among immigration officials. Following from powers invested in the 1910 Immigration Act, Canada’s approach to selecting migrants rested heavily

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on individual authority and discretion. As historian Franca Iacovetta has elaborated, immigration officials came to see themselves as gatekeepers re­ sponsible for admitting selected migrants.8 Perhaps reflecting notions of habitus, as discussed by Kevin Spooner in Chapter 9, they also came to see themselves as the gatekeepers of Canadian aspirations for a white settler nation. By contrast, diplomats in the Department of External Affairs were consistently more generous in their approach to refugee issues in the postwar period, for the notion of being a humanitarian nation resonated with their liberal internationalist approach to world affairs. Yet, as Canada’s diplomats communicated the government’s stance on refugee policies in various international forums, their statements often disguised the race-thinking that animated the country’s overarching immigration framework and the admission of select migrants. In attending to the gulf between rhetoric and practice among the various officials involved in formulating Canada’s response to postwar refugee developments, this chapter shows how public statements cloaked in the guise of liberal internationalism belied deep-seated, and racialized, reservations about the prospect of receiving refugees from all over the world. The decision to attend to the inconsistencies in the manner in which the federal government spoke publicly about refugee issues and the manner in which it approached the drafting and signature of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees emerges from three pressing historiographical concerns. The first is the ongoing effort to interrogate the scope and influence of the nation-state. Much of the recent work in international history has drawn attention to the multiplicity of actors involved in shaping relations between and beyond nations.9 This chapter takes a different approach by examining the interplay between various departments within the Canadian bureaucracy to unpack the motives behind the making of immigration and refugee policies, an approach akin to what geographer Allison Mountz describes as “an ethnography of the state.”10 The second is the general lack of critical scholarly attention to questions of race and immigration as the postwar period evolved, particularly with regards to the post-1967 period and the universalization of Canada’s immigration selection programs. The conventional narrative suggests a linear, progressive march toward increasingly liberal and race-neutral immigration regulations.11 However, the focus on progress belies both the contested nature of change in this period, where public sentiment was often opposed to

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universalization efforts, and the evolving nature of selection and discrimination in Canada’s immigration and refugee programs.12 The third is the widespread notion of Canada as a humanitarian nation, which continues to inform government statements about the character of the country and its immigration and refugee programs in particular. In February 2012, for instance, the minister of citizenship and immigration defended efforts to curtail refugee admissions and human smuggling by emphasizing Canada’s “long and proud tradition of providing a safe haven for refugees.”13 This statement disguised the government’s reluctance at the time to resettle significant numbers of refugees leaving the conflict in Syria, a reluctance that would become a key issue in the 2015 federal election campaign. The silence around race-thinking, in contrast with the clamour involved in the broadcasting of humanitarianism, disguises the inconsist­ encies that separated Canada’s approach to refugees in rhetoric and in practice in the postwar period.

On Race-Thinking, in Rhetoric and Practice Arendt argues that race-thinking predated racism, emerging alongside Darwinism and eugenics as an explanation for the perceived decline of Euro­ pean civilization. The nineteenth-century political philosopher and French nobleman Comte de Gobineau proposed race-thinking as a way of explaining the ills of contemporary society.14 Race-thinking was less about hate, fear, and discrimination and more about race as an explanatory mechanism. According to Arendt, race-thinking became more pronounced and devastating as it evolved into full-fledged racism, where race demarcated not only difference but also inferiority, with the emergence of nationalist movements in Europe. The result, as advanced by postcolonial feminist scholar Sherene Razack, is that “racism’s presence is not simply to be found in the racial hostility some individuals bear towards others not of their race, but also in the ideas that the state must protect itself from those who do not share its values, ideals of beauty and middle-class virtues.”15 While Arendt’s analysis focused on the European situation, her notion of race-thinking has clear applicability in other contexts, including the workings of modern immigration bureaucracies.16 As Razack has observed, “When race-thinking unites with bureaucracy, it loses its standing as a prejudice and becomes instead an organizing principle.”17 The idea of needing to protect the state, and the future of the nation, from individuals of different races or backgrounds has been a hallmark of modern immigration

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policy – particularly among white settler societies – since the late nineteenth century. The exclusion of undesirable migrants on the basis of race was at the very heart of early immigration legislation in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, all of which actively excluded migrants from Asia in particular. Although the so-called exclusion era is generally understood to have ended in the United States and Canada in the immediate postwar period and been structurally dismantled in Australia and New Zealand by the 1970s and 1980s respectively, evidence suggests the pervasive presence of race-thinking as an animating force in policy discussions, even as states moved to more race-neutral language and legislation over the course of the postwar period. Nowhere is the pernicious presence of race-thinking more apparent than in discussions over international instruments that threatened state sovereignty over admissions and, relatedly, the future of the nation. In the early postwar period, immigration programs sustained the Can­ adian government’s national aspirations as a white settler society, aspirations reflected in public opinion polls about the future of the nation. Admission policies privileged labourers who could contribute to the economy and the development of a particular vision of Canadian society.18 Migrants from the British Isles were preferred, along with northern Europeans. As in the early twentieth century, immigration officials continued to see Europe in shades of white, with migrants from southern Europe understood to be less desirable than those in the north.19 Migrants outside of Europe were even less desirable. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which had banned almost all immigration from China to Canada after 1923, was repealed in 1947; however, limitations on Chinese admissions remained. Quotas and restrictive policies also remained in place for migrants from Japan, South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean until 1967. While race-based admission policies endured, the establishment of the United Nations and specific organizations to address the needs of displaced persons and refugees in Europe, most notably the International Refugee Organization (IRO) and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Ad­ min­istration (UNRRA), hinted at the difficulty of maintaining restrictive immigration laws in the face of major population displacements and associated humanitarian concerns. The IRO and UNRRA were mandated to assist in the settlement of displaced persons and refugees. Their mandates reflected an emerging sensibility about the need for institutionalized international cooperation on refugee issues to counter the steadfast influence of fascist totalitarian regimes and other perceived threats to peace.20 Consistent

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with the themes Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) engages with in this volume, tensions quickly emerged among Canadian officials over the country’s inherently restrictive approach to immigration and its growing internationalist sentiments. More than any other factor (such as public opinion or federalprovincial relations), these tensions shaped how Mackenzie King’s Liberal government contributed to the design of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and help explain the country’s “belated signing” of this agreement.21 The Convention challenged Canadian policy-makers because it contradicted claims to equality of treatment under the country’s general immigration programs – an equality that existed in rhetoric alone until the late 1960s.

Refugees in a Time of War The Second World War created massive displacement, with an estimated 11 to 20 million people uprooted from their homes by war’s end. Peacemakers confronted the question of what to do with those who had been rendered stateless or who had lost their homes during the conflict. The Canadian government addressed this issue with considerable reserve, both in the pre- and postwar periods. From 1934 to 1940, an estimated 17,000 displaced persons and refugees moved to Canada. Another 2,400 entered the country over the course of the war. The majority of these were civilian internees. It was not until the work of the IRO began in earnest that larger numbers of displaced persons and refugees were admitted to Canada, but even then the federal government failed to measure up to the organization’s expectations in terms of helping those most in need. The IRO was established in 1946 with a mandate to deal with specific categories of refugees in Europe. The IRO worked with sixty voluntary agencies and was largely a resettlement organization.22 Between 1947 and 1951, the IRO resettled 329,000 people to the United States, 182,000 to Australia, 132,000 to Israel, 170,000 to various European states, and 123,000 to Can­ada.23 While these numbers were significant, the Canadian government provided only highly selective resettlement opportunities – privileging only certain kinds of labourers and refugees with family ties to Canada. Humanitarianism, as it was conceptualized at the time, meant family reunification and sponsorship schemes based on immigration regulations introduced in 1946. Displaced persons generally needed to meet the established criteria for landed immigrants in order to be admitted. Their humanitarian needs, as such, were secondary. For this reason, legal scholar James Hathaway contends that Canada’s interest in the refugee populations in

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Europe was largely one of economic self-interest.24 This, of course, was in keeping with the country’s historic approach to immigration generally, where economics and race combined to make only certain migrants desirable as permanent settlers (a point Paula Hastings underscores in Chapter 1, in her analysis of Canadian relations with the Caribbean). The government, in fact, saw no need to distinguish between humanitarianism and economic self-interest. The two policy objectives went hand in hand. If employable refugees could be selected, then the government would fulfill labour market needs and respond to pressure to provide some kind of assistance to displaced persons in Europe. The key was to ensure that the country selected the best people available. H.H. Carter, an official in the Department of External Affairs, observed a “great difference in the quality of the DPs [displaced persons] themselves as prospective immigrants” and proposed that “Canada should take the earliest possible action in this field, both for obvious humanitarian reasons, and in order to obtain the best potential immigrants for assimilation as future Canadians.”25 Carter’s comments reveal the character of the Canadian government’s investment in the country’s postwar recovery, selecting refugees and displaced persons on the basis of their potential contributions to the economy.26 Canada’s immigration programs therefore operated at considerable cross-purposes to those of the IRO and, later, those of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Canada made only minimal effort to assist in the resettlement of “hard-core” cases, a fact that the country’s representatives to the IRO were forced to concede in annual meetings of the organization.27 In 1949, J. Donald Kingsley, the director-general of the IRO, began to anticipate the end of the organization’s mandate in 1951. He was cognizant that there were still thousands of displaced persons living in camps across Europe. By way of a solution, Kingsley proposed a semi-autonomous high commissioner who would work to find “permanent solutions” for their situations and report directly to the United Nations. Reflecting a strong internationalist outlook, Canadian diplomats endorsed this option heartily.28 Hugh Keenleyside, in the Department of External Affairs, believed that the more the UN did on behalf of the refugees, “the more likely these people are to find satisfactory havens and the more willing they may be to accept permanent residence in the countries in which they are now.”29 In Keenleyside’s words, we find a strong emphasis on settlement, but not resettlement to Canada, foreshadowing the conversations that would characterize the work of officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration

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(established in 1950), once the notion of a high commissioner for refugees was introduced.

A High Commissioner for Refugees In 1949, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the appointment of a high commissioner for refugees, to take office on January 1, 1951, and address the “residual populations” in Europe, whose plights remained unaddressed at the time the IRO’s constitution expired. Initially, the authority of the office extended to refugees and displaced persons as defined in the constitution of the IRO, with the possibility of extending the mandate to certain classes of people at any given time. The development of a Conven­ tion Relating to the Status of Refugees changed the scope and character of postwar refugee work.30 Born of a 1947 resolution from the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, work on a refugee convention began in 1950 with an ad hoc committee operating under the mandate of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The purpose of the proposed convention was to provide people who met the definition of a refugee with guarantees of protection as well as economic and social rights to ensure they could lead lives of dignity and physical refuge free from danger. It took eighteen months to produce a draft convention, which was then considered by a Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons. Leslie Chance, the Canadian representative, was elected chairman of the conference. Chance had immigrated to Canada from England in 1913 and was a decorated veteran of the First World War. Remaining true to his roots, one colleague described him as a “great admirer of British institutions.”31 In his task as chairman, Chance faced the thankless task of mediating discussions on the scope of the draft convention and the especially contentious issue of how refugees should be defined. Chance’s first reaction to the draft convention, which was prepared with “surprising speed,” was somewhat dispirited. He wrote, “As it stands this is obviously not a very good draft. It contains I fear the sort of illiteracies which seem to emerge from the efforts of five people with differing points of view ... Nevertheless,” he added optimistically, “I think there is a fair chance of it being found generally acceptable after some polishing.”32 As chair, Chance had his work cut out for him. Participants in the discussions pursued conflicting objectives. Governments declared they were committed to a permanent solution to the refugee situation in Europe. However,

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they were equally determined to minimize their respective obligations toward the continent’s displaced persons. The tensions were foregrounded in the intense debate over how to define the term refugee. European countries, anxious to be relieved of some of the responsibility of caring for the displaced and stateless populations in their territories, pushed for a broadbased definition. The US delegation pushed for a more limited definition. In Ottawa, the formidable deputy minister of citizenship and immigration, Colonel Laval Fortier, agreed with the American approach, insisting on the need for a narrow definition. Otherwise, he feared, “many undesirable persons might become refugees.”33 Fortier never defined the term undesirable explicitly. Nevertheless, security concerns about communists from Europe and continued restrictions on migration from Asia and South Asia in particular hint at what he may have been thinking when he penned these words.34 By contrast, officials in the Department of External Affairs were more open to a broad definition of refugees, sensitive as they were to Canada’s im­age and reputation in the international community. In 1950, Arnold Heeney, then under-secretary of state for external affairs, argued, “a forwardlooking and flexible definition is required to accommodate individual persons and groups who suddenly become refugees, in order to avoid timelag.” He added, “A resolution purporting to deal with the entire question of refugees should not be restricted to Europeans.”35 Heeney wanted to promote flexibility and generosity of response on the very issue that immigration officials were hoping to avoid. As the postwar period progressed, the difference between how immigration officials and diplomats approached refugee issues became increasingly obvious. From the outset of the drafting process, Canadian immigration officials were sensitive to the impact of any convention on their preferential treatment of white migrants, and migrants from the British Isles and Northern Europe specifically. The executive assistant to Walter Harris, the minister of citizenship and immigration, argued that the proposed convention would force a change in Canadian immigration legislation for the worse, because refugees would be placed in what he called “a preferential position visà-vis other nonimmigrants and immigrants, including British subjects, citizens of France, et al.”36 He hinted, again avoiding any kind of explicit statement about the racial animus in Canada, that “the implications this form of discrimination holds in respect of our overall immigration policy of encouraging large movements of national migrants from Europe are, I think, obvious.”37 In other words, the proposed Convention would inhibit

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the Canadian government’s preferential selection of certain groups of migrants.38

Canada Balks After months of discussion, the drafting conference produced a text and a definition of refugees that was highly Eurocentric. The draft Convention focused on individual persecution and this biased its application toward the situation in Cold War Europe as opposed to movements in Asia and Africa, which observers insisted were caused by economic, as opposed to political, factors.39 As noted in the introduction, signatories could also choose to limit the application of the Convention to events occurring in Europe before 1951. Even with these limitations written into the fabric of the draft, the Canadian government was reluctant to sign. For instance, one of the government’s key concerns was the lack of a federal clause, which meant that the shared responsibility for refugees between the provincial and federal governments in Canada (and in other federations) was ignored. Following Canadian protestations, a federal clause was ultimately incorporated into the final text, but this did little to alter the government’s reluctance to sign. Other provisions of the draft Convention proved more difficult to reconcile with Canadian interests.40 The threat to sovereign action suggested by Articles 26, 27, and 28, which limited instances in which deportations could be effected, was a key issue for Canadian officials, particularly from the RCMP and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.41 The three proposed articles prevented signatory states from returning people to situations where they risked persecution. In the context of the hardening fault lines of the Cold War, Canadian immigration officials, and the RCMP in particular, wanted to ensure their ability to deport communists from Can­ ada, even if it meant returning them to Communist countries.42 The drafting conference made significant progress in addressing concerns about this issue, but the federal cabinet remained unconvinced. Just as cabinet was deliberating the draft text of the Convention, news emerged that four leading American communists were suspected of hiding in Canada. This immediately raised concerns about the potential implications of the Con­ ven­tion on the government’s capacity to deport undesirables. Prime Minister Mackenzie King was adamant that “the government could not place itself in a position where it would be obliged to allow such persons to remain in the country.”43 Meanwhile, the Canadian government’s efforts to deport Count de Bernonville, a Vichy war criminal, were also in the headlines, and

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anxious politicians repeatedly referenced his case. These news stories seemed to confirm the alleged difficulties that any infringement on sovereignty would create for Canadian lawmakers. Although scholars have generally recognized that concerns about the capacity to deport people from the country were instrumental in delaying Canada’s signature on the Convention, the key issue was really the perception that the agreement provided “automatic rights” to refugees.44 Im­ migration officials believed that because all immigrants admitted to the country were treated equally, there was no need for extra guarantees. Their primary objection was that the Convention might influence the government’s management of its overall immigration program, particularly in terms of social welfare assistance. Canadian officials wanted to ensure that the Convention did not apply to people they regarded as landed immigrants. These were people who were not yet citizens but had been granted the right to live and work in Canada – today’s permanent residents. The desire to limit the guarantee of social and economic rights was especially pronounced because of the concurrent introduction of more expansive social welfare programs in the postwar period.45 The concern was that the Convention would prescribe treatment for all of Canada’s immigrants, which officials viewed as an infringement on their capacity for discretion in terms of selection, as well as the provision of settlement assistance.46 They were loath to have any international authority direct how refugees and immigrants were to be managed. Colonel Fortier, for instance, feared that the high commissioner for refugees might want to establish an office to investigate the situation of landed immigrants and refugees in Canada.47 Ultimately, it was the overarching reach of the Convention and the threat it seemed to pose to the management of the immigration program gen­ erally that influenced the Canadian government’s decision not to sign in 1951. Briefed by Ottawa, Leslie Chance insisted in ECOSOC meetings that whether or not Canada acceded to the Convention, “the Canadian people would continue to treat refugees in the same way as all other bona fide immigrants, who enjoyed all the rights and privileges which the Convention sought to confer.”48 This rationale about equality of treatment created a positive impression about the manner in which all immigrants and refugees were treated in Canada, enabling the federal government to argue that its immigration programs should be excluded from the Convention’s scope. Officials wanted explicit language in the Convention that would ensure it did not apply to landed immigrants in Canada. When the Canadian delegation was unsuccessful in obtaining this language, officials realized that the

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country would not be immune from the Convention’s reach. At the end of July, Leslie Chance was informed that “Cabinet is not prepared to accept the restrictions on its freedom of action which would be imposed by the present Convention. From Canada’s point of view because permanent landings are granted to immigrant refugees the majority of refugees in Canada would not receive any substantial additional benefits.”49 The government wanted to retain full discretion and authority in the realm of immigrant admissions given the importance of this issue in terms of shaping the country’s future trajectory, including its racial make-up. The government therefore preferred “that Canada not become a party to a convention of this nature.”50 Equality of treatment and the redundancy of the Convention were the main arguments delivered to Chance in New York. Yet race-thinking was also present. It shaped the entire context of Canada’s postwar immigration programs, and it very quietly, but persuasively, reminded immigration officials of what was as stake in discussions of the Convention in terms of safeguarding their ability to select affluent or skilled white migrants over all others.

Race-Thinking and Equality of Treatment Although the government does not appear to have mentioned race specifically in its initial discussions about drafting and signing the Convention, traces of evidence in the archival record from subsequent years hint at race as an underlying concern. In 1953, C.E. Smith of the Department of Cit­ izenship and Immigration alerted senior officials that the Convention’s definition could include some “Asiatics.”51 This caused apprehension given the movement of millions of people as a result of postimperial, Cold War, and decolonization conflicts and upheavals in Asia. A year after C.E. Smith’s caution, Laval Fortier noted that “if Canada were to accede to the Conven­ tion Relating to the Status of Refugees, we should have to specify that it will not apply to events occurring elsewhere than in Europe.”52 The risk was that such a gesture would draw attention to the racial discrimination that remained structurally present in Canada’s immigration program and which was protected by the broad powers of discretion granted to officials responsible for determining admissions. Following from the 1910 Immigration Act, the administration and development of Canada’s immigration programs rested on the notion of execu­ tive discretion. Many of the key regulations, both progressive and regressive, introduced to govern immigration were born of cabinet initiatives, including the 1962 and 1967 points systems. Parliament was not involved. Similarly,

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officials in the field and at headquarters enjoyed wide influence over questions of selection and admission. Individual discretion played a large role in these determinations and officials acted on the basis of perceived societal expectations in making decisions about admission. In turn, they fed these same expectations through their actions and statements with regard to the suitability of different migrant groups. The fact that race informed hierarchies of selection was considered entirely acceptable. Indeed, officials believed it was their responsibility to preserve these hierarchies. When faced with pointed criticism about restrictive immigration policies, censure that became more acute over the course of the postwar period, immigration officials, along with some political leaders, defended their powers of discretion as aligned with the interests of the nation. In 1958, the minister of citizenship and immigration, Ellen Fairclough, responded to criticism from the YMCA about the selective nature of Can­ ada’s immigration programs. The organization was lobbying the government on the admission of refugees to whom it was extending services and was calling into question the selective nature of Canadian operations. In response, Fairclough declared, “In the sense that it is selective, Canada’s Immigration Policy is discriminatory, but it must be borne in mind that the potential supply of prospective immigrants throughout the world is practically unlimited, whereas the intake of immigrants into Canada must be a gradual process, geared to the absorptive capacity [emphasis added] of the country.”53 In Fairclough’s comment we see the kind of bureaucratization of race that cemented the influence of race-thinking. The language of absorptive capacity was not merely about economics. It was language that spoke to a certain vision of Canada and a particular racial makeup for the country, one that remained comfortably white and Anglo-Saxon. In 1960, immigration officials argued that Canada needed to retain its freedom of discretion on refugee admissions so as not to upset the harmonious balance created by the government’s approach to immigration generally: “The continuance of the substantial contributions we have been able to make to the solution of the refugee problem by admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees is dependent upon the sympathetic attitude towards refugees of the individual Canadian – a gratuitous attitude that stems from the heart.”54 This rationale made public sympathy for refugees contingent on the government having the freedom to exercise its discretion on refugee and immigration issues and, in particular, the capacity to limit the size and nature of admissions.

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Refugee policy was, therefore, bound up with larger questions about desirable migrants and the management of the country’s “carefully controlled immigration scheme.”55 Reservations about the world’s refugee populations, particularly those beyond Europe, were disguised by language that foregrounded equality of treatment and humanitarianism as the pillars of Canada’s immigration and refugee policies. It was language that proved relatively convincing and protected the Canadian government from any significant pressure to sign the Convention following the initial drafting stage. After 1951, Canada continued to accept refugees transported by the Intergovernmental Committee on European Migration (ICEM), facilitated sponsorships by private religious and secular groups, contributed funds to the UNHCR and UNRRA’s operations, and even sat on the executive committee that oversaw the high commissioner’s activities. As a result, Canada seemed to be doing its part, and signing the 1951 Convention was generally considered a nonissue.56 On only a few occasions was there any discussion about possible signing. In 1954, for instance, the Convention formally came into force after the government of Australia signed, and there was some suggestion that Canada should follow suit.57 For the most part, Canadian officials in both the Departments of Cit­ izenship and Immigration and External Affairs largely ignored the existence of the Refugee Convention. So much so, officials forgot why the country had failed to sign the agreement in the first place. In 1957, Canadian dip­ lomats in Geneva initiated conversations with Austrian legal expert Paul Weis, who had been an active participant in the drafting of the Convention, because they had recently moved offices and could not find any files that explained why Canada was not a signatory. Weis recalled that Leslie Chance “took great pains in ensuring that the draft Convention was submitted to the (conference) ... in such a way as to facilitate Canadian ascension.” Weis explained that in the end, Canadian officials concluded the country could not ratify the Convention “because a number of matters dealt with in the Convention were, in Canada, within the competence of the provincial Gov­ ernments.” According to Weis, the government had also insisted that there was little need for Canadian accession since refugees, “once in Canada, [were] granted the same status as ordinary immigrants and that Canadian accession would therefore in no way improve their lot.”58 The destruction of the files, in contrast to Weis’ power of recall, was a telling indicator of how little stock Canadian officials put into the international instrument designed to accord rights and protection to refugees.

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More to the point, by not discussing the Convention and the possibility of ratification, immigration officials in Canada avoided drawing attention to how their programs were being managed in general. When discussions of the 1951 Convention had been at their height, Canada had been forced to explain in detail how refugees and landed immigrants were treated, to describe the role that deportations played in the country’s overall migration program, and to delineate who was responsible for what in the federal landscape.59 Not talking about the Convention meant that the immigration program, including the racialized preferences of migrants, could operate at a distance from public scrutiny. While it appears the Canadian government would have quite happily let discussions of the Convention abate completely, there was intermittent public pressure on the government to sign the Convention. This interest was largely generated by the UNHCR, church groups, and NGOs such as the United Nations Association in Canada and, on occasion, Canadian diplomats in the field who bore the brunt of the criticism for Canada’s failure to sign.60 When the Canadian state was pressed to move on the refugee front, the racial discrimination that underpinned the structures of Canada’s immigration programs became more noticeable. For instance, in 1960, the high commissioner for refugees, August Lindt, urged John Diefenbaker’s Conservative government to do more for refugees in conjunction with the UN’s World Refugee Year, 1959–60. Lindt wanted the Canadian government to extend its Assisted Passage Loan (APL) scheme to refugees in the Far East, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Morocco.61 This program provided transportation loans that could then be paid back at a later date. As such, it was a way of encouraging particular groups of migrants to move to Canada. Officials recommended against Lindt’s request: The question of extending Assisted Passage facilities to non-European countries involves our whole policy of European preferences and a decision would have to be made at the highest level. Assisted passage could scarcely be given to refugees outside of Europe without granting it to other immigrants from such areas, particularly those who are sponsored by close relatives in Canada.62

What they told Lindt, however, was “we do not ordinarily deal with refugees (as such) in countries in which we do not have Canadian immigration offices.”63 It was a rational, palatable excuse. It was also one that relied on structural discrimination as grounds for the existing practice rather than an

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explicit explanation of the government’s continued preference for migrants from Europe. Until 1967, European families had privileged sponsorship rights in Can­ ada. As a result, in advance of the same visit in which he appealed for assisted passage loan support, High Commissioner Lindt also requested that the Canadian government allow family sponsorships from all over the world. Officials considered Lindt’s appeal but concluded they “could not extend refugee sponsorship provisions to include the Far East without an influx of Chinese refugees which, in view of Hong Kong’s geographic position, could lead to wide open immigration from Communist China.”64 Lindt’s entreaty was therefore refused. So, too, were his efforts to have Canada take in one hundred European families (mostly White Russians and Old Believers who had sought refuge in China in the 1920s and found themselves imperilled by the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power). Here, complications arose because of the proximity of these European refugees to Chinese refugees in Hong Kong. The feeling was that Canada “would be severely criticized if we were to take European refugees from the Far East and refuse to accept Chinese refugees.”65 To create a specific program for European refugees in China would create demands for a parallel program for Chinese refugees, on the very grounds of equality of treatment that immigration officials regularly championed in discussions of their activities. Only in 1967 were universal family sponsorship rights introduced, removing the last of the residual race-based regulations. The process that led to the new regulations, namely the 1966 White Paper and far-reaching consultations, opened up the possibility of reforming Canada’s highly discretionary approach to refugees.

The Passage of Time While immigration officials continued to resist Canada’s participation in the Convention, by the 1960s opposition to the Convention was easing in other quarters. The ebbs and flows of the Cold War made deportation less of an issue for the RCMP.66 Moreover, as discussions of humanitarian obligations and universal human rights gained global currency, the Canadian government came under renewed pressure to sign the Convention. Senior mandarins in External Affairs, attuned to criticisms presented in various international forums, pressed their colleagues in the Department of Cit­ izenship and Immigration to rethink their reservations about the Con­ vention’s impact on their capacity to manage the immigration program. Under-secretary of state Norman Robertson observed, “as compared to most other States, Canada does not have a border contiguous to countries

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from where refugees might be expected to come.”67 Noting Colonel Laval Fortier’s claim that the country might be swamped with refugees, Robertson argued, “It is difficult to see how the concern expressed earlier by your Department (Citizenship and Immigration) could, in fact, arise in a significant way as a practical problem.” Robertson pressed for signature of the Convention, explaining that it was “desirable in the broad context of Can­ adian international relations.”68 Although immigration officials showed some signs of flexibility on the issue, they never made signing the Convention a priority. As a result, other issues handily pushed the question of signing to the sidelines. A reorganization of the Immigration Branch in 1964 delayed a response to Norman Robertson’s appeal. A year later, when discussions began on an amending protocol to remove the temporal and geographic limitations of the Con­ vention, officials in the Department of Manpower and Immigration focused on incorporating discussions of refugees into the 1966 White Paper on immigration, rather than contributing substantively to the discussions in Geneva. The 1966 White Paper was issued as a discussion document based on consultations with interested stakeholders. It ultimately formed the basis for the 1967 immigration regulations and included key passages on refugee issues. The focus of the consultations was on determining “what number and kind of immigrants should be sought in the years ahead, and from what sources.”69 Although Canadian public opinion was mixed, the White Paper concluded that Canada should accept as many people annually as could be “readily absorbed” (echoing earlier iterations of the notion of absorptive capacity) and that “the only people who should be deliberately excluded are those who are likely to lack this adaptability or who represent a danger to public health or safety.” Adaptability was a purposefully vague criterion for admission. Importantly, the report recommended special provisions “for the movement to Canada of persons deserving of permanent admission for compassionate or humanitarian reasons irrespective of their personal abilities.”70 The White Paper therefore proposed that separate legislation be introduced for refugees and recommended further that Canada sign the 1951 International Convention on the Status of Refugees and become a party to the 1957 Hague Agreement on Refugee Seamen, “thereby accepting the internationally recognized standards for dealing with refugees.”71 The changes made to Canadian immigration regulations in 1967, including a refined points system and universal family sponsorship rules, were a

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direct result of the White Paper process. This process coincided with the international community’s efforts to universalize the scope and application of the 1951 Convention. Although officials in the Department of Man­ power and Immigration had been reluctant to engage with the issue of an amending protocol (pending the results of the 1965–66 immigration consultations), Canadian diplomats at the United Nations were involved with these discussions from the outset. As a result of their front-line role in international discussions, they were interested in bridging the gulf between Canadian rhetoric and practice in a way that immigration officials were not. In other words, race-thinking among Canada’s diplomats evolved dramatically in the 1960s, at a rate that far outpaced the change in thinking among their immigration counterparts. In 1968, the Department of External Affairs urged signing of the Con­ vention to coincide with the UN’s International Year of Human Rights. Marcel Cadieux, a proud French Canadian and fierce anticommunist who served as under-secretary of state for external affairs from 1964 to 1970, emphasized that “this occasion represents a special opportunity for Canada to confirm its support for the humanitarian principles embodied in the Con­vention.”72 Tom Kent, the Oxford-educated former editor of the Winni­ peg Free Press and deputy minister of the Department of Manpower and Immigration, resisted this pressure. In a curt reply, he said, “While we have agreed that Canada should sign the Convention, our assessment of the implications involved is not complete. It is quite possible that, having signed, it will be necessary to introduce new legislation on refugees or amend existing legislation.”73 Cadieux was patently frustrated, insisting in follow-up correspondence that External Affairs lawyers advised no new legislation was needed and that Canada should therefore proceed with signing the Convention. The decision to accede had been made in principle at the end of 1966 with the White Paper, and there was still no visible movement on the file. Immigration officials continued to delay, and it was not until January 1969 that External Affairs finally succeeded in bringing the issue to Cabinet. In doing so, staff from External Affairs emphasized that the proposed “Protocol extends the provision of the Convention to all refugees regardless of their geographic region. It is therefore consistent with the principles of non-discrimination and universality enunciated within the White Paper on Immigration.”74 The spirit of the Convention and Canada’s immigration programs appeared to be finally reconciled. Canada proceeded to sign the Con­ vention and Protocol on May 9, 1969.

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Conclusion Race-thinking, as it related to Canada’s ambivalent relationship with the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, played out in multiple ways. It was evident internationally. Race-thinking shaped the character of the Convention, resulting in a deliberately Eurocentric instrument that gave signatories the popular option of limiting the scope of its application to refugee situations born of events arising in Europe prior to 1951. In Can­ ada, race-thinking was also present in debates over the scope and contents of the 1951 Convention. It came to the fore as officials debated the implications on the country’s admissions policy in committing to the terms of the draft Convention. Senior officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration were unyielding in their convictions about the need for freedom of action to manage the country’s immigration and refugee programs. This sense of entitlement was informed by the country’s origins as a settler society and the manner in which immigration officials viewed their role as the nation’s gatekeepers. Race-thinking was further evident in the manner that successive Canadian governments approached the 1951 Convention in terms of its potential impact on the country’s capacity to determine admissions and to effect deportations. Whereas officials in the Department of External Affairs felt the brunt of international pressure to engage with the growing humanitarian and human rights agendas of the postwar period, immigration officials remained removed from the shifting currents of global opinion and consistently refused to sign legal instruments that seemed to threaten their capacity to manage the admission of select migrants to Canada.75 The reluctance with which Canada engaged with the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees has been disguised by accounts of the postwar period as a time of linear liberal progress along with an insistence by officials and citizens alike that the character of the Canadian nation was, and remains, a humanitarian one. Both these storylines are troubling for they conceal the inequities and racial biases inherent in Canada’s highly selective immigration and refugee programs. The active production of narratives of linear progress and humanitarianism disguises the prevalence of race-thinking even as the Canadian nation moved to more just and equitable admissions systems. To ignore the persistence of race-thinking in the evolution of Canadian immigration and refugee policies in the postwar period is to leave the gulf between rhetoric and practice unbridged.

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NOTES 1 H. Arendt, “Race-Thinking before Racism,” Review of Politics 6, 1 (1944): 36. Arendt later refined this piece, which became Chapter 6 in The Origins of Totalitarian­ism (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1966). 2 Arendt, “Race-Thinking before Racism,” 37. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 B.S. Chimni, “From Resettlement to Involuntary Repatriation: Towards a Critical History of Durable Solutions to Refugee Problems,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 23, 3 (2004): 58. 6 Statement by Robert Rochefort, French delegate, Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons: Summary Record of the Twenty-Fourth Meeting, November 27, 1951, http://www.unhcr.org. 7 Grénon to Bédard, December 13, 1960, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6929, part 1.2, file 5475-W-19–40. 8 F. Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006), 10. 9 A. Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2004). 10 A. Mountz, “Smoke and Mirrors: An Ethnography of the State,” in Politics and Practice in Economic Geography, ed. Adam Tickell et al. (London: SAGE Publications, 2012), 22. 11 N. Kelley and M. Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Im­ migration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); P. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010); V. Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–2007 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007). 12 N. Sharma, Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). 13 Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizen­ship, Immigration and Multiculturalism (at a news conference following the tabling of Bill C-31, Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, Ottawa, February 16, 2012), http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/speeches/2012/2012-02-16.asp. 14 Arendt, “Race-Thinking before Racism,” 47. 15 S. Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 10. Razack’s analysis is also informed by the work of George Mosse. 16 In the Canadian context, race-thinking has often emerged in terms of English and French Canadians. J.E. Iguarta, “The Genealogy of Stereotypes: French Canadians in Two English-Language Canadian History Textbooks,” Journal of Canadian Studies 42, 3 (2008): 106–132. Yet race-thinking has operated in a number of different contexts and involved a number of different groups. 17 Razack, Casting Out, 9. 18 Iacovetta, Gatekeepers, 10.

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19 See L. Mannik, Photography, Memory, and Refugee Identity: The Voyage of the SS Walnut, 1948 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013); R. Perin and F. Sturino, eds. Arrangiarsi: The Italian Immigration Experience in Canada (Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1989). 20 See M. Mazower, “The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933–50,” The Historical Journal 47, 2 (2004): 379–98. 21 Knowles, Strangers at our Gates, 211. 22 Little research has been conducted on Canada’s relationship with the IRO. For a limited discussion, see C.M. Lanphier, “Canada’s Response to Refugees,” International Migration Review 15, 1/2 (Spring–Summer 1981): 113–30. 23 “International Refugee Organization,” in Rudolf Bernhardt, Encyclopedia of Public International Law, vol. 5 (International Organizations in General: Universal Inter­ national Organizations and Cooperation) (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1983), 173. 24 J. Hathaway, “Selective Concern: An Overview of Refugee Law in Canada,” McGill Law Journal 33 (1988): 676–715. 25 H.H. Carter, “Inter-departmental Committees on Immigration and Refugee Prob­ lems,” LAC, RG 25, vol. 4164, part 1, file 939–40. 26 H. Troper, “Canada’s Immigration Policy since 1945,” International Journal 48, 2 (Spring 1993): 259. 27 Statement by Mr. G.L. Magann to the IRO General Council, October 11, 1950, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6407, part 14.2, file 5475–T-40. 28 Memo for the Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs (USSEA), November 3, 1949, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6407, part 11.1, file 5475-T-40. 29 H. Keenleyside to A. Heeney, November 2, 1949, LAC, RG 26, vol. 110, part 1, file 3–24–12. 30 “The IRO,” April 8, 1950, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6407, part 12.2, file 5475-T-40. 31 Correspondence from M. Cadieux to H.O. Moran, June 6, 1951, LAC, RG 32, vol. 309, part 1, file: Chance, Leslie G. 32 L. Chance to USSEA, January 21, 1950, LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 2, file C76724. 33 L. Fortier to External Affairs [correspondence], July 6, 1950, “Stateless Persons & Refugees,” LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 5, file C76724. 34 Cabinet Conclusions, Immigration; Admission of political refugees, Meeting Date: 1948/05/14, LAC, RG 2, vol. 2642, series A-5-a, Privy Council Office. 35 USSEA to Canadian Ambassador in Washington, Canadian Ambassador, August 5, 1950, LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 5, file C76724. 36 Executive Assistant to Director of Immigration, September 5, 1950, United Nations; Convention on Refugees and Protocol on Stateless Persons, Meeting Date: 1951/07/04, LAC, RG 2, vol. 2648, series A-5-a, Privy Council Office. 37 Ibid. 38 Though it is true there were some limitations on the admission of ethnic Germans after the Second World War, these were minimal compared to the limitations faced by prospective Chinese migrants. Christian Lieb has shown that the Canadian state facilitated the entry of ethnic Germans as displaced persons from parts of Eastern Europe to fill the demand for labourers, even though they were not recognized as such by the International Refugee Organization. C. Lieb, “Refugees, Displaced Persons, and the Limits of Political Recognition,” paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Montreal, Quebec, May 31, 2010.

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39 J. C. Hathaway, Law of Refugee Status (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991), 10. 40 L. Fortier to A. Heeney, November 5, 1951, LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 6, file C76724. 41 Article 26, which ultimately became Article 31, of the Convention declared: The contracting states shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees, who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.

Article 27 of the draft Convention read: The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on the grounds of national security or public order. The expulsion of such refugee shall be only in pursuance of a decision reached in accordance with due process of law. The refugee shall have the right to submit evidence to clear himself and to appeal to and be represented before competent authority.

