Reframing Canada’s Great War: Liberalism,sovereignty,and the British Empire c. 1860s–1919

Introduction

The centenary of the Great War has revived historical debate over the legacies of the conflict that convulsed the globe from 1914–1918: a world war that entailed far-reaching consequences for the European empires, their subject peoples, and the prevailing imperial world order. By 1919, as empires teetered and collapsed, national self-determination and internationalism appeared ascendant. In Canada, which—in common with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and tiny Newfoundland—joined the distant overseas war as a Dominion of the British Empire, historians have emphasized the Great War’s seemingly pivotal role in the development of a post-imperial national identity. In this line of argument, the crucible of the Western Front, and the Battle of Vimy Ridge in particular, marked the symbolic departure toward a new Canadian nationalism and an independent foreign policy. ³

This “Liberal-nationalist” interpretation remains deeply influential in Canadian historiography, though new works have increasingly challenged and contextualized its claims. ⁴ In recent years, moreover, imperial historians have rediscovered the significance of the British Dominions and their central role in Britain’s imperial world-system. There was, in fact, a “British World” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a transoceanic imperial community—both real and imagined—that linked the United Kingdom and its settler empire in tightly integrated networks of people, goods, and ideas. ⁵ “Here, in some ways,” as James Belich writes, “was a provincial collective identity… [that] made the Dominions provinces of a superpower[,]… co-owners—not mere subjects—of the world’s largest empire.” ⁶ In historian John Darwin’s phrase, the Dominions were “the great auxiliary engines of British world power[.]” ⁷ And the auxiliaries proved their worth in the Great War. Collectively, the Dominions mobilized 1.3 million soldiers, the vast majority of whom were volunteers who served on the Western Front. In Canada alone, close to 600,000 men from a population of only 8 million enlisted in the armed forces. But the Dominions’ contribution was not only measured in manpower. Canada in particular was a granary and arsenal of the Empire, providing the bulk of Britain’s imported food and up to one-third of the shells fired by British forces in Europe. From 1914–1918, “Greater Britain”—Britain plus the Dominions—was a de facto polity engaged in a common war effort. Revealingly, the French premier, Georges Clémenceau, described the British as “un peuple planétaire.” ⁸

Yet despite new historical scholarship that highlights the depth and longevity of the British World into the 1960s, studies of Canadian politics, political thought, and foreign policy nonetheless continue to downplay the British Empire in favour of national, continental, and transatlantic frameworks. ⁹ This reflects, perhaps, a disconnect between historians and International Relations scholars, as well as the relative decline of political, diplomatic, and international histories in the wake of the cultural and global “turns.” ¹⁰ Furthermore, when Canada’s political and international historiography does confront the Empire, it bears the enduring imprint of Carl Berger’s The Sense of Power (1970), which argued that imperialism, or the desire for closer union between Britain and the Dominions, was “one form of Canadian nationalism.” Focusing on what he regarded as a narrow, “reactionary” idea of imperialism, Berger reinforced the prevailing Liberal-nationalist narrative of a clash between a Liberal, North-American Canada on one hand, and a Conservative, often anti-American, imperial Britishness on the other. ¹¹ But this dichotomy is overstated. It downplays the pervasive role of empire in Canadian history, relies on anachronistic conceptions of liberalism, imperialism, and colonial nationalism, and displays what historian Simon Potter has identified as a post-Dominion tendency to “exaggerate the significance of… milestones on the road to national independence[.]” ¹² In practice, the Dominions enjoyed a wide measure of sovereignty within the British Empire, and for most Canadian Liberals there was no necessary contradiction between a staunch Canadian patriotism and a British imperial identity. As John W. Dafoe, the Liberal editor of the Manitoba Free Press, argued in 1920, Britain and the Dominions remained “one and indivisible through the unimaginable strain of the great war [sic],” and emerged on the other side as a collection of “self-governing British nations… of equal status, joined in a partnership of consent.” ¹³

This article, therefore, rethinks how leading Canadian Liberals understood their Dominion’s position in international relations and its role in the Great War. Specifically, it situates an elite group of journalists, professors, lawyers, and politicians within the British imperial world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to examine their political thought in a broad historical context. Though Canada’s sacrifice in the Great War undoubtedly reverberated as an affirmation of nationhood, I draw on extensive published as well as archival material to argue that Liberal intellectuals and politicians nonetheless imagined their Dominion as a “British nation” in North America and an integral part of a British imperial community in international politics.

