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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Phillip Buckner, editor. Canada and the End of Empire. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. 2005. Pp. vi, 328. Cloth $85.00, paper $29.95.
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| This timely collection consists of a comprehensive introduction and eighteen impressive chapters that rally around the theme of identifying, examining, and explaining Canada's devolution from the British Empire. The second half of the twentieth century, particularly the 1950s and 1960s, is the time period in focus. With the exception of editor Phillip Buckner's essay on Queen Elizabeth II's 1959 royal tour of Canada, all of the contributions to this volume originated as papers for a symposium held in 2001 at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. |
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The major revisionary motivation behind this collection is to recognize that Canada has developed its own historiographical tradition out of a sense of cultural nationalism that, ironically, downplays previously dominant British imperial influences. Buckner is a long-time crusader for bringing back British influence on both Canada's history and historiography as a central concern. To this end, the first essay in this book, by John Darwin, provides a comprehensive background to Canadian debates over the end of the British Empire. The underlying theme throughout the chapters is the process of Canada's ongoing realignment away from Britain. Buckner identifies 1956–1967 as the crucial decade when English-speaking Canadians were forced to address the "lingering death of empire" (p. 9). |
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