Article 28 of the draft Convention read, “No contracting state shall expel or return a refugee in any matter whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion.” See drafts in LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 4, file C76724. 42 Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic, 339. 43 W.L. Mackenzie King, quoted in Cabinet Conclusions, United Nations; Convention on Refugees and Protocol on Stateless Persons. Meeting Date: 1951/07/04, LAC, RG 2, vol. 2648, series A-5-a, Privy Council Office. 44 See G. Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism? (Montreal/ Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977). 45 L. Fortier to N. Robertson, April 1, 1952, LAC, RG 76, vol. 672, part 7, file C76724. 46 L. Chance to E. Reid, June 10, 1950, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6407, part 13.1, file 5475-T-40. 47 J. Boucher to the Deputy Minister, December 17, 1951, LAC, RG 26, vol. 118, file 3–24–43. 48 L. Chance, Statement to ECOSOC, July 3, 1951, RG 76, vol. 672, part 6, file C76724. 49 USSEA to L. Chance, July 10, 1951, LAC, RG 2, vol. 205, file U-40–22. 50 Ibid. 51 Director of Immigration (C.E. Smith) to Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Im­ migration, January 19, 1953, LAC, RG 26, vol. 118, file 3–24–43. 52 L. Fortier to M. Wershof, July 8, 54, LAC, RG 26 vol. 882, part 2, file 566–10. 53 E. Fairclough to Miss E. Gould, YMCA of Canada, July 21, 1958, LAC, RG 76, vol. 887, part 4, file 566–11. 54 Executive Assistant to Director of Immigration, September 6, 1960, United Nations; Convention on Refugees and Protocol on Stateless Persons, Meeting Date: 1951/07/04, LAC, RG 2, vol. 2648, series A-5-a, Privy Council Office. 55 Hathaway, “Selective Concern,” 678. 56 There is no record of Cabinet discussions about refugees at any point between 1962 and 1968, when Cabinet considered the Canadian response to refugees leaving Czechoslovakia following Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring. 57 Australia shared Canada’s history as a white settler society, and it might seem sur-

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prising that the government of Robert Menzies was willing to sign the Convention when Canadian officials and politicians were reluctant to do so. The difference stemmed from Australia’s very aggressive and positive selection of migrants from the camps in Europe, which the government used to pursue its nation-building ambitions. The White Australia Policy, cemented in legislation in 1901, and which governed admissions to the country until 1973, reassured Australian policy-makers that the Convention would not apply to migrants outside of Europe. The ambiguities present in the Canadian legislation provided no such assurances. 58 P. Weis, quoted in Canadian Permanent Delegation, Geneva to USSEA re. 1951 Con­ vention Relating to the Status of Refugees – Possible Canadian Accession, September 25, 1957, LAC, RG 76, vol. 882, part 2, file 566–10. 59 E. Scheinberg, “The Undesirables,” http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/immigrants/ 021017-2430-e.html; B. Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada, 1900–1935 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988). 60 M. Wershof (Geneva) to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, September 25, 1957, LAC, RG 26, vol. 110, file 3-24-43. 61 Director of Immigration to Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, “Pro­ posal by the UNHCR,” August 17, 1960, LAC, RG 26, vol. 110, part 4, file 3–24–12. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. This was a somewhat misleading statement, as the People’s Republic of China retained tight control over emigration until 1978. There was very little migration abroad from the Chinese mainland between 1949 and 1978, though hundreds of thousands of migrants did seek refuge in Hong Kong. 65 “Canada’s Refugee Programmes,” LAC, RG 26, vol. 110, part 4, file 3–24–12. 66 UN Division to USSEA, December 18, 1963, Refugees – Treaties and Agreements – Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, LAC, RG 25, vol. 11235, part 1, file 47–3-1. 67 N. Robertson, quoted in ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Canada. Department of Manpower and Immigration. White Paper on Immigration (Ottawa: Department of Manpower and Immigration, 1966), 5. 70 Ibid, 17. 71 Ibid. 72 M. Cadieux to T. Kent, July 13, 1967, LAC RG 25, vol. 11234, part 1, file 47-4-1. 73 Kent to Cadieux, August 17, 1967, LAC, RG 25, vol. 11234, part 1, file 47-4-1. 74 Cabinet Conclusions, Meeting Date: 1969/01/30, LAC, RG 2, vol. 6340, series A-5-a, Privy Council Office. 75 The initial concern about federal-provincial relations and responsibilities was addressed in the federal clause of the Convention, one that the Canadian delegation successfully introduced.

8

Romanticism and Race Escott Reid, the Department of External Affairs, and the Sundering of Canada-India Relations, 1952–57 RYA N T O U H E Y

In mid-November 1952, Escott Reid arrived in New Delhi as Canada’s third high commissioner to India with the belief that as India went, so did the rest of the developing world. Reid had observed India closely before taking his post, first as deputy under-secretary of state for external affairs, and second as a Canadian delegate travelling throughout the subcontinent with Lester Pearson following the Colombo foreign ministers’ conference in January 1950. During that visit, Reid grappled with the poverty that shocked many of his colleagues over the years, but he acknowledged that he “saw something of the beauty of India.”1 He developed a passion for India that arguably defined his career as a diplomat. In the wake of the Colombo Plan’s creation, Reid became transfixed with India’s domestic concerns and its role on the world stage. Reid’s left of centre political convictions, fostered in his youth, meant that he sympathized with Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s ambition to develop an independent minded, secular society through concentrated state planning. At a key juncture in the early Cold War in Asia, Reid thought that it was not vital for India to be explicitly aligned with the West. This soon set him apart from his colleagues in Ottawa. What was important, he argued, was to cultivate India’s sympathy for, and understanding of, Western policies in the Cold War. It was also essential that the West actively assist India’s economic development. The more developed the Indian state became, the less likely it would succumb to communism or disintegrate into a myriad of factions. To this end, Reid lobbied vigorously

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for massive aid increases from Canada and the other Western nations and sympathy (if not patience) with nonalignment. He also argued for Ottawa to develop a substantial cultural and public diplomacy presence in India to let the Indians know of Canadian efforts and to help foster mutual awareness to bridge west and east, a role for which he believed Canada was exceptionally well suited. Reid later argued that after India’s independence in August 1947, and dovetailing with his arrival in New Delhi, a special relationship had emerged between Canada and India. In his memoir, Envoy to Nehru, he cites numerous examples of the bilateral and multilateral connections that he believed drew the countries closer together, thereby making Canada’s relations with India distinct from the respective American and British approaches to relations with New Delhi. First, Canada appreciated the importance of understanding and respecting the views of the newly independent Asian members of the Commonwealth, particularly India. Second, Ottawa had worked to retain India in the new multiracial Commonwealth. Third, he pointed toward Canadian participation in the Colombo Plan. The fourth dynamic that Reid believed led to this special relationship was the shared apprehension among Canadian and Indian officials of US policies on Korea. This had led to mutual cooperation at the United Nations. Within months of arriving in India, Reid asserted in a despatch to Ottawa, “My impression is that there is perhaps no western democratic country whose foreign policy is closer to that of India than Canada.”2 This closeness soon proved ephemeral, and Reid’s optimistic hopes clashed with differing calculations of India’s worth made by a growing number of his colleagues in Ottawa. Reid struggled in his writings to look at the period objectively in explaining why the high hopes that Canadian officials had for India proved fleeting. In his memoir, which until recently dominated the literature on Canada-India relations, Reid advanced specific cases whereby ties between Ottawa and New Delhi became strained due to questions of Cold War security. The few historians who have examined Reid’s time in India or the broader state of the bilateral relationship have tended to agree with Reid that the relationship deteriorated due to Cold War divergences, while also challenging his suggestion that a special relationship existed.3 Yet in emphasizing splits on high policy and focusing on Reid’s divisive persona, historians of Canadian foreign relations with India have overlooked the influence of racialized attitudes apparent in Reid’s passion for India, as well as the subtle, and sometimes overt, currents of suspicion and

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bewilderment that arose when Canadian officials speculated whether Hinduism explained why India’s Commonwealth status – and imperial heritage – failed to foster a more sympathetic disposition to the West as the Cold War evolved. New Delhi’s unwillingness to explicitly align with the West facilitated policy tensions from Ottawa’s perspective. Frustration with India’s pursuit of a third path in the Cold War does not on its own account for the level of condescension Canadian policy-makers came to display for India or why Canadian officials considered tensions with India existed. Re­ calling the case of ties between French Canada and Haiti that Sean Mills (Chapter 4) explores in this volume, tension toward India gradually appeared in the racialized assumptions and language deployed to characterize Indians and Indian policy. Even when invoking the “bridge” metaphor – a profoundly racialized concept as it pertains to India – Canadian historians have tended to avoid examining the influences of culture, religion, and race on the assumptions of policy-makers. An examination of those assumptions is vital for understanding Reid’s own romantic disposition toward India and the crucial evolution of official Canadian thinking toward India during the Reid era. For it was during Reid’s term as high commissioner that an acute transformation occurred: Canadian officials in the Department of External Affairs (DEA) began to make sense of Indian foreign policy – and nonalignment – through a prism of racialized assumptions based on culture and religion that ultimately undermined Reid’s cherished goal that Canada could bring India and the West together. Upon joining the DEA in 1939, Escott Reid enjoyed a rapid rise in the departmental ranks. Much of that success can be attributed to his formidable intellect and an astonishing work ethic. Passionate in his convictions, Reid could often work himself – and his colleagues – ragged. Throughout his professional career, Reid gained a reputation among colleagues of being overly rigid in his convictions when he attached himself to a particular issue. India would be no different. Following his attendance at the Colombo Conference and subsequent visit to India in January 1950 while serving as deputy under-secretary of state for external affairs, Reid eyed the New Delhi post. He pursued the position, believing it imperative to serve as head of a post if he was to further his career aspirations. In spring 1952, Reid lobbied to be appointed Canada’s next high commissioner to India. He was a star candidate for what had become an important diplomatic posting for Ottawa.4 Reid’s first encounter with South Asia at the Colombo Conference nurtured a growing sympathy toward that region’s needs. One of the main

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actors at the conference, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, left a lasting impression on Reid. Mesmerized by Nehru’s sophistication, Reid’s views, developed during his early adulthood, were mirrored by the Indian prime minister’s firm left wing convictions, disdain for colonialism, and support for secularism and minority rights in India.5 He also developed a curiosity about the racial diversity of the new Commonwealth member states. In an awkward racialized description of one conference meeting, Reid enthusiastically recorded his impressions of various South Asian officials: Of the twenty-two people who were seated at the conference table, ten were coloured and the coloured members on the whole were much more goodlooking than the non-coloured members. There were various shades of colour among the coloured members, even within delegations. Most of the Ceylonese are dark chocolate with pitch-black hair and usually fine featured. The Indians vary from Mr. Nehru’s pale gray to Mr. Menon’s dark black.6

Curiosity about South Asia’s racial diversity lingered, and a key racial dimension shaped Reid’s interest in choosing India, which he explained to his colleague Dana Wilgress: I have for some years now been obsessed by the belief that, for the rest of my period in the Department – that is the next fifteen years or so, the problem of the relations between the white have nations and the coloured havenots is as difficult and dangerous for the democracies as the problem of the relations between the Soviet world and the Western world and that we are unlikely to win the struggle against the Russians if we fail to deal adequately with the first problem. I would like to have some first-hand knowledge of the most important have-not nation on our side.7

Reid’s description of the Colombo participants and binary description that lumped the world into two basic racial camps, and all nonwhites simply described as the “coloured have-nots,” appears rudimentary with hindsight. Yet Reid acknowledged that a global colour line existed and that race affected international relations. His admission that he needed to remedy the sizable gap in his understanding of the non-Western world with first-hand knowledge set him apart from many of his DEA colleagues. In the post-1945 era, the number of Canadian diplomatic posts rapidly expanded beyond the traditional confines of the North Atlantic and white Commonwealth states, but precious few of Ottawa’s diplomats had ventured beyond North America

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or Europe in their formative and professional years. Reid was also unique in that New Delhi was not considered a comfortable post. Five years earlier, Ottawa had had difficulty securing a High Commissioner willing to stay in India. Reid was different. The diplomat was genuinely curious about the region and its peoples. He had no aspiration to be a spectator when confronting the problem between two worlds that he described to Wilgress. As one of the first prominent Canadian officials posted to a rapidly decolonizing Asia, Reid was at the forefront in believing Canada could bridge the gap between the West and the predominant have-not: India. The notion that Canada could act as a bridge is a longstanding one in Canadian foreign policy and dates back prior to the First World War. ThenPrime Minister Robert Borden envisioned a role whereby Canada could act as a linchpin between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers of Great Britain and the United States. At the heart of the linchpin vision is an exceptional belief that Canada was uniquely suited as both a North American nation and a product of empire to serve as an intermediary between the two powers. That same sense of North Atlantic-Anglo Saxon exceptionalism was eventually projected on to India, driven by the belief that Canada could reach out to India in a way that no other Western nation could. In the case of India, the metaphor employed was not linchpin but bridge. At its heart, as applied to India, it was predicated on racialized assumptions that India – as a product of empire – shared numerous traits familiar to Canadian diplomatic and political elites. The metaphor first appeared in December 1941, when then-diplomat Lester Pearson suggested to Prime Minister Mackenzie King that Canada should consider establishing a post in India during the war, in preparation for India’s eventual independence. He reasoned that by drawing on Canada’s political evolution, Ottawa could help India transition to independence in a way other allied nations could not.8 Pearson believed that Canada shared a number of commonalities with a soon to be independent India. Both countries shared an imperial legacy, had a similar legal culture of British jurisprudence, shared linguistic ties through the English language, and, like India, Canada was a country of religious and linguistic minorities. Pearson may have also observed that it was not uncommon for India’s bureaucratic and political elites to have attended Oxbridge, as had many of their Canadian counterparts. Pearson had barely travelled beyond the North Atlantic world apart from a short visit to Egypt, followed by a brief deployment to the Balkans during the First World War. Yet here he was projecting the North Atlantic world into South Asia to find understanding and linkages but without considering environment,

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geography, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, caste, the myriad of languages, or the significance of the freedom movement. The logic that Canadians could relate to the decolonized world had another distinct element. Canadian policy-makers dealing with South Asia observed (falsely) that unlike the British, Americans, and even Australians, Canada did not have its own imperial legacy to taint its new ties with India. These factors fostered a sense, then, that Canada and India shared a cultural-political kinship that transcended consideration of racial-religious differences. This exceptional, and ambitious, sense permeated senior DEA attitudes toward India as the 1950s dawned, and Reid embraced it with fervour. As an early adherent of the bridge thesis, Reid approached his work in New Delhi with the expectation that Canada could cooperate effectively with India and act as a bridge between the West and South Asia. The DEA also encouraged this in the briefing materials provided to Reid, observing that his departure for India came “at a time when it is as important as ever to maintain good relations between the West and Asia.” It was in Canada’s interest to bolster democracy in India “in any way we can” and enhance India’s links to the West. Canada was, according to Reid’s instructions, in a unique position. While the British and the Americans were in a better position to “co-operate significantly with India,” the DEA believed that Canada had developed a unique advantage in pressing its own interests in India. London and Washington determined events to an extent that Canada did not. However, despite their vast knowledge of India, the British were still regarded with suspicion as colonialists and Americans as single-minded anticommunists who readily dismissed Indian views. By contrast, the authors of Reid’s instructions thought “Canada’s outlook on international issues has earned the admiration of India’s leaders and we perhaps have a better appreciation of Indian aims than some of our western allies, notably the United States.” Indeed, it was believed that “on some issues, particularly the Eastern issues, India looks to Canada for the enunciation in a western context of a point of view with which she herself is, at least partly in sympathy.”9 With these instructions in mind, and his conviction that India’s economic and democratic success was vital, Reid had high hopes that with the proper mindset and the right resources he could construct solid bridges between Canada and India. He handled his first months as head of post with aplomb, quickly immersing himself into the nuances of Indian foreign and domestic politics. Unlike his predecessors, Reid believed that to understand the country it was crucial to see where the bulk of India’s masses lived. He set out on

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a tour of rural villages and apart from some “depressing” scenes he “fell in love with the Indian countryside.”10 It is a flat country but it combines much of the loveliness of our prairies with the loveliness of the sleepy canals in rural England. My memories of it are full of colour, of fragrance and of music. The rose of sunrise turning to gold. The golden glow of late afternoon turning to the rose of sunset. The gold of the mustard fields. The fragrance of the flowering fields of peas and mustard. The sweet smell of boiling sugar cane that met us in a country lane. The long shadows of late afternoon and early morning. The bells of the bullock carts. And the gay singing of villagers heard across the fields or from villages at night.11

This is a remarkably romanticized and racialized view of a rural area where poverty was systemic; Reid perceived this section of India not in an Indian context but in an English one. Reid later used much of the above passage in public speeches to Indian audiences to relay his enchantment with the country.12 And he shared the above impression in a report sent to Ottawa describing his tour of the Indian countryside, invoking the familiar terrain of rural Canada and England. Perhaps in drawing on the familiar to describe the unfamiliar, Reid hoped to impress upon his distant colleagues that the non-Anglicized majority of Indians inhabited terrain that his colleagues could easily envision from afar. However, the “sleepy canals” of rural England were far removed from the poverty, traditions, and caste distinctions that characterized the majority of India’s rural villages. Reid’s wife, Ruth, for instance, struggled with the juxtaposition between relatively wealthy villages and poorer ones. Writing to her sons she recounted that some villages she visited were “depressing” and “swarming with flies” and would remain so as long as they “have their cattle in their houses and have no sanitation.”13 Nonetheless, Reid’s cheerful description provides an example of a blossoming love for India, at least the India that he constructed in his mind. Certainly, his later impressions of India were further affected by both a profound admiration of Nehru and the instant impression on seeing the country. His romanticism, coupled with left of centre political beliefs, allowed Reid to tolerate, even transcend, India’s adherence to nonalignment that soon troubled many of his DEA colleagues. Reid suggested in his memoirs that “the high point in the special relationship between India and Canada and, indeed, in India’s relations with the West” was reached in the autumn of 1953 following the end of the Korean

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War and lingered into 1954.14 Certainly, these two years were the happiest and arguably the most successful of his time in India. His reports were well received in Ottawa, he received encouragement for his efforts, and, in the winter of 1954, he basked in Prime Minister St. Laurent’s successful visit to India. Meanwhile, Reid’s travels throughout India reinforced his passion for his work and his determination to structure the bridge on firm foundations. These same travels also gave him an opportunity to see the impact of Canadian Colombo Plan aid dollars at work. He returned to New Delhi convinced that while Ottawa was doing good work in India, it was not getting value for its dollars in terms of profiling its efforts. He attempted to use his prominence and personal relationships with senior members of the DEA to obtain an increase in staffing for the high commission. To his chagrin, pleas to senior colleagues Charles Ritchie and Dana Wilgress for additional personnel, a deputy high commissioner, and a publicity man who might focus on the Colombo Plan went unanswered.15 A frustrated Reid implored that if countries such as Canada demonstrated to New Delhi and the people of India that they were trying to help raise the standard of living, “this will strengthen the links between India and the Western democracies ... It is necessary to do what we can to ensure that as many people as possible in India learn of the assistance which Canada is giving to them.”16 Reid was acutely aware that while Western aid was indeed doing good work in India, the impact was often diluted due to Indian consternation with American foreign policy. American policy was often a bugbear for Reid. He concluded early on that the Americans understood neither Nehru nor the idiosyncrasies of Indian policy concerning Korea and China. As the Eisenhower administration settled in, Reid began to counsel Ottawa that anything that could be done to “lessen fear about foreign policy of the new administration in Washington,” the more likely it would be that Indian foreign policy would move in the direction Ottawa desired.17 The task was easier said than done. Reid’s arrival in India dovetailed with Washington’s decision to recognize Pakistan – India’s arch enemy – as its central ally in South Asia. In late 1953, shockwaves rippled through New Delhi when the Americans announced they were preparing to grant military assistance to Pakistan. New Delhi’s distrust of Washington escalated, and Indians were indignant. Both countries were growing further apart, and this did not portend well for the West’s efforts to project its message to India. Even before learning of the proposed military aid to Pakistan, Nehru had acidly commented on professional bilateral exchanges, saying, “I dislike more and more

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this business of exchange of persons between America and India. The fewer persons that go from India to America or that come from the United States to India the better.”18 Exchanges, both ideas and personal, mattered if bridges were to be built between the West and India and racial and cultural understanding enhanced. Reid acknowledged the importance of fostering understanding and exchanges beyond official lines. During his time in New Delhi, the high commission attempted to expand its cultural outreach, albeit with mixed results, to promote Western culture and norms to Indians. Attempts to hold Canadian cultural weeks began in 1953, with the inaugural one finally held in February 1955 at Kanpur. The event was intended to showcase Canadian art, crafts, films, literature, music, and tourism. Organizers sought to project Canada as a modern, democratic nation to Indian attendees. The high commission notified Ottawa that its own holdings of items to promote such an exhibition was lacking, and it required support. That support proved lacklustre and reveals the scarcity of resources that the DEA devoted to such pursuits: With respect to the photographs, they represent the result of several hours search through the National Film Board files and are not as satisfactory a collection as we should have liked ... The National Film Board film “The Stratford Adventures,” is not ready yet but when it is, we shall send it air express, if necessary ... With respect to Canadian music, very little was available ... Several of the items you requested were not procurable on such short notice. For instance, we could not obtain the dolls, children’s art, handicrafts, and costumes that you requested.19

The show went on. In his report to Ottawa, Reid noted that the opening day attracted “a number of substantial citizens of Kanpur ... unfortunately a very important local wedding deprived us of the company of many prominent citizens.”20 An early example of Canadian cultural diplomacy, Reid’s reference to substantial and prominent citizens – essentially the elites of the city – highlights Canadian racial assumptions of India. Many of the items displayed at the cultural week could only have reached those Indians that understood English. That was a significant minority of the population at the time, and it demonstrated the extent to which Reid and the DEA assumed that Indians, at least the elites, were similar products of a shared imperial inheritance. Reid concluded that the “Cultural Week was a reasonable success.” But he conceded, “I doubt whether the Canadian Cultural Week was worth the

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trouble it caused us.”21 In Ottawa this report was circulated to the undersecretary of state for external affairs (USSEA), Commonwealth, and Infor­ mation divisions. Two of Reid’s colleagues acidly commented in print on his assessment: “Hear, Hear,” wrote one. Another, writing in reference to the value of the week, added “I am quite sure it is not [worth the trouble].”22 Promoting awareness of Canadian culture through public diplomacy activities, it seemed, was better suited for audiences in the Western world. Reid may never have known of the disparaging comments directed toward a program he genuinely believed in and that aspired to promote a nuanced and informed understanding of Canada as a modern, western democratic state that appealed to Indian audiences beyond the Anglo-elites of New Delhi. But he soon came to know that few in Ottawa continued to view India through his positive lens or shared Reid’s desire to procure resources he believed essential for his post to be successful. While relations with Ottawa appeared amicable, India’s relations with the United States approached their nadir after the election of the Eisen­ hower administration. The secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was a staunch anticommunist and loathed nonalignment. Nehru, in turn, loathed Dulles. This worried Reid, but he believed this provided another opportunity for Ottawa to serve as a bridge. Hoping that Ottawa could use its close ties with both countries, Reid sent a series of despatches to Ottawa with the purpose of looking at ways to ameliorate the growing rift between Washington and New Delhi. It is evident, though, that Reid believed the onus was on Washington to carry out a rapprochement and to temper its policies in Asia, particularly with India. The United States needed to follow the British example of consulting the Indians on issues of joint concern. As far as Reid was concerned, the Americans had failed to do this. Without dramatically changing its foreign policy, Washington could remedy these ills.23 Improvements would also require changes in American policy on Asia, particularly China and Indochina. For instance, the Americans could begin by discussing frankly their concerns with the Indians about China and its admission to the UN.24 Confidence bred confidence, argued Reid, and if Washington showed some faith in India, then they could expect to receive the same from the Indians. If India failed, Asians would likely look to the Chinese model for leadership. This was not what the West wanted. Reid did not seek changes from New Delhi or counsel Ottawa that this should even occur. Instead, he interpreted India’s nonalignment policy favourably to Ottawa; he presented the Indian argument that termination of this policy would only exacerbate global tensions while presenting a risk to

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national unity. It was evident to the Indians that nonalignment was in their best interests. Nonalignment would ensure that scarce resources were not channelled away from domestic concerns into the military. Besides, this policy put India in a position to be courted, albeit periodically, by Washing­ ton and, increasingly, by the Soviet Union in the wake of Stalin’s death. The stakes according to Reid were high, and no one knew this better than the Indian leadership.25 Shortly before Christmas 1954, Pearson wrote to congratulate Reid “on a profound and valuable analysis of the situation.”26 Despite the praise, Pearson chose not to champion Reid’s ideas to Washington, recognizing that his ability to reconcile the differences that existed between Washington and New Delhi was limited and that maintaining Ottawa’s relationship with Washington was paramount. This was a fact that frequently obstructed Reid’s efforts in subsequent years to persuade Ottawa to champion India in the West. Pearson’s personal enthusiasm for Nehru had also begun to wane, and racial considerations influenced that shift. Pearson now recognized that Nehru could equally be as strident as the Americans he admonished, and hypocritical, in his own views, as Pearson’s diary entry from the 1955 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London reveals: “Nehru was quite bitter about American policy, and resented, as an Asian, their bullying and threatening tactics. He obviously doesn’t feel the same resentment when Chou bullies and blusters, because Chou is not so much a Communist as an Asian.”27 Reid resumed his campaign in early 1955. In a follow-up memorandum to the DEA, soon distributed to cabinet, Reid suggested that the essential ingredient for improving relations was for the West to treat India as the most important country of free Asia.28 The chances of India remaining a democracy were good, and it was in the interests of the West for Indian influence to increase across South and Southeast Asia. Only India and China could vie for influence in this region. If the West were not willing to foster a politically and economically strong India, then it inevitably would aid China. Reid offered specific steps to enhance Western influence, ranging from making India a permanent member of the Security Council and enhancing cultural diplomacy initiatives to increasing economic assistance and increasing sympathy for Indian views on colonial issues in Asia and Africa. Conscious of the dangers of a global racial divide and influenced by a concern for racial equity, Reid made a number of suggestions that were intended to soothe tensions between the United States and the leader of the nonaligned movement. His proposals were consistent with Laura

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Madokoro’s suggestion in this volume (Chapter 7) of a greater openness among certain DEA elements. That latter group, with India at the forefront, challenged Washington’s assessment that security was of paramount concern in the Cold War world as opposed to consideration of the distribution of power, social justice, and an end to colonialism. But in the meantime, there was little change in the tensions between Washington and New Delhi. The Americans watched warily as Moscow stepped up its efforts to counter the US-Pakistani alliance by channelling increased aid to India, which resulted in a high profile visit from Nehru to Moscow later that spring.29 Still, Reid’s despatches were disseminated to colleagues in the DEA on the eve of the Bandung Conference of nonaligned nations held in Indonesia in April 1955. At the conference, Nehru explicitly displayed his pursuit of nonalignment. Attendance at Bandung was intended “to promote goodwill and understanding” among the nearly thirty independent and nonaligned governments invited from Asia and Africa while they considered their role in international affairs. Not far removed from Nehru’s mind was a desire to see Bandung serve as an alternative to the American-led military pacts that created the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the Baghdad Pact. Many Westerners understandably saw Nehru’s willingness to chastise Western imperialism while ignoring Communist machinations as a double standard and further evidence that nonalignment was duplicitous. This confirmed the suspicions of many in the DEA who had doubted India’s impartiality. This group of emerging India skeptics questioned Reid’s assessments and analysis of Indian foreign policy, as well as his policy prescriptions to enhance Western ties with New Delhi. Racial attitudes and assumptions informed their skepticism. An early example of how Canadian officials considered the role of race in shaping India and its officials came from a junior Canadian diplomat posted to New Delhi, Graham McInnes. McInnes prepared an essay, “Whither India,” which impressed Reid so much that he distributed it to the DEA in December 1953. McInnes was probably the first Canadian official to consider, on paper, how culture, environment, geography, and history shaped Indian society. And his analysis, building on long-standing racial attitudes, tartly questioned the assumptions of the bridge idea. India’s environment had produced “physical isolation” while subjecting Indians to an “extremely brutal climate” that over millennia had promoted “disease, lassitude, poverty, over-subtle speculation and a roaring fertility, which, until the coming of the West, was held in check only by war, famine and pestilence.” 30 McInnes described Indians to his DEA colleagues as

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poetic in the widest sense and it is the poet in others that appeals to them. They are strong family people – much stronger than in the West; They are extremely hospitable; They are kind and affectionate if approached with­ out ambivalency. This makes them very demonstrative and they say things which to Westerners seem exaggerated or untrue; The reverse of this is that they can also be very violent; They have little staying power except at the level close to the dust at which India has generally subsisted. These characteristics are in turn traceable back to the environment: isolation; terrific and permanent heat leading to physical inaction, immense tolerance and fine-spun metaphysical subtleties.31

India’s pursuit of nonalignment, for McInnes, marked a struggle between the affinities of the western-educated elites against Hinduism and the colonialism that sculpted what he regarded as India’s ambivalent attitude toward the West. This ambivalence was rooted in the Hindu faith that “was conceived and arrived at its present character in a monumental isolation. This character is complex, subtle, withdrawn into itself and though not precisely xenophobic not particularly interested in contact with other peoples.”32 In McInnes’ conclusion, there was not a meeting of the minds to be had. India would revert to its dominant Hindu culture once the westernized leaders of Congress moved on. McInnes’ assessment that the West had raised India up was not unique within the DEA. Nor, as Kevin Spooner and David Webster show in Chap­ ters 9 and 11 respectively, were Canadian racial and geographic attitudes toward decolonization solely limited to India. Charles Ritchie, having accompanied St. Laurent to India and Pakistan in 1954 as an adviser, echoed McInnes in his references to Hinduism as he grappled with his interactions with Pakistani and Indian leaders. Ritchie’s diary entry reveals how he employed racialized assumptions to understand the “essence” of the Hindu/ Muslim persona and their actions: “How different are the people,” he observed. “The Moslems in Karachi seemed straightforward, frank, simple, compared with the alien sophistication of the Hindu, a strangeness lurking just under the surface of the Oxford educated civil servants with whom we associate. Then there is the mixture of morality and the Machiavellian in their politics.”33 Joining Ritchie in a cool appraisal of the Indian persona and also nonalignment was Marcel Cadieux, one of the rising figures in the DEA. Cadieux was one of a select group of senior members of the department asked to provide comments on Reid’s proposals. As Reid prepared to travel to Ottawa

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in July 1955 for consultations, Cadieux read the proposals with skepticism. A devout Roman Catholic, he focused on what he saw as a devious side to Indian politics and to the Indian character. This stemmed from his experience serving with Indian diplomats on the Indochina Commis­sions (ICC) in Vietnam between 1954 and 1955. Recalling his experience in Indochina, Cadieux alleged that the Indians claimed to be neutral but were largely indifferent to many of the heinous acts carried out by the Viet Minh. At the same time, the Indians were more than willing to criticize the French for less serious faults. Cadieux’s impressions of Indochina, and of the Indian officials he encountered, formed the basis of a scathing reply to Reid’s memorandum that was widely circulated within the DEA. The Indians were pursuing an opportunistic policy based on the successful pursuit of distinct national objectives. In their disregard for the value of the individual or of important principles and in their treatment of the press, he argued the Indians “did not behave like Westerners or in accordance with Western standards but with detachment from what, I for one, would consider an acceptable moral pattern of behaviour.”34 Although a significant number of Indians were educated in Britain and fluent in English, Cadieux believed that the “western characteristics” of the Indians were largely ephemeral: I am inclined to think that on the whole it may be dangerous and perhaps unwise to look at the Indians as people like us, as people who are fundamentally influenced by Western concepts and who will try to achieve their ends by Western methods. While they used Parker Pens, and had their clothes cut out by the best London tailors Indians in Vietnam were not adverse to undertaking devious and, to us, objectionable horse-trading operations if they served their particular purposes, thus ignoring principles on which the West could not compromise. If this line of reasoning is warranted (and on this I naturally have to defer to the views of those who have much longer experiences than I of Indian ways), it seems to me that Indian ‘neutrality’ or non-alignment may be the expression of basic Indian spiritual and moral attitudes which may be the result of geographical and historical factors, but which has the effect that the Indians do not approach problems in what we would consider a scientific, objective Western way but perhaps in what seems to us too ‘flexible’ and idealistic a fashion.35

Cadieux had not spent any considerable length of time in India other than a possible brief stopover during a flight. Yet, he confidently based his damning

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analysis of Indian nonalignment on the few Indian officials that he encountered in Vietnam and extrapolated that interaction on to India proper. Cadieux’s analysis exhibited deep frustration that India and its officials were less like the traditional white Commonwealth members than he had envisaged. His assessment provides a revealing glimpse at how cultural and racial assumptions of Indians could profoundly influence the perspectives of both anglophone and francophone Canadian officials, who then evaluated Indian foreign policy in fairly reductionist terms. In this sense, Cadieux followed the earlier analysis of Graham McInnes. It is evident in Cadieux’s use of the phrase “behave like westerners” that he assumed Indian elites in Indochina would act in a Western fashion be­ cause of their colonial history, Oxbridge education, and the commonality of the English language. That same assumption informed the earlier bridge notion as it applied to India. By assuming these traits existed and dominated the Indian world view, Cadieux and his colleagues created expectations of Indian policy and behaviour that could not be fulfilled to the extent they desired. Through this lens, India’s sympathy for Hanoi could not be understood as anything less than perfidy, not recognizing that New Delhi had a strongly sympathetic assessment of Hanoi’s actions as that of another Asian government that had shaken off a colonial power. This is a fundamental and overlooked reason by historians as to why the “special relationship” advanced by Reid gained little traction in Ottawa, and the early aspiration to be a bridge between the West and India came asunder. That aspiration, due in large part to racialized conceptions, had assumed that a sense of familiarity existed between the two Commonwealth states. Yet, whereas Reid rapidly developed a romance for India, Pearson and Ritchie confessed to finding the subcontinent personally and spiritually bewildering, and Cadieux concurred.36 Reid’s memoirs also suggest that Cadieux’s views of Indian foreign policy gained an audience that had not previously existed, and that Indochina became a crucial factor in fanning discontent toward India. This was certainly correct. Many of Cadieux’s colleagues in the diplomatic service came to share his views that India sympathized with Hanoi, and as the commissions continued into the 1960s, these attitudes gradually created irreparable fissures in the bilateral relationship. Upon his return home on a leave, Reid was asked to provide a report about India for departmental officials. In it, he expressed his support for the Indian view that Vietnam would likely fall under Hanoi’s rule. The British and French, he added, had already tacitly acknowledged this through their acceptance of the Geneva agreement. It

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was a fait accompli, therefore, that communism would dominate throughout Vietnam, but it “was possible to hold a line at the border between Laos and Cambodia on one side and Vietnam on the other.”37 As Reid recalled, the reaction to his prophetic assessment was immediate and hostile. Reid returned to New Delhi, wounded, but determined to stay the course. Pursuing that course proved increasingly difficult for Reid, especially when the secretary of state for external affairs (SSEA) also became an India skeptic. Reid had consistently sought to impress upon Pearson the importance of nurturing ties with India and its officials. Pearson now questioned his own earlier reading of the extent to which commonalities existed between the two countries. In November 1955, Pearson returned from further travels to India and Pakistan, and his analysis of the differences between the two countries illuminates a lingering cultural unease that he experienced with India: It is surprising, the difference in the atmosphere between India and Pakis­ tan. The people of the latter country – or at least West Pakistan – seem much easier to talk to, more like ourselves, than the Indians. They seem franker and more straightforward, more vigorous ... Finally, the Pakistanis seek, and very often secure, your sympathy as the smaller state ... Anyway we seem to like the Pakistanis.38

Pearson’s sense that the Pakistanis were “more like ourselves” compared to the Indians further illustrates the shift underway in Canadian perceptions of the subcontinent. His frustration with nonalignment demonstrates the extent to which racialized assumptions informed the shift in Canadian thinking at the highest levels. His earlier analysis that Canada could act as an interpreter between the West and India, which was based on an assumption that the Indians and Canadians shared common values and traits, had vanished. Now his doubts about New Delhi transformed into overt frustration when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was warmly received during his state visit to India in December 1955 by the Indian prime minister. Livid with the Soviet performance as Khrushchev publicly excoriated the West, Pearson stewed as Nehru stood by passively. Sniffing at India’s “neutralism,” he cabled Reid, asking him to inform the Indian Ministry of Ex­ ternal Affairs of Ottawa’s displeasure and to remind the Indians that they had done well by Western economic assistance without perhaps acknowledging such through­out the years.39

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Reid did not share Pearson’s concern that the Soviets had “raised a tempest,”40 and undeterred, he used the offers of Soviet aid as incentive to lobby Ottawa to reconsider a 250 million dollar line of credit to India.41 If the West, and Canada, did not act soon, counselled Reid, it faced being out­ manoeuvred by Soviet overtures. USSEA Jules Léger agreed with some of Reid’s points and raised them in a memorandum to Pearson.42 While his colleagues in Ottawa’s East Block scrutinized his aid proposal, Reid proposed another initiative, “a western counter-offensive in India” that would combat Russian and Chinese efforts to expand their influence in India.43 It was imperative that Nehru’s ego be massaged. Again Reid counselled that India be recognized as a great power and Ottawa should support a Soviet proposal that India be made a permanent member of the UN Security Council. This declaration followed by action would offset Moscow’s latest efforts. The West could further cultivate India’s confidence by increasing their consultations with New Delhi.44 Finally, it was imperative that Ottawa consider the gradual normalization of relations with China. Reid’s appeals were ignored. The urgency that had propelled Ottawa’s policy-makers to act on the Colombo Plan proposals had dissipated. Some sympathy for India’s needs remained, but officials were now prepared to go only so far to accommodate nonaligned India, and Pearson remained unwilling to vex Washington for the sake of bringing India closer to the West. Reid’s final full year in India was personally and professionally unpleasant. In Ottawa, the high hopes of a special relationship had faded, replaced instead with frustration over Indian foreign policy. Reid could take some pleasure in helping to conclude the first bilateral atomic energy cooperation agreement between the two countries. However, new negotiations involving safeguards concerning plutonium generated by the Canada-India Reactor soon became bogged down and would not be resolved for another three years. Reid’s health faltered in the spring of 1956 when he contracted hepatitis and suffered a bout of jaundice. Reid was advised by his doctor to take rest, avoid alcohol, and, above all else, “no hurry, no worry, no curry.”45 Reid’s poor health lingered into the autumn. Depressed, tired, and isolated, he recovered as the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian revolution unfolded. Reid’s greatest concern, a breach between India and the West, appeared to be unfolding before his eyes. The British and French seizure of the Suez Canal angered the Canadians but outraged the Indians. Nehru verbally blasted the British, the memories of the independence struggle still fresh among the Congress Party leadership. Veiled threats to leave the Commonwealth

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followed. Yet, within days of the Suez Canal seizure, the Soviet Union crushed the uprising in Hungary, and the Indians were silent. That juxtaposition did not go unnoticed in Ottawa, another example that nonalignment favoured the Soviet Bloc. Reid’s emotions got the better of him. The DEA and Pearson, at the United Nations, were deluged with despatches from Reid giving what he believed was sage advice. But it was instead met with exasperation from his colleagues. He was finally admonished by Pearson to report only on matters pertaining to Canada-India relations. The bridge had developed distinct cracks. In the wake of the Suez crisis and in advance of a state visit to Ottawa by Nehru, Reid made one final attempt to buttress the structure of the bridge. He lobbied in favour of one of his key hopes: enhanced cultural and public diplomacy exchanges that supplemented the “larger efforts of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.”46 Canada’s role would be small, granted, but the fall from grace sustained by Britain and France in the minds of the Indians following the Suez crisis had only enhanced Ottawa’s stature in India and its ability to project a positive example of the West. Meanwhile, India’s ties with the United States remained fickle. Again, the distinction was made that Canada could act in India in a relatively easy fashion, in contrast to its allies. Emphasizing the recent mushrooming Soviet and Chinese cultural exchanges with India, Reid encouraged a range of means to bolster Canada’s presence in India, noting that “the amount of news about Canada in Indian newspapers is pitifully small. Canadian newspapers are almost as sparsely stocked with Indian news.”47 He suggested that the Canadian Press post a representative to New Delhi if the Press Trust of India did the same for Canada. The Information Division, however, in its evaluation of the report was skeptical and did not offer encouragement. Arthur Andrew, the director of that division, noted that “the CP cannot be persuaded to have a correspondent in Paris – India would be inconceivable.”48 Perhaps most shocking were Andrew’s views on Reid’s proposal to introduce a bilateral scholarship program. Both countries would share in the costs of sending Canadians to India to study while emphasizing “our belief that we have as much to learn from the East as the East has to learn from us. More should be done to increase Indian knowledge of Canadian education and of contemporary Canadian scholarship.”49 Andrew showed little appetite for any substantial engagement and briskly dismissed the proposition. First, he concluded there would be “very few takers” for the scholarships and the ideas should not be encouraged as the lack of interest would “be embarrassing.” Second, Andrew expressed reticence with Reid’s analysis

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that there was much to learn from the East. In his assessment, “It is doubtful if students could honestly convey the impression that we have as much to learn from the East as to teach it.”50 This was hardly the stuff on which bridges were to be built, but, as McInnes’ earlier analysis of Indian politics and society suggests, such cultural condescension was not an aberration. Rather, Andrew’s caustic comment further emphasizes the shift in DEA thinking, whereby figures as esteemed as Pearson and senior diplomat Hume Wrong once believed there was indeed much Canadians could learn from understanding India and its peoples. None of Reid’s final efforts to expand cultural understanding succeeded at a time that cultural misunderstanding was eating away at the fabric of the relationship. Escott Reid returned home from India in May 1957 with few victories in his campaign to raise the profile of the bilateral relationship in either country or to improve mutual understanding. Indeed, few of the proposals that Reid pressed for were implemented during or after his tenure. He had also won few converts. Rather, a pool of India skeptics had emerged.51 The effusive optimism that characterized DEA descriptions of India in 1952 became rarer by 1957. Ottawa remained unwilling to jeopardize relations with Washington for the sake of gaining influence in New Delhi. In fact, Ottawa had begun to follow the American tilt toward Pakistan, deeming its foreign policy more in line with Western interests. Racially informed analysis influenced that shift. Prominent officials in the DEA ranks thought the Pak­ istani character more amenable to Westerners than its Indian counterpart, thereby reinforcing the tilt.52 Many of Reid’s colleagues believed that his romance and enthusiasm for all things Indian had gotten the better of him – India had clouded his judgment. In arriving at that conclusion, certain prominent Canadian officials apparently formed their own distinct racialized impressions of India, predicated on hazy religious and cultural assumptions, to understand nonalignment and the Indian character. Divergences of interpretation on the International Commission for Supervision and Control and regarding the merits of nonalignment serve as notable examples. The evidence suggests that the placid waters of Reid’s special relationship were disturbed by currents that he was slow to detect, and, to be fair, the same was true of individuals like Pearson – that earliest proponent of bridge building.