The essay proceeds in five parts. First, it outlines mid-Victorian Liberal arguments over the political future of Britain’s North American colonies. With these main positions established, parts two and three focus on the growth of Canadian sovereignty before 1914. During this period—predominantly but not exclusively under Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier—Liberals asserted Canada’s distinct interests and identity in international relations under the doctrine of “colonial autonomy.” At the same time, however, they affirmed their role in an evolving imperial system premised on the recognition of Dominion sovereignty. The fourth section then turns to the outbreak and course of the Great War to analyze how Liberals reacted to the European conflagration and justified Canada’s unprecedented military mobilization on behalf of the British Empire. Far from making a radical departure in their views, Liberals articulated their visions of Canada’s role in the conflict in the deeply entrenched language of British imperial identity. Finally, the article concludes by briefly assessing the war’s influence on Liberal ideas of empire and internationalism at the outset of the interwar years.

The colonial dilemma

The Dominion of Canada was founded in 1867 in the context of a series of geopolitical challenges to Britain’s global empire. In North America, the American Civil War (1861–1865) illustrated the burgeoning military and industrial power of the United States and strained relations between London and Washington; in the Near East and Central Asia, the “Russian menace” loomed over the Mediterranean and the British Raj; and in Europe, Berlin’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War and the proclamation of the German Empire (1870–1871) upended the post-Napoleonic balance of power. Meanwhile, Victorian skepticism toward the value of the settler empire reached its height. To many British observers, their small, distant, lightly defended colonies were an obvious strategic liability. ¹⁴

In this light, Britain’s Liberal prime minister W. E. Gladstone concluded the Treaty of Washington in 1871, settling a series of Anglo-American disputes and establishing his policy of imperial retrenchment. Shortly thereafter he withdrew the British Army from Canada, retaining only the Royal Navy bases at Halifax and Esquimalt. In one stroke, Gladstone conceded Washington’s hegemony over the American continent, and began to normalize Anglo-American relations. ¹⁵ For Canadians, the treaty implied American recognition of the new Dominion, and effectively removed the threat of invasion from the south. Yet it also clearly illustrated the “colonial dilemma”: that as a self-governing British colony, Canada enjoyed full autonomy over its internal affairs but remained subordinate to the United Kingdom in international relations. Though Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald participated in the Washington negotiations, he did so as an imperial rather than a Canadian representative, and without substantive authority. ¹⁶ In his Considerations on Representative Government (1861), British liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill outlined the colonial predicament:

It is now a fixed principle of the policy of Great Britain, professed in theory and faithfully adhered to in practice, that her colonies of European race, equally with the parent country, possess the fullest measure of internal self-government … Each colony has thus as full power over its own affairs, as it could have if it were a member of even the loosest federation … but [it is] not a strictly equal federation, the mother country retaining to itself the powers of a Federal Government … This inequality is, of course, as far as it goes, a disadvantage to the dependencies, which have no voice in foreign policy, but are bound by the decisions of the superior country. They are compelled to join England in war, without being in any way consulted previous to engaging in it … It is essential, therefore, that in all wars, save for those … incurred for the sake of the particular colony, the colonists should not (without their own voluntary request) be called on to contribute anything to the expense, except what may be required for the specific local defence of their own ports, shores, and frontiers against invasion. ¹⁷

In these circumstances, most British Liberals imagined that the settler colonies would quickly sever what remained of their imperial ties. Though a global British community linked by sentiment, institutions, and migration would continue to exist, the constitutional supremacy of the United Kingdom would come to an end. In any case, as Liberal politician John Morley asserted, there was little chance that the far-off British colonies would contribute to a “war, say, for the defence of Afghanistan against Russia, or for the defence of Belgian neutrality.” ¹⁸

In the late nineteenth century, however, this Gladstonian Liberal vision came under assault as Britain’s “Anglo-Saxon” colonies grew in significance. At their most ambitious, proponents of a united Greater Britain, including a number of Liberals, endorsed Imperial Federation: a constitutional revolution to establish a truly imperial parliament in which colonial representatives would participate in formulating the foreign and defence policies of the British Empire. But while the “New Imperialism” arose in opposition to the prevailing Liberal orthodoxy, it was hardly a conservative movement, premised as it was on technological progress and thoroughly modern social, political, and pseudo-scientific racial theories. This furnished imperialists with a powerful new language to critique Liberalism’s apparent “Little Englander” indifference, if not hostility, toward the Empire. ¹⁹

Yet, as historian Frank Underhill once noted, a key difference between Liberals in Canada and the United Kingdom was “the constant tendency… in England to announce unctuously that Canada was perfectly free to leave the Empire,” whereas most Canadian Liberals remained “devoted to the integrity of the British connection.” ²⁰ Indeed, “Britishness” was central to the invention of a post-Confederation Canadian identity. “Here is a people composed of two distinct races, speaking different languages, with religious and social… institutions totally different,” claimed Ontario Liberal journalist, politician, and “Father of Confederation” George Brown, “all avowing hearty attachment to the British Crown… [and] British institutions.” ²¹