Conclusion In Envoy to Nehru, Reid reflected on his time in India and why his hopes for a special relationship came asunder. He identified India’s pursuit of

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nonalignment and the frustrations stemming from the Indo-China com­ missions as the dominant obstacles. In other words, Cold War structuralism had placed limitations on the ability of Canada and India to successfully intersect with the other. But the passage of time also allowed Reid to ponder why personal relations between Pearson and St. Laurent with Nehru became distant. And after examining Pearson’s diary entries while researching Envoy to Nehru, Reid partly identified the extent to which religious and cultural dissonance affected his own hopes. In New Delhi, Reid had failed to recognize that his own racially informed romanticism for India ultimately blinded him to the shortcomings of the policies he was promoting. Decades later, Reid recognized that Pearson had developed a friendlier disposition toward the Pakistanis and concluded that it was due to perceived cultural and religious differences between Islam and Hinduism.53 As Kevin Spooner notes in Chapter 9, an examination of how race influenced Canadian attitudes and approaches to decolonization in 1950s Com­ monwealth Africa reveals how “a set of values and norms can be seen to be taking shape, and such belief systems, infused as they are with fundamental underlying assumptions, can powerfully delineate the choices and options that are imagined.”54 Likewise, a close examination of Escott Reid’s time in India shows that a new set of beliefs toward India surfaced in Ottawa. The link between race, culture, and religion to the policy-making process can be slippery and elusive. Yet, glimmers of its influence are evident in the underlying assumptions Canadian officials possessed of India. Understanding how those assumptions were formulated and how they changed can help to explain the transformation of Canadian perceptions of India during Reid’s time in New Delhi. Observations, language, intonation, and an almost vanishing reference to bridge building infused the Canadian policy-making process toward India in a manner that had not been the case years earlier. Careful consideration of the racialized influences of culture and religion juxtaposed with high policy can better illuminate how a once vaunted relationship became not so special for Ottawa, despite Reid’s efforts. Those same influences further explain why, in a stunningly short period of time, Canadian foreign policy on New Delhi shifted from a policy based on aspiration to one based on visceral distrust that India could be a reliable partner in Asia, thereby sundering Reid’s cherished hopes. NOTES 1 E. Reid, Envoy to Nehru (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981), 7.

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2 Ibid., 26. For Reid’s analysis on how the special relationship developed, see Chapter 2 of that volume. See also Ryan Touhey, Conflicting Visions: Canada and India in the Cold War World, 1946–76 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), Chapter 5. 3 See for example G. Donaghy, “‘The Most Important Place in the World’: Escott Reid in India, 1952–57,” in Escott Reid: Diplomat and Scholar, ed. G. Donaghy and S. Roussel (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004): 67–84; R. Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945–1984 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 77–78, 123. 4 Letter to Dana Wilgress, April 8, 1952, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Reid Papers, MG 31 E 46, vol. 37, file: Wilgress, L. Dana (3) 1952–1967. 5 Reid’s memoirs show that as a child he devoured Kipling, Sir Walter Scott, and imperial history. Yet later in his youth, and nurtured during his university years in Toronto and at Oxford, he was influenced by a Christian, even Fabian, socialist ideal that would not have made many of Nehru’s own socialist ideals seem alien. Reid confessed that visiting India made him realize his education was limited to that of the western world. However, “my Oxford years plus my social-democratic views also helped me to get along with and understand Jawaharlal Nehru since he was a Cambridge graduate and a social democrat.” These elements, when combined, nourished his romantic assumptions of India. E. Reid, Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 60. 6 E. Reid, “Colombo Conference Notes,” January 9, 1950, LAC, Reid Papers, vol. 7, file 2–19. 7 Letter to Dana Wilgress, April 8, 1952, LAC, Reid Papers, vol. 37, file Wilgress, L. Dana (3) 1952–1967. 8 Memorandum for the Prime Minister, December 26, 1941, LAC, W.L.M. Papers, series J4, vol. 281, c 193155–58. 9 Letter of Instruction from Dana Wilgress to Escott Reid, November 12, 1952, LAC, RG 25, vol. 360, part 1, file 4900-E-40. 10 Reid, Radical Mandarin, 273. 11 Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 42. 12 See, for example, Speech by Escott Reid, February 21, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3.1, file 2727-Y-40. 13 R. Reid, quoted in Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 40. 14 Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 100. 15 Letter from Reid to Dana Wilgress, July 20, 1953, LAC, Escott Reid Papers, MG 31 E 46, vol. 7, file 18. 16 Ibid. 17 Reid to secretary of state for external affairs, Despatch No. 277 Subject: Korea, December 12, 1952, LAC, Reid Papers, MG 31 E 46, vol. 7, file 17. 18 J. Nehru, quoted in S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography Vol. 2 1947–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 189. 19 See Bruce Williams to USSEA, September 6, 1954; Hicks to Delhi, October 21, 1954, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3.1, file 2727-Y-40. 20 Reid to USSEA, March 7, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3.1, file 2727-Y-40. 21 Ibid.

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22 Ibid. 23 Reid to Pearson Despatch No. 1377 Subject: How Indian-United States Relations Might Be Improved, December 1, 1954, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8230, part 6.2, file 9126–40. 24 Ibid. 25 Despatch No. 1318, From High Commissioner for Canada in India, New Delhi to SSEA, November 18, 1954, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8230, part 6.2, file 9126–40. 26 Pearson to Reid, December 23, 1954, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8230, part 6.2, file 9126–40. 27 Reid to Pearson, Despatch No. 1318 Subject: Some Considerations in the Formula­ tion of Indian Foreign Policy, February 5, 1955, LAC, MG 26 N1, Pearson Papers, vol. 23, file Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference Diary 1955. 28 Confidential Brief from Commonwealth Division, “Some Measures for Improving Relations Between India and the West,” April 15, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7127, part 7.1, file 9126–40. See also Reid to SSEA, Despatch No. 338, March 28, 1955 re: My despatch No. 1318 of 18 November 1954, Subject: Some Measures for Improving Relations Between India and the West. 29 R. McMahon, “U.S. Policy toward South Asia and Tibet during the Early Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 8, 3 (2006): 139. 30 McInnes, quoted in Reid to Pearson Despatch No. 1260, December 23, 1953, Sub­ ject: “Whither India”: A Memorandum by Mr. Graham McInnes, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8247, part 6.1, file 9193–40. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 C. Ritchie, Diplomatic Passport: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946–1962 (Toronto: MacMillan Publishers, 1981), 63. 34 Note to File DEA Memorandum from Cadieux, June 29, 1955 Re: Mr. Chapdelaine’s Memorandum of June 16, Subject: Relations between India and the West. Mr Reid’s Despatch No. 338 of March 28, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7127, part 8.1, file 9126–40. 35 Ibid. 36 Pearson described Nehru as “one of the most subtle and difficult men to understand whom I had ever met ... an extraordinary combination of a Hindu mystic, who had become almost a Hindu god, and an Eton-Oxbridge type of Englishman.” L.B. Pearson, quoted in J. Munro and A. Inglis, eds. Mike: The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon Lester B. Pearson Volume 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 118–19. 37 Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 83. 38 L. Pearson, quoted in ibid., 93. See also LAC, Pearson Diaries, MG 26 N8, vols. 1 and 2, file 6. 39 Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 138–140. 40 Ibid., 139. 41 Reid had initially suggested a line of credit in Despatch No. 333 of March 2, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7127, part 7.1, file 9126–40. 42 See Leger to Pearson, January 11, 1956, LAC, Pearson Papers, vol. 12, file Escott Reid. 43 See Reid to SSEA, Despatch No. 32, January 11, 1956, LAC, Reid Papers, part 5, vol. 8.

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44 Ibid. Reid singled out the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada in particular. 45 See letters from Pearson to Reid, 17 July 1956 and Reid to Pearson, 5 September 1956, LAC, Pearson Papers, vol. 12, file Escott Reid. 46 Reid to SSEA, Despatch No. 1771, 5 December 1956, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3, file 2727-Y-40. See also Despatch No. 1772, 5 December 1956. 47 Reid to SSEA, Despatch No. 1771, 5 December 1956; Despatch No. 1772, 5 De­ cember 1956; both in LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3, file 2727-Y-40. 48 A. Andrew to Commonwealth Division, 14 December 1956, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8057, part 3.2, file 2727-Y-40. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Included in this camp were Marcel Cadieux, George Glazebrook, John Holmes, R.L. Rogers, and Morley Scott. All were in key roles to comment on bilateral relations between Canada and India. 52 See R. Touhey, “Dealing in Black and White: The Diefenbaker Government and the Cold War in South Asia 1957–1963,” Canadian Historical Review 92, 3 (September 2011): 429–54. 53 Reid, Envoy to Nehru, 93–95. 54 See page 225 of this volume.

9

“Awakening Africa” Race and Canadian Views of Decolonizing Africa KEVIN A. SPOONER

The two decades after the Second World War constitute a key trans­form­ ative period in the development of Canadian political relations with Africa. From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, a number of remarkable ideo­­logical and political forces were simultaneously at play. African nationalism, mani­ fested within colonies as social, ideological, and political movements ad­ vocating decolonization and independence, were just as notable in the continent-wide pursuit of pan-Africanism. With more than twenty colonial entities in Africa, Britain was a significant imperial power confronted by this rising African nationalism. The orderly dissolution of the formal British Empire in Africa and its evolution into the Commonwealth, an organization that today retains some eighteen African states, was seen as key to retaining British influence on the continent. Yet the tensions and undercurrents associated with decolonization are obviously much more complex than is implied by such a straightforward transition from Empire to Commonwealth. In this collection, Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) and David Webster (Chapter 11) highlight many of the complexities inherent in decolonization, and David Meren (Chapter 10) helpfully explores the transnational dimensions of ethnocultural solidarities and their intersections with nationalisms within and beyond North America. Francine McKenzie’s contribution (Chapter 3) is particularly important and relevant to this chapter; her exploration of Prime Minister Robert Borden’s

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understanding and framing of empire, hierarchy, and race presents an early parallel example of how notions of race and Canada’s place in imperial frameworks impacted those responsible for shaping foreign policy. This chapter excavates some of the underlying racial assumptions held by officials within the Department of External Affairs as they reflected on British colonial policy on Africa and began to develop a Canadian approach to relations with English-speaking Africa. The idea of race is central here. As noted elsewhere in this collection, Canada occupies a particular place within British imperial frameworks as a white settler society racially identifying more closely with the colonial power and metropole, even as it shares a legacy of colonization and trajectory of political independence more akin to Britain’s imperial hinterland. Scholars of Canadian foreign policy have long engaged with the concept of middle power as a way to explain Canada’s political position, influence, and stature in the international arena. Used another way, the middle power concept might also be employed to explain the nation’s in-between status within the British Empire – a status that was more embraced than resisted, even after more than half a century of Canadian Confederation. In 1925, Sir Joseph Pope, the first under-secretary at the Department of External Affairs, had just retired. It is worth recalling his famous admonition: “Canada by herself is not a nation, and I hope I may never live to see her one.”1 Certainly, by the late 1960s, there was a heightened awareness of Canada’s own sense of national identity, and this had definitely evolved beyond Pope’s perception of the nation’s appropriate place in the world. Yet, one can imagine that the very idea of Britain’s African colonies becoming independent nations would have remained in the 1960s truly unimaginable, even inconceivable, to someone like Pope. This chapter reveals how echoes of such past colonial and racial paradigms reverberated well into the twentieth century. How exactly did Canadian officials begin to understand and appreciate the realities of African nationalism and imperial dissolution? And, particularly, in what ways was race a conceptual factor that shaped that understanding? To address these questions, a subset of themes and historical events are critically examined: Canadian assessments of British policy related to decolonization, particularly with respect to Kenya; observations and assessments of Africa and African nationalism by Canadian officials, including perceptions of leading African figures; and perceptions of the role of South Asians, and especially Indian foreign policy, on the continent. Together, these themes present an opportunity to assess how race played a role in the shaping of Canadian policy on Africa by the foreign policy elite.

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By focusing on the Canadian foreign policy elite, in particular, officials within the Department of External Affairs, and on what is revealed in their communications with one another, there is concern this analysis could be summarily dismissed as old-fashioned diplomatic history. In his thoughtful assessment of the cultural turn in international history, historian David Reynolds refers, as so many others have done, to G.M. Young’s scathing appraisal of diplomatic history as “little more than the record of what one clerk said to another clerk.”2 Much of the work in this volume is inspired by the promise of transnational and international approaches to understanding a fundamentally important issue such as race that, by its inherent nature, has implications that transcend the physical boundaries of nation-states, an important domain of diplomatic history. The stage, then, could well be set for tension between the old (i.e., diplomatic) and the new (i.e., inter/transnational) histories. This perceived tension lies behind a key question Reynolds poses: “How exactly do we connect the masculine self-images of policy-makers, their historical memories or their sense of national identity to the actual policies they choose, advocate, and execute?”3 For Reynolds, the answer to this question lies somewhere in the resolution of two fundamental but related conundrums. First, is it possible to reconcile in historical analysis such structural forces as society, economy, and culture with the agency exercised by individuals? Second, can we resolve the divergent historical impulses to either “explain” or “represent”? The cultural turn toward more international and transnational history is clearly associated with the “shift from explaining change to understanding context or meaning” identified by Reynolds.4 To frame this discussion dichotomously is problematic. We are pressed to choose between structure and individual, between explanation and representation, and finally – though this is admittedly too simplistic – between diplomatic and inter/transnational histories. But a fundamental task for the historian in this field must surely be to do what Reynolds initially asks us to do in his important essay: make connections. Here, Daniel Hucker’s work on international history and public opinion is helpful. Hucker escapes the methodological quagmire historians face in attempting to reconstruct public opinion by focusing on how the “perceptions of public opinion (whether accurate or otherwise) influenced foreign policy choices.”5 Representation is key to understanding the significance of these perceptions, according to Hucker, and he helpfully breaks down this concept further into residual and reactive representations. While providing a useful method to better understand historical public opinion, more relevant here is how this approach

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also provides a means to make the very sort of connections called for by Reynolds. While reactive representations are linked to how public opinion is constructed on a given issue at a particular point in time and may, by their very nature, be fleeting, the conceptualization of residual representations provides a useful mechanism to bridge the divide between structure and an individual who, by virtue of position and power in society, could exercise a significant degree of influence and control over policy formation. Residual representations are very potent in that they have the strength of instinctiveness and intuition behind them. They emerge from dominant narratives and shared or collective experiences that shape “national identities, traditions, and memories.”6 The pervasive shared bureaucratic and institutional culture and norms that took shape and were continuously fostered within the Department of External Affairs, replete with communally held assumptions and perceptions that could well be either valid or invalid, can be seen as a form of residual representation. This concept of residual representation is similar to other related theoretical approaches. The idea of cognitive maps, for instance, has proven useful for understanding geopolitical and spatial preconceptions and has been employed to good effect by Webster and Sean Mills (Chapter 4) in this volume.7 Of course, the social construction of national identities is at the heart of Benedict Anderson’s work on imagined communities;8 and while Clifford Geertz’s work on culture is sometimes criticized for its broad, all-encompassing nature, his notion of common sense relates well to such ideas as collective residual representations. Yet, in a white settler society such as Canada, Eva Mackey also reminds us that the identities emerging from collective belief systems shaped by such representations are replete with exclusions, even as they aim to be collective.9 As the introduction to this volume cautions, historians must be equally attuned to both what is said and not said in the historical record. Another way to appreciate the utility of residual representations is in recognizing their correspondence with the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu. Historian Peter Jackson has noted the applicability of Bourdieu’s ideas to international historians engaged in the analysis of “the dynamic relation­ ship between the cultural predispositions of policymakers and the external structures that limit their policy choices.”10 Bourdieu’s work is especially relevant because it enables a conceptualization of how identity and beliefs interact and connect with larger structures or environments. Bourdieu’s habitus is an effective tool to be employed when assessing the impact of

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“conscious and unconscious learned experience” on an individual or even on an institution’s ability to see “what is imaginable and what is unimaginable.”11 In the context of international history specifically, the habitus can be seen to be composed of the durable and implicitly understood collective memories and knowledge of historical actors in a position to shape policy. Key also to this approach is the idea of the field or multiple fields within which the habitus operates. Fields, too, are replete with “formal and informal structures, spoken and unspoken assumptions.”12 These often work to constrain the range of perceived possible actions and approaches. In effect, what we have with this model is a means to reconstruct beliefs, identities, and cultures at an individual or group level, in order to then assess interactions and associations with larger structures or fields that not only provide context but also come with their own set of rules and cognitive boundaries. This has tremendous relevance for the historical study of Canada’s foreign policy, particularly when analyzing a factor as complex as race, which is at the very least a contested and socially constructed characteristic of identity. For instance, here this approach is used to appreciate how membership in the British Empire, and Canada’s own colonial status as alluded to earlier, affected racial ideas that infused not only an emerging Canadian identity but also the racialized world views of the foreign policy elite charged with shaping relations between Canada and decolonizing nations. To examine Canadian-African relations in the critical postwar period of the 1940s to the late 1960s, we need to bridge diplomatic and inter/transnational history. From diplomatic history, we can take its particular focus on the foreign policy elite.13 In this period, the Department of External Affairs was the uncontested centre of foreign policy development. In the two decades following the Second World War, the department experienced significant growth. Through the 1950s, however, the cast of characters at the most senior levels of the department (both in terms of positions in Ottawa and abroad) was remarkably consistent, even as they often exchanged high-level appointments.14 It is not difficult to see just how easily the collective wisdom of department officials and their underlying assumptions about Canada’s place in the world could have formed an institutional, systemic habitus or set of residual representations that was then transmitted throughout the department.15 In the pages that follow, note how evidence is drawn from not only the typically known and most senior level departmental officials such as Lester Pearson, Norman Robertson, and Escott

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Reid but also those who held other important but less senior positions, including Evan Gill, Edgar D’Arcy McGreer, George P. de T. Glazebrook, and Robert Ford. Still, it is important to recognize that no bureaucracy is entirely homogenous in its outlook, as Ryan Touhey (Chapter 8) shows in explaining the reaction of senior officials to Reid’s ideas about Indian development and the Cold War. In other words, the habitus or residual representations are never likely to become completely pervasive and achieve a consistent unified approach on, or understanding of, all issues. Differences in views, particularly between internal divisions, were common in the department. As will be seen below, the views of some individuals simply would not rise to the level of representing the collective outlook. That said, the understanding of the department as a whole becomes manifest in the archival evidence of communication across the bureaucracy and especially as official views rose vertically and ultimately on to Cabinet. In this sense, while differences between officials or divisions existed, such differences should not be regarded as extremes on a spectrum in an absolute sense. Rather, such dif­ ferences demarcated the scope of racialized thought and understanding; variety, difference, and nuance were possible, but all views were ultimately shaped and influenced by certain racialized norms and values that rose to the level of dominant residual representations within the department. To more fully understand how policy options were developed and framed, it is necessary first to expose how race penetrated and, in turn, shaped official thinking, norms, and values. Revealing the underlying assumptions and residual representations that contributed to the collective and individual belief systems of members of the department allows us to reflect upon their significance for policies that necessarily also took into consideration the larger structures confronting Canadian officials. In the Canadian context in particular, some of these structures (or fields, to use Bourdieu’s terminology) would have been readily and consciously apparent, for instance, Canada’s empire and Commonwealth relations; the North Atlantic triangular relations of Canada/United States/United Kingdom, particularly with respect to divergent policies on decolonization; and the ideological and political implications of the Cold War. Other structures, while equally present, would have been much less explicit, for example, wider societal conceptions of race in Canada, notably in relation to national identities and Canada’s relationships within the Empire and the emerging Commonwealth.16

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Assessing British Colonialism in Africa By the late 1940s, Canadian officials had recognized a need to consider and assess British colonial policy on Africa. As it was the subject of debate and examination at the United Nations, officials wanted to be as well informed as possible; moreover, there was an additional concern over growing tension between India and South Africa within the Commonwealth. In 1948, in pursuit of fuller information, a newly appointed secretary of state for external affairs, Lester Pearson, wrote to Norman Robertson, then serving as Can­ada’s high commissioner to London, asking him to keep Ottawa abreast of significant developments in British policy. This subject of interest was so novel that it actually led the Canadians to assume their queries would prompt the British to wonder “why the Canadian Government was becoming decidedly interested in points of detail about African dependent territories.”17 The British had no real cause for concern. Officials in Ottawa were simply keen to gather information to be used by the Canadian member of the UN Trusteeship Committee, should it become necessary to defend the colonial powers against what were seen as scurrilous and obstructive accusations hurled by the Soviets. External Affairs was aware the Montreal Gazette had editorialized on the mischief-making communists, and this too may have been a factor prompting their inquiries.18 The United Kingdom resented the routine criticisms it was subject to during UN discussions on colonialism and preferred to have its colonial matters viewed as domestic concerns. This, of course, is not at all consistent with how many other UN members – notably India and the Soviet bloc – saw it. The Cold War and decolonization very much intersected to shape such global geopolitical realities. When conditions in its colonies became especially volatile, British policies were subject to even greater scrutiny. In the fall of 1952, there was a significant surge in anticolonial violence in Kenya. The Mau Mau uprising or revolt would continue through much of the 1950s. Associated primarily with the Kikuyu, although certainly there were divisions within this group, the uprising was a forceful expression of resistance meant to fundamentally challenge British colonial rule in East Africa. Reaction to the Mau Mau uprising provides a useful opportunity to see how the British explained difficult developments in Kenya to Canada and to assess the views that circulated within External Affairs. Reporting back to Ottawa in late October, High Commissioner Norman Robertson quoted Colonial secretary Oliver Lyttelton’s statement in the British House of Commons, in which Mau Mau was described as a movement that “encourages racial hatred and is violently anti-European and anti-Christian.”19

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Robertson followed up by dispatching a member of his staff to the Col­ onial Office to discuss matters with the assistant secretary concerned with Kenyan affairs. As an explanation of the origins of Mau Mau, the Canadians were told that it was “fairly common amongst the more primitive tribes in Africa to indulge in secret societies and witchcraft.” Jomo Kenyatta, described by the Colonial Office as “by far the ablest intellectual and rabble rouser” and “essentially an evil man,” was said to be leading the movement. Kenyatta, it was argued, had made the decision “to turn Mau Mau from an organization with an already strong anti-European bias into one prepared to pursue its aims by the tactics of terror.”20 Characterized as an extremist, anti-Western terrorist group, little attention was paid to the underlying root causes for the rise of this particular expression of anticolonialism. In Ottawa, the racialized view of Mau Mau gleaned from the Colonial Office was readily received, and descriptions of the movement began to appear in memoranda prepared for the minister that used the identical phrases that emerged in the discussions between Colonial Office officials and Canadian diplomats in London.21 As part of an effort to frame a Canadian approach to Africa, in 1955 External Affairs engaged in wide intra-departmental consultations to prepare a memorandum on an “Awakening Africa” for the minister. The final document emerged from an early draft prepared by the Commonwealth division and discussed at a meeting of under-secretary Jules Léger, assist­ ant under-secretaries John Holmes and J.A. Chapdelaine, and the heads of the European, Economic, United Nations, and Commonwealth divisions.22 The Commonwealth was seen to be on the verge of a key period of “far-reaching change,” as the expected decolonization of some 50 million (mostly African) subjects would cement earlier changes brought about by India and Pakistan’s independence, turning it “from a predominantly pink to a predominantly brown Commonwealth.”23 Yet, Canadian officials also carefully noted the United Kingdom’s differing approaches to independence in West and East Africa. With Ghana and Nigeria, there were few non-African minorities to consider; here, British preparations for selfgovernment were “more striking and more rapid.” In British East Africa, it was expected Africans would be granted economic and political rights over a longer period of time to preserve “the rights and privileges” of the Euro­ pean minorities.24 While development of a Canadian policy on Africa was readily seen as necessary because of the pending dramatic changes resulting from decolonization and their impact on international institutions such as the Commonwealth, the approach advanced by External Affairs was entirely

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consistent with the idea that, at least in respect to East Africa, white privilege in those colonies needed to be protected. In fact, as the final version of this memorandum was prepared, some officials raised concerns over the pace of decolonization and the degree of consultation between the administering powers. These concerns had emerged during the intra-departmental discussions. The head of the Euro­ pean division, Robert Ford, actually proved very critical of British policy, arguing it was too rash and generous in granting independence: At the risk of being considered conservative I think the British are really rushing ahead much too fast in the plans to give independence to a number of colonies which have very little in the way of either civilization or training at self-government behind them. I should think they are opening the way for interference on a large scale by the Russians on the one hand and probably the Indians on the other. However, if the British insist on this timetable, I suppose we should do our best to prevent these scraps of territory from falling to the Communists after the departure of the British.25

Ford further questioned whether the British had adequately consulted their European counterparts. His views were incorporated into the final memorandum as an explicit expression of concern over whether “differences in timing and methods of the four colonial powers could cause serious frictions among the administering powers and their allies.”26 In other words, was British colonial policy about to land Canada in the middle of a nasty European argument, most worryingly with France over its attitude to North Africa? These reservations proved sufficiently significant to warrant mention not only in the final document but also in the despatch of instructions to Canada House in London, asking the high commissioner to check with the Commonwealth Relations office to determine the extent of consultation between the European colonial powers on matters of broad policy.27 Thus, in the end, the head of the European division very ably influenced the direction taken by the department and managed to convince his colleagues of the merit of his views relating to the pace of decolonization by framing these in a highly racialized argument: the degree of supposed civilization achieved by Africans. Significantly, Ford’s comments allude to another important policy consideration: the connection between Cold War politics and (anti)colonial­ ism. Ford, after all, had served for a number of years as Canadian chargé

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d’affaires in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, becoming the department’s Soviet specialist. Recalling the situation in India that Ryan Touhey explores (Chapter 8), the British were quite keen to keep their former scraps of African territory from falling under communist and even neutralist influences. They exerted some pressure on Canada, as an older member of the Commonwealth, to assist and recognize newly independent African states as part of a strategy to secure allegiance to the West. Canadian officials considered the British approach a tad “disingenuous” but shared their ideological concerns nevertheless.28 Where perhaps Canadian and British viewpoints may have most diverged was in the assessment of the likelihood of success in achieving this agenda. At one point during departmental consultations, officials speculated, “It may be, so strong is the force of nationalism today in Africa and Asia, that Europeans (including Canadians) operate at a permanent disadvantage as the heirs of those who once held ‘the gorgeous East’ in fee.”29 Canadian officials did not underestimate the psychological difficulties the former colonies would confront if pressed to choose sides in a Cold War whose chief protagonists in the West happened also to be the very colonial powers to whom they had been subjugated. Ghana would be a critical test case. It was “the first all-African negro independent nation to emerge from colonial status,” and External Affairs fully expected that the significance of this would “not be lost on the rest of Africa, nor on the anti-colonial nations or the Soviet Union.”30 Race, colonialism, and the Cold War were clearly converging. By the end of the 1950s, External Affairs was increasingly dissatisfied over the state of consultations with British Colonial Office officials. A pattern had emerged whereby consultations occurred on an almost annual basis as part of the Canadian preparations for the opening of the fall meeting of the UN General Assembly. Although departmental knowledge of Africa was seriously limited in the late 1940s, a decade later officials at External Affairs started to react with a certain degree of surliness toward paternalistic assumptions of ignorance made by Colonial Office officials. George P. de T. Glazebrook, head of the Commonwealth division at External Affairs, even found that the 1959 British-Canadian consultations served “no useful object.” Afterward he remarked, I had hoped that Mr. Bourdillon was alone in his desire to give us an elementary course on the geography and present conditions in Africa, but found that Mr. Eastwood came with the same zealous intent. Indeed, he

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began his remarks yesterday by expressing pleasure that we had become interested in Africa and asking if he should assume that we know nothing about it.31

While Glazebrook clearly resented Colonial Office assumptions of Can­ adian ignorance, he was equally troubled by British unwillingness to provide confidential information or engage in any serious discussion on policy; Canadian interest in and knowledge of Africa had, at least in the minds of those at External Affairs, advanced to a state that deserved a far more serious approach to consultation. For his part, Glazebrook simply resolved never again to waste his time on the meetings. Throughout the 1950s, consultations between British and Canadian officials on questions of British colonial policy on Africa demonstrated a number of tendencies at External Affairs. Anticolonial movements, such as Mau Mau, were constructed in racialized terms that could conveniently discount their otherwise legitimate and nationalist grievances. Distinctions in British policy between colonies in Eastern and Western Africa were duly noted, and as early Canadian policy on Africa was formulated, such distinctions were incorporated to recognize and validate the white privilege of minorities in the East. Attitudes toward decolonization were paternalistic; while the Cold War proved to be a significant structural factor, especially when it came to timetables for decolonization, individual officials effectively influenced departmental attitudes to see supposed preparedness for independence in terms of racialized perceptions of the degrees of civilization attained by particular colonies. Given the degree to which the department was effectively embedding racial considerations into its policy on Africa, Glazebrook’s indignation at the paternalistic treatment by British officials during their consultations might seem more than a little ironic. It does perhaps reveal something about an emerging Canadian sensibility toward the place of Britain in its foreign policy, particularly given its own history within the colonial empire.

Perceptions of Africa and African Nationalism It should not come as a great surprise to learn that Canadian officials could be racist in their appreciations of Africa. In 1950, on his departure after four years in his post as Canadian high commissioner to South Africa, Edgar D’Arcy McGreer advised secretary of state for external affairs Pearson on the subject of settlers in British colonial Africa. He pointedly asked “whether it is so certain that Central Africa is a White man’s country.” Exploring

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this idea along racially and geographically determinist lines, McGreer concluded Eurocentrically: The fact that so far in history the Black races have not produced alone anything comparable to the great civilisations of other races, may have been largely due to the handicaps of their environment. Africa, as compared with the other continents, has had a raw deal from Nature in climate, endemic diseases, and the poverty of much of her soil ... Indeed, Africa had been the ‘Dark Continent’ for many centuries.32

Yet, even while McGreer credits Europeans for the development of Africa, the high commissioner is also critical of the settlers, though the critique continues to be presented in racialized terms: The White man’s science, skill, capital and energy, the only forces presently equal to the task, will then have been expended fruitlessly if what has been achieved has been done at the cost of racial strife, of disintegration of the friendly relations which normally should have existed between the racial groups which have come to form the community and of the domination of the less gifted indigenous masses by a fair-skinned oligarchy.33

The use of words such as domination and oligarchy reveal an awareness of the imbalances and unsustainability of a social structure in which power continues to be wielded by a non-Indigenous racial minority. Although this quite nuanced view does offer a critique of white minority settlers, by simply stressing the need for greater understanding between racial groups it falls short of calling for the sort of substantive political reform that would have satisfied African nationalism. Notably, McGreer’s explanation for Afri­ can underdevelopment also fails to take into account the economic exploitation inherent in colonialism itself. At the time, McGreer was literally the only Canadian diplomat in Africa; the significance of his views should not be underestimated. Canada’s diplomatic representation in sub-Saharan Africa doubled in 1957 with the opening of a High Commission to Ghana soon after that country achieved independence. A year after his arrival in Accra, Canadian high commissioner Evan Gill witnessed the first of three meetings of the AllAfrican Peoples’ Conference – a gathering of notable delegates drawn together by the shared objectives of securing the formal independence of African colonies and working against neocolonialism. Anticipating the

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gathering in a despatch to External Affairs, Gill was suspicious of this early development in pan-African nationalism: “Since most of those attending the conference will be radicals and nationalists the indications are that discussions and resolutions will lean to extreme denunciations of colonial powers. I do not expect that the conference will do anything to encourage a moderate and responsible approach.” Chinese and Soviet observers were present, and the high commissioner immediately recognized the gathering’s Cold War implications; he fully expected the event to furnish the communists with ample propaganda to damage “western interests” and “further encourage irresponsible sections of black African opinion.”34 Gill was quick to label early pan-Africanism in this political manifestation as extreme, radical, and irresponsible. Following the event, Gill’s reports to the department both confirm and qualify his earlier assessment. He was particularly troubled by the views of African leaders from British multiracial territories. In this regard, he reinforced the already embedded predilection at External Affairs to distinguish between Britain’s African colonies in a manner that recognized and reinforced the racial privilege of white settlers when they constituted a significant minority. Gill found African leaders from the East to be uncompromising on the principle of securing “complete political control,” intent on taking full responsibility “for the conduct of government” and on doing so “very soon.” He opined, “They showed themselves as unrealistic and irrational in their cry of ‘Africa for the Africans’ and in their contention that the problems of this continent could be dealt with in isolation.” In sum, he believed the conference had “ushered in a new phase in the African revolution” that would now be led, to a much greater extent than had earlier been the case, by the extremists. Yet, he reported more positively on Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah’s interventions at the conference. The Ghanaian leader spoke against the use of force to achieve independence and had cautioned his colleagues to be aware “that imperialism might come in a different guise, not necessarily from Europe.”35 On the Cold War front, Gill seemed satisfied that many Africans had recognized for themselves the dangers of communist penetration, but he continued to worry that they might just the same pursue independence by means that undermined “orderly” change and created conditions favourable “for the USSR to exploit.”36 Again, Gill’s key message for Ottawa was that African nationalism and many of its proponents were evolving in increasingly extreme and irresponsible directions, though it is possible to

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recognize in Gill’s approach a distinction between African nations such as Ghana and Kenya; in the case of the latter, there were ensconced white settler groups whose social, economic, and political privileges were directly threatened by the project of independence. Gill certainly betrays at least a modicum of sympathy for the European settlers in these colonies by dismissing as irrational those African nationalists who intended to fundamentally challenge such white privilege. High Commissioner Gill’s relatively favourable view of Nkrumah continued, even as reports that the Ghanaian leader was developing certain authoritarian tendencies began to circulate. Gill acknowledged Ghana as the “focal point of African nationalism” but suggested that it was the “multiracial communities” that were more likely to prove challenging to the Com­ monwealth. He emphasized the need to take into account “local conditions,” as he outlined the difficulties Nkrumah faced: “What he has to work with is ... a population, the vast majority of which lives at a subsistence level, is illiterate, animistic and split by tribalism. This population has been given adult suffrage. Independence and the parliamentary system of government have little or no meaning for the illiterates.” Ultimately, Gill advanced an argument for adapting the western world’s conception of democracy to suit Africa. In effect, he called for a wait and see attitude that accepted the need for a strong central government in a Ghana where conditions were “not yet propitious for multi-party parliament on the Westminster model.”37 The Cold War was an undeniable factor in the suggestion of such an approach. So long as Ghana was stable, even if not entirely democratic, it was less susceptible to communist influences. In the end, though, this policy is justified by references to social underdevelopment (such as illiteracy) and, more significantly, to racialized perceptions of animism and tribalism. As Edgar D’Arcy McGreer, high commissioner to South Africa, had done nearly a decade earlier, Gill explained political and social development in Africa through a Eurocentric lens that then enabled Canadian policy to be justified on the basis of perceived racial shortcomings. McGreer’s earlier and explicit references to civilization may well be absent, but they are nonetheless implicit. Gill’s views were important. Back in Ottawa, the currency of his per­ ceptions were in evidence during a meeting between the head of the Com­ monwealth Division, George Glazebrook, and Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, the last governor of the Gold Coast and first governor-general of Ghana. Practically echoing Gill, Glazebrook outlined the departmental attitude toward Ghana:

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Because of the cultural environment, the continuing influence of tribalism, and local mysticism, and the relative inexperience in operating British forms of government, we cannot reasonably expect Ghana to develop precisely along the lines of democracy as we know it, but rather we must make an effort to be patient and understanding and ready to give assistance and tactful advice when asked for it.38

The consistency in language used by Gill and Glazebrook clearly demonstrates that the racialized perceptions constructed in Accra were being echoed in Ottawa. Either Gill’s interpretation of events in Ghana was constructed in the first instance to correspond with systemic ethnocentric norms implicitly present at External Affairs, or his ideas migrated from Africa to Ottawa and were wholeheartedly received there, very much influencing those within the department charged with shaping Canada’s policy on Africa.

Africa and India In the nineteenth century, the British Empire bound together India and Africa through a diaspora of indentured labour, in particular to build railways. Canada’s initial first-hand, official account of the Indian community in colonial East Africa came from Terrence MacDermot who, as high commissioner to South Africa, toured the area in 1952. Many Europeans he met expressed concern over the degree of economic penetration the Indians had managed to achieve. The governor of Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell, was less concerned by this and spoke more in cultural and racial terms: He [Mitchell] reminded us first that the Moslem and Hindu made very different citizens; the former, largely through the influence of the Aga Khan, and because of their religion, readily assume the responsibilities of their surroundings and give them their allegiance. The Hindu, tied as he is by an almost mystical bond to Mother India is much more difficult to assimilate.39

MacDermot considered Mitchell’s analysis of the situation to be “some­ what ahead of many of his colleagues and fellow Europeans.” The Canadian high commissioner offered a more prosaic, if equally stereotypical, view: We heard far more of the exploitation of the African by the Indian, of the latter’s exclusiveness, and his refusal to train his African employees to

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become skilled workers for fear they might rival the Moslem worker. On balance I would say that the Indian because of his intelligence, his unceasing industry and, not least, because he has a great power behind him whose favours are much sought after, is the source of more troubled thoughts in East Africa today than is the African.40

MacDermot’s report to Ottawa, replete as it was with both his own racial stereotypes and those communicated to him by Mitchell, was important as a first-hand account by a Canadian official in this part of Africa. It certainly laid the groundwork for continued Canadian interest in how Indian policy could shape and influence the direction of decolonization and independence for British colonial East Africa. It was clear to officials in Ottawa that India intended to play a concerted role in pressing Britain to divest itself of empire in Africa. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was certainly vocal on the subject, and External Affairs noted his views. Kept on file was one of Nehru’s speeches entitled “Grave Danger of Colonialism,” delivered in 1953. In it, the Indian prime minister argued, “In this business of colonialism, of course, the question of racialism or racial discrimination comes in.” He went on to connect the question of race to political ideology, making associations with the authoritarianism and fascism the world had just so recently confronted. With a clear eye to Africa and the situation Britain was confronting in Kenya at that time, he asked, “If a small or relatively small racial group perpetuates itself in authority over a large nation, more especially of a different racial group, I do not know what the difference is between that type of fascism and this.”41 By comparison, it was definitely not the Canadian habit to so inherently associate racism with colonial rule. At the Fifth Commonwealth Relations Conference in Lahore, in 1954, when discussion turned to race and colonial self-government, one can read in the Canadian account of the debates little regard for views consistent with Nehru’s. In fact, in recalling the conference, it was suggested that on this issue there was practically a “clear division between Asian and Western delegates.” Indian and Pakistani criticisms of Britain were characterized as emotionally deep-rooted and, less charitably, as irrational, as the Canadian report suggested: While they [the Asian critics] professed to appreciate Britain’s accomplishments and intentions, they clearly showed that they had a profound and automatic distrust of all her actions in the colonial sphere. There was an instinctive and perhaps unconscious assumption that every manifestation

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of discontent represented a genuine expression of popular nationalism, and that every refusal of a colonial power to yield immediately and completely was a manifestation of old-fashioned imperialism.42

In recounting the event, the Canadian interpretation undermines any validity that might adhere to the Asian perspective by simply discounting it as unthinking: these views are labelled instinctive, irrational, emotional, even unconscious. When Canadian empathy was expressed or implied, it was clearly for Britain as opposed to the colonized. While that view appears not to have been conveyed publicly in Lahore, it definitely was conveyed privately just a few months later in Ottawa. In one of the annual fall meetings of Colonial Office officials with members of External Affairs, before Glazebrook attempted to put an end to them, assistant under-secretary John Holmes actually encouraged the British to more openly and effectively argue their case on questions of colonialism to the United Nations. In Canada’s view, Britain was “overly timid.” Canadian officials thought “the United Kingdom colonial record was so good [that they] regretted them taking an attitude which might be interpreted as indicating the United Kingdom had something to hide.”43 In the division between Western and Asian outlooks on colonial self-government, race, and Afri­ can nationalism and independence movements, Canadian underlying assumptions proved more consistent and compatible with the colonizer than the colonized. The Canadian high commissioner in New Delhi, Escott Reid, promoted a more subtle understanding of Indian policy. In the previous chapter, Ryan Touhey assesses Reid’s diplomacy in India and, more particularly, the currency given his views by colleagues in Ottawa. Suffice it to say here that Reid benefitted from his personal relations with the secretary-general of the Indian External Affairs ministry, Sir Raghavan Pillai; this association certainly helps to explain his more nuanced appreciation of the dynamics of policy formulation in India. Reid acknowledged that Nehru had a deepseated “hatred of racialism and colonialism.”44 But from Pillai, Reid knew that many officials in the External Affairs ministry reaffirmed the prime minister’s beliefs. Some did because they also possessed a “genuine hatred for colonialism, especially when combined with racial discrimination,” but others did it simply to get along well with Nehru.45 Reid found Pillai to be quite moderate and interested in ensuring good relations between Britain and India, but this was seen as a difficult position to sustain, especially if

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Britain pursued policies – particularly in Kenya – that fuelled resentment in India. In Reid’s view, Countries like Canada have an interest in doing what they can to ensure that colonial powers, and in particular the United Kingdom, give a fair hearing to the views of the Government of India on colonial and racial policy when these views are put forward privately through the proper channels, are expressed moderately, and are intended to be constructive.46

Given the assurances and encouragement later given to the British by Holmes, it would seem that Reid’s suggestion was not embraced. The high commissioner’s opinions do serve as an example of how, at times, views divergent from the mainstream departmental norms and values could emerge, although as Touhey explains in greater detail, Reid’s views were also steeped in racial beliefs. In this instance, they failed to penetrate and effectively challenge more widely accepted beliefs that favoured Britain as the colonial power. There is evidence that, some years later, Canadian officials did become eager to learn more about India’s approach and perspective toward Africa. Having relied mostly on the British and limited Canadian diplomatic representation on the continent for its information, External Affairs asked the high commissioner to India to reach out to their diplomatic counterparts in New Delhi, so that a more well-rounded picture of African developments might be constructed. External Affairs was particularly interested in India’s views on the pace of political evolution in African colonies, perceptions of leading political figures, assessments of the degree to which African nationalists were influenced by outside elements, and the position and allegiances of Indians resident in Africa – were they cooperating politically or “splitting along religious and ethnic lines”?47 So as not to be too direct with their inquiries, the Canadians used a routine visit to the Ministry of External Affairs to raise these questions with the Indian under-secretary responsible for African affairs. They learned that the Indian government encouraged Indians abroad to identify with the countries where they lived and to support “nationalist and independence movements there.” In spite of this, Under-Secretary S.N. Basu observed that Indian communities tended to view themselves as superior to Indigenous populations. He then went on to provide an “account of the backwardness and unreliability of the majority of Africans,” that left the Canadians with

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the distinct impression that he “did not view the integration of the African and Indian communities as desirable or practicable.” Yet, in referring to Rho­desia and Nyasaland, Basu was bitter in his denunciation both of Euro­ pean tendencies to apply indignities and restrictions to the “coloured population” and of African leaders who “incited Africans to riot against the Indian community.”48 In New Delhi, Canadian officials encountered and transmitted back to Ottawa not only racialized views of Africans as unreliable and backward, but also a more complex construction of the Indian communities in Africa, who were seen to simultaneously sustain and suffer from the racial hierarchies present, especially in British colonies in East and Central Africa. Within the Department, such views would have been easily reconciled with what were by then prevailing and racialised assumptions and beliefs about Africa.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen how racial attitudes were transmitted and (re)constructed as Canadian officials from the Department of External Affairs turned their attention to Africa in the postwar period. By examining Canadian assessments of British policy related to decolonization, assessments of Africa and African nationalism by Canadian officials, and even perceptions of the role of other racial minorities in Africa, we can begin to tease out the underlying assumptions that may well have served to limit and frame the Canadian response to emergent African nationalism. Meren also explores the understanding of African nationalism in Canadian and Quebec encounters with French-speaking Africa after 1945 in this volume. It is still possible to see diplomatic history as little more than what one clerk communicates to another, but this simplistic assessment fails to recognize the potential value in decoding what officials have written and said to one another, not simply to recreate chronology and establish causation but also to understand the nature of beliefs and underlying assumptions that framed their pursuit of particular policy options. Much can be gleaned from bringing together diplomatic history’s emphasis on key actors in policy formation with the cultural turn in international history and its key goal of understanding context and meaning. This is particularly so for historians who study the Canadian context, and especially in the period from the 1940s to the late 1960s, when the foreign policy elite (both bureaucratic and political) especially shaped and dominated the formulation of policy. Opinions and views circulated within bureaucratic structures, sometimes developed from within and sometimes assimilated from external sources.

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In either case, a set of values and norms can be seen to be taking shape, and such belief systems, infused as they are with fundamental underlying assumptions, can powerfully delineate the choices and options that are imagined. Views about race are particularly notable in this respect. The cultural turn of inter/transnational history, with its particular emphasis on representation, encourages and facilitates this avenue of historical inquiry. To conclude and highlight this very point, it seems fitting to end with what one official, the high commissioner for Canada in Pretoria, Terrence MacDermot, wrote to another official, the secretary of state for external affairs, on his views of the nature of race and racism in Africa: Bound together by two such powerful forces as the desire to shake free of the domination – however beneficent – of the white man and the fraternity of a skin pigmentation which almost everywhere in their experience is a disparagement of their race, it is not surprising that a buoyant and belligerent African nationalism or racism is now one of the most striking and is certainly one of the most universal social phenomena in Africa today.49 NOTES 1 J. Pope, quoted in N. Hillmer and J.L. Granatstein, Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s (Toronto: Copp Clark Longman, 1994), 54. 2 D. Reynolds, “International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch,” Cultural and Social History 3, 1 (January 2006): 76. 3 Ibid., 87. 4 Ibid., 88. 5 D. Hucker, “International History and the Study of Public Opinion: Towards Meth­ odological Clarity,” The International History Review 34, 4 (December 2012): 781 (original emphasis). 6 Ibid., 786. 7 In the Canadian context, David Webster effectively uses the idea of mental maps in his study of Canadian foreign policy on Indonesia. D. Webster, Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009). 8 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na­ tion­alism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 9 This critique is well argued by E. Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). 10 P. Jackson, “Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘Cultural Turn’ and the Practice of International History,” Review of International Studies 34, 1 (January 2008): 156. 11 Ibid., 164–65. 12 Ibid., 167.

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13 This volume’s introduction highlights the very significant role played by political actors in shaping Canadian foreign policy, particularly throughout much of the twentieth century. Of course, foreign policy elites in other nations have also been the subject of much scholarship. One relevant example from another country is F. Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation 1945–1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind (London: Frank Cass, 2002). 14 Hilliker and Barry’s account of “changes” in the Department upon the departure of under-secretary Arnold Heeney in 1952 illustrates this well. J. Hilliker and D. Barry, Canada’s Department of External Affairs: Coming of Age, 1946–1968 (Montreal/ Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 2:87–92. 15 An important examination of the shared traits and even social experiences of senior members of the Canadian civil service, including prominent members of the Department of External Affairs, is found in J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins 1935–1957 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982). 16 See discussion in this volume’s introduction on the theme of empire, identity, and liberal internationalism. 17 Secretary of State for External Affairs (SSEA) to High Commissioner for Canada in London, September 14, 1948, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 25, vol. 4022, part 1, file 10283–40, 2. 18 Memo: Non-Self-Governing Territories, September 10, 1948, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4022, part 1, file 10283–40. 19 High Commissioner for Canada in London to Under-Secretary of State for Ex­ ternal Affairs (USSEA), October 20, 1952, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4023, part 1, file 10283D-40, 1. 20 High Commissioner for Canada in London to SSEA, December 9, 1952, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4023, part 1, file 10283-D-40, 2–3. 21 Memo for Minister, January 5, 1953, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8331, part 2.1, file 10283-D-40. 22 Commonwealth Division to the USSEA, Mr. Chapdelaine, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Ford, Mr. Ritchie, November 15, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4023, part 1, file 10283-D-40. 23 Expansion of Commonwealth Membership, November 7, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7748, part 1, file 12354–40, 3. 24 Ibid., 4. 25 European Division to Commonwealth Division: Expansion of Commonwealth Membership, November 21, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7748, part 1, file 12354–40, 1. 26 Memorandum USSEA to SSEA: Canadian Relations with an Awakening Africa, December 9, 1955, in G. Donaghy, ed., Documents on Canadian External Relations, 1956/1957, vol. 22, part 1 (Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 2001), document 737, 1388. 27 SSEA to the High Commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom: Canadian Relations with an Awakening Africa, February 9, 1956, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7748, part 1, file 12354–40. 28 Expansion of Commonwealth Membership, November 7, 1955, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7748, part 1, file 12354–40, 6. 29 Ibid., 7.

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30 Memorandum USSEA to SSEA: Canadian Relations with an Awakening Africa, December 9, 1955, in Donaghy, Documents on Canadian External Relations, document 737, 1389. 31 Note for file by G. de T. Glazebrook, September 22, 1959, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.3, file 12684–40, 1. 32 High Commissioner for Canada in South Africa to SSEA, 28 March 1950, LAC, RG25, vol. 4023, part 1, file 10283-D-40, 3. 33 Ibid., 3. 34 High Commissioner for Canada in Ghana to SSEA, November 24, 1958, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.1, file 12684–40, 3. 35 High Commissioner for Canada in Ghana to SSEA, January 7, 195[9], LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.1, file 12684–40, 3-5. 36 Ibid., 5. 37 High Commissioner for Canada in Accra to SSEA, February 24, 1959, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.2, file 12684–40, 1–4. 38 Notes of Meeting, April 23, 1959, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.2, file 12684–40, 1. 39 High Commissioner for Canada in Cape Town to SSEA, June 3, 1952, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4023, part 1, file 10283-D-40, 2. 40 Ibid., 2. It is worth observing how the racial stereotypes of Asians in East Africa, reported here in MacDermot’s despatch, would be echoed years later when rising African nationalism was one factor in such dramatic events as the expulsion of Asians from Uganda by President Idi Amin. 41 Speech by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, December 23, 1953, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4022, part 1, file 10283–40, 1–3. 42 Some Comments on the Fifth Commonwealth Relations Conference, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4022, part 1, file 10283–40, 2. 43 Memo for file, 5 August 1954, LAC, RG25, vol. 4022, part 1, file 10283–40, 3. 44 High Commissioner for Canada in New Delhi to SSEA, July 13, 1953, LAC, RG 25, vol. 4023, part 2.1 file 10283-D-40, 2. 45 Ibid., 1. 46 Ibid., 3. 47 USSEA to High Commissioner for Canada in New Delhi, May 22, 1959, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.3, file 12684–40, 2. 48 High Commissioner for Canada in New Delhi to USSEA, July 4, 1959, LAC, RG 25, vol. 7821, part 1.3, file 12684–40, 1–2. 49 High Commissioner for Canada in Pretoria to SSEA, December 15, 1952, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8331, part 2.2, file 10283-D-40, 1–2.

10

Crisis of the Nation Race and Culture in the Canada-QuebecFrance Triangle of the 1960s DAVID MEREN

The year 2015 will be remembered in France as a violent and tragic one. Barely a week into the new year, an armed assault on the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a hostage taking at a kosher supermarket rocked the country. Eleven months later, as people were still processing what had occurred in January, France was left reeling again as a series of coordinated, horrific attacks in Paris left scores dead, injured, and traumatized. These events, and the reactions to them, dramatically highlighted the tensions inherent in reconciling particularity and universalistic ideas of the nation as well as the complicated afterlife of French colonialism. Responses on both sides of the Atlantic drew upon and fed into a discourse on reli­gion, pluralism, and identity that had been circulating between France and Quebec since the turn of the century, part of a larger Western obsession with Muslims. The French government’s banning of the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in public schools in 2004 had anticipated Quebec’s debate over “reasonable accommodation” that erupted two years later and culminated in the controversial Charter of Quebec Values, by which the government of Pauline Marois sought to ban the wearing of “ostentatious religious symbols” in Quebec’s public service.1 Amid appeals to a “civic” universal idea of the nation – allegedly under threat from those who refused to conform to it – discussion in Quebec was marked by the idea that here were two French-speaking societies with much in common, each moving to respond in “republican” fashion to the challenge of reconciling pluralism with the promotion – and preservation – of national identity.2

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In the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks especially, this FrancoQuébécois response was often portrayed as facing off against an AngloSaxon/Canadian rival; discussion in France and Quebec was marked by ambivalence, even hostility, to multiculturalism as a foreign Anglo-Saxon import. In Quebec, multiculturalism was depicted as a federalist plot serving to undermine Quebec nationalism. Indeed, it did not take long for the alleged divergence between anglophone and francophone Canada’s responses – notably the anglophone media’s decision not to reproduce Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed – to be incorporated into the longstanding trope of Canada’s two solitudes.3 This development was particularly ironic given that in the time between the two sets of attacks in Paris, Canada experienced a federal election campaign marked by an increasingly explicit Islamophobia. Stephen Harper’s incumbent Conserv­ ative Party stoked security fears amidst an ongoing migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, exploited the debate over the wearing of the niqab, and even proposed a “barbaric cultural practices” hotline to encourage Canadians to report on those who they believed were engaged in activities not in keeping with “Canadian values.”4 The events of 2015 echoed, albeit in an admittedly violent fashion, an earlier period in the complex triangular dynamic among Canada, Quebec, and France. In the quarter century after 1945, postwar migrations, intensifying transnational exchanges, and decolonization had fuelled a “crisis of nation” that informed how evolving national and nationalist projects intersected with one another, leading to the emergence of a special relation­ship between France and Quebec and an accompanying crisis in Franco-Canadian relations. This was a period in which rapidly changing demographic landscapes in Canada and Quebec were a crucial factor contributing to a (re-)imagining of the “Canadian” and “Québécois” national communities. Notwithstand­ ing the trend toward a less exclusionist immigration policy and the grow­ ing ascendance of more civic, universal variants of nationalism over overtly ethno­centric understandings, these were communities that remained significantly influenced by a racialized logic, a legacy of their origins and evolution as white settler societies. Notions of national identity informed by whiteness were by no means limited to the Canadian side of the Atlantic; evolving as it did against a backdrop of decolonization, the triangular dynamic highlighted tensions within a French republicanism with universalist and colour-blind claims.5 All told then, what occurred in Montreal on July 24, 1967, when France’s president, Charles de Gaulle, exclaimed “Vive le Québec libre!” was far more

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complex than the caprices of an aging general. Yet, the actions of this “great (white) man” occupies a disproportionate place in a historiography that has overwhelmingly tended to interpret events exclusively and uncritically through the analytic framework of nation, the resulting narratives often meant to promote a specific project of national rule.6 Such an approach obscures a great deal, since it is impossible to abstract the triangle from broader global conditions and their interaction with local efforts to construct and promote national identities. Accordingly, it is crucial to move beyond a methodology associated with orthodox political history and thereby shift the Canada-Quebec-France triangle from under de Gaulle’s shadow. This must include bringing race to bear on the triangle, since race – that is, a political and social construct that, at its base, is founded upon apparent physical difference and linked closely to modern-era colonialism7 – informed the rivalry between Canadian and Quebec nationalisms and their encounters with French nationalism. To contribute to this task, this chapter opens with a discussion of racialized understandings of national identity and the accompanying political projects associated with them. This is a prerequisite to exploring how race informed the ethnocultural dimension of the triangular dynamic, notably the essentializing logic that buttressed the special relationship between France and Quebec. This sets the stage for a discussion of how questions of national identity intersected with debates over immigration and how race informed constructions of immigrants and their relationship to the nation. The analysis then shifts to how a racialized logic encouraged the selective appropriation of the decolonization phenomenon by actors in the triangle, leading to the emergence of the Quebec as colony metaphor that influenced the triangular dynamic in the 1960s. Building on this discussion of ethnocultural considerations and the selective appropriation of decolonization, the chapter concludes with a survey of how the triangular tensions intersected with the emerging Francophonie in order to highlight the interplay of race, culture, identity, and the legacy of empire in the Canada-QuebecFrance triangle.

A Crisis of Nation: Identity, Race, and Ethnocultural Solidarity Although the emergence, in the 1960s, of a special relationship between Paris and Quebec City, and the ensuing strained relations between Ottawa and Paris, can be understood as a product of geopolitical calculations and politico-constitutional realities, these factors realize their full explanatory

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power only when placed in conversation with questions of culture and identity. Such questions appeared all the more pressing to nationalist elements on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century; beyond the intensification and acceleration of transnational exchanges that were calling into question the nation-state, along with the ethnic, religious, and national bases of identity, a more immediate but linked concern was the multifaceted challenge of American power after 1945. Indeed, at each point of the triangle, the dynamic provoked a rethinking of preconceived ideas of the nation, even as it posed troubling questions about its integrity and future. The nation-state’s paradoxical situation – that is, it was increasingly being undermined at the moment of its apparent normative and effective apogee – cannot be abstracted from questions of race. As cultural theorist Paul Gilroy has observed, “The discourses of nation and people are saturated with racial connotations.”8 Historian Partha Chatterjee places race and empire at the heart of the nation-state, and an international system founded upon it “as the universally normal, legitimate ... locus of sovereignty.”9 Al­though historians Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds have chronicled the postwar decline of “white men’s countries,” as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States dismantled the most overtly discriminatory aspects of their immigration policies amid the discrediting of scientific racism and growing antiracism sentiment, one must remain wary of a narrative of linear progress, a point Laura Madokoro (Chapter 7) underscores in her contribution to this volume.10 After all, this was a period of shifting and transforming notions of race; if overt racism was no longer acceptable, race retained its salience as a power structure as new forms of exclusion emerged that were predicated upon culture and national identity rather than biological theory.11 Those who have explored the links between race and nationhood have observed how the nation is conceived as “pre­ carious and perpetually vulnerable to attack from enemies from within and without,” a tendency all the more pronounced in settler societies.12 Such sentiments encouraged state intervention, in the Keynesian era especially, on behalf of the production, promotion, and preservation of a national identity that continued to be informed by racialized logic.13 As the evolution of English and French Canadian nationalisms in the quarter century after the Second World War demonstrate, Canada was by no means immune to this crisis of nation. Consistent with a long history of oppositional symbiosis and mutual othering, one in which the word race had been frequently deployed, the nationalisms and identities associated

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with the country’s two dominant ethnolinguistic communities shared something in common that ended up dividing them as each strove to respond to the intersecting of global conditions with local circumstance.14 Race figured prominently in this dynamic, explicitly and implicitly, overtly and subtly. To be sure, it was increasingly considered unacceptable to use racist language to describe the Canadian nation, reflected in a discursive shift from race to ethnicity, ethnic communities, and culture, but this shift left an ethnocentric logic largely intact. This was significant, since ethnocentrism – that is, the tendency to divide the world into us and them – although not necessarily based upon physical difference, overlaps significantly with race-thinking, not least owing to its othering and essentializing logics.15 Cultural theorist Stuart Hall warns against a simplistic binary opposition between race and ethnicity; if the latter (and, by implication, ethnocentrism) emphasizes language, culture, and religion, those who “are stigmatized on ethnic grounds, because they are ‘culturally different’ and therefore inferior, are often also characterized as physically different in significant ways ... The biological referent is therefore never wholly absent from discourses of ethnicity, though it is more indirect.”16 Consistent with a global trend that saw the liberal state apparently “[slough] off its ethnic particularistic skin [to emerge in] its culturally cleansed universalistic civic form,”17 postwar demographic changes pro­voked ques­ tions regarding the ethnocultural component of English Canadian identity. A growing portion of Canada’s population traced its ethnic origins to neither the British Isles nor France (albeit still overwhelmingly to Europe); this shift, along with the declining importance of links with Britain, represented a challenge to that strand of Canadian nationalism which emphasized Can­ ada’s Britishness. Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) explores the development in this collection. If Britishness is a capacious and fluid concept, in the Canadian context it has often been associated with whiteness or, at the very least, Anglo-Celtic predominance.18 Moreover, Britishness cannot be abstracted from the imperial link, one informed by a logic of racial hierarchy. To the contrary, as Paula Hastings (Chapter 1) and Francine McKenzie (Chapter 3) explore in this volume, Canada as a white settler society contributed to the reification of this hierarchy.19 It should thus come as no surprise that the shift from an overtly ethnocentric English Canadian nationalism was neither easy nor linear and was marked strongly by racial and ethnocentric attitudes, as well as the legacy of efforts to construct a “Britannic” nation grounded in white supremacy.20 As Gilroy has observed, “nationhood is not an empty receptacle which can be

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simply and spontaneously filled with alternative concepts according to the dictates of political pragmatism.”21 If notions of national belonging are somewhat malleable, these ultimately remain informed by historical and political contingencies, not least racialized thinking. This reality could be seen in the era’s tentative steps toward a cultural pluralism that retained the Anglo-Celtic majority culture as its point of reference and maintained an assimilationist logic.22 The dynamic was apparent, for example, in John Diefenbaker’s calls for “One Canada” and an end to “hyphenated Can­adians” that, while suggestive of openness to a more inclusive Canada, ultimately remained grounded in an imperial logic according the white Anglo-Celtic majority pride of place in Canada’s “vertical mosaic.”23 Efforts to reconcile the Britannic notion of Canada with evolving demographic realities highlights how after the war, and especially by the early 1960s, overtly racial, ethnic-based visions of Canadian nationhood were under pressure. This included a more liberal, civic-based variant that posited that Canada’s identity and unity would be best assured by the adoption of distinctive national symbols and greater recognition of the country’s “two nations.” This idea of Canada envisaged a federal activism that would promote what was claimed as the country’s cultural duality, with biculturalism depicted as the guarantor of a national life distinct from the United States.24 Yet, the emphasis on cultural dualism reflected an enduring ethnocentrism informed by racialized logic. The shift toward biculturalism may be understood as the effort undertaken by the Canadian project of rule, and a portion of its controlling Anglo-Canadian majority, to accommodate and defuse the Quebec nationalist challenge by expanding the space at the apex of the racial pyramid. Here was another response to postwar demographic changes, migration patterns, and fluctuating attitudes on race that reimagined the Canadian community along more inclusive and pluralistic lines, though in a manner in which the country’s two principal ethnolinguistic groups, working in (ethnocentric) partnership, would retain their privileged position.25 The vision of a bicultural Canada, and particularly the federal role in fostering it, points to what was a similar crisis of nation in Quebec, one that was, in fact, a factor contributing to the rise of the bicultural project. Similar to its English Canadian counterpart, French Canadian nationalism had its origins in white settler colonialism; the ethnocentric variant of this nationalism was grounded in the heroic exceptionalism of New France’s white colonial population and their descendants, tasked with preserving their faith, language, culture, and ethnic integrity in the face of the anglophone other. Notions of a francophone solidarity understood to transcend provincial

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boundaries and which fought for equality of rights and opportunities across the country accompanied this nationalist vision of Canada’s “French fact.”26 As with English Canada, ethnocentrism and a racialized logic remained largely intact – albeit less overt – amid the ascendance of a more Quebeccentric nationalism that challenged traditional French Canadian nationalism by conceiving of North America’s French fact in a majority position on Quebec territory, with the Quebec government responsible for protecting and promoting this francophone nation.27 In addition to rejecting traditional French Canadian nationalism’s pan-Canadianism, advocates of Quebec nationalism grappled with French Canadian nationalism’s ethnic dimension in a dynamic not dissimilar to developments in the rest of Can­ada. After all, this civic, Quebec-centric nationalism rose to prominence amid, and in response to, a declining French Canadian birth rate, the French language’s gradual eclipse of Catholicism as the keystone of Quebec identity, the growing diversity of Quebec’s population owing to postwar migrations, and the trend among new arrivals to learn English and thus affect the linguistic balance of power in the province and Canada as a whole. Here was the same ethnocentric logic informing the bicultural vision of Canada, harnessed admittedly to a different political project yet seeking to preserve, even promote, white (francophone) privilege within an increasingly diverse society.28 With the rival Québécois and Canadian nationalisms each grappling with a crisis of nation, and each in its unique way preoccupied with the future of North America’s French fact as central to their respective projects of national rule, it did not take them long to turn to France for assistance, even validation. The rising generation of Quebec nationalists, for example, were more open to an activist state in service of Quebec’s francophone majority, not least in the cultural domain, so that nationalist calls for the Quebec government to develop links with France grew increasingly pronounced.29 Indeed, such calls pointed to the more defensive impetus informing the expanding cultural contacts between Quebec and France. Con­sistent with the longstanding French Canadian nationalist mission, that is, safeguarding the fruit of French settler colonialism in North America, elements of the emerging Quebec nationalist elite turned to France as protection against Anglo-Saxon – notably American – cultural influences, considered all the more a menace owing to Quebec’s ongoing urbanization and industrialization, as well as communications advances. An additional defensive motivation for Quebec governmental cultural action was a concern to protect against encroachments from federal institutions controlled by the

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English Canadian other and thus perceived as a threat to the cultural integrity of the nation.30 Quebec nationalist interest in France intersected with a French preoccupation with American cultural power. With the protection and promotion of French culture at home and abroad a priority for France’s political class and intelligentsia,31 French nationalist anxieties were projected across the Atlantic and included a growing concern over the state of Quebec’s French cultural heritage. The Gaullists’ rise to power by the late 1950s was especially significant since Gaullism, preoccupied with “the nation” and promoting “a certain idea of France,” was attracted to Quebec nationalism’s bid to equip Quebec as French Canada’s nation-state. If French notions of nationhood have been predominantly political in orientation, they have also been marked by efforts to achieve cultural unity.32 Moreover, the ethnocultural dimension has at times overshadowed civic and political attributes. In his exploration of race, citizenship, and colonial exception in the French context, Gary Wilder has highlighted how, notwithstanding claims to politicalcivic notions of nationalism and identity, the very efforts on behalf of these carry an ethnocultural content; attempts to construct the universal draw attention to, distinguish, and ultimately oppose the particular.33 Hence, the value placed on any a priori understanding of “Frenchness” (or Canadianness, or Québecité) has the potential to lend itself to a chauvinistic, ethnicbased nationalism. As France’s multiracial empire dissolved and concerns about Americanization grew, French identity’s ethnocultural dimension took on greater salience, leading to increased interest in an essentialized French Canada.34 Thus, despite numerous assertions by Quebec figures about French Canada’s distinctiveness, de Gaulle tended to view it as a branch of the French nation, projecting on to it efforts to distance France from “les Anglo-Saxons.” It was telling that when Jules Léger, Canada’s ambassador to Paris, presented his credentials, the general declared that France was present in Canada by virtue of the fact that numerous Canadians were of French blood, language, culture, and thought and were “essentially French” in all areas except sovereignty.35 French minister of culture André Malraux’s visit in 1963 reflected the significance Paris attached to relations with Quebec. In improvised remarks in Montreal, he invited French Canadians to face the future with France, exclaiming that nowhere in the world was French energy on display as much as it was in Quebec.36 De Gaulle’s and Malraux’s declarations were but two of the multiplying appeals to a trans-Atlantic solidarity between two francophone populations.

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This was a dynamic in which ethnocentrism remained present, notwithstanding universalistic claims and efforts to articulate a civic nationalism. Especially significant in this regard were the efforts of the “Quebec lobby,” a group of French politicians, civil servants, and other figures. Although members of this informal group differed in ideological and political affiliations, they were inclined to sympathize with Quebec nationalism owing to their nationalist-inspired concern for the international influence of French culture and their exposure to an anti-American discourse dating to the nineteenth century and positing a global struggle between Anglo-Saxons and “Latins.”37 French interest in Quebec’s francité – “Frenchness” – encouraged Paris and its representatives to adopt an increasingly explicit two-nation policy regarding Quebec and Canada, leading to the special relationship between Paris and Quebec City and Ottawa’s growing marginalization.

Reinforcing the “French Fact”: Crisis of Nation and Immigration The ethnocentrism informing Canadian, Quebec, and French nationalism – and the ensuing triangular tensions – was apparent in debates surrounding immigration. Immigration was a central issue of the Quiet Revolution owing to the tensions flowing from the effort, amid the ongoing crisis afflicting the traditionalist order, including the place of the Catholic Church in Quebec society, to articulate a conceptualization of the Québécois nation that was universal but would also safeguard its French Canadian particularism. Accordingly, amid Quebec nationalism’s gradual rise to power after 1945, there were growing calls for increased immigration from francophone Europe. The francophone press took the Duplessis government to task for what was condemned as an outmoded laissez-faire attitude to immigration (a shared jurisdiction in Canada’s federal system) in the face of what was alleged as Ottawa’s indifference, if not hostility, to immigration from francophone Europe and, more generally, maintaining the country’s ethnolinguistic balance of power.38 Prompted by the representations of the Société d’assistance aux immigrants and the Chambre de commerce du district de Montréal, the Tremblay Commission examining Quebec’s constitutional situation recommended that Quebec City take a more assertive approach, if only to preserve Quebec’s francophone majority. Yet, consistent with a long history of conservative nationalist hostility, the commission’s report dismissed Quebec’s need for immigration and expressed worry over its “destabilizing” influence.39 In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Ottawa had imposed the same conditions on emigration from France as were applied to

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other continental European countries. Starting in 1948, however, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI) began according as much official importance to attracting emigrants from France as it did to those from the British Isles. Yet, the number of new arrivals from France remained low, owing in part to Paris’ refusal to countenance an active recruitment campaign. This frustrating record helps explain federal reactions to the migrations provoked by decolonization in North Africa. Amid the accession to independence of Morocco and Tunisia and the deepening conflict in Algeria, a large number of immigration applications from French nationals in the region began to arrive.40 Consistent with Canada’s “tempered sympathy” regarding North African decolonization,41 immigration officials were anxious to avoid being seen as profiting from French mis­ fortune but were nonetheless enthusiastic about this pool of potential migrants.42 In the wake of Algerian independence, the immigration attaché at Canada’s Paris embassy characterized the settler population – the pieds noirs – as a “select but fleeting reservoir of manpower, which could easily be one of the last vestiges of our immigrant potential in Europe,” and expressed a worry that Australia and South Africa would attract the lion’s share.43 Such observations underscore the race-thinking that remained present even as Canada shifted slowly toward a universal immigration policy. It was particularly telling that a Canadian embassy memorandum discussing immigration from North Africa established an implicit racial hierarchy: French nationals by birth in France who had moved to the region came first, followed by descendants of French nationals “of white race,” then nonnationals of France who had moved to the region, and, finally, French nationals “of Jewish race (Hebraic origin).”44 French-speaking Arabs did not even appear on the list. In the late 1940s, there had been discussions in the immigration branch whether “individuals of Algerian race” fell under regulations designed to exclude Asians.45 Although Order-in-Council P.C. 1956–785 removed references to race from the Immigration Act regulations, such individuals remained subject to a hierarchy of preferences strongly influenced by race-thinking but now concealed by references to geographic and national origin.46 By the mid-1960s, promoting francophone immigration had taken on even greater importance for Ottawa, with the Pearson government viewing it as part of its biculturalism drive in response to the Quiet Revolution.47 The question was of especial concern to Léger, who described French immigration as the highest priority of his work as ambassador, the most important long-term issue in Canada’s relations with France, and a matter that touched

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on “the very future of our country.”48 Léger declared that Ottawa had to act to maintain and develop Canada’s bicultural and bilingual dimensions; however, consistent with the racial logic that had historically informed Canadian immigration policy and the enduring ethnocentrism underpinning the bicultural vision of Canada, the emphasis was decidedly on European francophones. Notwithstanding the growing prominence of a civic imagining of the Canadian community and the ongoing liberalization of Canadian immigration policy, Léger’s comments on the subject make clear that he remained influenced by an ethnocentric logic and viewed such immigration in terms of replenishment, that is, a means to maintain Canada’s ethnolinguistic balance amid postwar migration. The ambassador urged action to maintain “a known balance in a known Confederation.”49 In making this plea, Léger echoed the minister of immigration; visiting Paris in July 1965, J.R. “Jack” Nicholson told France’s foreign minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, of Canada’s need for French immigrants by emphasizing the importance of “maintaining the current ethnic composition of the Canadian population.”50 It is telling that neither Léger nor his Department of External Affairs colleagues made mention of attracting immigrants from Haiti and the French Caribbean, francophone Africa, or Vietnam; rather, emphasis was placed on the need for a French immigrant who would be “more easily and rapidly ‘integrable,’” thereby implicitly reifying a logic of white supremacy even as Ottawa put into place a universal immigration policy.51 Indeed, although Ottawa moved to establish a program that it hoped would encourage French Algerian farm families to immigrate to Canada,52 there remained a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the Paris embassy about potential immigration from North Africa. Faced with a growing number of immigration applications from Algerian and Tunisian nationals, officials informed the majority they did not meet Ottawa’s selection criteria. Even more significantly, the embassy sought to dissuade those who qualified by proffering the excuse that Canada operated no immigration facilities in their home country. Ultim­ ately, only those “enterprising individuals” who announced they would make the effort to visit Paris saw their applications processed.53 Recalling the dynamic regarding Caribbean immigration that Hastings explores in this volume, the attitude was that much more hostile toward unskilled labourers; G.M. Mitchell, the immigration attaché in the Paris embassy declared: “We only have to study the problem of Algerians in Europe with its high criminal rate, great health hazards, etc., to shudder at the idea of initiating such a movement to Canada.”54

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Heightened federal interest in immigration from France was of course attributable to the fact that by the mid-1960s, interest in immigration was not limited to Ottawa. In 1965, under pressure from nationalist groups and the Union Nationale opposition, the government of Jean Lesage established an immigration service attached to Quebec’s ministry of cultural affairs. Three years later, following an interdepartmental committee’s call for greater effort to maintain Quebec’s francophone majority, the Johnson government established a ministry of immigration.55 As in the federal context, and consistent with the logic of white settler colonialism, ethnocentric concerns shaped Quebec government attitudes. There was a deliberate instrumentalizing of immigrants, marked by preoccupations that new arrivals should integrate into the francophone majority and thus preserve Quebec’s linguistic and cultural balance of power.56 Moreover, there were intense debates over exactly who constituted an acceptable francophone. Such discussions reflected contemporary racial attitudes in Quebec, as there was a marked preference for white Europeans. It was telling that an article in Le Devoir cited educational, investment, and touristic opportunities as reasons Quebecers were increasingly interested in Martinique and Guadeloupe, but it made no mention of the French islands as a potential source of immigrants.57 This exclusionist trend would continue into the 1970s; amid the controversy over the proposed federal deportation of Haitian immigrants, Quebec immigration minister Jean Bienvenue suggested that nonwhite immigration posed a threat to Quebec society, warning of the “dangerous social tensions” that resulted when a society pushed a “multi-racial” policy too far.58 Conversely, while the debate over Haitian immigration was characterized by a greater openness to a nonwhite population, this was partly attributable to the population being instrumentalized for nationalistic and linguistic ends.59 Such contradictory impulses were consistent with the history of French Canada’s complex attitudes regarding Haiti that Sean Mills (Chapter 4) explores in this volume. An added complication was that the ethnocentric logic that continued to inform Quebec nationalism favoured a specific form of whiteness. In November 1961, for example, Lesage informed his cabinet that the Quebec government’s recently appointed representative in Paris had been contacted by a French official mandated to assist in the “repatriation” of three hundred thousand pieds noirs from Algeria, and who was interested in settling part of this population in Quebec. There appears, however, to have been skepticism around the cabinet table regarding a population that,

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though European in origin, was by no means uniformly “ethnically” French, as it included large numbers who traced their roots to Spain, Italy, Malta, Switzerland, or Germany, and was, moreover, religiously diverse, boasting a sizable Jewish population.60 Race also informed Le Devoir columnist Jean Tainturier’s analysis of the question of a pied noir resettlement in Quebec, though in a different way: the journalist warned of the need for “a very careful selection” of potential immigrants, owing to their wartime radicalization and a political attitude that had “been very close to a certain philosophy which requires the existence of a superior race, or more simply, a privileged race.”61 All told, by the latter half of the 1960s, French authorities were facing rival bids from Ottawa and Quebec City to attract immigrants from France. Consistent with notions of ethnocultural solidarity, Paris favoured the Que­ bec government’s initiative. Anticipating the Paris visit of the federal min­ ister for immigration, France’s ambassador advised his superiors to play for time, given that a comparable overture was expected from Quebec City.62 Back in Paris, Jean-Daniel Jurgensen, a Quebec lobby member and senior figure in France’s diplomatic establishment, was of the same mind, arguing that French immigrants would have the most beneficial impact in Quebec and would be at risk of assimilation elsewhere in Canada.63 In a similar vein, official French skepticism over the Pearson government’s bilingualism and biculturalism initiative was linked to concerns about nonfrancophone immigration to Quebec, notably the tendency of new (federally admitted) immigrants to assimilate into the anglophone community, a trend that would eventually result in French Canada’s “demographic asphyxiation.”64 French policy regarding immigration and Quebec was thus informed by an ethnocentric logic, one that ultimately meant that white francophones would retain a position of demographic predominance in the province. In­ deed, the prominence of ethnocentric preoccupations in the triangle meant a certain porousness of the boundary between the French and Québécois imagined communities. One prominent Quebec lobby member, Xavier Deniau, a deputy in France’s National Assembly, introduced a bill granting special status to those “bound to France by virtue of history and language” – the expressed priority being francophone Quebecers – to facilitate their settling in France or the granting of citizenship. To be sure, the proposed legislation met with skepticism from the legal division of France’s foreign ministry, which argued that the legislation appeared to bestow special status upon an ethnic group.65 In some French minds at least, the ethnocentrism of Deniau’s proposal clashed with the universal and civic attributes of France’s

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national identity. Yet, the proposal lends credence to Wilder’s claim that efforts to achieve the universal draw attention to the particular; for the French deputy, a “Quebecer” was by definition a francophone whose ethnic origins could be traced to France. Moreover, the readiness with which Deniau and others were ready to imagine francophone Quebecers as part of a greater French (national) community stood in stark contrast to the tale of unequal treatment accorded individuals from France’s colonial possessions who were not of European origin.66

Race, Identity, and (Echoes of) Empire: From Decolonization to the Francophonie Discussion of immigration, nation, and citizenship draws attention to how notions of ethnocultural solidarity encouraged a selective appropriation of decolonization that contributed to the Franco-Québécois rapprochement, a development I have explored elsewhere and which reminds us how the Global South was at the heart of events in the northern hemisphere, rather than being simply acted upon by First World actors.67 Race informed this selective appropriation, though in radically different ways depending on who was doing the appropriating. Whereas conservative elements in Quebec tended to perpetuate the racial divide as they deployed the decolonization phenomenon to nationalist ends, members of the Quebec left enthusiastically promoted the idea of parallels and unity between the Québécois and what Frantz Fanon had referred to as the “wretched of the earth,” evident in what stands as the era’s most famous statement of Quebec’s colonized situation: Pierre Vallières’ Les Nègres blancs d’Amérique.68 Yet, even such expressions of solidarity could not be separated from the structure of racial power in Quebec; Vallières’ depiction of Quebec francophones could only be realized by deliberately ignoring the province’s black and Indigenous populations and the subordinate position they occupied in a settler society based upon white supremacy.69 French encounters with decolonization meant a receptiveness in France to the anticolonial discourse emanating from Quebec. To be sure, this dynamic was encouraged in part by projecting on to the province France’s relationship with the United States; anti-American elements in France were quick to reimagine their country as a colony, a dynamic in which the French nation was relegated to a position in the American empire akin to that which Indigenous populations had occupied in France’s empire and – adding racial insult to national injury – were now escaping.70 A more immediate reason for the ready acceptance of Quebec as colony was Gaullist France’s embrace, in the aftermath of Algerian independence, of a mission libératrice

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that positioned France as a champion of self-determination and decolonization.71 Ironically, the very ideas and examples of movements that had emerged in opposition to French imperialism served to encourage closer relations between France and Quebec. But this turn of events and the selective appropriation of decolonization quickly lose their ironic gloss when refracted through the prism of race. The logic of white superiority underpinning French imperialism, and French responses to the decolonization phenomenon, predisposed certain French elements to embrace the idea of Quebec as colony. Indeed, in some French minds, francophone Quebecers were racialized to occupy the role of Al­geria’s Muslim majority, with Canada cast in the role of France – that is, the white imperial authority, with Quebec’s English-speaking minority occupying the role of the pieds noirs. Quebec’s complexity as a white settler society, not least that it was, in fact, white francophone Quebecers who occupied the position akin to that of Algeria’s colon population when it came to the province’s Indigenous peoples, was effaced amid the growing popularity of notions of Quebec as colony.72 Race served a similar function on the Quebec side of the equation. It is striking, for example, that certain elements in Quebec, having appropriated the ideas and examples of anticolonial movements and positioned themselves in solidarity with Third World populations, should have so readily turned to an imperial power for help in achieving national liberation.73 All told, discussion of Quebec as colony underscored the enduring influence of settler colonialism and a hierarchical logic of race. Race, notions of ethnocultural solidarity, the legacy of settler colonialism, and decolonization intersected in Africa amid the emergence of the Francophonie. Notions of francophonie – cooperation between the world’s French-speaking populations – had been discussed since the late nineteenth century; by the late 1950s, as France’s colonies won their independence, calls came from the leadership of these states for an enduring relationship with France and each other. Quebecers had been active throughout the twentieth century in civil society initiatives promoting francophone cooperation. Journalist and nationalist personality Jean-Marc Léger was especially active in postwar efforts; reflecting the self-perceptions of Quebecers (and Can­ adians in general) that tended to ignore the racial logic informing their society, including the legacy of empire, Léger claimed that Quebec had a special role in building the Francophonie since it had no imperial past and could thus achieve agreements with the new states that France could not.74 As the Francophonie emerged in institutional form in the late 1960s, the government of Daniel Johnson sought distinct Quebec participation.