From these premises flowed three main visions of the new Dominion’s political future. A minority of Liberals, as in Britain, supported Imperial Federation. In fact, Edward Blake, briefly Liberal premier of Ontario (1871–1872) and later the leader of the Canadian Liberal party (1880–1887), suggested in 1874 that “an effort should be made to reorganize the Empire upon a Federal basis.” This was necessary because “[t]he Treaty of Washington produced a very profound impression throughout this country… that at no distant period the people of Canada would desire… some greater share of control than they now have in the management of foreign affairs.” ²² Though Blake eventually abandoned imperial federalism, his famous utterance inspired a new generation of Liberal imperialists—most notably the Toronto-based intellectuals and financiers who directed the Canadian branch of the imperial Round Table movement after 1909. But neither Blake nor his contemporary Goldwin Smith—the radical English historian and polemicist who, having settled in Toronto in 1871, became the leading advocate for colonial independence, republicanism, and annexation to the United States—represented the sentiments of the majority of mid-Victorian Canadian Liberals. Their views are better represented by the position of George Brown, who rejected imperial federalism, republicanism, and annexation alike. “We are not surprised,” commented the Toronto Globe, Brown’s great Liberal organ, that:

… a disposition has been shown in some quarters to mix up the question of an independent British American nationality with that of a British American federation … Our metropolitan contemporaries travel much too fast for us … Yet the day may come when the United Provinces shall … be in a position to offer to Great Britain … the friendship of a powerful and independent ally as compensation for the long years of protection she extended over us as colonists. When that day arrives, we shall … pass at once, without any violent change in our institutions from the condition of dependent colonies to that of an independent nation … while we maintain, at all events for a very long time to come, our connection with the grand old British Empire intact and unimpaired. ²³

Colonial autonomy

Through the 1880s and early 1890s, relatively little changed with respect to Canada’s role in international relations and the defence of the British Empire. Even the plight of General Gordon’s Sudan campaign in 1884–1885, a touchstone of Victorian imperial patriotism, elicited few demands for serious Canadian intervention. Unlike the Australasian colonies for whom the Suez Canal was a lifeline, Canada had no direct stake in British control of greater Egypt. This reticence toward overseas imperial wars was apparent in the arguments of imperialists themselves. When George Monro Grant, among Canada’s leading imperialist intellectuals, addressed a Winnipeg audience in 1889, he went out of his way to reassure his listeners that Imperial Federation did not mean “taking away our sons to fight in Burmah [sic] and Afghanistan.” ²⁴

During this period it was trade, not defence, that most sharply divided Liberal opinion. Indeed, in the depths of a prolonged economic depression, a small but influential cabal of Liberals, led by Goldwin Smith, stepped up their agitation for Canada’s annexation to the United States of America. Their preferred device, labelled “Commercial Union,” was a North American common market. Though Smith privately admitted that simple free trade “need not, so far as I can see, entail any change of political relations,” ²⁵ a customs union, as British radical politician and arch-imperialist Joseph Chamberlain warned, “must inevitably be followed at no long date by a political union and the separation of Canada from Great Britain.” ²⁶ And Chamberlain was an authority—he similarly hoped to create an imperial common market, or Zollverein, that would be the first step toward Imperial Federation. ²⁷

Canada’s future as a self-governing Dominion thus hinged on the question of trade. Though not all Commercial Unionists were annexationists, many Liberals feared that Chamberlain was right—that Commercial Union entailed the extinction of Canada as a British nation in North America. “If that is to be the policy of the Dominion Liberal party,” warned Ontario’s powerful premier Sir Oliver Mowat, “I cease to be a member of it.” ²⁸ Even in the radical heartland of rural western Ontario, reported J. S. Willison, soon to become the new editor of the Toronto Globe, Liberals were “largely Canada First, not quite commercial unionists… kindly disposed toward the States[,]… and while perhaps not quite against British connection still in favour of our exercising full national rights.” ²⁹

In this context, the new leader of Canada’s Liberals, Quebec MP Wilfrid Laurier, sought to unite the party under the doctrine of colonial autonomy. It was evident, Laurier argued, that as Canada developed, it required increased powers of self-government to conduct international affairs, particularly to negotiate commercial treaties with foreign nations. Nonetheless, the Liberal leader upheld the British connection, claiming that it was “anti-Canadian, and even anti-British… [to] pretend that our colonial allegiance demands… that we should be deterred from the spirit of enterprise.” ³⁰ Laurier even publicly lauded the “grandeur in the [imperial federalist] idea of uniting the colonies and the mother country into one great body.” But he warned ominously:

If colonists are to be represented at Westminster … then, of course, colonists must assume the duties and responsibilities which are borne by Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen, to carry on the wars in which they are almost perpetually engaged … I think these are consequences before which the people of Canada will recede.