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Beyond strengthening Quebec claims to autonomous international action, the move was consistent with the nationalist position that the Quebec government was the political expression of the Québécois nation and thus the entity entitled to membership. African and Quebec interest in the creation of an international francophone organization dovetailed with Gaullist France’s efforts to come to terms with decolonization and challenge American power, since Paris con­ sidered cultural affinities a vehicle to maintain influence with former colonies and thereby retain its international stature. The emerging Franco­phonie accordingly bore a pronounced neo-imperial hue, one inseparable from France’s broader relationship with postindependence francophone Africa.75 To be sure, Paris was an enthusiastic champion of Quebec regarding the Francophonie, not least to help it achieve international autonomy and thus promote Quebec self-determination. Such a policy was also consistent with Gaullist ethnocentrism: there was no place for Ottawa, capital of an AngloSaxon entity, in the Francophonie; rather, Quebec City had the rightful claim to membership. Yet, Paris’s enthusiasm for Quebec participation also stemmed from awareness of the usefulness of widening membership beyond the France-Africa binary. After all, Paris’s expressed desire was to see the Agence de coopération culturelle et technique (ACCT) – the Franco­phonie’s first intergovernmental organization – serve as a multilateral shield that would protect France from charges of neo-imperialism, even while serving as a vehicle to retain links with its former colonies and keep an eye on relations between them.76 Thus, even as Paris was inspired by notions of ethnocultural solidarity to promote Québécois libération, it employed the levers of neo-imperialism to exert pressure on its former African colonies and thus secure Quebec a distinct participation in the Francophonie. This included arranging to have Gabon’s government bypass Ottawa and invite the Quebec government directly to an international conference in its capital, Libreville – the “Gabon Affair.”77 Another instance came amid the conferences held in Niger’s capital, Niamey, which resulted in the creation of the ACCT. Determined to see Quebec participate in the conferences and the Francophonie, Paris brought considerable pressure to bear on the host, President Hamani Diori, including the mobilization of his African counterparts against him.78 As Paris pursued a postdecolonization drive to shore up its influence in Africa and facilitate autonomous Quebec participation in the Francophonie, it increasingly had to take into account a growing foreign aid rivalry between Ottawa and Quebec City with distinctly neo-imperial overtones. The

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Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson’s take on the CanadaQuebec-France neo-imperial rivalry regarding the emerging Francophonie at the time of the 1969 Niamey Conference. | “Dr. Pelletier I presume!” Toronto Star, February 19, 1969, 6.

reality was not lost on Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson, who deployed the imperial-age trope of Henry Morton Stanley and David Living­ stone’s meeting (along with the inevitably racist portrayal of “the natives”) to depict the federal-provincial tensions playing out in Africa at the time of the first Niamey Conference (see the figure above). Unwittingly or not, Macpherson’s cartoon signalled that nearly a century after the clichéd encounter between two European imperialists, Africa remained above all a theatre of (white) rivalry that relegated the easily manipulated local population to the margins. Indeed, a major part of the federal response to the strengthening France-Quebec axis regarding the Francophonie came in the form of development assistance, through which Ottawa hoped to gain influence over and obtain help from the francophone African states. Racial predispositions in Canada’s foreign policy establishment meant Ottawa tended to regard francophone Africa as a series of actors that could be manipulated to realize larger aims. This was apparent at the time of the Gabon Affair;

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Ottawa cancelled the Libreville portion of an aid mission designed in part to outflank Quebec City and Paris. Along with the suspension of Canada’s minimal existing aid to Gabon, this was meant to warn other African capitals against siding with Quebec nationalism.79 The Trudeau government’s arrival in office in 1968 only reinforced the dynamic. The neo-imperialistic dimension of Canadian aid was apparent as the secretary of state for external affairs, Mitchell Sharp, urged a federal aid presence in Africa wherever the Quebec government was engaged in development activities so as to prevent it from gaining advantage.80 Especially telling was the attitude and actions of Marcel Cadieux, under-secretary of state for external affairs, who was delighted when Paris was forced to cut its aid budget owing to the economic fallout from the political crisis that shook France in May 1968; Cadieux crowed that France’s leverage over its former colonies was diminishing at the very moment Canadian aid was skyrocketing.81 Such a reaction was not surprising given that Cadieux had earlier ruminated about stoking anticolonial nationalism in Martinique and Guadeloupe in response to French involvement in Quebec; whether the subject matter was aid or anticolonial nationalism, race-thinking in the federal bureaucracy encouraged a belief that local populations could be instrumentalized for foreign policy ends.82 The federal aid offensive gave Quebec officials pause, as it was feared Ottawa’s greater financial resources would win it the support of francophone Africa. Indeed, far from being passive actors, the various African cap­ itals seized the opportunities that the triangular rivalry afforded. Niger’s national highway, for example, was constructed with Canadian aid money – and by 1970, francophone Africa was receiving more Canadian aid than was Commonwealth Africa. Quebec, nonetheless, attempted to influence francophone Africa with aid promises of its own and was thus implicated in the neo-imperial dynamic; when Ottawa suspended its aid to Gabon in 1968, Quebec offered technical assistance to Libreville. Similarly, in advance of a Francophonie conference in Kinshasa, Quebec officials proposed a major education cooperation program to Congolese authorities.83 Quebec was also able to count on French help, including reminders to francophone African capitals of the obligations that flowed from accepting Paris’s aid.84

Conclusion Events related to the emergence of the Francophonie underscore the race­ thinking that existed at the core of the Canada-Quebec-France triangle and, more specifically, the crisis of nation that fuelled conflict and cooperation in

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the triangle in the 1960s. Notwithstanding the universalist pretentions informing it, the preoccupation to preserve and promote a certain idea of the nation – Canadian, Québécois, or French – flowed from a fixation on particularity and, ultimately, remained inflected by a logic of white supremacy. At each point of the triangle, ideas of nationhood were defined against the other points, so that notions of ethnocultural solidarity between Paris and Quebec City, and antagonistic relations with Ottawa, were as present in discussions over immigration as they were amid the construction of the Franco­phonie. In a similar vein, race-thinking facilitated the selective appropriation of decolonization in the triangle. The racialized logic that facilitated notions of Quebec as colony was also a crucial prerequisite to the condescension, arrogance, and cynicism on display as Ottawa, along with Quebec City and Paris, engaged in neo-imperial conflict and cooperation in francophone Africa. This included the forgetting of France’s recent colonial past, the failure to recognize the position of privilege that white francophones occupied in Quebec society, the enthusiastic projecting of Third World struggles on to Quebec, and the linked effacing of the lived conditions of marginalized populations in Quebec, Canada as a whole, and the Global South. Ultimately, whether Quebec was raced as white (and thus French) or black (and thus colonized), notions of race, identity, and the legacy of empire informed how elements in France interpreted Quebec’s political future in the 1960s, anticipating its accession to some form of autonomy, if not independence. And to be sure, a primary cause of the triangular tensions of the 1960s had been that federal officials saw in the Franco-Québécois rapprochement, and Quebec’s growing international activity, a Quebec effort to follow the colony-to-nation path Canada was alleged to have taken as it relegated the British Empire to the dustbin of its (national) history and emerged as an autonomous international actor. Yet, events at home and abroad demonstrated that notwithstanding the various crises of nations accompanying more progressive and universalistic imaginings of the national community, neither Canada nor Quebec could so easily escape the race-thinking that was a legacy of empire and their origins as white settler societies. NOTES The author acknowledges the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the completion of this chapter.

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1 K. Gagnon, “Cent universitaires contre la Charte des valeurs,” La Presse, December 10, 2013. 2 J. Laurence and G. Goodliffe, “The French Debate on National Identity and the Sarkozy Presidency: A Retrospective,” International Spectator 48, 1 (March 2013): 34–47; G. Mahrouse, “‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in Québec: The Limits of Par­ ticipation and Dialogue,” Race and Class 52, 1 (2010): 85–96; H.E. Bories-Sawala, “Accommodements raisonnables, laïcité républicaine ou mosaïque fédérale: Les défies de l’interculturalité au Québec, en France et en Allemagne,” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 29, 1 (2009): 151–65; D. Bell, “The French Dilemma,” Dissent (Spring 2015), http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/french-dilemma-charlie -hebdo-national-front. 3 P. Lagacé, “Je suis offusqué, are you offended?” La Presse, January 18, 2015. 4 S. Chase, “Niqabs ‘Rooted in a Culture that is Anti-Women,’ Harper says,” Globe and Mail, March 10, 2015; L. Berthiaume, “PMO’s Syrian Refugee Audit about More than Security,” Ottawa Citizen, October 10, 2015; E. Keenan, “When Stephen Harper Refers to ‘Barbaric Culture,’ He Means Islam – an Anti-Muslim Alarm That’s Ugly and Effective Because It Gets Votes: Edward Keenan,” Toronto Star, October 5, 2015. 5 G. Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Also, M. Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism, and Citizenship in Modern France (New York: Routledge, 1992); D. Morley and J. Broadbridge, “The Maghrebian Community in France: Defining the Borders,” in At the Border: Mar­gins and Peripheries in Modern France, ed. S. Gemie and H. Altink (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008), 153–74; A. Hajjat, Les frontières de “l’identité nationale”: L’injonction à l’assimilation en France métropolitaine et coloniale (Paris: Découverte, 2012); D. Beriss, Black Skins, French Voices: Caribbean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2004). 6 For a review of the historiography, see D. Meren, “Strange Allies: Canada-QuebecFrance Triangular Relations, 1944–1970,” (PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2007), 6–16. 7 J. Samson, Race and Empire (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2005), 3, 103; S. Hall, “Conclusion: The Multi-cultural Question” in Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Dias­ poras, Entanglements, ‘Transruptions,’ ed. B. Hesse (London: Zed Books, 2000), 222. 8 P. Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 2002), 60. 9 P. Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), xi, 193–94, 273. 10 M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni­versity Press, 2008), 335–53. 11 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, 38, 60, 66. 12 P. Gilroy, “The End of Anti-Racism,” in Race and Local Politics, ed. W. Ball and J. Solomos (London: MacMillan), 191–210, quoted in E. Mackey, The House of Dif­ ference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 8–9.

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13 Ibid., 54. 14 A.I. Silver, The French-Canadian Idea of Confederation, 1864–1900, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); R. Breton, “From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism: English Canada and Quebec,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 11, 1 (1988): 85–102; A. Lecours, “Ethnic and Civic Nationalism: Towards a New Dimension,” Space and Polity, 4, 2 (2000): 153–65. Lecours gives nuance to what he criticizes as a reductionist ethnic-civic dichotomy in the Quebec context. Examples of the terminological slippage between race and nation in the Canadian context can be found in L. Groulx, La naissance d’une race (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l’Action française, 1919); G. Wrong, “The Two Races in Canada: Lecture Delivered before the Can­ adian Historical Association,” (lecture, Montreal, May 21, 1925); along with the work of French geographer, A. Siegfried, Le Canada, les deux races: Problèmes politiques contemporains (Paris: A. Colin, 1906). 15 Samson, Race and Empire, 3; C.D. Kam and D.R. Kinder, “Terror and Ethnocentrism: Foundations of American Support for the War on Terrorism,” The Journal of Politics 69, 2 (2007): 322–23; R.A. Hammond and R. Axelrod, “The Evolution of Ethno­ centrism,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, 6 (2006): 926–36. 16 Hall, “Conclusion: The Multi-cultural Question,” 223. See Mackey, House of Dif­ ference, 51–53, for a discussion of the Canadian context. See also H. Ritvo, “Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons,” Representations, 39 (1992): 16–17. Ritvo draws attention to how this ethnic/race tendency is apparent in the writings of Robert Knox, whose mid-nineteenth century ethnographic works were crucial to the rise of scientific racism and notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Knox critiqued earlier racial theories for concentrating too much on differences between Europeans and Asians at the cost of exploring those between “the European races,” citing physical differences as he elaborated upon the character traits that allegedly differentiated Europeans. 17 Hall, “Conclusion: The Multi-cultural Question,” 228. For a useful critique of the civic/ethnic dichotomy, see also R. Brubaker, “The Manichean Myth: Rethinking the Distinction between ‘Civic’ and ‘Ethnic Nationalism,’” in Nation and National Identity: The European Experience in Perspective, ed. H. Kriesi et al. (Zurich: Rüegger, 1999), 55–71. 18 P. Hastings, “‘Our Glorious Anglo-Saxon Race Shall Ever Fill Earth’s Highest Place’: The Anglo-Saxon and the Construction of Identity in Late-Nineteenth Century Canada,” in Canada and the British World, Culture, Migration, and Identity, ed. P. Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 92–110; C. Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism: 1867–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 128–33. 19 See also Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line. 20 Mackey, House of Difference, 52–53. See also the chapters by P. Hastings, J. Price, and F. McKenzie in this volume (Chapters 1, 2, and 3). 21 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, 60. 22 F. Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006), 51, 80.

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23 J. Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). Also, Mackey, House of Difference, 12. 24 J. Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 194571 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 117–222. 25 The trend was apparent in the publication of Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, which became the literary referent and shorthand for Canada’s increasingly fraught internal dynamic. As David Austin observes, the novel’s emphasis on relations between English and French Canada, and its conclusion on a note of interethnic partnership, if not unity, effectively eliminated Indigenous peoples and Afro-Canadians and thus reflected and reinforced the ethnocentrism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism upon which Canada is built. D. Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013), 38–39. 26 M. Martel, French Canada: An Account of Its Creation and Break-Up, 1850–1967 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1998). 27 Ibid. 28 S. Mills, The Empire Within, Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 138–62; M. Pâquet, “Un nouveau contrat social. Les États généraux du Canada français et l’immigration, novembre 1967,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 10, 2 (2002), 123–34. See also M. Gauvreau, The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931–1970 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). Gauvreau urges an end to viewing the advent of the Quiet Revolution as heralding the end of Cath­ olicism’s influence on Quebec society. 29 See Chapter 3 of D. Meren, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944–1970 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012). 30 Ibid., 58–81. 31 H. Lebovics, Mona Lisa’s Escort: André Malraux and the Reinvention of French Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4. 32 R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 1–13; E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976). 33 Wilder, French Imperial Nation-State, 15–19. I find useful Brubaker’s work regarding the ambiguous links between language and nation, notably his observation that state promotion of a language can be interpreted as a manifestation of both civic and ethnic nationalism. Brubaker, “Manichean Myth,” 62–63. 34 An example of this trend was Patrie et progrès, an organization established in the late 1950s that championed a “socialisme patriotique” and France’s imperial mission in Africa. There was a pronounced strain of ethnocultural nationalism in the group’s manifesto; to avoid being trapped in a Europe organized by the United States and West Germany, members urged France to strengthen its links with “countries of French ethnicity or language.” Philippe Rossillon, a central personality in this group, subsequently emerged as a figure in the special relationship between France and Quebec. Patrie et progrès, December 1961: 2.

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35 Léger to DEA, June 4, 1964, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 25, 10098/20–1-2-FR/2.1. 36 Meren, With Friends Like These, 98. 37 P.-A. Comeau and J.-P. Fournier, Le Lobby du Québec à Paris, Les précurseurs du général de Gaulle (Montreal: Québec-Amérique, 2002); P. Roger, The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 165, 75–76. 38 De Vial to Ministère des Affaires étrangères (hereafter MAE), Amérique, March 20, 1952, Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères, B, Amérique, Canada, 1952– 1963 (hearafter MAE 1952–1963)/179; Guérin to MAE, Conventions Administratives et Sociales, May 12, 1952, MAE 1952–1963/179; De Laboulaye to MAE, Conventions Administratives et Sociales, September 30, 1952, MAE 1952–1963/179. 39 M. Paquet, “Des lettres mortes ... La Commission Tremblay et l’immigration (1953– 1956),” Journal of Canadian Studies 30, 4 (Winter 1996): 52–74. 40 “Immigration from France,” November 1963, LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2-FR/1.2. The annual average was twenty-five hundred to three thousand new arrivals. 41 R.S. Gendron, “Tempered Sympathy: Canada’s Reaction to the Independence Move­ ment in Algeria, 1954–1962,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 9, 1 (1998): 225–41. 42 Joint Report of the Canadian Mission to Morocco and Tunisia, Introduction, undated, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1; Marleau to Attaché, Paris, July 27, 1961, LAC, RG 76/818/552–1-506/3; Chief of Operations to Deputy Minister, August 2, 1962, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2-550. 43 Grant to Chief of Operations, July 12, 1962, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2-550. 44 Brunet to Chatillon, February 17, 1956, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1. See also Fortier to the Minister, July 31, 1956, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1; Director of Immigration to Deputy Minister, March 11, 1960, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1. Notwithstanding the presence of such attitudes in the bureaucracy, starting in 1956 the federal government admitted a large number of Moroccan and Tunisian Jews who were believed to be subject to persecution, not least owing to the fact they were effectively rendered stateless when the two postindependence governments did not issue them passports. This said, as soon as word came that Morocco and Tunisia were granting passports to their Jewish populations, there were efforts in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI) to end the special measures. 45 Senior immigration official Colonel L. Fortier expounded that “the Berber tribes of Northern Africa have been there since ancient times and therefore they could not be classed as Asiatic. The Arab element of the population probably originated in Asia many hundreds of years ago. These racial stocks are now so mixed that it would probably be difficult in an individual case to establish Asiatic descent.” Fortier to Superintendent, London, December 20, 1949, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1. 46 Smith to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs (USSEA), September 19, 1956, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1. 47 “Compte Rendu de l’Entretien entre M. Couve de Murville et M. Paul Martin, Ministre des Affaires Étrangères du Canada à Paris, January 15, 1964,” Document 28, Ministère des affaires étrangères, Commission de publication des documents

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français, Documents diplomatiques français, 1964, (Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002); Consular Division to Personnel Division, April 10, 1964, LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–12-FR/1.2; Halstead to Cadieux, February 19, 1964, LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2FR/1.2; Bousquet to MAE, Amérique, May 10, 1964, MAE, B, Amérique, Canada, 1964–1970 (hereafter MAE 1964–1970)/198. 48 Léger to Marchand, February 1, 1966 [my translation], LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–12-FR/3.2. 49 Extraits d’un discours prononcé le 5 mai 1964 par M. Jules Léger, Ambassadeur du Canada, undated, LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2-FR/2.1; Léger to Marchand, February 1, 1966 [my translation], LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2-FR/3.2. 50 Léger to USSEA, June 27, 1966 [my translation], LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2FR/4.1. 51 George to USSEA, June 27, 1966 [my translation], LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2FR/4.1. 52 Ultimately, there was no substantial group settlement. The federal pilot program, announced in late July 1964, resulted in only a very small number arriving, an outcome attributed to a lack of knowledge about Canada and the fact that French authorities failed to show “any real [promotional] initiative regarding the programme.” Although it has been estimated that approximately twelve thousand pieds noirs moved to Canada, these appear to have been admitted as individuals under established regulations. Hunter to Chief, Settlement division, August 16, 1963, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2-550; “Press Release,” Department of Citizenship and Immigration, July 28, 1964, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2-550; Bissett to Assistant Deputy Minister (Immigration), December 24, 1964, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2-550; Durocher to Officer-in-Charge, Visa Office, Paris, March 29, 1965, LAC, RG 76, 831/552–2550; A. Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (London: Macmillan, 1977), 533. 53 Attaché, Visa Office, Paris to Director, CGIS, Europe, Geneva, May 28, 1969, LAC, RG 76, 991/5850–3-706. 54 Ibid. This said, multiple currents existed within the DCI. By late 1968, there were calls for the establishment of immigration facilities in North Africa in order to attract French-speaking immigrants to Quebec. See also Smith to USSEA, December 17, 1957, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/1; Canadian Ambassador, Madrid, to USSEA, November 26, 1965, LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/3; Ziegler to Bissett [extract], November 27, 1968, LAC, RG 76, 991/5850–3-706. 55 Frégault to Laporte, July 14, 1965, BANQ, E6, Ministère de la Culture et des Com­ munications (hereafter E6)/1976–00–066/4; M. Behiels, Quebec and the Question of Immigration: From Ethnocentrism to Ethnic Pluralism, 1900–1985 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991), 17–19. 56 Mills, Empire Within, 159–61; Pâquet, “États généraux du Canada français,” 130–32. 57 “L’appel des Antilles,” Le Devoir, June 9, 1965, LAC, RG 25, 10098/20–1-2-FR/3.1. 58 J. Bienvenue, “Extraits du discours prononcé par Me Jean Bienvenue, ministre de l’immigration du Québec devant la Croix-Rouge, section Québec, Québec, le mercredi 4 décembre 1974,” available through the Réseau informatisé des bibliothèques

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gouvernementales du Québec, 5 [my translation]. I thank Sean Mills for bringing this speech to my attention. 59 S. Mills, “Quebec, Haiti, and the Deportation Crisis of 1974,” Canadian Historical Review 94, 3 (2013): 421. 60 J.-J. Jordi, “Les pieds-noirs: Constructions identitaires et réinvention des origines,” Hommes et migrations 1236 (2002): 16, 24–25. Jordi describes this population as having been “‘tropicalisées’ ou plus sûrement créolisés,” a noteworthy characterization when considering Quebec reactions; Mémoire des délibérations du Conseil exécutif, November 22, 1961, BANQ, E5, Ministère du Conseil exécutif (hereafter E5)/1986–03–007/93, v. 2 1961; Mémoire des délibérations du Conseil exécutif, Séance du December 13, 1961, BANQ, E5/1986–03–007/93, v. 2 1961. 61 J. Tainturier, “Possible but Very Cautious Immigration,” Le Devoir, March 28, 1962 (departmental translation), LAC, RG 76, 818/552–1-506/3. This said, Tainturier main­tained that a French-speaking migration would on the whole be a positive thing for Canada’s francophone minority. 62 Leduc to Couve de Murville, Conventions Administratives et des Affaires Consu­ laires, Conventions, October 27, 1966, MAE 1964–1970/199. 63 Jurgensen to Couve de Murville, May 2, 1967, MAE 1964–1970/199. 64 Leduc to MAE, Amérique, August 23, 1967, MAE 1964–1970/200; Chapdelaine to Morin, December 5, 1967, BANQ, Jean Chapdelaine Fonds, P776/2001–01–006/1/ Reportage Politique, 1967–1974. 65 Proposition de loi de M. Xavier Deniau – Note pour le Cabinet du Ministre, January 24, 1968, MAE, B Amérique, Canada 1971–1975 (hereafter MAE, 1971–75)/ 460/8.11.2, 1/Francophonie, Reconnaissance de la nationalité/française aux francophones; Note pour le cabinet du Ministre, à l’intention de M. Haberer from Jurgensen, April 21, 1969, MAE, 1971–75/460/8.11.2, 1/Francophonie, Reconnaissance de la nationalité/française aux francophones. 66 Wilder, French Imperial Nation-State, 118–45; Silverman, Deconstructing the Na­ tion. See also T. Stovall, “Universalisme, différence et invisibilité. Essai sur la notion de race dans l’histoire de la France contemporaine,” Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique, 96–97 (2005): 63–90, for an excellent discussion of questions of race and identity in contemporary France. 67 D. Meren, “An Atmosphere of Libération: The Role of Decolonization in the FranceQuebec Rapprochement of the 1960s,” Canadian Historical Review 92, 2 (2011): 263–94. 68 P. Vallières, Nègres blancs d’Amérique: Autobiographie précoce d’un “terroriste” quebecois, nouv. ed. (Montreal: Éditions Parti pris, 1968). 69 Austin, Fear of a Black Nation, 67; Mills, Empire Within, 83. 70 Roger, The American Enemy, 331–35. 71 M. Vaïsse, La grandeur: Politique étrangère du général de Gaulle, 1958–1969 (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 452–60, 501–03. 72 André Bettencourt, the French secretary of state responsible for cooperation with Quebec, told Jules Léger that if France, with all the means at its disposal, had been unable to maintain its grip on Algeria, it was only logical to conclude that Ottawa would be unable to stop Quebec. Léger to Cadieux, December 14, 1967, LAC, Jules

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Léger Fonds/1/11, MG32-A3; Reilly, Record of Conversation with the Canadian Ambassador, December 15, 1967, The National Archives (UK), FCO 23, Common­ wealth Office: Atlantic Department/111, General de Gaulle’s visit and “Vive le Québec Libre” comment. 73 Thus, de Gaulle’s speech at Montreal’s city hall was described in the leftist journal Parti pris as “le premier acte global de decolonisation.” G. Bourque, “De Gaulle, Politique et Stratégie,” Parti pris 5, 1 (September 1967): 7. 74 J.-M. Léger, “Une responsabilité commune,” Esprit 30, 311 (1962): 569. 75 M. Lefèvre, Les États-Unis face à la francophonie: Les stratégies américaines en Afrique francophone, 1960–1970 (PhD dissertation, Université Paris-Sorbonne [Paris IV]/Université de Montréal, 2005), 147–69, 201–4; Vaïsse, La grandeur, 452–500; A. Peyrefitte, De Gaulle et le Québec (Montreal: Stanké, 2000), 52. 76 Meren, With Friends Like These, 257. 77 Déclaration de M. Alain Peyrefitte, Ministre Français de l’Éducation nationale, undated, attached to letter from Delauney to Couve de Murville, Affaires africaines et malgaches, February 10, 1968, MAE, 1971–75/462/Francophonie, Conférence de Libreville et rupture des relations diplomatiques Canada-Gabon (hereafter Libreville). 78 Wibaux to MAE, February 3, 1970, MAE 1971–75/467/Niamey; De Lipkowski to French Embassy, Dakar and Abidjan, February 4, 1970, MAE 1971–75/467/Niamey; Raphael-Leygues, French Embassy, Abidjan, February 14, 1970, MAE 1971–75/467/ Niamey; De Goumois to DEA, February 15, 1970, LAC, RG 25/10688/26–41969-NIAMEY/11. 79 R. Gendron, Towards a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 134–35; Delauney to Couve de Murville, MAE, Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, March 30, 1968, MAE, 1971–75/462/Libreville. 80 Sharp to Trudeau, October 20, 1969, LAC, RG 25, 8647/20–1-2-FR/25. 81 Personal Journal, March 14, 1968, LAC, MG31-E1, Marcel Cadieux Fonds (hereafter MC)/8/13; Cadieux to Tremblay, June 27, 1968, LAC, MC/8/13. 82 Meren, With Friends Like These, 123. 83 Ibid., 244. 84 M. Lefèvre, Charles de Gaulle: Du Canada français au Québec (Montreal: Leméac, 2007), 179–80; J. Baulin, Conseiller du président Diori (Paris: Eurafor-Press, 1986), 60.

11

“Red Indians” in Geneva, “Papuan Headhunters” in New York Race, Mental Maps, and Two Global Appeals in the 1920s and 1960s DAVID WEBSTER

A visit to London in 1921 would hardly be complete without an outing to the theatre. Chief Deskaheh of the Cayuga Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy of Six Nations, was as keen as many others to take in a show at the London Hippodrome while in the imperial capital. Deskaheh – Levi General, to use his day-to-day name – arrived at the Hippodrome for a matinee, dressed in a brown suit. Once inside, on the request of theatre management, he donned “the regalia of his office” including a feathered headdress, before being escorted to a box. There, he took in the show and showed himself to others in the hall. The costume change was no accident: Deskaheh was responding to a sympathizer who had written to advise him: “It is essential, if anything is to be done with the English Public, to appeal to its romantic sense. We must show them the Chief, and use every means at our disposal to bring him and his case to the foreground.”1 Forty years later, nationalist leaders from the Dutch colony of West Papua, located where Southeast Asia shades into the Pacific islands, were working hard to downplay an image of Papuan men dressed in feathers that was circulating in a coffee-table book of photographs. Pictures of “primitive” Papuans had bolstered their claim to be a nation different from Indonesia – the former Dutch East Indies – and entitled to their own nation-state. By 1961, this image was less attractive, and Papuan nationalists found another image that they believed would bolster their global appeal. “Dutch New

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Guinea is New Africa,” one nationalist song declared. Papuan nationalists deployed the dark skin and curly hair of most of their people to perform pan-Africanism in the Pacific as a sign of global “black” identity during a time of rapid decolonization.2 Both Deskaheh in the 1920s and Papuan nationalists in the 1960s performed racialized roles that they believed would draw international sympathy. Both did so in the context of an appeal to the top international organization of their time. The Six Nations sought the aid of the League of Nations in a dispute over governance of their territory on the Grand River, near Brantford, Ontario. The Papuan nationalist leaders sought United Nations support for their claims to independence rather than union with Indonesia. Both built substantial sympathy grounded in part on these performances of a claimed racial identity. In both cases, however, the support was not enough to succeed and indeed undermined their chances of success by playing into racialized stereotypes held by key policy-makers. The two cases lie at the margins of diplomatic history and were, even at the time, peripheral issues to Canadian policy-makers. In each case, traditional diplomatic history offers a satisfactory explanation for Canadian policy. Probing deeper, however, highlights the way perceptions of race formed the background against which policy-makers made their decisions. Policy decisions were made on the mental maps of the policy-makers, their ways of viewing the world spatially, and these mental maps were, in turn, highly racialized.3 Canadian foreign policy was never colour-blind. There is a widespread notion, repeated most recently by Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, that Canada has never been a colonial power or has no “colonial baggage.”4 But Canada has a colonial past, as Paula Hastings (Chapter 1) and Whitney Lackenbauer (Chapter 5) demonstrate in this volume. Canada acted in colonial modes within the borders it claimed, even while Canadians acted as participants in the British imperial enterprise. Loring Christie, legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs, could have been a Portuguese official describing Angola or Mozambique when he wrote that a formal assertion of sovereignty over the Arctic islands was not enough to establish title: it required “occupation” of the land.5 Thai scholar Thongchai Winichakul writes of a national geo-body that, once defined and bordered, must be filled up with the national government’s power and presence and defended against all comers. The concept applies well to Canada’s North, where a claim to undivided, unimpaired sovereignty has guided Canadian policy for a century or more.6 The North’s inhabitants, meanwhile, were

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racialized, “imagined in quasi-logo form,” located on a “logo-map [re­ sembling] a detachable piece of a jigsaw puzzle ... wholly detached from its geographic context,” as Benedict Anderson has written of a different region and a different people. Quasi-logo form, in Anderson’s description of Indonesian-ruled New Guinea, meant, among other things, “negroid” faces and the “penis-sheaths” of the Dani people.7 In Canada’s North, it meant furlined parka hoods, igloos, and inukshuks. The northward gaze was just as orientalizing as the European eastward gaze toward Asia. The same is true in the pockets scattered across the Canadian geo-body that resist assimilation: Indian reserves. This chapter suggests that the concepts of mental maps and a national geo-body, which come from Asian studies, are also useful in studying the history of Canadian foreign relations and allow race to be more visible. The Canadian geo-body, from Yarmouth to Yukon, was a single unity, and the national power had to fill it up. As in French Indochina and Dutch Indonesia, Euro-Canadians worked to police the borders of their European ethnicities, protecting Canadian purity from racial contamination.8 In­ digen­ous people living inside the Canadian geo-body had to be assimilated culturally, even if they could not be racially. And yet, they were not permitted equality as full members of Canadian society prior to the 1960s. This circle was squared in a common colonial fashion: Indians were (in an oftrepeated metaphor) children who had to grow into full citizenship. Yet the people being fashioned into quasi-logo form could try to use these images as a diplomatic asset: their very difference was an aid to their diplomatic campaigns. Rather than masking themselves in ways that sought to conform to European systems, “red-skins” metaphorically wore “red masks” and “Papuan headhunters” wore “black masks.”9 The appeals by the Six Nations to the League of Nations in the 1920s and by the Papuans to the United Nations in the 1960s illustrate two efforts to use race as a diplomatic asset, while also showing the limitations imposed by such strategies.

The “Complaint of the Six Nations,” 1920s Global appeals led by Six Nations Chief Deskaheh from 1921 to 1925 highlight these themes. Key in provoking the conflict was a Canadian gov­ ernment decision in 1920 to force involuntary enfranchisement upon the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a policy of granting Indians the right to vote but at the cost of losing their Indian status (and thus, for instance, the right to housing on reserves). This policy aimed to ensure there were no islands of divided sovereignty within the Canadian geo-body. In order to turn back

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these encroachments and assert Six Nations’ sovereignty as an ally rather than a subordinate subject of the Crown, the Six Nations Council sent one of its chiefs on a series of missions to Europe in the early 1920s. Levi General, who bore the Cayuga title of Chief Deskaheh, embarked on trips to London to petition the British imperial government and then to Geneva and other European cities to petition the League of Nations for support and, ultimately, for recognition as a sovereign state. These missions did not bear fruit, but they showed how different actors in the drama deployed racialized ideas and language in an unequal diplomatic struggle. The Six Nations reserve on the Grand River, near Brantford, Ontario, was the largest in eastern Canada. Its people were Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Tuscarora, together the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Con­­federacy, who settled on the reserve territory after the American Revo­ lution. Along with Mohawks who retained control of lands scattered from Lake Huron to Montreal, they were often regarded by Upper Canadian society as among the most advanced and progressive of Canadian Indians. The Hau­denosaunee saw themselves, and initially were treated, as British allies settled on new lands where they would govern themselves as they saw fit – loyal allies but not subjects of the King in London. Pressure on Six Nations lands mounted as settler populations expanded. This sparked Six Nations’ appeals to be left alone and treated as sovereign allies, not subjects. As evidence, Six Nations representatives offered the two-row wampum belt – a treaty that showed their canoe and that of the Europeans travelling parallel in friendship and alliance but without one side exercising control over the other. Appeals to be treated as allies rather than subjects started as early as 1890 by chiefs from both Grand River and the Mohawk territories of Tyendinaga to the governor-general as the Crown’s representative in Canada, who they referred to in kinship terms as “brother.” This petition evoked the two-row wampum and assailed involuntary enfranchisement. Canada was interfering in self-governing reserves and forcing Six Nations residents to be enfranchised as British subjects (Canadian citizenship had not yet been invented). It was time, the petitioners wrote, to polish the covenant chain that bound Britain and the Six Nations. The transfer of authority from London to Ottawa was especially objectionable in the words of the Tyendinaga appeal: “It appears to us the child has grown up and separated the bundle of sticks which is contrary to the Wampum Treaty between the Six Nation [sic] and the British Government”.10 The government in Ottawa formally rejected this position in 1890 and continued unwaveringly thereafter to assert that Six Nations people were

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Canadians and subject to Canada. Indian Affairs argued that progressive, educated Six Nations members favoured enfranchisement. The Tyendinaga appeal, on the other hand, was said to come from the least educated, least progressive, and most “pagan” Indians.11 Moreover, it was self-evident that anyone born in British territory was automatically a British subject. Here was circular logic: it was impossible to even consider as a possibility the claim that Six Nations lands were not, in fact, British, because of the belief that the Canadian geo-body was self-evidently one and indivisible. As the Six Nations continued to press their claim to be independent from Canada, Duncan Campbell Scott, who as deputy superintendent-general of Indian affairs headed the relevant government department, dismissed out of hand the “childish idea that they are a separate nation.”12 The Six Nations Council resisted demands for conscription during the First World War on the grounds that their people were not Canadians, but four hundred of the five thousand residents of Grand River enlisted in the Canadian army in any case. This service won them credit in the Hamilton Spectator for being “intensely loyal to the crown” and “the most progressive Indians in Canada.”13 Council attempted after the war to parlay the positive image into recognition of independent status. In this, it was taking a parallel course to nationalists in Korea, Egypt, and India, who deployed US president Woodrow Wilson’s language of the self-determination of peoples to support their claims for independence from colonial rule.14 In 1920, the six head chiefs of each nation at Grand River petitioned Ottawa to refer their claim to sovereignty to the Supreme Court of Canada.15 Cabinet responded, in effect, that a united Canadian geo-body under the British flag existed. Anyone born at Grand River was born on British territory and, therefore, was a British subject. Thus, any Six Nations appeal was axiomatically “hopeless,” as the deputy minister of justice wrote.16 An Ontario judge made the same ruling in 1921: “The matter, as a question of law, is not arguable – the authorities are so perfectly plain that anyone born in His Majesty’s territory is His Majesty’s subject.”17 Though this judgment assumed its own conclusion, it would be cited often in the years that followed. Tensions rose as the federal government amended the Indian Act to ease enfranchisement of Six Nations veterans and others. “We have no shield of our own with which to oppose the Power of Canada coming against us in our own homes,” the Six Nations status committee wrote. “To prevent so great a wrong we offer the simple justice of our cause.”18 In again rejecting the petition, Scott cited as his own opinion that of a British official who, in 1824, had called a treaty with Mohawks just as absurd as a treaty with “the

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Jews of Duke Street.”19 He wanted to “squelch” the case being prepared by the council’s newly hired lawyer, George P. Decker, of Rochester, New York.20 Equally, he wished to squelch the Six Nations Council itself in favour of an elected band council, a policy Ottawa was following with respect to First Nations from coast to coast. The traditional system, Scott wrote, was “obsolete.”21 Council was unwilling to pass away quietly, however. It dismissed the local Indian agent from its meetings and embarked on a more assertive path, which included naming Deskaheh as “chief speaker.”22 This was part and parcel of increasing conflicts concerning land ownership on the reserve itself between “loyalists” accepting federal jurisdiction and “traditionalists” asserting the claim to be allies rather than subjects. Scott, by 1922, was calling on Ottawa to “assume control there as soon as possible and give support to the loyal element on the reserve.”23 Indian Affairs, in other words, was both administrative authority and partisan of one side in internal aboriginal politics. A final appeal to Canadian opinion in 1921 evoked the growing sense of Canadian independent status that grew during and after the First World War. “There are many people in Canada who are desirous of seeing Can­ada stand more in the light of an ally of Great Britain than as a colony,” it read. “The Six Nations by treaties already occupy that position to which these people are only now aspiring. Then why try to undo a desirable accomplishment already attained by the Six Nations?” The document added that the Six Nations “are already in advance of their English allies in that they recognize their women as having a place in legislation” and intimated that if there was no change in Canadian policy, the Six Nations would appeal to the Imperial government in London.24 Reference to London was (and remains) a common tactic of First Nations people. Treaties often used kinship terms in keeping with traditional forms of Indigenous diplomacy, and the British monarch tended to be referred to as father or mother. This did not imply subordination from the Indigenous perspective, but it did from the Canadian/British perspective, especially as racism grew and the value of Indian allies declined. The first such petitions were made by Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who had led the Six Nations to Grand River after the American Revolution. Brant set the visual template of the Indian ally: dressed in traditional costume and loyal, stalwart, and brave.25 Similar imagery was advanced by poet Pauline Johnson and other Mohawks on their own journeys to London in later years.26 The use of symbolic politics, in other words, was long-standing. In these missions, success mattered, but symbolism, form, and style were also important.27

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As the council sent Deskaheh to London on their behalf, Scott asked the local member of Parliament to “quietly advise them that they are just wasting their time and their money” since London would simply refer them back to Ottawa.28 Colonial secretary Winston Churchill duly noted that “the matters referred to in the petition lie within the exclusive competency of the Canadian Government.”29 Britain may have been directly responsible for India, Ireland, and so on, and for dealing with independence claims in those territories, but it was stepping back from responsibility for the affairs of the Dominions. So Churchill repeated his referral to Ottawa the following year when the matter was raised in Parliament. Canada wished to impose the European state system, with its jigsaw pieces of undivided sovereignty in the geo-body of each state, unmodified by Indigenous understandings of alliance or shared sovereignty. This was paradoxical: European ideas of jigsaw sovereignty were at the time making way for international cities (such as Danzig), shared or qualified sovereignty, and mandates in which colonial powers accepted the principle of League of Nations oversight. Yet Canada, which in the minds of many Canadians was moving from colony to nation, grabbed at the Westphalian sovereignty model and showed little interest in islands of partial sovereignty within its national territory. The British government’s response was entirely as officials in Ottawa had hoped and expected. “The circle has been completed, and the Home Gov­ ernment has taken the usual action,” Scott noted. “When will these people learn wisdom, and refuse to subscribe to these overseas trips?”30 Regardless of outcome, however, the Six Nations were internationalizing their dispute in ways that drew on their collective historical perception as allies. The appeal to London was not made in idealistic ignorance but as a clear and calculated political strategy. Needing visual evidence and not having access to treaties, for instance, Deskaheh displayed the two-row wampum, carried with him across the Atlantic. Deskaheh had attempted symbolic politics in London. The romantic appeal of Indian allies certainly had resonance– even in Canada, it had earlier won the endorsement of at least one chapter of the Imperial Order Daugh­ ters of the Empire (IODE).31 It also played off images of Indians that existed in quasi-logo form in the British imagination: dressed in feathers, they projected the nobility of a dying race.32 Deskaheh, in the words of one sympathetic report, was “a man of fifty, sturdily built, with the stolid countenance typical of the Indian, but which becomes animated at times when he discusses the affairs of his people.”33

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Top left: Deskaheh displays the two-row wampum. | Canada (an illustrated weekly published in London), August 27, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2285, part 3, file 57,169–1B. Top right: Deskaheh as a logo on the cover of a pamphlet in London in 1923, entitled “Chief Deskaheh Tells Why He Is Over Here Again.” | Special Collections, Lavery Library, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.

Deskaheh (right) in his everyday brown suit with the Six Nation Council’s lawyer, George P. Decker. | Special Collections, Lavery Library, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.

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Deskaheh sought to appeal to British perceptions of their own identity as a free and generous people. One supporter insisted that “once the British people know of the manner in which you and your brave people have been treated, they will not hesitate to demand for you the rights and justice which is so obviously yours.”34 Yet British and Canadian supporters tended to fall away when calls for justice seemed to imply a challenge to British imperial rule. The council’s original Canadian lawyer would call their decision to internationalize the dispute “most ill-advised, unnecessary and doomed to certain failure.”35 One legal adviser in Britain wrote that of course “Canada could not tolerate the existence of an entirely independent state within its domain.”36 Even for strong backers, the Canadian geo-body was inviolate. Scott finally wrote up a full response for the Canadian high commissioner to London to use in combatting Deskaheh’s influence. The government was not interfering at Grand River, he wrote, but seeking to mediate among competing factions. It was not “invading” Grand River but merely policing.37 The rise in Haudenausaunee nationalism at Grand River alarmed Ottawa and led to increasing Canadian government interference, much of it directed in moralistic terms at the perceived leader of the nationalist party for allegedly leading his people astray. Deskaheh was “the worst of the unruly element” at Grand River, the local Indian agent wrote. Although “once a good English church man,” he had “turned pagan, and that element will soon gain control unless some drastic measures are taken. It is pitiful to see such intelligent people held down by a leadership of ignorance, fanaticism and opposition to the law.”38 Meanwhile there were frequent dismissive references to the agenda being driven by the “Yankee lawyer,” Decker: “The cake was mixed on the American side by an American-German lawyer,” as one press account had it.39 Here was a race-based assumption: Indians were children being led astray by unscrupulous men, some of them foreigners. As Deskaheh explained, this only ratcheted up tension: “The officials wished to treat us as children and use the rod. This trouble has been going from bad to worse because we are not children.”40 The appeal to London did prompt some reconsideration in Ottawa. In­ terior minister and superintendent-general of Indian affairs Charles Stewart offered arbitration by a group of three Ontario judges, one selected by each side and the third by the two nominees. After initial rejection of this bid, the council accepted a revised offer: any three British subjects as commissioners, with the right to accept or reject findings. Yet even in his letter accepting the offer and agreeing to split costs, Deskaheh added a postscript that the RCMP had just fired shots on the Six Nations reserve, asking, “Is this what

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you call a protection according to our treaty[?]” Stewart’s reply, two weeks later, reiterated plans to name a commissioner shortly for the Canadian side.41 But it was too late: the RCMP’s use of force on the Six Nations reserve sent Deskaheh fleeing across the border for his own protection. In Rochester, he decided to appeal to the League of Nations in Geneva. Ottawa’s intervention had prompted an internationalization of the dispute. Stewart went on to name Andrew Thompson as a sole commissioner and did not invite the Six Nations to name a counterpart. Deskaheh sought the good offices of the Six Nations’ oldest European ally, the Netherlands, asking that the Dutch government pass an appeal on to the League. “We are an organized and self-governing people” who had been promised continued self-government, the letter read; Recently, nevertheless, our British neighbours of the Dominion of Canada, planning our extinction as a separate people, undertook, under cover of Canadian laws and under the pretense of British sovereignty over us, to enforce British citizenship upon our members, to bring our lands under administration of Canadian laws and policy and to treat us, to the extent of their own pleasure, as British subjects.

Although the Six Nations had accepted arbitration, Canada had “without notice or declaration on its part ... invaded our country with an armed force” the following day.42 Forwarding this document to Geneva, the Dutch delegation expressed no opinion on the merits of the case but drew attention “to the danger that, in consequence of measures taken by the Canadian Gov­ ernment, the peace between Canada and the Six Nations may be disturbed.”43 Dutch action drew a swift British rebuke. Lord Devonshire, the Colonial secretary, was “disagreeably surprised” by their “uncalled for interference in [the] internal affairs of Canada.”44 The Foreign Office informed the Dutch ambassador that the Netherlands, “if such a practice came into being, might find themselves arraigned before the Council by some of their East Indian subjects.”45 One colonial appeal, in other words, might spark another in the form of British backing for the Indonesian nationalist movement, itself beginning to seek global support. Anticipating the South African reaction that would greet the Diefenbaker government’s stance on apartheid that Dan Gorman (Chapter 6) explores in this collection, Canada’s under-secretary of state for external affairs, Sir Joseph Pope, blasted the Dutch for intervening and wrote that Canada “utterly repudiates” any suggestion of a threat to peace: “To claim that the Six Nations are an organised and self-governing

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people so as to form a political unit apart from Canada, is to anyone acquainted with the actual conditions, an absurd one.”46 Dutch diplomats offered a mild reply that they were merely passing a petition to its intended address, with no endorsement, and retired from the field.47 Deskaheh couched his appeal to the League in terms of universal justice and tried to turn weakness into a diplomatic asset by asking for “protection to a small people against the ruthless aggression of so powerful a State as the Canadian Government.”48 A highly successful tour of Switzerland aided the cause in the court of European public opinion. The appeal to European sympathy for exotic “red-skins” was a double-edged sword. It evoked strong sympathy and drew large crowds, but it also gave a faintly romantic and hopeless tone to claims to be a candidate for League membership. In Europe, the feeling seemed to boil down to Indians deserving support and justice but not membership in the European state system. Deskaheh offered “a touch of the picturesque” in one wire service report but was unable to gain an official hearing.49 Various delegates offered sympathy. The Chinese representative was especially sympathetic, but “frankly replied that China had given notice of withdrawing from the League, as it was apparent that there was no justice in its activities.” To this, Deskaheh reported that “the crux of problem is that we are not KNOWN by other States to be a State.”50 The official document appealing to the League, then, stressed that the Six Nations were “a state within the purview and meaning of Article 17 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but not ... at present a member,” and served notice that “a dispute and disturbance of the peace has arisen.” Ottawa’s backing of proCanadian factions at Grand River showed “the manifest purpose on the part of the Dominion Government to destroy all de jure government of the Six Nations,” while the RCMP presence constituted “an act of war upon the Six Nations by making an hostile invasion of the Six Nations domain.” The appeal incidentally evoked a common Six Nations claim that they had formed “the oldest League of Nations, the League of the Iroquois.”51 This was not a full appeal to join the League, but it certainly asserted the claim to full statehood. With Dutch backing now gone, Deskaheh was able to convince diplomats representing Ireland, Estonia, Panama, and Persia to call on the League to grant him a hearing. (All of these were smaller states, and Ireland had itself been independent from Britain for but a short time.) The delegations noted, “Etant donnée l’intérêt universel qui s’attache à la conservation de l’antique race des anciens Peaux-Rouges” (Given the universal interest in

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preserving the ancient race of red skins), and since treaties conferred upon the Six Nations acknowledged “le caractère d’un Etat indépendant” (the character of an independent state), the Six Nations were entitled to have their case heard at the world body.52 British diplomats quickly exerted pressure on behalf of Canada to ensure that the “ridiculous question” would get no hearing.53 “Present attempt to reopen the question is resented as impertinent interference in internal affairs of the British Empire,” the foreign office instructed its ambassador in Panama to tell his hosts. Similar letters went to the other sponsoring governments.54 Acting League Secretary-General Joseph Avenol “quite agree[d] that what must be done is to ‘enterrer’ [bury] the matter,” a League secretariat memorandum noted. This could be achieved by circulating the Six Nations petition merely for information, leaving the matter “completely buried and never likely to be resuscitated.”55 Thus the League Council’s president, Swedish diplomat Hjalmar Branting, embarked on an extraordinary series of communications with Persian delegate Prince Arfa, ignoring his statements that he wished the issue placed on the agenda and asking him repeatedly to confirm that he was making an official request from his government. Arfa wrote that his “seul but était de donner à une petite nation l’occasion d’être au moins entendue” (only goal was to give a small nation the chance at least to be heard), but he was not able to obtain a copy of instructions from Teheran that secretariat officials would accept as official.56 There had been no damage to the Canadian government position in government circles, but European public opinion seemed alive to the Six Nations claim. Although Scott spat angry letters over the affair, the External Affairs department felt it best to “suppress [the] preposterous claim of the Six Nations Indians to independent sovereignty” rather than confront it head-on.57 When Ottawa finally did offer a response, it came at the urging of League officials. The secretariat prepared a letter to Prime Minister Mackenzie King over the signature of Sir Herbert Ames, a Canadian national working as a senior League of Nations official. “During the Assembly a picturesque delegation of Iroquois Indians, with their Chief, Deskaheh, were here in Geneva addressing meetings and interviewing delegates,” the letter read, “they aroused a certain amount of sympathy among people who heard their side only. Since the Assembly, I understand that they have been following up on this initiative by visiting several European countries. The recent action of the Persian Delegate is the result of this campaign.” Ottawa should respond, the letter continued, “lest our apparent indifference be misinterpreted and thus our excellent reputation over here suffer somewhat.”58

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Scott thus prepared a lengthy reply, which asserted blankly, “The Six Nations are not a state within the purview or meaning of Article 17 of the Covenant” because they were British subjects “domiciled within the Do­ minion of Canada.” Appealing to notions of what constituted acceptable forms of government, the response denigrated the Six Nations council as “a primitive matriarchal form of Government [that was] antiquated” in the age of the League.59 Gendered and racialized images intermingled in the Canadian government’s portrayal of its case, and again the idea of pro­ gressive versus traditional raised its head. Alongside Borden’s actions at Versailles, discussed in Francine McKenzie’s contribution to this volume (Chapter 3), here was another instance of Canada contributing to the maintenance of a global racial order. Ottawa followed up by sending along to the League, the next year, the report of its one-man commission of inquiry. Commissioner Thompson’s imagery of the objects of his inquiry was at times more positive than the government had previously put forward. Six Nations members, he wrote, were “a people of very quick intelligence, and quite as capable of assimilating education as are their fellow-citizens.” Yet they suffered under poor conditions in schools, poor infrastructure, and a moral system insufficiently assimilated into mainstream Canadian Christian ways. Many Six Nations traditions “could not be considered ‘moral,’ from the Christian standpoint, and especially in this case with regard to marital relations.” Men routinely left their wives and families and took up with others, Thompson lamented, and the Six Nations Council did nothing to prevent it. Then there was lacrosse, played on Sundays in defiance of Ontario law: “While people may honestly differ as to what constitutes morality, surely all will agree that premeditated violation of the law is such, and this leads me to the question of Sunday lacrosse games, held for profit on the reserve.” Similarly immoral was the way chiefs were selected by “a comparatively small number of old women.” The system had to change to one more aligned with progressive Canadian values: universal suffrage by males aged over twenty-one, with women excluded despite winning the right to vote in federal elections in 1917. In Thompson’s view, “For the time being the franchise should not be extended to women ... since education is not very much advanced on the reserve.” Thus the council, a barrier to progress, should be replaced by an elected body.60 Thompson’s report was sympathetic in many ways and, at the same time, a model of colonial control – Sunday lacrosse and marital relations being the ideological underpinnings of the call to disenfranchise the traditional mode of governance and replace it with one in which women

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could not even vote. This was ironic, given the Six Nations members’ longstanding use of the status of women as an example of their confederacy’s progressive nature.61 After a discussion about chiefs and clan mothers, the Canadian cabinet swiftly accepted Thompson’s recommendation for an elected council in October 1924.62 The RCMP then evicted the Six Nations Council in favour of a “modernizing” faction on the reserve and held a widely boycotted election. “It is believed that this change to a more modern political system will have a good influence on the reserve and act as a stimulation to progress and advancement among the Six Nations,” External Affairs informed the League secretariat.63 From Ottawa’s perspective, the issue was settled. Deskaheh’s appeal is remembered very differently by each side. One account of the effort calls it a “bizarre affair” that appeared “merely absurd” at first glance.64 Here was the “common sense” belief that any non-Canadian sovereignty within the Canadian geo-body, especially of nonwhite people, was, by definition, ridiculous. Kevin Spooner makes a similar point in Chap­ ter 9 to explain collective beliefs that were both inclusive and exclusive. The Six Nations memory, on the other hand, gives central place to Deskaheh’s European pilgrimage and has evoked it repeatedly in ongoing diplomatic efforts at the UN.65 Six Nations appeals beyond Canada’s borders did not end with the removal of the traditional council. The council continued to meet in longhouses and other locations, to insist upon its legitimacy as a governing body, and to petition London and Geneva. It issued a declaration of (continued) independence in 1928 aimed at League and international audiences.66 In 1929, Chief Jacob Lewis travelled to Geneva on a Six Nations passport, as had Deskaheh before him, calling for a three-person commission along the lines agreed in 1922.67 Lewis aimed especially to have the League rule on “le caractère international de la contestation” (the international character of the appeal).68 In response, Indian Affairs asked for, and received, a resolution of support for Ottawa’s position from the new elected council at Grand River. The resolution attacked Lewis as “a dissolute ne’er-do-well” who had lived in adultery with at least four women in the thirty to thirty-five years since he left his wife. Declaring “he does not work,” the resolution suggested that in no way was he suitable to represent modern Six Nations people.69 Canadian officials in Indian Affairs and External Affairs then began to debate whether they could describe the elected council as legitimate and democratic to an international audience. Six Nations supporters in Geneva conceded they would have to abandon their support for the traditional

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council’s claims if the new elected council could be proven to legitimately represent the Six Nations majority. The issue turned on how many Six Nations residents had voted – if it was a minuscule number, then democratic legitimacy would be difficult to prove. But Superintendent-General Stewart was adamant that the number of people who had voted in Six Nations band council elections must be kept secret, even from his cabinet colleagues. In vain did External Affairs under-secretary O.D. Skelton and Senator Raoul Dandurand, heading Canada’s delegation to the General Assembly, seek the information. Dandurand was able only to say that all men aged twenty-one and up had the right to vote, but Scott and Stewart refused to provide him any numbers – for the numbers were indeed low.70 Dandurand showed far more sympathy to the Six Nations cause in internal correspondence, stating that the Indian Affairs department appeared to have breached the terms of British promises to leave the Six Nations alone to practise their traditional culture and system of governance. “By what means,” he asked, “has your Department assured itself of the will of the majority in favour of a change in the election of their [Six Nations] council and in the form of their Government?”71 Scott could only reply with an invocation of the “civilizing and protective” effect of assimilating Indians into Canadian law.72 This effect did not seem so salutary from the Grand River standpoint. A “progressive” Six Nations elected councillor wrote to the highest-ranking Mohawk civil servant in Ottawa in 1938, for instance, to inform him that “of approximately 300 heads of families, who have been enfranchised, not a single one has made good and there is not one who would not return to the Six Nations if that were possible.”73 Efforts continued the following year, with Chief Chauncey Garlow heading a delegation of seven men (including Lewis) and two women to carry their appeal to Europe, armed with wampums, a historic pipe of peace, and original copies of British documents. They were able to take tea and pass the pipe of peace with sympathetic members of Parliament on the House of Commons terrace, winning favourable press comment for their bid to discuss difficulties between “the British and their allies, the Iroquois.”74 An all-party group of parliamentarians headed by Labour MP Fenner Brockway backed the Six Nations case – here, as in European colonial powers, there were dissenters from colonial assumptions – but the Dominions secretary refused to meet the delegation.75 The traditional council continued to campaign and link its cause to global trends, tacking strategically to be noticed by, and appeal to, global audiences. In 1935, for instance, Garlow contrasted Canadian concern for

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Dressed in feathers, the Garlow delegation leaves the House of Lords, 1930. | Daily Mirror. LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57, 169–1.

European Jews to Canada’s assimilation policy on the Six Nations and announced he would seek United States arbitration under the terms of a 1912 Canada-US agreement.76 Six Nations campaigners were not desperately fighting a last ditch effort: they were part of an ongoing diplomatic effort that continues. They looked not only to their own traditions and territories but also to international developments. Like the individuals and groups that John Price explores in Chapter 2 of this volume, they reflected, and even helped to shape, a global counter-current to colonial government desires.

Pacific Pan-Africanism: Canadian Mental Maps and a Delayed Decolonization A similar effort would be undertaken four decades later by independence movement leaders half a world away from Grand River. In June 1969, three Papuan leaders hailing from the western half of the island of New Guinea visited Ottawa. Their aim in coming was to seek Canadian sponsorship of

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their petition to testify at a UN committee. They were lobbying the United Nations in advance of a planned “act of free choice” in their homeland between integration into Indonesia or independence. The territory in question, named West Papua by pro-independence activists and West Irian by the Indonesian government, had been part of the Dutch East Indies prior to the Second World War, a separate colony called Netherlands New Guinea from 1949 to 1962, a directly governed United Nations territory called West New Guinea from 1962 to 1963, and, finally, Indonesian rule starting in 1963. The Dutch-Indonesian agreement that set out this complex transfer mandated that the inhabitants of the territory be given an act of free choice on their future political status by 1969. For Papuan nationalists, that meant a referendum on self-determination, or at least a direct vote in urban areas and an indirect “whispering ballot” in rural areas. For Indonesia’s government, it meant an “act of determining the people’s opinion” by 1,025 hand-picked Papuans meeting in regional assemblies under Indonesian military supervision. Not surprisingly, the “vote” was 100 percent for Indonesian rule, and no major power intervened to ensure any true self-determination. Yet for Papuan activists seeking their homeland’s independence, the result was not predetermined in June of 1969, a month before the start of Indonesian-sponsored “popular consultations.” They sought from the UN exactly what Deskaheh had sought from the League of Nations: a hearing before the world body. A letter went to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau over the signature of the leaders of the Freedom Committee of West Papua/West New Guinea. The UN, they wrote, should make it possible for the victims of a new type of colonialism and imperialism, namely by a coloured country instead by a White one, to make themselves heard ... The Papuan people of West New Guinea who have never been allowed to speak openly on an international level about their own future, now claim the right to be heard officially.77

One of those leaders was Nicolaas Jouwe, designer of the West Papuan flag and coproclaimer of Papua’s right to independence back in 1962. In 1969, he made the flight north at the invitation of Robert N. Thompson, a Conservative MP who, until 1967, had been leader of the fourth party in Parliament, Social Credit.78 Thompson further demonstrated his commitment to the Papuan cause by circulating a detailed eleven-page memo­ randum titled “A Case for the Right to Self-Determination of the Papuan Peoples of West New Guinea.” It called on the government to help “the

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defenceless negroid people” of West Papua by supporting inscription of an item on the General Assembly agenda and trying to ensure a genuine act of self-determination took place. Thompson’s memorandum stressed difference, especially racial difference, between Papua and Indonesia, in ways that built on existing pro-Papuan writings. The “Papuan Negroes” had little in common with the Indonesians who “belong to the Malaysian race which is mongoloid.” Indonesian Muslims and Papuan Christians inhabited “two different worlds.”79 Official Ottawa made no reply, either to Jouwe and his colleagues or to Thompson, their Canadian advocate. External Affairs sought to coordinate Canadian policy with its new imperial allies Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. After all, Indonesia was ruled by a promising new pro-Western military regime under General Suharto, who had toppled neutralist leader Sukarno.80 The gist of the responses was that Canada’s partners wished to “prevent rocking of boat” by any high-profile response to events in West Papua, which included “tribal” rebellions and what all diplomats agreed was a mockery of any pretense to actual self-determination.81 The outcome, Canada’s embassy in Jakarta reported, was “pre-ordained and Indonesian Govt cannot and will not permit any outcome other than continued inclusion of W.I. [West Irian] in Indonesia.” The territory was part of Indonesia’s “manifest destiny,” as one telegram noted in a telling reference to the expansion of the American frontier.82 Thus, in common with its partners in Washington, Canberra, and the Hague, Ottawa expressed no opinion and voted, like most UN members, to accept the act of free choice in West Papua. Thirty states abstained as a symbolic protest, twenty-four of them African.83 Mental maps were in play: Ottawa’s default position on an issue of marginal importance was to follow the United States, Western European allies, and the “Old Dominions” of European settlement. Trudeau’s stance on separation movements reinforced this tendency. Long opposed to Quebec independence, Trudeau also resolutely opposed the attempted secession of Biafra from Nigeria despite much sympathy from nongovernmental Canadians for the Biafran cause. African governments, recently decolonized themselves, often felt more sympathy for Papuan independence, though this, too, was tempered by African adherence to colonial boundaries, as in the Congo dispute. The tale so far is of tacit Canadian support for Indonesia. Yet the story can be read more deeply, starting with Thompson’s jarring (to today’s readers) use of the term Negroes for the inhabitants of West Papua, usage that echoed that of Papuan nationalist leaders themselves in this period, and

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continuing with Thompson’s own involvement. Half of an island in the southern Pacific, after all, was not an obvious topic of concern for the veteran MP for Red Deer, Alberta. Indonesian demands to “restore” Papua “to the fold of the Indonesian Republic” were driven by mental maps.84 Indonesia would quickly be conflated with old precolonial empires, particularly the Java-based Majapahit empire, which did not, in fact, rule Papua but was understood in the Indo­ nesian nationalist imagination to have done so. The separation of any part of Indonesia could be viewed as the mutilation of the Indonesian geobody. “Would anybody allow one of his limbs to be amputated without putting up a fight?” asked President Sukarno. “Does not a man cry out in pain if even the tiniest finger of his hand is cut off?”85 Similarly, foreign minister Subandrio rejected “the Netherlands’ concept of self-determination” as an “amputation which the Dutch are performing on our national body.”86 Papuans had two possible images they could deploy as they entered the diplomatic arena. One was a tribal people literally dressed in feathers, a modern-day Stone Age parallel to North American Indians (and, worse still, headhunters). This had some romantic resonance, perhaps, but seemed less advantageous than the second image, a self-portrait of an industrious Papuan people trying to develop, just like newly independent countries in Africa. Clearly, international politics made the second image more favourable in an independence campaign. With few prospects of Western support, Papuan appeals to Africa seemed the only hope of generating new international support for selfdetermination. Papuan nationalists toured Africa in the first half of 1962, carrying with them a pamphlet, Voice of the Negroids of the Pacific to Ne­ groids Throughout the World, that tried to invoke pan-African themes. “Brothers and sisters negroids!” it opened: It’s about time you break away from your busy work to listen to what we Papuans have to say! Many, many times you have heard about us from the Dutch and Indonesians, without having known us. Now we will take the floor ourselves. We are living in the Pacific, our people are called Papuans, our ethnic origin is the Negroid race.87

The pamphlet made an audacious claim that mobilized ideas of race to back a demand for independence. As they travelled through Africa, their hosts remarked with surprise on their appearance, the pamphlet recounted. These inhabitants of a Dutch colony, claimed by Indonesia, “looked African.”

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Armed with that perception, they tried to turn race into a diplomatic asset, transforming marginalization and powerlessness into a tool they could wield internationally. Lest there be any mistaking its intent, the pamphlet was copiously illustrated with photographs of Papuans. One depicted a Papuan teacher alongside Frédéric Guirma, the ambassador of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) to the United Nations. “What is the ethnical difference between them?” the caption asked.88 The problem with the Papuan effort to use race as a diplomatic asset was that it also left Papuans victim to ideas of space and place implicit in Western minds. If Papuans were black, that made them, to many in the West, primitive. One danger was that West Papua would be painted as another Congo, prompting outside powers to avoid the issue. Indonesian officials argued with some success that the Dutch were trying to split Indonesia through a separate Papuan state, in the same way many African leaders thought Belgium was trying to split the Congo by backing separatists. Dutch officials warned of “a Congo situation” if they left Papua too quickly, while the United States ambassador warned of the “threat of Congo-like development.”89 The Congo trope of screaming random violence, in short, was a major blow to Papuan leaders trying to show themselves to be responsible enough to win international support for their freedom. Thus Papuans were frozen out of the US-mediated Dutch-Indonesian talks that saw an agreement to transfer power. Yet in the years leading up to the 1969 “act of free choice,” they continued to campaign for independence in the international arena. Robert Thompson’s pro-Papuan initiative aimed to support their efforts. Thompson came to support Papuan self-determination by way of an ex­ tensive career in Africa. A devout Protestant, medical man, and Albertan, he went to Africa to preach the Gospel as part of the Sudan Interior Mission. He joined the British forces that, in the Second World War, evicted the Italian administration from Ethiopia and then turned power back over to Emperor Haile Selassie. Thompson became Canada’s eye on Ethiopia, and he joined Haile Selassie’s service: he donned an Ethiopian uniform to command the country’s nascent air force (with the assistance of John C. Robinson, an African American air force colonel known as the black eagle of Chicago) before handing off to a Swedish air force mission. Then he helped design Ethiopia’s new secondary schools system.90 When the emperor’s favourite son, Prince Makonnen, wished to learn of the United States and Canada, Haile Selassie dispatched Thompson to accompany him. The prince met President Harry Truman, threw the first ball at a New York Yankees baseball game, was feted by Louis St. Laurent,

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Photograph supporting the image of Papuans as a tribal people “dressed in feathers.” | T. Saulnier, Les Papous coupeurs de têtes : Cent soixante-sept jours dans la préhistoire [Papuan Headhunters: A Hundred and SixtySeven Days in Prehistory] (Paris: Éditions du Pont-Royal, 1961).

Papuans meeting the Upper Volta ambassador. | Voice of the Negroids in the Pacific to the Negroids throughout the World (Papuan nationalist pamphlet published in Hollandia, 1962).

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saw the RCMP musical ride, and so on. But the West took pride of place. In Alberta, the prince’s party landed to a greeting from Premier Ernest Manning, then toured the oil fields of Leduc and embarked for Thompson’s hometown of Innisfail. Locals staged a mock kidnapping of the visitors from Ethiopia, then performed rural Alberta for them. With the African royalty now dressed as cowboys, the Albertans lifted portable stoves out of their chuckwagons and cooked flapjacks and bacon.91 A performance of frontier cowboy identity was a subtle, if perhaps unintended, reference to the Canadian project of westward colonization. It might have been welcomed by the visitors, whose own government was increasingly asserting central control over peripheral areas of Ethiopia defined as ethnically different from the Amharic central regions of the country. Forced back to Alberta by the fragile health of one of his children, Thompson entered politics and became a Social Credit MP. As Socred leader in 1964, he won a mandate from Prime Minister Lester Pearson to tour Africa to comment on Canadian aid projects. He also served as an ad hoc emissary seeking to free Canadian hostages in the Congo.92 The tone of press reports and opposition criticism evoked racialized images of Africa and its peoples: for instance, Thompson was described as being “on safari.”93 Thompson was no backwoods ignoramus, but a cosmopolitan Chris­ tian formed in a British imperial context. His intimacy with governing circles in Africa echoed Pearson’s comfort among European and American leaders. His African experiences led him to West Papua advocacy in 1969 as surely as diplomatic imperatives led Papuan activists to press the Africa parallels and to embrace an identity as negroids of the Pacific. In Ottawa, policy-makers plotted their decisions on a rational calculus of what they saw as Canadian national interests, but racialized mental maps formed the background. On these mental maps, Papuans appeared as headhunters and savages and Indonesians as spoiled children. Yet the children could grow up and develop into stronger partners for the West. The savages were a long way behind, mired in, as many portrayals had it, the Stone Age. Diplomats, in Canadian embassy reports on repeated visits to West Papua between 1963 and 1968, had no illusions that in a free vote, Papuans would opt to cast off Indonesian rule, but they also knew there would be no free vote.94 There was no strategic benefit for Canada in supporting Papuan independence claims. At the same time, the image of Stone Age Papuans seeking their own country appears to have deterred any potential action. Papuans were “not sophisticated enough to have personal views on their political

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status,” according to a Canadian air force officer stationed there during the short UN administration.95 “If the Dutch are tired of trying to prompt the Papuans down from the tree-tops,” commented one Canadian ambassador, “I do not see that it matters too greatly, even to the Papuans, whether the job is assumed by the United Nations or by Indonesia.”96 (Very few Papuans, of course, live in trees: this statement illustrates the author’s mental map rather than the lived realities of Papuan peoples.) A subsequent Canadian ambassador described the territory as “remote, primitive, and one of the few areas on this planet which is not yet fully explored by more civilized man.”97 Such sympathy as existed was for the noble savages whose way of life was dying. The same Canadian embassy report, for instance, evoked the old colonial motif of areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples as living museums: “The primitiveness of the people and the relative inaccessibility to encroachment by the modern world’s civilization makes them all the more beautiful and leaves one with a feeling that perhaps this paradise on earth should be preserved, untouched!”98 The image of West Papua as exotic and strange endures in Canadian diplomatic discourse, and this hinders any serious consideration of the self-determination issue, which remains alive to this day.99

In Place of a Conclusion In each case noted here, diplomatic historians can point to perfectly acceptable explanations grounded in the national interest, or alliance imperatives, or other straightforward political or economic motives. These would not be incorrect explanations. However, the mental maps of the decision makers defined what seemed central and what seemed peripheral to the perceived national interest. Enclaves of one country in the centre of another are not uncommon, from the age of divided German principalities to today’s Lesotho. Nothing necessarily makes a sovereign Six Nations impossible, and Six Nations under­ standings of an alliance rather than subject relationship with the Crown are no more inherently absurd than are the many protectorates governed indirectly by Britain without disturbing local structures that existed beforehand, or China’s former relationship of “suzerainty” without sovereignty over Tibet, or other relationships that depart from the jigsaw puzzle image of interlocking fully sovereign states with no overlap between them. What made the Six Nations claim seem absurd was the assumption that Indians were a dying people to be assimilated and that it was simple common sense to believe that any divided sovereignty was impossible within the Canadian geo-body. Can­ada could not share sovereignty with a nonwhite community

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inside its borders: that would harm the integrity and unity of the Canadian geo-body. Similarly, Canadian policy-makers may not have intervened on behalf of the Papuan claim for reasons of realpolitik, but the frontiers of what was realistic were set by racialized images of Papua as a place of the primitive that could not realistically seek to govern itself. There is value, too, in seeing the way that marginalized and racialized peoples unearth important stories from their past as a means of “reinscribing” themselves as subjects in histories told about them.100 Haupt­ man recalls a story that Iroquois workers had added an extra light to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome for the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, to symbolize their Confederacy. Whether this is a tall tale or revealed secret, there is power in the telling.101 In this case, racialized images of Indigenous people were deployed by Deskaheh and others as a diplomatic asset, in an effort to turn marginality into mainstream diplomatic appeal. The belief that both causes were inherently hopeless was a self-fulfilling prophecy: policy-makers who believed a cause to be hopeless acted in ways that reinforced that alleged hopelessness. Both the Six Nations and the Papuans sought to turn the perceptions others had of their race into diplomatic assets, with remarkable degrees of success. But the perceptions of backwardness and primitiveness associated with those races in Canada (as elsewhere) hindered their hopes and set the boundaries beyond which Canadian policy would not go. In this sense, the official mind of Ottawa changed little from the 1920s to the 1960s. It is an open question how much it has changed in the half century since then. NOTES This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coun­ cil of Canada. 1 “Arrangements for the reception of Chief Deskaheh,” September 1, 1921, note by Hippodrome staff, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. The Haudenausaunee coverage in this chapter draws on three archival sources. About fifty key documents are posted at a website of documentary evidence from this dispute: http://sixnationsappeal.blogspot.ca/. 2 Voice of the Negroids in the Pacific to the Negroids throughout the World (Papuan nationalist pamphlet published in Hollandia, 1962). 3 A.K. Henrikson, “Mental Maps,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, ed. M.J. Hogan and T.G. Paterson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1991), 177. The article does not appear in the second edition of this book. On mental maps more generally, see P. Gould and R. White, Mental Maps

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(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974); H.F. Stein and W.G. Niederland, eds., Maps from the Mind: Readings in Psychogeography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989); G.Ó. Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (London: Routledge, 1996); A.K. Henrikson, “The Geographical ‘Mental Maps’ of American Foreign Policy Makers,” International Political Science Review 1, 4 (1980): 495–530. 4 Tim Fontaine, “What Did Justin Trudeau Say about Canada’s History of Colonial­ ism?” CBC News, April 22, 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/trudeau -colonialism-comments-1.3549405. 5 Memorandum from Legal Adviser to Prime Minister, October 28, 1920, Documents on Canadian External Relations (DCER), vol. 3: 1920 (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1970), 566. 6 P.W. Lackenbauer and P. Kikkert, “Sovereignty and Security: Canadian Diplomacy, the United States, and the Arctic, 1943–1968,” in In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909– 2009, ed. G. Donaghy and M.K. Carroll (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2011). 7 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991), 178. 8 A.L. Stoler, “Sexual Assaults and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cul­ tural Practices of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. F. Cooper and A.L. Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 9 The reference is to F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, originally published as Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Collections Esprit, 1952). 10 Mohawks of Tyendinaga to Duke of Connaught, April 20, 1891, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. 11 PCO report November 13, 1890; Clerk of Privy Council report, March 21, 1892, both in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. 12 D.C. Scott to interior minister W.J. Roche, April 15, 1915, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. 13 “Indian Chiefs in Conference,” Hamilton Spectator, September 11, 1919, in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. 14 E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti-Colonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 15 Six Nations petition dated March 18, 1920, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1. 16 Deputy Minister of Justice to Scott, September 1, 1920, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1. See also Scott to Sir James Lougheed, July 15, 1920; undated note to Governor-General, 1920, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1. 17 Justice Riddell to Scott, April 4, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. For use of this comment, see for instance, undated memorandum “The Six Nations,” Acting Deputy Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs Williams to O.D. Skelton July 13, 1929, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 18 Six Nations letter to Governor-General, May 10, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1A.

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19 Scott to David Hill, June 11, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 1, file 57,169–1. 20 Scott to Indian Agent Smith, April 14, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 21 Scott to J.C. Harold MP, May 7, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2884, part 2, file 57,169–1A. 22 Smith to J.D. McLean, secretary of Department of Indian Affairs, May 17, 1922; R.M. Abraham, Agricultural representative, Department of Indian Affairs, to Duncan Campbell Scott, March 16, 1922, both in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2285, part 3, file 57,169–1B. 23 Scott memorandum, August 10, 1922, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2285, part 3, file 57, 169–1B. 24 J.S. Johnson, “Indians Protest Against Compulsory Enfranchisement,” Brantford Expositor (Ontario), March 16, 1921. 25 J.R. Miller, “‘Petitioning the Great White Mother: First Nations’ Organizations and Lobbying in London, in Canada and the End of Empire, ed. P. Buckner (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006). 26 C. Morgan, “A Wigwam to Westminster: Performing Mohawk Identity in Imperial Britain, 1890s–1990s,” Gender and History 15, 2 (August 2003): 319–41. 27 L.M. Hauptman, Seven Generations of Iroquois Leadership (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 40. 28 Scott to Harold, June 13, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1A. 29 W. Churchill to Lord Byng, September 23, 1921, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. 30 Scott to Smith, October 11, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 31 “Rapacity of Whites Feared by Six Nations,” unattributed newspaper clipping, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 2, file 57,169–1A. 32 See, among other sources, S.E. Bird, Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996) and D. Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011). 33 “The Rights of the Six Nations,” Canada, August 27, 1921, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 34 J.E. Finch, Inter-Allied Commission of Control, Berlin, to Deskaheh, February 12, 1924, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. 35 A.G. Chisholm to editor of the London (Ontario) Evening Advertiser, October 4, 1923, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 36 Stoker to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Oct 10, 1923, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 37 Scott to Canadian High Commissioner in London P.C. Larkin, July 10, 1923, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 38 Indian agent to Scott, April 2, 1922, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 39 “Ordered Union Jack Taken Down,” unattributed press clipping, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 4, file 57,169–1A. Yet, Deskaheh was clearly driving the agenda; see, for instance, Deskaheh to Decker, January 28, 1924; Decker to Deskaheh February 12, 1924, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker

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papers. Accounts such as B. Titley’s A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986), driven by documents from the Indian Affairs department in Ottawa, portray Decker as the person who was driving events, with Deskaheh appearing more passive. L. Hauptman rightly points out that Deskaheh’s letters show him often ignoring Decker’s advice and making his own decisions, with the Rochester lawyer acting as a skilled practitioner of European laws and methods. Deskaheh, meanwhile, was trying to practise traditional Iroquoian forms of diplomacy, for instance, seeking Italian and French assistance to balance Britain and its Japanese allies. Hauptman, Seven Generations, 129, 136. 40 Chief Deskaheh Tells Why He is Over Here Again, pamphlet printed in London, August 1923, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. 41 Asa Hill, former secretary of Council, to Scott, December 8, 1922; C. Stewart’s letter “to the Chiefs and Warriors of Six Nations,” June 13, 1922; Deskaheh to Stewart, December 5, 1922; Stewart to Deskaheh, December 21, 1922, all in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2284, part 3, file 57,169–1A. 42 Six Nations Council to Queen of the Netherlands, [1923], League of Nations Archives (LONA), R612, file 28075. 43 Netherlands delegation to Secretary-General, April 23, 1923, LONA, R612, file 28075. 44 Colonial Secretary Lord Devonshire to Governor-General, August 30, 1923, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2285, part 3, file 57,169–1B. 45 Foreign Office to Sir Auckland Geddes, undated letter, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 46 Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Joseph Pope to Secretary-General, May 25, 1923, LONA, R612, file 28075. 47 Netherlands delegation to Secretary-General, July 13, 1923, LONA, R612, file 29540. 48 Deskaheh letter to Headway, August 16, 1924, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. 49 “Deskaheh in Appeal to the World League,” Brantford Expositor (Ontario), December 10, 1923. 50 Deskaheh’s report to Six Nations Council, December 20, 1923, St. John Fisher College Special Collections, Rochester, NY, George P. Decker papers. 51 “The Redman’s Appeal for Justice,” text of Deskaheh letter to Secretary-General Eric Drummond, August 6, 1923, printed as a pamphlet in London (n.p., 1923). Article 17 of the League of Nations Charter read in part: In the event of a dispute between a Member of the League and a State which is not a Member of the League, or between States not Members of the League, the State or States not Members of the League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, upon such conditions as the Council may deem just ... Upon such invitation being given the Council shall immediately institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the dispute and recommend such action as may seem best and most effectual in the circumstances.

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52 Six Nations petition transmitted by the four delegations, September 27, 1923, LONA, R612, file 31340. 53 Foreign Office to Sir P.L. Loraine [minister at Tehran], January 22, 1924, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2286, part 4, file 57,169–1C. 54 Foreign Office to minister in Panama, March 4, 1924, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2286, part 4, file 57,169–1C. 55 League Secretariat internal memorandum, July 31, 1923, LONA, R612, file 29540. 56 Prince Arfa to Branting, January 8, 1924, and Secretariat internal memorandum, January 17, 1924, LONA, R612, file 32700. 57 Pope to Scott, October 11, 1923, and G.P. Graham, minister of railways and canals, to Stewart, October 6, 1923, both in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2286, part 3, file 57,169–1C; Pope to Stewart, January 21, 1924, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2286, part 4, file 57,169–1C. 58 Ames to King, December 28, 1923, LONA, R612, file 32700. 59 This version from Hauptman, Seven Generations, 134. 60 A. Thompson, “Six Nations Indians,” report to the Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, Nov. 22, 1923, LONA, R612, file 40899. 61 For examples, see Morgan, “Wigwam to Westminster.” 62 PCO minutes, September 17, 1924, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 63 Acting USSEA to League Secretary-General, November 27, 1924, LONA, R612, file 40899. 64 R. Veatch, Canada and the League of Nations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 91. The word “absurd” was used frequently by Canadian officials in the 1920s to describe the Six Nations appeal. 65 See, for instance, Basic Call to Consciousness, a booklet in which the memory is evoked and elaborated in successive editions in 1978, 1981, and the latest version: Akwesasne Notes, ed., Basic Call to Consciousness (Summertown, TN: Native Voices, 2005). 66 “Declaration of Independence – The Confederacy of Six Nations of the Grand River (Iroquois),” LONA, R-1852, file 12364. 67 W.A. Riddell, Canadian advisory officer in Geneva, to Skelton, July 15, 1929, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 68 Note for Mr. Sugimura, June 18, 1929, LONA, R-1852, file 12364. 69 Indian Affairs to Indian agent C. Morgan, August 1, 1929; undated Council resolution, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 70 Canadian mission in Geneva to External Affairs, August 28, 1929; Scott to Skelton, September 5, 1929; External Affairs to Geneva, September 18, 1929, all in LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 71 R. Dandurand to Scott, June 29, 1930, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 72 Scott to Dandurand, July 8, 1930, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 73 William Monture to Gilbert Monture, July 4, 1958, Trent University Archives, Gilbert C. Monture fonds, 97–017, vol. 1, file 1. 74 CP cable, “Canadian Indians in Costume Appear in British ‘Commons,’” Ottawa Citizen, June 24, 1930, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 75 Fenner Brockway MP to Thomas, 8 July 1930, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1.

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76 “Brantford Braves Ask U.S. to Fight Canadian Tyranny,” Toronto Star Weekly, January 12, 1935, LAC, RG 10, vol. 2287, part 6, file 57,169–1. 77 H. Womsiwor, N. Jouwe, and Z. Sawor, Freedom Committee of West Papua/West New Guinea, to Pierre Trudeau, June 2, 1969, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8572, file 20-IRIAN[2]. 78 “West Irian: Visit of Mr. Nicolaas Jouwe,” memorandum for the prime minister, June 9, 1969; External Affairs to Canadian UN delegation, Oct. 17, 1968, both in LAC, RG 25, vol. 8572, file 20-IRIAN[2]. 79 Robert Thompson MP, “A Case for the Right to Self-Determination of the Papuan Peoples of West New Guinea,” [June 1969], LAC, Wallace Nesbitt papers, vol. 19, file West New Guinea. 80 Most Indonesians have only one name; references in some sources to “Mohammad” Suharto and “Ahmed” Sukarno are incorrect. 81 UN delegation to External Affairs, June 24, 1969, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8572, file 20IRIAN[2]. 82 Canadian embassy in Jakarta to External Affairs, July 24, 1969, File 20-IRIAN[2], Vol. 8572, RG25, LAC. 83 Yearbook of the United Nations 1969: 178; UN documents A/l.574 and A/l.576. 84 The call to “restore” Papua to Indonesian rule was a common one in Indonesian nationalist speeches of the 1950s and 1960s. See, for instance, Suyanto Hadinoto, ed., 25 Tahun Trikora [25 Years after the People’s Threefold Command] (Jakarta, Indonesia: n.p., [1988]); Orders of General Suharto, January 15, 1962, cited in Mar­ wati Djoened Poesponegoro and Nugroho Notosusanto, Sejarah Nasional Indonesia VI: Zaman Jepang dan Zaman Republik Indonesia [National History of Indonesia, vol. VI: The Japanese Period and the Period of the Republic of Indonesia] (Jakarta, Indonesia: Balai Pustaka, 2008), 443. 85 Sukarno, quoted in R.E. Elson, The Idea of Indonesia: A History (Cambridge, UK: Cam­bridge University Press, 2008), 63, 223. 86 Subandrio, An Opening Address to the UN Political Committee (Jakarta, Indonesia: Ministry of Information, [1957]), 8. 87 This and following quotes taken from Voice of the Negroids in the Pacific to the Negroids throughout the World, 5. 88 Ibid. 89 Dutch Ambassador J. H. van Roijen to US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, April 14, 1962, United Nations Archives, S-0884-22-5; US embassy in The Hague to UnderSecretary of State for Political Affairs, March 29, 1962, John F. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Box 26. 90 R.N. Thompson, unpublished memoir, Trinity Western University Archives, Langley, BC. 91 Ibid. 92 “Loud House Debate Sparked by Quiet Assignment to Africa,” Globe and Mail, November 5, 1964, A4; N. MacLeod, “The Mystery of Thompson’s ‘Joyride,’” Toronto Star, November 13, 1964, A21. 93 “Socred on Safari Trying to Free Congo Canadians,” Toronto Star, November 6, 1964, A1; Untitled note on Thompson trip, LAC, Nesbitt papers, vol. 6; “Ask Socred Leader To Help Hostages,” Globe and Mail, November 6, 1964, A1.

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94 Canadian Embassy Jakarta to External Affairs, April 29, 1968, LAC, RG 25, vol. 8571, file 20-IRIAN[1]; Foreign Minister Adam Malik speech to UN, General Assembly Official Records, meeting of November 13, 1969, A/PV.1810; Indonesian government report on act of free choice, Annex B to UN document A/7723; “Indonesia Accepts Plan for Vote in West Irian,” New York Times, October 1, 1966. 95 “Canadian officers’ Report on West New Guinea,” May 28, 1963, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6150, file 50409-A-40[1.2]. 96 Ambassador John P. Sigvaldson to Assistant Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs George Glazebrook, October 21, 1961, LAC, RG 25, vol. 6148, file 50409– 40[8.1]. 97 Canadian Embassy Jakarta to External Affairs, August 11, 1970, LAC, RG 25, vol. 10861, file 20-INDON-2–2. 98 Ibid. 99 See for instance J.L. Sutton, So Many Goodbyes: Episodes in a Foreign Service Career (self-published, 1999), 106–25. The Department of Foreign Affairs produced a Papua policy research document in 2000, but there does not appear to have been any action taken in response to the document. 100 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993), 210. 101 Hauptman, Seven Generations, 117.

Conclusion Race and the Future of Canadian International History DAVID MEREN

This volume’s exploration of race and Canadian international history opened with a provocation. Henry Yu issued a challenge to revisit the stories we tell and how we tell them, informed by an awareness of their potential to either interrogate or reinforce the racial structures of power within and outside of Canada. The contributions to this collection are the beginning of an answer to Yu’s provocation and the broader task of bringing race to bear on Can­ adian international history. In so doing, they have grappled with a number of questions. What are we talking about when we talk about race? How can race be used to explore the history of Canada in the world? What does it add to our understanding of Canada and its international action? And, to paraphrase Yu, how can we write Canadian international history without replicating the exclusions of the past? How do we narrate the story of Canada in the world without reinforcing what he calls the “delusions of race” within the larger story of Canada? This collective effort has demonstrated the necessity and value of deploying race as an analytic category, of placing it at the centre of narratives of Canadian international history, and by virtue of this, of recognizing its power as a structuring agent and causal force. Contributions to this volume have also drawn attention to the fact that much remains to be done to engage with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historiography because of the way race itself was overlooked, if not ignored, in earlier discussions of Canada’s international history. Beyond encouraging recognition of the historical subjectivity of those targeted by racialized power

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structures, exploring these histories facilitates the decentring of the Can­ adian state and nation that is required for a more complex and comprehensive Canadian international history, one that recognizes the multiplicity of links between the peoples inhabiting the northern half of North America and the world beyond Canadian shores. Seizing the contributions of these histories will help ensure that engaging with race does not mean simply producing more critical narratives that leave white males alone at the centre of accounts of Canada in the world; to the contrary, such narratives help reveal how race is embedded in all facets of the Canadian project of rule and create a more inclusive intellectual space at the centre of Canadian international history. Indeed, the diverse contributions to this volume point to a fundamental question, namely, how can we conceive of Canadian international history in a way that ensures an ongoing engagement with race? As Madokoro and McKenzie discuss in the introduction, a more orthodox understanding of Canadian international history, one prioritizing a rather narrow, positivistic recounting of state action and informed by a preoccupation with explaining the dynamics and outcomes of governmental decision making, tended to ignore race. More­over, the emphasis on interstate relations privileged the Canadian nation-state as the object of analysis, thereby reifying the nation and the race-thinking upon which it is based. After all, national-state his­ torical memory is often at odds – sometimes diametrically so – with the historical memory of those whom the nation-state (and its history) excludes.1 What is required is a more inclusive, multifaceted exploration of the relations of “Canada” – its diverse populations, civil society, regions, and governments – with the world. The Canadian state remains present in this more inclusive approach, but it no longer necessarily occupies the centre of analysis; indeed, its presence, actions, and the consequences of its actions may be more implicit than explicit. Consistent with the need to accord greater attention to the agency of nongovernmental actors and structural forces – material and cultural – the state may often be more rightly understood as an object rather than a subject of history. In a similar vein, while the politicians, diplomats, and bureaucrats responsible for Canadian diplomacy remain worthy of study, this must be carried out in a manner acknowledging the ways in which such individuals were products of a society shaped by race-thinking, and who, through their attitudes, words, and deeds, contributed to such race-thinking. Moreover, engaging with race compels us to be more creative in terms of how we conceive of the decision-making process, so that we are better able to acknowledge the influence and impact of those

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individuals, groups, and organizations that were viewed at the time – or in the historiography – as being on the edge of, or excluded from, the foreign policy establishment. Not only do the contributions in this volume bring us that much closer to this more inclusive Canadian international history; they also serve as signposts as we continue to explore how race has shaped this history. A foremost task in this regard is a comprehensive and critical exploration of empire as a central aspect of Canadian international history, something all the more necessary when we recall the mutually constitutive links between race and modern-era colonialism, along with the latter’s justifying ideology – imperialism.2 Building on what has been accomplished in this volume, this task should include exploring how groups and individuals seized the opportunities that empire afforded to contest its racialized logics.3 Yet, we must also remain alert to the oppressive ways in which empire and race intersected, along with the paternalism that informed encounters with populations not part of Canada’s Anglo-Celtic majority. Attentiveness to such dynamics is all the more important given that this paternalism was by no means limited to the imperial era but continued into the post-1945 period as it informed Canadian liberal internationalism. In addition to continuing to excavate the ambiguities surrounding the diverse “afterlives” of the empire of which Canada was a constituent part, we must also examine how race informed Canada’s place and participation in the American empire, as well as Canadian encounters with other imperial systems (and their afterlives), to gain deeper understanding of the roles Canada and Canadians have played in an international system produced by the complex interplay of race and empire.4 Beyond an expression of political and economic power, empire is, of course, a system of cultural power, one involving the production, processing, diffusion, deployment, and displacement of knowledge. With this in mind, contributions to this volume built upon the trend toward a greater geographic diversity in exploring Canadian international history, a prerequisite of engaging with racial structures of power and their influence on the production of historical knowledge about Canada in the world. Interwoven with this expanded spatial perspective exists a similarly pressing need regarding time. We need to pay greater attention to Canadian international history before 1900, not least because it was this period that witnessed the articulation and rise of the race theories that informed events examined in this volume. Conversely, we need to add to the works exploring Canadian international history after 1970 so as to understand the myriad

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ways in which race evolved and operated in the closing decades of the twentieth century, a period marked by profound change both within and outside of Canada. In addition to expanded geographic and chronologic perspectives, addressing the historiographical consequences of race and its intersection with empire means paying heed to the voices of those populations, organizations, and governments affected by Canadian international action, By the same token, it also means being attentive to how such actors influenced Canada. This points to the need, if we take race seriously, for a more expansive approach to the subjects to be studied. A fundamental priority in this regard has to be a comprehensive and ongoing engagement with Indigen­ous peoples and the history of encounters between them and the diverse settler populations that make up Canada. Whitney Lackenbauer’s (Chapter 5) and David Webster’s (Chapter 11) contributions to this volume reveal how the attitudes, ideas, and experiences of encounters between Indigenous peoples and newcomers informed the history of Canada in the world. More broadly, they underscore the fact – one long recognized in the American context5 – that grasping the analytic potential of race to understand Canadian international history requires acknowledging Canada’s origins and evolution as a settler society and, ultimately, the symbiotic link between the “domestic” and “international,” since encounters between Indigenous populations and settlers – not least the state authority tasked with facilitating the colonization of Indigenous lands – served as a critical precedent in Canadian international history. The logic of white supremacy that lies at Canada’s very origin has shaped not only its international action but also interpretations of its place in the world in a manner that reinforces settler colonialism in Canada. It is no accident, for example, that one can plot a direct line between Vincent Massey referring to Canadians as a “docile race of Aborigines” in the context of the American wartime presence in the Canadian North and the effacing of Indigenous peoples and Afro-Canadians in Pierre Vallières’ Nègres blancs d’Amérique, a product of the selective appropriation of the decolonization phenomenon in Quebec. How are we to understand the history of Canadian participation in the British Empire without tackling the colonial project that was westward expansion? How are we to explore Canadian responses to decolonization internationally without reference to the history of relations between Indigenous peoples and the society built upon their territory and displacement? How are we to interrogate the mythology of Canada as a peacekeeping country without reference to the (racialized) mythology of

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Can­ada’s Northwest as a peaceful place overseen by benevolent Royal Northwest Mounted Police “peacekeepers”? Linked closely to the question of Indigenous-Canadian relations and the history of territorial dispossession is that of migration. As is the case with Indigenous history, this volume has demonstrated that although migration history stands as a distinct field of study, it is also a crucial component of Canadian international history. How could it be otherwise when questions of migration, or more accurately, efforts at exclusion, lay at the heart of Canada’s first steps on the world stage? Questions of migration and race, after all, spurred increasingly nationalistic assertions of the Canadian state’s right to impose restrictions on the entry of Indians to Canada. In addition to being part of a global history of migration that witnessed a thickening of national borders, this development can also be situated within the narrative of colonial exception that marked the British imperial enterprise in India and elsewhere.6 Migrations were also central to the Canadian colonization project in the Northwest that was, in its own way, marked by a twinned ethos of nationalism and imperialism. The race-thinking that informed Canadian immigration policy during the imperial era is apparent in the contributions of John Price (Chapter 2) and Paula Hastings (Chapter 1) to this volume. Yet, the chapters by Laura Madokoro (Chapter 7) and David Meren (Chapter 10) underscore the need to continue uncovering how race-thinking remained influential in immigration policy even as notions and discourses of race evolved. How, for example, did race inform the large-scale refugee arrivals of the 1970s, and how does this complicate the narrative trope of “exclusion-to-multiculturalism”? How did these arrivals shape their new society and compel a critical rethinking of not just immigration policy and citizenship, but also the wider scope of Canada’s place in the world? The importance of migration highlights another subject requiring greater study, namely the economic dimension of Canadian international relations, a subject that has traditionally been accorded less attention in the historiography. Given that race as a structure of power can be understood as existing and functioning at the point where culture and economics intersect, we need to pay attention, as Hastings does in this volume, to the ways in which the Canadian state has pursued its foreign economic relations, how race shaped the participation of Canadian business in global capitalist networks, and how such participation informed race-thinking at home. Simi­ lar work is required for the economic dimension of Canada’s international history after its emergence as an autonomous international actor. How did

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race influence Canada’s participation in the construction of the international financial institutions after the Second World War? How did it shape Can­ adian attitudes to the racially loaded concepts of “development” and “modernization”? How do we explain the history of Canadian mining enterprises around the world without recourse to race? The effort to understand the impact of the interplay of race and empire on Canadian international history compels us as well to explore religion. After all, religion occupied a large role in the imperial enterprises so strongly associated with race. Moreover, as Sean Mills (Chapter 4) and Ryan Touhey (Chapter 8) demonstrate in their contributions, the significance of religion to identity formation means that it played a crucial role in race-thinking and racialization. How are we to fully understand the significance to Canadian international history of the participation of Canadians in missionary networks if we do not explore religion and its interplay with race? Religion is also central to understanding the racialized tensions within Canada that informed its international history, not least the logic of ex­ clusion, since the aim was not simply a white man’s country but a white Christian man’s country and, indeed, certain forms of Christianity. Such an objective gave rise to religious difference serving as a basis for exclusion. Grappling with religion helps to highlight the porousness and overlap between “cultural” and “scientific” notions of race, namely the way in which differing religious practices came to inform race-thinking predicated on what were alleged to be apparent and measurable physical differences.7 The close links between nation and religious practice meant that religion was part of the racialization accompanying the systemic anti-Semitism that shaped so much of Canada’s interwar immigration policy; more recently, it has informed the racialization of Muslims in the context of debates swirling around immigration, multiculturalism, talk of Canadian (or Québécois) “values,” and Canada’s participation in the so-called war on terror. Religion also figured prominently in the horrific attack on a Quebec City mosque in January 2017. It bears noting, however, that religion and religious organizations have also served as vehicles of adaptation, resistance, and opposition to the racial structures of power within Canada and its international action. All told, religion also has to be part of the task of recovery associated with reading race into Canadian international history. This lengthening list of subjects points not only to the diversity of ways in which race was manifested in Canadian international history, but also to the necessity of recognizing that race by no means functions as an independent, hermetically sealed force. To the contrary, the concept of intersectionality,

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with its origins in feminist theory and the work of bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and many others to theorize the lived experiences of African American women, emphasizes the mutually constitutive relationship between race and other analytic categories such as class and gender. Although such phenomena can be treated, at least to a certain extent, as analytically distinct and the object of more specific study, intersectionality emphasizes that such categories are “interlocking, mutually determining [and] reinforcing,”8 with an impact that is ultimately greater than the sum of the constituent parts. Consistent with the interpenetration of race and nation highlighted in this volume, understanding the myriad and complex ways in which race operated necessitates studying the diversity of its interactions with other sociocultural phenomena that shape individual and group identities, hierarchies of power, and, ultimately, systems of oppression.9 Acknowledging intersectionality also encourages greater sensitivity to socio-economic and political context and the trap of homogeneous categories, and thus serves as a safeguard against reductive analyses.10 One of the implications of this discussion of intersectionality is that as we continue the task of reading race into Canadian international history, we need to explore how it interacts with class, since, as David Theo Goldberg has observed, “race can be understood to mean either socio-economic status ... or relation to the mode of production.”11 After all, the link between membership in cultural and racialized groups, class position, and the exercise of power in Canada’s “vertical mosaic” has been long recognized.12 This dimension of Canadian international history is apparent when we look at the socio-economic origins of members of the foreign policy establishment, several of whom are referenced in this volume; notwithstanding variations between them, the overwhelming majority were drawn from the various strata of the bourgeoisie. Exploring how their place in Canada’s class structure shaped their race-thinking and, conversely, how the place they occupied was the product of a structure of racial power will yield new insight into Canadian international action and the foreign policy establishment. In a similar vein, understanding how race informed the evolution of immigration and refugee policy in Canada entails taking into account the evolving capitalist order within Canada and abroad, the socio-economic status of those who gained admission, and the place they came to occupy in Canada’s class structure. Given intersectionality’s intellectual origins, and the broader aim of challenging notions of biological essentialism, embracing intersectionality also entails the need to be attentive to the dynamic interplay between race and

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gender, something that has loomed large in the international historiography.13 Paying heed to gender dynamics also encourages recognition that although women have, in general, been underrepresented and neglected in Canadian international history, this reality has been even more pronounced with regard to nonwhite women. Exploring the cumulative impact of race and gender helps us unpack the structures of power that informed Can­adian participation in the Afghanistan war, justified by the building of schools for Afghan girls and the invoking of women’s rights even while murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada went largely ignored, as did the discrepancies in education opportunities between Indigenous communities and the general population. Race, after all, is inscribed on to the body, but as Lackenbauer’s contribution highlights, it is inscribed differently based upon the sex of the body in question and the gender constructions associated with that body. At the same time, gender constructions and the power dynamics accompanying them vary in function of the race that is read upon the body.14 The composition of Canada’s foreign service, for example, was not simply a product of the white supremacy upon which the country was based; it was also the product of a patriarchal order. Understanding the history of the orientation – geographic and otherwise – of Canadian diplomacy is thus impossible without referring to the way in which race and patriarchy informed each other. Francine McKenzie’s (Chapter 3) discussion of Canadian participation in the Paris Peace Conference points to a performance of (imperial) masculinity as Robert Borden joined with the leaders of the Big Three to participate in the construction of an international order that left intact colonial empires and the global colour line, even as Canada moved closer to an “adulthood” that was gendered male. The dynamic interplay between race and gender also encourages us to revisit the historiography, recognizing, as Kimberlé Crenshaw has observed, that what historically has been treated as an objective, authoritative, universal voice has, in fact, usually been “white male subjectivity masquerading as non-racial, non-gendered objectivity.”15 Gender thinking was all too evident, for example, as Arthur Lower deployed an essentializing logic to argue for the inevitability of Canada’s linchpin role in the North Atlantic alliance. Whereas the French were “too feminine – too much emotionalism, too many shrieks of offended dignity” and the British “too masculine [with] too strong a tradition of domination to enable them to accept subordination readily,” Canada was perfectly placed for what Lower estimated was “an essentially feminine role ... to be pleasant, agreeable, supple, and yet get a good

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share of her way.”16 Lower’s observations, beyond highlighting the value of a critical rereading of the “common sense” conveyed in earlier accounts, underscore the need to explore how long-standing notions of “manly” and “effeminate” races, as well as a latent belief in the inherent superiority of patrilineal societies, informed Canadian international action.17 What, for example, happens when we bring gender into conversation with the racethinking that informed the Canadian foreign policy establishment’s response to the various decolonization movements in Africa that Kevin Spooner (Chapter 9) explores in this volume? How did intersections between race and gender thinking inform the proliferation of contacts between Canada and the Global South that accompanied aid efforts? Viewed from the perspective of intersectionality, the potential scope of the intellectual project informing this volume becomes apparent. Reading race into Canadian international history becomes a gateway to engage with the implications of the social, cultural, and linguistic turns, given that it is not possible to fully grasp how each of the analytic categories of race, gender, and class operate without engaging with all of them and acknowledging their interdependence as systems of privilege and domination.18 All told, the more expansive approach to subject matter advocated here holds the potential for contributing to the fundamental shift in how we conceive of, explore, and write Canadian international history. In addition to necessitating the embrace of a wider array of subjects as part of Canadian international history, greater sensitivity to the production of historiographical knowledge requires a similarly expansive approach to sources. This includes a concerted effort to uncover voices and discourses hidden or silenced in the official documentation upon which Canadian diplomatic history has traditionally been based. Touhey’s use of the travel journal of Escott Reid and the personal diaries of Marcel Cadieux and Lester Pearson, for example, recalls Mary-Louise Pratt’s use of travel journals to explore the construction and evolution of the “imperial gaze.”19 This suggests the need to reread official diplomatic reports and memoirs through the prism of race to glean new insight. In rereading such sources, we must be more attentive to the language employed. This naturally includes noting those instances in which explicitly racist language (and, indeed, what was understood to be racist language) is deployed, as several contributions to this volume demonstrate. But it also should be attentive to language that, while not overtly racist, ultimately served as a code for race-thinking. This is all the more important in the post-1945 period, given the terminological and linguistic slippage that occurred parallel to the rise of antiracism as a

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global phenomenon, the discrediting and delegitimization of scientific racism, and the emergence of culture- or identity-based forms of race and racism. Finally, we have to be alert to language that is not employed, to silences, to those instances where race was indeed present, if not predominant, but not explicitly present.20 Notwithstanding its challenging nature, this is a crucial task given that the word race is arguably at its most powerful when it is not pronounced. The Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908, for example, was grounded in a logic of racial exclusion and white supremacy, notwithstanding that the word race does not appear in it. Indeed, grappling with the challenge posed by silence is all the more important in the Can­ adian context given what has been referred to as Canada’s “ideology of racelessness,”21 that is, the refusal on the part of many Canadians to acknowledge the significance of race in their country and its history. This rereading of traditional sources needs to be supplemented by the incorporation of new sources. While this includes an ongoing engagement with non-Canadian governmental archives in order to produce a truly international history recounted from multiple perspectives, we should also seek out those sources that will permit us to uncover ignored histories and hear voices that previously went unheard. Mills’ contribution to this volume is a useful example in this regard; rather than governmental archives, the story he recounts is based upon private French-language publications, Haitian sources, publications by Montreal’s Haitian community, and files generated by civil society organizations. Together, these have yielded an analysis offering important insight into the history of encounters between French Can­ ada and Haiti, one with broader implications for the history of links between Quebec and the larger francophone world. In a similar vein, Price draws upon a range of community histories, personal correspondence, and a wide array of contemporary newspaper articles to construct his account. Hastings has drawn upon private papers to construct the history of those implicated in the transnational circuits of empire, as has Dan Gorman (Chap­ter 6) in his use of papers generated in the nongovernmental sphere. And although Webster uses governmental sources, he examines those of the Department of Indian Affairs that, along with the correspondence between the Haudenosaunee of Grand River and their legal counsel, ensure Indigenous peoples are at the centre of his analysis. All told, historians of Canada’s encounters with the international community and transnational movements, as well as Canada’s connections with racialized others, need to look for sources (and actors) beyond the official records of the Department of External Affairs.

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Embracing a wider range of subjects and a more expansive resource base as part of an ongoing engagement with race will help to destabilize long-standing tropes associated with Canadian international history that reified and naturalized the racialized power structure; it will also help craft new narratives. The need in this regard is especially apparent for the post1945 period. The historiography of Canada in the Cold War, for example, has been dominated by accounts that are more rightly described as being about Canada–United States relations, resulting in interpretations that have tended to obscure much regarding race. The orthodox interpretation of Canada’s Cold War, tending toward Eurocentrism in its emphasis on geostrategic rivalry, the North Atlantic region, and, above all, the dilemma of relations with the American superpower is, in its own way, as problematic as the colony-to-nation narrative centred exclusively on the “white” dominions. Race needs to be at the centre of a more comprehensive interpretation of the history of Canada and the Cold War, one offering insight into how populations – notably non-European ones – that were part of the communist world, along with a wide range of individuals and communities, were constructed into threats to the Canadian body politic. In a related vein, and as Spooner’s contribution to this volume highlights, we need to build upon the works that have appeared in recent years to more deeply analyze how race informed the panoply of Canadian reactions – positive, negative, ambivalent, along with governmental and nongovernmental – to decolonization. It is essential to investigate decolonization, both as a phenomenon unto itself and one that intersected with, became a driving force of, and was shaped by the Cold War, since here was a crucial moment of encounter between Canada and the Global South. Also sorely needed are accounts of how Canada and its peoples participated in and responded to neo-imperial dynamics. Each of these topics – Cold War, decolonization, neo-imperialism – underscore the broader necessity of a critical interrogation of Canadian liberal internationalism and the way in which race informed Canadian actions in multilateral organizations such as the UN, NATO, the Commonwealth, the Francophonie, and an array of international financial organizations. As McKenzie makes clear, race-thinking was present in the earliest instances of Canadian internationalism, and Madokoro’s contribution reveals how racethinking continued to inform it in the so-called “golden age” of Canadian liberal internationalism. Yet, consistent with the more inclusive approach advocated here, and as Gorman underscores in this volume, race can also be employed to explore the array of nongovernmental organizations motivated

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by a liberal internationalist ethos. Moreover, we need to explore how those who found themselves on the margins of, or excluded from, the Canadian project of rule availed themselves of transnational networks, multilateral organizations, and international activism to challenge the racial structures of power within Canada’s borders and beyond. This includes the long history of Indigenous internationalism, but it must also include the histories of those Canadians of Asian, African, or Latin-American origin who employed the global stage as part of their efforts to fight racialized power structures at home and abroad, obtain a place closer to the centre of the foreign policy process, and compel change in Canada’s international action. Given the preceding discussion of the need for a greater diversity of subjects, sources, and narratives as a means to continuing to engage with race in the exploration of Canadian international history, it is fair to ask what our priorities should be in responding to this need. The contributions to this volume point to three overlapping priorities. The first is the need to embrace connective, or entangled, history. Consistent with the discussions above regarding intersectionality and the production of historical knowledge, we need to explore those points of contact, convergence, and mutual influence between what might otherwise be treated as discrete histories. An echo of Edward Said’s earlier advocacy of contrapuntal study, connective history emphasizes the dynamism of the objects of research. Such objects are “not merely considered in relation to one another but also through one another, in terms of relationships, interactions and circulation.”22 Connective history, while sensitive to the multiplicity of perspectives, convergences, and departures attached to different contexts, consists of a self-reflexive effort to place diverse social, cultural, and political objects into conversation with each other. In so doing, it generates new insight on the myriad con­ sequences – direct and indirect – flowing from the interaction between persons, practices, events, or phenomena in one context with those in another, not the least being how such entanglements affect the original elements.23 This connective approach promises to uncover points of commonality and continuity (or rupture) in Canadian international history across time and space that might not otherwise be apparent. It will encourage the more expansive perspective in terms of geography, chronology, and subjects required to understand the ever-shifting, fluid nature of race-thinking, as well as the enduring nature of race as a structuring agent in Canadian international history. The attention accorded to connections and entanglements also offers a means to situate this history in global historical currents, not least those concerned with contesting race-thinking and its impact.24

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Yet, consistent with this volume’s exploration of the theme of mutually constituted domestic and international spheres, connective history’s value is by no means limited to placing “Canada” into conversation with the “abroad.” A fundamental part of this connective approach has to be a greater ability and willingness on the part of anglophone historians to cross the linguistic divide at home, a task Mills and Meren undertake in this volume. To be sure, the aim here is not to reinforce the legacy of British and French settler colonialism or a hierarchical structure of racial power that accords a privileged place to the fruit of such colonialisms; after all, there are other linguistic divides in Canada beyond the French-English cleavage, and these must be crossed if we are to engage with marginalized histories. However, it seems odd to appeal for an exploration of how the constructing and racializing of others has shaped Canadian international history without exploring one of the most obvious and long-standing cases of this dynamic in the Canadian context.25 This is all the more crucial since English and French Canada have a lengthy history of using one another as a convenient scapegoat on to which responsibility can be displaced. A “racing” of Canadian federalism as it pertains to international history is similarly necessary, given the tendency of the federal and provincial levels of government to use each other as an excuse for racialized policies and the fact that the Canadian and Québécois nationalist imaginaries condemn one another in order to assert moral superiority regarding race. Indeed, along with the absolving effect linked to the effacing of empire, and the fortunes of geography that have provided Canadians with the United States as a point of comparison, the French-English divide has been a crucial factor in the enduring strength of Canada’s ideology of racelessness. Crossing this linguistic divide should thus be undertaken with the objective of bringing anglophone and francophone Canada into greater relief, acknowledging differences while at the same time underscoring similarities, if not convergences, with regard to white supremacy. This task, one suggestive of applying the logic of transnational history within Canada, is crucial given the combined (albeit complex, if not often conflictual) efforts of English- and French-speaking populations to build settler societies. This latter point underscores how connective history overlaps with the need for an ongoing engagement with the transnational, another priority in realizing a renewed Canadian international history that engages with race. Exploring the transnational facilitates a decentring of nation and state that is crucial to recovering histories otherwise relegated to oblivion owing to the fixation on a nation-state that is grounded in a racialized logic. Moreover,

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embracing the transnational represents an acknowledgment that global affairs are far more complex than intergovernmental relations and that phenomena beyond the nation-state unite (or divide) populations across inter­ national borders. Engaging with the transnational will facilitate the situating of the “Canadian” experience into global historical and historiographical currents. This said, and without accepting uncritically the existence of the nationstate, we have to recognize that the national frame of analysis remains relevant. Paying attention to local or regional contingency is admittedly a crucial prerequisite to decentring the nation-state, along with the racialized logic underpinning it and its history. At the same time, however, it could reasonably be argued that a primary source of notions of Canada’s racelessness and, more specifically, the neglect of race in the writing of Canadian international history is that, like the French-English divide, the significance of regionalism in Canada has afforded opportunities for displacement and denial. Hence, the razing of Africville becomes a Maritime issue; anti-Asian legislation and the internment of the Japanese during the Second World War become episodes in British Columbia history; Cree activism on the world stage in the face of hydroelectric development is the inevitable consequence of problematic relations between Indigenous peoples and francophone Quebec. To be sure, the local and the regional matter; however, one must be wary of a dynamic whereby Canada’s fragmented nature is deployed to achieve some sort of absolution, obscuring the Canadian nation-state’s responsibility, directly or indirectly, for racist measures and ignoring the fact that the myriad “local” stories of exclusion have informed, and been informed by, a larger project of national rule. It would thus appear that the recovery of regional histories is important to Canadian international history, both as an end unto itself and as a means to realizing more nuanced, comprehensive accounts. Flowing from these first two priorities, a third is that those interested in Canadian international history must engage in a more sustained way with other fields of history and disciplines. Indeed, those interested in Canadian international history face a double challenge. In the first instance, embracing a long-established historiographical trend such as race is necessary if we are to facilitate enriching exchanges with those interested in different historical subjects or in other domains of the humanities and the social sciences. At the same time, exploring race is one aspect of a larger task of renewal that will facilitate participation in and contributions to the global historiographical currents of international history. Indeed, this collection

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took a large part of its inspiration from this pressing need. How, for example, are we to fully grasp the role race has played in Canada’s international history if we do not take into account the influence of nonstate actors such as private activists and organizations? How will we produce effective narratives if we privilege the political power associated with government at the expense of other equally, if not more, crucial structures of power, such as those of class, gender, sexuality, religion, and race? Ultimately, if we are to grapple with the tensions at the points of contact between individual and structure, theory, and practice, what is required is a Canadian international history that recognizes that the histories of high politics cannot be adequately written without the history from below; to the contrary, these histories are interwoven and interdependent. Each of these priorities – seizing the potential of connective history, grappling with the challenges and opportunities of transnational history, and engaging with other historical fields, intellectual disciplines, and analytic categories – brings us back to Yu’s initial provocation. By ensuring that future excavations and explorations of Canadian international history address these priorities and embrace a more inclusive approach in terms of subject matter and sources, we will contribute to the crucial task of seeing through the conceptual borders that are a legacy of focusing only on the Canada and the history of its international action that were defined by exclusion. In so doing, it will be that much easier to acknowledge and understand that race is not an afterthought; nor is it peripheral. Rather, it is at the centre, a fundamental component of Canada and its international history. NOTES 1 D. Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013), 138. In this discussion of memory, Austin draws on M. Hanchard, “Black Memory versus State Memory: Notes toward a Method,” Small Axe 12, 2 (2008): 51. 2 J. Samson, Race and Empire (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2005), 3, 103; S. Hall, “Conclusion: The Multi-cultural Question” in Un/settled Multicultural­ isms: Diasporas, Entanglements, ‘Transruptions,’ ed. B. Hesse (London: Zed Books, 2000), 222. 3 C. Morgan, “‘A Wigwam to Westminster’: Performing Mohawk Identity in Imperial Britain, 1890s–1990s,” Gender and History 15, 2 (August 2003): 319–41. 4 J. Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 5 R. Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); P. Silver, Our Savage Neigh­ bors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008);

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A. Hyde, Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011). See also the forum on Native Americans and American international history in Diplomatic History 39, 5 (Nov­ember 2015): 926–54. 6 R.V. Mongia, “Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport,” in After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation, ed. A. Burton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 196–214. 7 This dynamic can be traced to the Reconquista, when a biologic logic distinguished between “pure-blooded” Old Christians and recent converts to Catholicism, who carried within them, by virtue of their Jewish or Muslim origins, “impure” blood that was allegedly passed along – with the accompanying social category – to their descendants. C. Lorenz, “Representations of Identity: Ethnicity, Race, Class, Gender and Religion. An Introduction to Conceptual History,” in The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. S. Berger and C. Lorenz (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 24–59, 38. 8 V. Satzewich and N. Liodakis, eds., “Race” and Ethnicity in Canada, A Critical Intro­ duction, 3rd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2013), 51. 9 Lorenz, “Representations of Identity,” 34; B. Robnett, “Race and Gender Inter­ sections,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, ed. N. Smelser and P. Baltes (Oxford: Pergamon, 2001), 10: 12681–4; K. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989): 44. 10 Lorenz, “Representations of Identity,” 34. 11 D.T. Goldberg, “The Semantics of Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, 4 (1992): 547. 12 J. Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). See also G. Galabuzi, Canada’s Eco­ nomic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century (Toronto: Canada’s Scholars Press, 2006). 13 Lorenz, “Representations of Identity,” 45; Robnett, “Intersections”; Crenshaw, “De­ marginalizing the Intersection”; K. Canning, “Gender History,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, ed. N. Smelser and P. Baltes (Oxford: Pergamon, 2001), 10: 6607. For discussions of gender, sexuality and colonialism, see B. Voss and E. Casella, eds, The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); A.L. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (New York: Routledge, 1994). 14 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” 48; Canning, “Gender History,” 6608. 15 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” 46. 16 A. Lower, Canada, Nation and Neighbour (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1952), 7. 17 Samson, Race and Empire, 47, 119. 18 Satzewich and Liodakis, “Race” and Ethnicity, 52. 19 M.L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).

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20 For a crucial discussion of the intersection of race, silences, and history, see M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995). 21 C. Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/University of Toronto Press, 2001), 14. 22 M. Werner and B. Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, 1 (February 2006): 38. 23 J. Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42, 1 (February 2003): 39– 44; Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison,” 30–50. 24 Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” 40–42. 25 For example, a primary frustration expressed by students of my master’s seminar exploring race and Canadian international history at Université de Montréal in the winter of 2014 was the tendency of historians to marginalize, if not ignore, francophone Quebec in their narratives of race and Canadian international history.

Selected Bibliography

This selected bibliography includes key readings that influenced the ideas and interpretations in this volume. The works relate to theories of race as well as methodologies that use race as a category of historical analysis. We have organized this bibliography into several categories that highlight the fields and approaches relevant to the study of Canada’s international history. Although each work was placed in the section relating to its primary emphasis, race’s complexity as both a historical phenomenon and analytic category means that many of these works could have been placed in multiple categories. We hope that those interested in carrying on the task of reading race into Canadian international history will find this bibliography a useful point of departure. THEORY AND METHODS Arendt, H. “Race-Thinking before Racism.” Review of Politics 6, 1 (1944): 36–73. Berger, S., and C. Lorenz, eds. The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Chatterjee, P. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Crenshaw, K. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 1 (1989): 139–67. Engel, J., and K.C. Engel. “Introduction: On Writing the Local within Diplomatic History – Trends, Historiography, Purpose.” In Local Consequences of the Global Cold War, edited by J.A. Engel, 1–30. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

302

Selected Bibliography

Gilroy, P. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. London: Routledge, 2002. Goldberg, D.T. “The Semantics of Race.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, 4 (1992): 543–69. Hanchard, M. “Black Memory versus State Memory: Notes toward a Method.” Small Axe 12, (2008): 45–62. Henrikson, A.K. “Mental Maps.” In Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, edited by M.J. Hogan and T.G. Paterson, 177–92. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Hesse, B., ed. Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, ‘Transrup­ tions.’ London: Zed Books, 2000. Hucker, D. “International History and the Study of Public Opinion: Towards Meth­ odological Clarity.” The International History Review 34, 4 (2012): 775–94. Hunt, L. Writing History in the Global Era. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. Jackson, P. “Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘Cultural Turn’ and the Practice of International History.” Review of International Studies 34, 1 (2008): 155–81. Reynolds, D. “International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch.” Cultural and Social History 3, 1 (2006): 75–91. Said, E. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993. Trouillot, M.-R. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995. Tuathail, G.Ó. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. London: Routledge, 1996. Werner, M., and B. Zimmermann. “Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Chal­lenge of Reflexivity.” History and Theory 45 (February 2006): 30–50. Wise, T. Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2013. EMPIRE Bailkin, J. The Afterlife of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Berger, C. The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism: 1867– 1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. Buckner, P. ed. Canada and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Buckner, P., and R.D. Francis, eds. Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. Burbank, J., and F. Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Burton, A., ed. After the Imperial Turn, Thinking with and through the Nation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Chatterjee, P. The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. Darian-Smith, K., P. Grimshaw, and S. Macintyre, eds. Britishness Abroad: Trans­ national Movements and Imperial Cultures. Melbourne: Mel­bourne Univer­ sity Press, 2007.

Selected Bibliography

303

Howe, S. “British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems, and Killing Fields.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, 4 (2012): 691–725. Hyde, A. Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Potter, S. “Empire, Cultures and Identities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain.” History Compass 5, 1 (2007): 51–71. Pratt, M.L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Stoler, A.L. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Ward, S. ed. British Culture and the End of Empire. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2001. Young, R. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. New York: Routledge, 1994. GENDER Boris, E. “‘You Wouldn’t Want One of ’Em Dancing with Your Wife’: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II.” American Quarterly 50, 1 (1998): 77–108. Braudy, L. From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Brooks Higginbotham, E. “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17, 2 (1992): 251–74. Carter, S. Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. Carter, S., L. Erickson, P. Roome, and C. Smith, eds. Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women’s History. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2005. Dudink, S., K. Hagemann, and J. Tosh, eds. Masculinities in Politics and War: Gen­ dering Modern History. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004. Enloe, C. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Erickson, L. Westward Bound: Sex, Violence, the Law and the Making of a Settler Society. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011. McClintock, A. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Con­ test. New York: Routledge, 1995. McGrath, A., and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race and Policy: Aboriginal Women and the State in Canada and Australia.” Labour/Le Travail 38/Labour History 71 (1996): 37–53. Nagel, J. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pickles, K. Female Imperialism and National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. Ruiz, V.L., and E.C. DuBois, eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. Scott, J. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

304

Selected Bibliography

Voss, B., and E. Casella, eds. The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. TRANSNATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HISTORY Anderson, W. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Bielakowski, A. African American Troops in World War II. New York: Osprey, 2007. Connelly, M. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cam­ bridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Dower, J. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Dudziak, M.L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Guoqi, X. Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War. Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Iriye, A. Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Lake, M., and H. Reynolds. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni­versity Press, 2008. Lauren, P.G. Power and Prejudice, The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimin­ ation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988. McKeown, A. Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Pedersen, S. The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empires. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Shimazu, N. Japan, Race, and Equality: Racial Equality Proposal of 1919. London: Routledge, 1998. Snyder, T. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. MIGRATION AND ETHNICITY Abella, I., and H. Troper. None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933– 1948. 3rd ed. Toronto: Key Porter, 2000. Anderson, K. Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. Austin, D. Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013. Ayukawa, M.M. Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891–1941. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. Backhouse, C. Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950. Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/University of Toronto Press, 2001. Bangarth, S. Voices Raised in Protest: Defending Citizens of Japanese Ancestry in North America, 1942–49. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008.

Selected Bibliography

305

Behiels, M. Quebec and the Question of Immigration: From Ethnocentrism to Ethnic Pluralism, 1900–1985. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991. Boyko, J. Last Steps to Freedom: The Evolution of Canadian Racism. Winnipeg, MB: J. Gordon Shillingdon, 1998. Breton, R. “From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism: English Canada and Quebec.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, 1 (1988): 85–102. Calliste, A. “Race, Gender and Canadian Immigration Policy: Blacks from the Caribbean, 1900–1932.” Journal of Canadian Studies 28, 4 (1993/1994): 131–48. Con, H., Ronald J. Con, Graham Johnson, William E. Willmott, and Edgar Wickberg, eds. From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart/Multiculturalism Directorate, Department of the Secretary of State, 1982. Gay, D. Les noirs du Québec 1629–1900. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 2004. Gilmour, J. Trouble on Main Street: Mackenzie King, Reason, Race and the 1907 Vancouver Riots. Toronto: Allan Lane, 2014. Goutor, D. “Constructing the ‘Great Menace’: Canadian Labour’s Opposition to Asian Immigration, 1880–1914.” Canadian Historical Review 88, 4 (2007): 549–76. Hastings, P. “Territorial Spoils, Transnational Black Resistance, and Canada’s Evolv­ ing Autonomy during the First World War.” Histoire sociale/Social History 47, 94 (2014): 443–70. Hudson, P.J. “Imperial Designs: The Royal Bank of Canada in the Caribbean.” Race and Class 52, 33 (2010): 33–48. Iacovetta, F. Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006. –, ed. Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Kaprielian-Churchill, I. “Rejecting ‘Misfits’: Canada and the Nansen Passport.” The International Migration Review 28, 2 (Summer 1994): 281–306. Kelley, N., and M. Trebilcock. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Kishibe, K. Battlefield at Last: The Japanese Canadian Volunteers of the First World War, 1914–1918. Toronto: Kaye Kishibe, 2007. Knowles, V. Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration Policy, 1540–1997. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1997. Lee, J. “Gender, Ethnicity, and Hybrid Forms of Community-Based Urban Activism in Vancouver, 1957–1978: The Strathcona Story Revisited.” Gender, Place and Culture 14, 4 (2007): 381–408. Mackey, E. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Mackey, F. Black Then: Blacks and Montreal, 1780s–1880s. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Madokoro, L. “‘Slotting’ Chinese Families and Refugees, 1947–1967.” Canadian Historical Review 93, 1 (2012): 25–56.

306

Selected Bibliography

Mahrouse, G. “‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in Québec: The Limits of Participation and Dialogue.” Race and Class 52, 1 (2010): 85–96. Mar, L.R. Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Mawani, R. Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871–1921. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009. Mills, S. The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010. Mountz, A. Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Oikawa, M. Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Perin, R., and F. Sturino, eds. Arrangiarsi: The Italian Immigration Experience in Canada. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 1989. Rajala, R.A. “Pulling Lumber: Indo-Canadians in the British Columbia Forest Industry, 1900–1998.” B.C. Historical News 36, 1 (2002/2003): 2–13. Razack, S. ed. Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002. Roy, P. The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914–1941. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003. –. A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1854–1914. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989. Satzewich, V., and N. Liodakis, eds. “Race” and Ethnicity in Canada, A Critical Intro­duction. 3rd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2013. Sharma, N. Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of “Migrant Workers” in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Stanley, T. Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011. Troper, H. “Canada’s Immigration Policy since 1945.” International Journal 48, 2 (1993): 255–81. Walker, B. Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Walker, J.W. St.G. “Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of Visible Minorities in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.” Canadian Historical Review 70, 1 (1989): 1–26. –. “Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies. Waterloo, ON: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/Wilfrid Laurier Uni­versity Press, 1997. Winks, R. The Blacks in Canada: A History. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1971. INDIGENOUS HISTORY IN CANADA Abel, K.M. Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History. Montreal/Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1993.

Selected Bibliography

307

Coates, K.S. Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. Daschuk, J.W. Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2013. Francis, D. The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture. 2nd ed. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. Gélinas, C. Les Autochtones dans le Québec post-confédéral, 1867–1960. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 2007. Haig-Brown, C., and D.A. Nock, eds. With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005. Hauptman, L.M. Seven Generations of Iroquois Leadership: The Six Nations since 1800. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Marcus, A.R. Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Can­adian Arctic. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995. Miller, J.R. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada. 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Morgan, C. “‘A Wigwam to Westminster’: Performing Mohawk Identity in Imperial Britain, 1890s-1990s.” Gender and History 15, 2 (2003): 319–41. Sheffield, R.S. The Red Man’s on the Warpath: The Image of the “Indian” and the Second World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. CANADA’S INTERNATIONAL HISTORY Bothwell, R. Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945–1984. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. Chapnick, A. The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005. Demers, M. Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Rela­ tions between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945. Montreal/Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2014. Donaghy, G., and P.E. Roy, eds. Contradictory Impulses: Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Century. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008. Gendron, R.S. “Tempered Sympathy: Canada’s Reaction to the Independence Move­ ment in Algeria, 1954–1962.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 9, 1 (1998): 225–41. –. Towards a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. Hill, O.M. Canada’s Salesman to the World: The Department of Trade and Com­ merce, 1892–1939. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977. Hilliker, J., and D. Barry. Canada’s Department of External Affairs. Vol. 2, Coming of Age, 1946–1968. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Hillmer, N. O.D. Skelton: The Work of the World, 1923–1941. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press/Champlain Society, 2013. MacFarlane, J. Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

308

Selected Bibliography

MacLennan, C. Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929–1960. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Meehan, J.D. The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929– 41. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. Meren, D. With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the CanadaQuebec-France Triangle, 1944–1970. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012. Mills, S. “Quebec, Haiti, and the Deportation Crisis of 1974.” Canadian Historical Review 94, 3 (2013): 405–35. Price, J. Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011. Spooner, K.A. Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960–64. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009. Touhey, R.M. “Dealing in Black and White: The Diefenbaker Government and the Cold War in South Asia 1957–1963.” Canadian Historical Review 92, 3 (2011): 429–54. Webster. D. Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Contributors

Daniel Gorman is an associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo and teaches at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. He is the author of The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s and Imperial Citizenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging. He is currently working on a book about the development of an international civil service after 1945. Paula Hastings is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses broadly on the global and imperial contexts of Canada’s political and social histories, with a current emphasis on the movement of people, ideas, and commodities between Canada and the Caribbean in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her work has been published in a number of edited collections and journals, including the American Review of Canadian Studies, Histoire sociale/Social History, and the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a professor of history at St. Jerome’s University/ University of Waterloo and the honorary lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Can­ adian Ranger Patrol Group based in Yellowknife. His recent books include Blockades or Breakthroughs? Aboriginal Peoples Confront the Canadian State; A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North: Terrestrial Sovereignty, 1870–1939; The Canadian Rangers: A Living History

310

Contributors

(shortlisted for the Dafoe prize); Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sover­ eignty, Security and Stewardship; and Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (winner of the 2009 Donner Prize for the best Canadian book on public policy). Laura Madokoro is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. Her research explores the intersection of race, humanitarianism, and migration in the twentieth century. She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War. Francine McKenzie is a professor of history at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of Redefining the Bonds of Commonwealth 1939– 1948: The Politics of Preference and the coeditor of Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the 20th Century and A Global History of Trade and Conflict since 1500. Her research examines the history of global trade and the history of the British Commonwealth. She is currently writing a book on postwar reconstruction after the Second World War. David Meren is an associate professor in the Département d’histoire at the Université de Montréal. He is the author of With Friends Like These: En­ tangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944–1970. His current research explores the entangled history of Canadian foreign aid and relations between Canada and Indigenous peoples in the quarter century following the Second World War. Sean Mills is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, as well as A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec. John Price is a professor of history at the University of Victoria. He is currently writing a biography of Victoria Chung, the first person of Asian heritage to graduate from the University of Toronto medical school (1922), and finishing research for a second manuscript on Asian Canadians, the transPacific, and Canada. He is the author of Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific. Kevin Spooner is an associate professor of North American studies and history at Wilfrid Laurier University and a former coordinator of the North

Contributors

311

American Studies Program. He teaches and researches about the history of Canadian foreign policy, more particularly Canada’s contribution to international peacekeeping and Canada’s place in the world from the 1940s to the 1960s. He is the author of Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960–64. His current projects address the impact of decolonization on Canadian relations with Africa. Ryan Touhey is an associate professor of history at St. Jerome’s University/ University of Waterloo. His research emphasis is on post-1939 Canadian foreign relations. His most recent publication is Conflicting Visions: Canada and India in the Cold War World, 1946–76. David Webster is an associate professor of history at Bishop’s University. His research focuses on trans-Pacific interactions between Canada and Asia, the diplomacy of independence movements in Asia, and the histories of international organizations. He is author of Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World, which examines CanadaIndonesia state and nonstate connections over the second half of the twentieth century, and collection editor of East Timor: Testimony. Henry Yu is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on trans-Pacific migration history over the last three centuries. One of his current projects is “Pacific Canada,” an attempt to create new narratives for understanding Canadian history by re­ imagining and recovering the engagements between trans-Pacific migrants, trans-Atlantic migrants, and First Nations and Aboriginal peoples. He was the project lead for the “Chinese Canadian Stories” public history and education project (chinesecanadian.ubc.ca) involving twenty-nine commun­ ity organizations across Canada, and he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the BC Multiculturalism Prize in 2015 for his leadership.

Index

Abe, Kahachi, 64 Aboriginal peoples. See Indigenous peoples ACCT (Agence de coopération culturelle et technique), 243 Africa: Canada’s view of, 216–21; de­ colonization of, 206, 212–16, 218, 219; foreign aid to, 245; Indian communities in, 220–21, 227n40; India’s perspective on, 220–21, 223–24; L. Pearson’s interest in, 275; and Papuan nationalists, 272–73; racialization of, 213–14, 216, 275; and United Nations debates on colonialism of, 212. See also South Africa African Americans, 112, 117–23, 126, 127–31 African Canadians, 59 Agence de coopération culturelle et technique (ACCT), 243 Ah Chew, 70n18 Algeria, 237, 239–40, 251n52 Ames, Herbert, 265 Anderson, Benedict, 209, 256 Anderson, F.W., 67

Andrew, Arthur, 200–1 Anniversaries of Change, 27 anti-Asian riots of 1907, 26–27 anticolonialism, 55, 212–13 antiracism, 31, 34–35, 56, 145, 231, 292–93 Arden-Clarke, Charles, 219 Arendt, Hannah, 5, 160–61, 163 Arfa, Prince, 265 Arthur of Connaught, Prince, 61–62 Asian Canadians: contributions to First World War, 54, 55–60, 68; and the franchise, 57–58, 65, 66– 68; interest in First World War, 61– 63; involved in labour action, 63– 65, 72n52; narrating their struggle, 33–36; racism toward, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71n36, 72n52. See also Chinese Canadians; Japanese Canadians Asian immigrants, 77–78 Atlanticism, 6, 150 Audet, Maurice, 95–96, 101, 105 Australia, 83–84, 173, 182n57 Avenol, Joseph, 265

Index

Babcock, J.P., 61 Bandung Conference, 194 Barbados, 43 Barnes, George, 85 Basu, S.N., 223–24 Beichman, Arnold, 147 Bellegarde, Dantès, 98, 101, 109n21 Bernonville, Count de, 169–70 Biafra, 271 Bienvenue, Jean, 239 Black Narcissus (film), 140 Borden, Robert: imperialist view of, 79– 81, 87–88; and Japanese Canadian recruitment during First World War, 58; view of Japan, 79–80, 82; views on immigration, 78–79, 91n35 Borden government: and First World War recruitment, 63; and franchise in 1917 election, 65; imperialist foundations of, 87; and Japan’s proposal for racial equality, 75–76, 84, 85, 87; sees Canada as linchpin, 187 Botha, Louis, 84 Bowlby, Kathleen, 149 Brant, Joseph, 259 Branting, Hjalmar, 265 British Guiana, 42–43, 44 Britishness, 142, 146, 232 Brockway, Fenner, 268 Brown, Adam, 38–39 Burde, R.J., 66 Burns, E.L.M., 149 Cadieux, Marcel, 177, 195–97, 245 Canada, Government of: and affinity to United Nations, 146–47; antiracial policies of, 144–45, 146; attitude toward racism after 1945, 141–42, 153–54; and biculturalism, 233, 237– 38; and Britishness, 142–46; colonialism of, 39, 43, 48–49, 129–30, 143, 188, 207, 255–56; and Convention on Refugees, 161, 162–63, 165, 168– 77, 178, 181n4; economic self-interest and humanitarianism, 165–67, 178;

313

effect of McKinley tariff on, 38, 39; foreign aid rivalry with Quebec, 243–45; and the franchise in 1917 election, 65; and francophone immigration, 236–38, 240; honouring of D. Jung, 26–28; honouring of H. Green, 25–26; and Inuit, 124–27; immigration from North Africa, 250n44, 251n52; immigration policy of 1950s, 143–44, 156n22, 164, 180n38; immigration policy of 1960s, 176–77; Islamophobia of, 229; and Japan’s race proposal, 75–76, 84, 85, 87; and liberal internationalism, 50–51, 140, 141–42, 145, 146–47, 153–54, 162, 163; opposition to use of African American soldiers in North, 127–31; and Papuan nationalists, 270, 271, 275– 76; and Paris Peace Conference, 74, 75, 81, 86–87, 89n9; race-thinking of, 162, 163, 168, 171–75, 178, 237, 238, 243–45, 246; racial practices in international action, 43–51, 61, 63, 77–79, 85–86, 142–43, 146, 191, 198, 201, 202, 216–21, 229–30, 231–33; recruitment during First World War, 57, 63, 68; refugee policy, 161–62, 165–67, 175; relations with India, 183–85, 187–94, 194–201; relations with Jamaica, 39, 48–49; relations with Pakistan, 198, 201; relations with West Indies, 43; and Six Nations fight for nationhood, 254, 256–69, 276, 277; sovereignty concerns of, 125, 170–71; support for British colonialism, 55, 56, 207, 212–16, 221–22; ties to Haiti, 106; trade and immigration with West Indies, 38–51; and US construction in Northern Canada, 116, 123–24; as white settler society, 246; white supremacy, 172, 232–33, 238. See also Department of External Affairs

314

Canada-Haiti Committee, 95 Cantave, Philippe, 101, 103, 108n11 Carlow, Ezra, 56 Carter, H.H., 166 Cecil, Robert, 83, 84 Chance, Leslie, 160, 167, 170, 171, 173 Chapdelaine, J.A., 213 Charlie Hebdo, 228 China: and African decolonization, 218; Canada’s immigration policy for, 164; and Canada’s refugee policy, 175, 182n64; at Paris Peace Confer­ ence, 83; relations with Great Britain during First World War, 62–63; and relations with India, 192, 193, 199; and Six Nations fight for nationhood, 264; treatment of in First World War, 67 Chinda, Viscount, 83 Chinese Canadians: and D. Jung, 25; and the franchise in BC, 66; fighting in First World War, 60–61, 79, 91n40; and head tax, 40, 77; labour action, 64–65 Chou En Lai, 193 Christie, Loring, 255 Churchill, Winston, 260 Circé-Côté, Éva, 99 Clark, Grenville, 151 class as source of future race studies, 290 Claxton, Brooke, 127 Clemenceau, Georges, 82 Cold War: and decolonization of Africa, 212, 214–15, 216, 218, 219; ideas for future study on race, 294; and India’s nonalignment, 184, 192–201, 202 Collignon, Louis, 104, 105 colonialism: of British in India, 55–56; in Canada, 39, 43, 48–49, 129–30, 143, 188, 207, 255–56; Canada’s support for British, 55, 56, 207, 212–16, 221–22; ideas for future study on race, 287–88; India’s view of British,

Index

221–23; Indonesia’s claim to West Papua, 269–73, 275–76; and United Nations, 212; W. Woodside on, 152–53. See also decolonization; imperialism Colquhoun, Robert, 58 Commonwealth: and decolonization of Africa, 213, 215; and Great Britain, 140; and India, 199–200; and South Africa, 141–42, 144–45, 146; W. Woodside on, 150 communism, 169–70 Conacher, Lionel, 148 Congo, 245, 273 Congrès de la langue française, 97–98, 108n8 connective history, 295–96 Cormack, James, 45–46 Cousineau, Albert-F., 105 Couve de Murville, Maurice, 238 Creole, 101 Crystal Two, 124 cultural paradigms, 14–15 Dandurand, Raoul, 268 Das, Taraknath, 55 Dawes, Mrs. E.J., 47 De Gaulle, Charles, 229–30, 235 Decker, George P., 259, 261, 262, 279n39 Declaration of Atlantic Unity, 151 decolonization: in Africa, 206, 212–16, 218, 219; and Canada, 16–17, 207; and francophone immigration, 237; ideas for future study on race, 294; and India, 188; after Second World War, 140 Delisser, Herbert George, 47–48, 49 Deniau, Xavier, 240–41 Department of External Affairs: African Americans, 127; and African decolonization, 207–8, 212–13, 218, 221, 223; British Colonial Office consultations, 215–16, 222; bureaucratic

Index

culture and race, 162, 186, 209, 210, 220, 224; and historiography 8, 11; Papuan nationalist movement, 271; on race and international relations, 146; relations with India, 185, 188, 189–90, 191, 193–96, 201, 223; Six Nations fight for nationhood, 265, 267; and United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 168, 173, 175, 177–78 Deskaheh, Chief (Levi General), 254, 257, 259, 260–63, 264, 267, 279n39 Desnoyers, Anthime, 105 Devonshire, Lord, 263 Dick, Amos, 117 Diefenbaker, John, 144–45, 146; government of, 174, 233 Diori, Hamani, 243 DuBois, W.E.B., 73, 74 Dulles, John Foster, 192 Dupont, C.T., 67 economics as source of future studies of race, 288–89 Egan, W.J., 46–47 Ethiopia, 273, 275 ethnocentrism, 232–33, 234, 236, 237– 38, 240–41, 243 ethnosexuality, 113–15, 132–33 Fairclough, Ellen, 172 Feng Shengguang, 65 Firmin, Anténor, 95 First Nations. See Indigenous peoples First World War: Asian Canadians’ participation in, 54, 55–63, 68, 79, 91n40; Canadian government recruitment for, 57, 58–59, 63, 68; China-Britain relations during, 62–63; and the franchise for Asian Canadians, 66–68; and immigration from West Indies, 43–44; JapanBritain relations during, 61–62; and R. Borden’s view, 80–81

315

Fisher, A.I., 66–67 Ford, Robert, 214–15 foreign aid, 243–45 Fortier, L.M., 41, 168, 170, 171, 176, 250n45 Foster, George, 38 France: and Charlie Hebdo, 228; colonization analogy, 241; and foreign aid to Africa, 245; and Francophonie, 243; and immigration to Canada, 236–38, 240–41; and race-thinking, 246; relations with Quebec, 234–36 franchise: for Asian Canadians, 57–58, 66–68; and 1917 election, 65 Francophonie, 242–45 Gabon, 243, 244, 245 Gabon Affair, 243, 244 Gadsden, Burges J., 67 Garlow, Chauncey, 268–69 Garran, Robert, 84 gender, 100, 113–15, 131–33; and future studies of race, 291–92. See also masculinity Germany, 80–81 Ghana, 215, 217–20 Gill, Evan, 217–20 Gingras, Jules-Bernard, 100–1, 105 Glazebrook, George P. de T., 75, 85, 86, 215–16, 219–20 Gompers, Samuel, 73, 74 Gray, R.C., 122–23 Great Britain: and African decolonization, 206, 212–16; and anti-imperialist action in India, 55–56; and Common­­­ wealth, 140; contrast between Canadian and Indian views on colonialism of, 221–22; decision to go to war in 1914, 68; decline of, 153; as postcolonial state, 142–43; R. Borden’s view of, 79–81, 87–88; relations with China during First World War, 62–63; relations with India in 1950s, 188; relations with

316

Japan before First World War, 61– 62, 78–79; and Six Nations and nationhood, 257, 259–62, 263, 265, 268–69; and Suez Canal, 199; and South Africa, 145 Great War Veterans Association (GWVA), 66–68 Green, Howard, 25–26 Guirma, Frédéric, 273 Gwatkin, Willoughby G., 58, 59 habitus, 15, 209–10, 211 Haiti: antisuperstition campaign in, 102–3, 110n43; and Quebec, 94–96, 103–4, 106–7; and Quebec immigration, 107, 239; Quebec’s missionary work in, 104–7; Quebec’s racialization of, 96–97, 101–2; representation at 1937 congress, 97–98; ties to Quebec through French language, 98–101 Harper, Stephen, 229, 255 Haudenosaunee Confederacy, 254, 256–69 Heeney, Arnold, 168 Heron, Mary McNeill, 121 Hinduism, 185, 195–97, 220 Ho Chi Minh, 73, 74 Holmes, John, 213, 222 Holness, Mercy Ann, 46–48, 49–50 Homma Tomekichi, 57 Hughes, Billy, 83–84, 92n76 Hughes, Sam, 58 humanitarianism, 163, 165–67, 173, 178 imagined communities, 4, 107n1, 209, 233, 240 immigration: Canada’s policy in 1950s, 143–44, 156n22, 164, 180n38; Canada’s policy in 1960s, 176–77; effect of race-thinking on, 163–65; effect of white supremacy on, 172, 238; francophone, 236–38, 240–41; and Germany, 180n38; of Haitians to

Index

Quebec, 107, 239; from North Africa to Canada, 250n44, 251n52; and Quebec, 236, 239–40; R. Borden’s views on, 78–79, 91n35; and racism, 43–50, 77–79; and West Indians, 39–50 Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), 260 imperialism: of Borden government, 75–76, 87–88; ideas for future study on race, 286; legacy of, 11–12; in R. Borden’s worldview, 79–81; racialized politics of, 50; W. Woodside’s view of, 150. See also colonization; decolonization India: British colonialism in, 55–56; and E. Reid, 183–94, 197–201; immigration to Canada, 77–78; nonalignment, 184–85, 192–201, 202; and racethinking in Canada, 184–85, 191, 198, 201, 202; race-thinking and Hinduism, 195–97; relations with Canada, 187–88, 194–97; and Commonwealth, 199–200; US relations with, 188, 190–91, 192, 194; view of British colonialism in Africa, 221–23; view of Vietnam, 197–98; views of Africa, 220–21, 223–24, 227n40 Indian Act, 122, 258 Indian community in East Africa, 220– 21, 227n40 Indigenous peoples: and Canadian settler colonialism, 29–30, 255–56, 287–88; and postwar Canada, 124– 29; racialized view of, 113–15, 131– 33, 262, 266; reaction to African Americans, 112, 120–23; reaction to Alaskan Highway construction, 116–17; recruitment of in First World War, 57, 59, 63; role in developing Canadian North, 113, 116; Six Nations fight for nationhood, 254, 256–69

Index

Indo Canadians, 55, 71n36 Indochina, 196 Indonesia, 269–73, 275–76 Intergovernmental Committee on European Migration (ICEM), 173 International Labor Organization (ILO), 85–86 International Refugee Organization (IRO), 164, 165–67 International Student’s Service, 151 Inuit, 124–27, 128–29 Iroquois Confederacy, 254, 256–69 Islamophobia, 21n6, 228–29 Jamaica, 38–39, 45–50 James, Arthur L., 130 Japan: and First World War, 68; international standing 67, 76–77; immigration to Canada before First World War, 78–79; proposal for racial equality by, 74–76, 82–86, 87; R. Borden’s view of, 79–80, 82; relations with Great Britain before First World War, 61–62, 78–79; T. Roosevelt’s view of, 90n20 Japanese Canadians: in First World War, 57–58, 59–61; the franchise, 66–68; internment of during Second World War, 25–26; labour action, 64, 65; protest naming federal government building after H. Green, 25–26 Jim, Lillian, 60 Johnson, Pauline, 259 Jordan, David Starr, 76 Jordan, John, 62–63 Jouwe, Nicolaas, 270 Jung, Douglas, 25, 26 Jurgensen, Jean-Daniel, 240 Keenleyside, Hugh, 129, 166 Kent, Tom, 177 Kenya, 212–13 Kenyatta, Jomo, 213

317

Khrushchev, Nikita, 198 King, W.L. Mackenzie, 169, 265; government of, 165, 187 Kingsley, J. Donald, 166 Kitigawa, Keiko Mary, 26 Komagata Maru, 55, 79 Koo, Wellington, 83 Kubota, Sainosuke, 57, 58, 59 Kumar, G.D., 55 Laurier, Wilfrid, 77; government of 78–79 League of Nations, 81, 82–85, 254, 255, 263–65 Léger, Jean-Marc, 242 Léger, Jules, 199, 213, 235, 237–38 Lei Gen, 65 Leising, William, 120 Lescot, Elie, 103–4, 105, 110n43 Lewis, Jacob, 267 liberal internationalism: and Canada, 12–13, 50–51, 140, 141–42, 145, 146–47, 153–54, 162, 163; ideas for future study on race, 294–95; and mental maps, 18–19; and race, 50–51, 162, 163; of United Nations Association in Canada, 148–49; and W. Woodside’s views, 149–52, 153; and world government, 151 Lindt, August, 174, 175 Lloyd, Trevor, 124 Logan, Hance, 48 Lower, Arthur, 150 Lyttelton, Oliver, 212 MacDermot, Terrence, 220–21, 225 Mackenzie, Ian, 66 MacKenzie, J.A., 66 MacLean, J.D., 61 Macmillan, Harold, 145 Macpherson, Duncan, 244 Makino, Baron, 82–83, 84, 85 Makonnen, Prince, 273, 275 Malouin, Reine, 100

Index

318

Malraux, André, 235 Manning, Ernest, 275 Marois, Pauline, 228 Martin, Paul, Sr., 154 masculinity: British, 76, 80–82; feminist ideas on, 91n52, 115; R. Borden and, 87; and race, 114. See also gender Massey, Vincent, 112, 287 Massey, William, 84 Mau Mau uprising, 212–13 McGreer, Edgar D., 216–17, 219 McInnes, Graham, 194–95 McKay, Theo, 48–49 mental maps: of Canadian policy makers, 255–56; and liberal internationalism, 18–19; and Papuan nationalism, 271, 272, 275, 276; of primitiveness, 277; Quebec and Haiti, 96 Mesher, Dorothy, 128 Michael, Simonie, 126 migration/migrants, 20, 35–36, 173, 182n64, 288. See also immigration Mikuriya, Tamotsu, 59–60 Mitchell, G.M., 238 Mitchell, Philip, 220–21 Morgenthau, Hans, 150 Mousir, Elwyn P., 41–42 Mudaliar, Ramaswamy, 152 multiculturalism, 54, 229, 288–89 Naglingniq, Tomassie, 125 Nehru, Jawaharlal: and British colonialism in Africa, 221; and Common­ wealth, 145; L. Pearson and, 193, 198, 204n36; socialism of, 186, 203n5; and Suez Canal, 199 neo-imperialism, 243–45 Netherlands, 263–64, 273 Nicholson, J.R., 238 Nicolson, Harold, 83, 84, 85 Niger, 245 Nkrumah, Kwame, 218, 219 nongovernmental organizations, 142, 174, 294–95 Nooshoota, Ooleepeeka, 125

Now – The Peace (documentary), 139–40 Oliver, John, 66, 67–68 pacificism, 81 Pakistan, 190–91, 198, 201 pan-Africanism, 218–20, 225 Papuan nationalist movement, 254–55, 269–73, 274, 275–76, 277 Paris Peace Conference: and Canada, 74, 75, 81, 86–87, 89n9; and racial equality, 74–75, 82–85 Patry, André, 106 Pearson, Lester B.: and Africa, 275; and African American troops in Quebec, 127, 130, 131; and British colonialism/ imperialism, 212; and E. Reid, 193, 200; and India, 187, 193, 198, 202; and Nehru, 204n36; as secretary of state for external affairs, 216 Pillai, Raghavan, 222 Pope, Joseph, 207, 263–64 Powaschuk, Mike, 117 Powell, Enoch, 143 public diplomacy, 150–51, 200–1 Qaumagiaq, Saami, 125 Quebec: and African Americans based in, 127, 128–31; anti-Muslim sentiment in, 228; characterized as colony, 241–42, 246; Congrès de la langue française (1937), 97–98, 108n8; and decolonization, 16; and foreign aid, 243–45; and la francophonie, 242–43; and French language, 98–101; and Haiti, 94– 96, 96–97, 101–2, 103–4, 106–7; Haitian immigration to, 107, 239; immigration, 236; missionary work in Haiti, 104–7; promotion of francophone immigration to, 239–41; race and identity, 229– 30, 231–34; racialization of immigration policy, 239–40; “reasonable

Index

accommodation” debate, 228; relations with France, 234–36; and Second World War, 102, 109n30; as white settler society, 242, 246 race/racism: toward African Amer­icans, 118, 127–31; toward Asian Canadians, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 72n52; toward panAfricanism, 225; and Canada’s immigration policy, 43–50, 77–79; and Canada’s view of Africa, 216–21; and Canadian identity, 229–30; climatic determinism, 43; and disenfranchising nonwhites, 29–31; and expulsion of South Africa from Common­ wealth, 144–45, 146; global literature on, 9; historicizing, 5, 8, 9–10, 28– 29, 32–33, 208–11; and historiography, 7–8; and Indian Canadians, 55, 71n36; and Inter­national Labor Organization (ILO) membership, 85– 86; Japan’s proposal for racial equality, 74–75, 82–86; and language, 98– 101, 152; on narratives of past racism, 28–29; obscured, 8, 58–59; Quebec views of Haiti, 95–96; and Quebec’s identity, 229–30, 231–33; and racethinking, 163; W. Woodside’s view of, 150, 152–53. See also race-thinking; racialization; white supremacy race-thinking: and Canada-Quebec rivalry in foreign aid, 243–45; of Canada-Quebec-France relations, 246; of Canada’s promotion of franco­phone immigration, 237, 238; and Canada’s refusal to sign Con­ven­ tion on Refugees, 168, 171–75, 178; of Canadian diplomats, 162, 177; of Canadian officials about African Americans, 117; effect on immigration bureaucracies, 163–65; explained, 5–6, 160–61; and H. Arendt, 5, 160–61, 163; and liberal internationalism, 162, 163. See also mental maps; racialization; white supremacy

319

racialization: of Africa, 213–14, 216, 275; of African American and Indigenous relations in Canada’s North, 113–15, 131–33; and Canada’s Britishness, 142–43, 146; of Canada’s view of India, 184–85, 191, 198, 201, 202; of Canada–West Indies relations, 50– 51; of Canadian recruitment during First World War, 57, 58–59; and diplomacy, 254–55, 256, 273, 277; E. Reid’s view of India, 186; of India and Hinduism, 194–97; of Indigen­ ous peoples by Canadian government, 262, 266; of international order before First World War, 76–81; of Quebec’s immigration policy, 239– 40; Quebec’s view of Haiti, 96–97, 101–2; of R. Borden’s worldview, 87. See also mental maps; race/racism; race-thinking; white supremacy RCMP, 120–21, 122, 262–63, 264, 267 Reid, Escott: fascination with India, 185–87; and India’s policy on colonialism, 222–23; intellectual background, 203n5; and relations with India, 183–84, 188–94, 197–201; on use of African American troops in Quebec, 127 Reid, Ruth, 189 religion as source of future studies on race, 289 Ritchie, Charles, 190, 195 Roberts, Owen, 151 Robertson, Norman, 175–76, 212 Robinson, John C., 273 Roosevelt, Theodore, 90n20 Ross, W.R., 66 Rowell, Newton, 71n36 Roy, Camille, 101 Roy, Louis, 105 Salgado, Pierre, 103 Scott, Duncan Campbell, 258–59, 260, 262, 265, 266, 268 Scott, William D., 41, 42

320

Second World War, 25–26, 102–3, 109n30, 165 Selassie, Haile, 273 Sharp, Mitchell, 245 Sifton, Arthur, 86 Singh, Bhai Balwant, 55 Singh, Harnam, 55–56 Singh, John Baboo, 56 Singh, Kapoor, 63 Singh, Mayo, 63–64 Six Nations, 254, 256–69, 276, 277 Skelton, O.D., 49–50, 268 Smith, Byron J., 122 Smith, C.E., 171 Smuts, Jan, 83, 84 Sokichi Hemmi, 63 South Africa, 141–42, 144–45, 146 Soviet Union, 194, 198–99, 200, 212, 214, 218 St. Laurent, Louis, 127, 190, 202, 273 Stewart, Charles, 262, 268 Subandrio, 272 Suez Canal crisis, 199 Sukarno, 272 Tébaud, Jules, 98 Thompson, Andrew, 263, 266–67 Thompson, Robert N., 270–72, 273, 275 Toynbee, Arnold, 151 transnationalism, 22n16, 208–11, 225; and Britishness, 142; ideas for future study of race, 20, 293, 296–97; transnational movements, 15, 77, 90n22 Tremblay Commission, 236 Trudeau, Justin, 255 Trudeau, Pierre, 270, 271 Truman, Harry, 273 Tupper, Charles H., 66 Ukita Goji, 61 UNA-C (United Nations Association in Canada), 142, 148–49 UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), 166, 173, 174

Index

United Kingdom. See Great Britain United Nations (UN): and Canada, 146–47; and colonialism in Africa, 212; and Convention on Refugees, 164–65, 167, 174; and Papuan nationalists, 255, 270–71; and world government, 151–52 United Nations Association in Canada (UNA-C), 142, 148–49 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 167–69; Canada’s decision not to sign, 169– 71; Canada’s race-thinking on, 168, 171–75, 178; Canada’s ratification of, 175–77; criticisms of, 161; and deportation, 169–70, 181n41 United States: and Canada-India relations, 193; and Canada’s North, 116, 123–24; and Convention on Refugees, 168; and Dutch-Indonesian talks, 273; and H. Singh, 55; and Haiti, 104; and leadership, 81; and McKinley tariff, 38, 39; and Pakistan, 190–91; at Paris Peace Conference, 84; relations with France, 241; relations with India, 188, 190–91, 192, 194; relations with Inuit, 124–27; relations with Jamaica, 49 Universal Races Congress, 77 Vancouver District Labour Council (VDLC), 27 venereal disease, 118–23, 128–29 Viatte, Auguste, 100 Vietnam, 197–98 Wee Hong, 60 Wee Tan Louie, 60 Weis, Paul, 173 West Indies, 38–50 West Papua, 269–73, 274, 275–76 White Paper on immigration (1966), 176–77 white settler societies, 31–32, 164, 242, 246

Index

white supremacy: and Australia’s refugee policy, 182n57; and Canada’s identity, 232–33; and Canada’s immigration policy, 172, 238; and disenfranchising nonwhites, 29–31; effect on Japan’s rise as world power, 76–77; ideas for future study on race, 287–88; in settler societies, 31–32. See also race/racism; racethinking; racialization Whiteside, A.M., 66 Whitten, Lyman P., 130–31

321

Wilgress, Dana, 186, 190 Wilson, Woodrow, 82, 83, 84–85, 92n76 Wint, Theophilus, 48 Woodside, Willson, 142, 147–48, 149–53 Woolford, E.G., 44 world federalism, 151 world government, 151–52 Wrong, Hume, 201 Yamazaki Yasushi, 57–58 YMCA, 172

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