In the short-term, however, Laurier’s rearguard action failed. His alternative of “Unrestricted Reciprocity” with the United States—the mutual reduction and elimination of tariffs rather than the creation of a common market—was tarred by its association with Commercial Union. At the 1891 election, Sir John A. Macdonald successfully played on annexationist fears to win a narrow victory with his famous last stand: “A British subject I was born—a British subject I shall die.” ³² But Laurier laid the foundation for Liberal advances on the ground of colonial autonomy. The 1893 Liberal platform declared that Canada’s tariff “should be so adjusted as to… promote freer trade with the whole world, more particularly with Great Britain and the United States”—a policy “in the interests alike of the Dominion and of the Empire.” ³³ By the mid-1890s, having conciliated imperial loyalists like Oliver Mowat, George Monro Grant, and George Denison, Laurier presented the Liberals as a reliably “British” party. ³⁴

With the Liberal election victory in 1896, Laurier had an opportunity to translate his rhetoric into practice. In 1897, the imperial world descended on London to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and the Dominion entered the realm of global politics. Its French-Canadian premier received particular attention—while in Britain, Laurier was knighted and awarded honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, gave glowing speeches across the country, and, in a personal highlight, met W. E. Gladstone at his Hawarden estate. ³⁵ The political effect was immediate. “The First Minister of Canada,” gushed the Toronto Globe, was “a man whose name now carries meaning in the remotest parts of the British Empire… [as] the exponent of the nationhood of Canada.” ³⁶ As The New York Times confirmed, “Without a doubt the most conspicuous figure among all the notabilities… assembled in London was Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Canadian Premier.” ³⁷

But despite the pretense of late-Victorian pomp and power, British politicians and intellectuals were anxious over the rise of new imperial rivals, especially Germany and Russia. Many looked to the burgeoning settler empire to buttress London’s increasingly vulnerable position. ³⁸ Among them was Joseph Chamberlain, the new colonial secretary, who solicited contributions for imperial defence at the Colonial Conference held in conjunction with the Jubilee. Laurier, however, cited the imperative of colonial autonomy and rejected the idea of Canadian involvement in a centralized imperial scheme managed at Westminster. ³⁹ Yet this was not a repudiation of the Empire, Canada’s British connection, or Laurier’s own imperial rhetoric. On the contrary, as historian John Mitcham perceptively argues, Laurier set the template for a long line of:

colonial statesmen … [who] proclaimed their loyalty to the Crown and empire, but staunchly resisted any plan that might undermine their domestic autonomy … No sane politician, British or colonial, doubted the unwavering support that would come from the settler communities in time of crisis. ⁴⁰

Dominion sovereignty

In 1899, that system faced its first real test with the outbreak of war in South Africa. Having wrested control of the Cape from the Dutch at the turn of the nineteenth century, Britain’s expansionist drive intensified in the 1880s with the discovery of diamonds and gold in the Transvaal. The prospect of enrichment enticed British settlers, or Uitlanders, to the Afrikaner republic, while Joseph Chamberlain, Alfred Milner, and Cecil Rhodes aimed to consolidate South Africa under British rule. When Transvaal president Paul Kruger refused demands to concede political rights to the Uitlanders, the British Cabinet agreed to augment imperial forces in the region, and the Afrikaner republics (the Transvaal and the Orange Free State) responded with a pre-emptive attack. The British Empire was suddenly at war in South Africa. ⁴¹

In Anglophone Canada, as across the British World, the war prompted widespread demands to send a contingent of soldiers to fight with imperial forces—a departure from previous Canadian practice that reflected both the crescendo of imperial sentiment and a newfound national self-confidence. But Wilfrid Laurier initially balked, telling the Toronto Globe’s J. S. Willison, “I am not prepared to think that it is a wise policy, even from an Imperial point of view, to take a share in all the secondary wars in which England is always engaged.” ⁴² However, on further consideration, he “frankly admitted that public feeling in the English [speaking] Provinces was too strong to be opposed and… the Government could not afford to… withhold Canada from a struggle in which the other Dominions would be engaged.” ⁴³ In late 1899, Laurier’s Liberal government committed Canadian volunteers to the conflict, and by the end of the war in 1902, over 7,300 Canadian soldiers had served in South Africa. ⁴⁴

Historians have struggled to explain Anglo-Canadian enthusiasm for this far-off, often forgotten, imperial war. An earlier generation pointed to British propaganda, anti-Americanism, and jingoistic sentiment, while later studies more usefully emphasized national, ideological, racial, and religious considerations. ⁴⁵ But “Britishness” encompassed all of these factors, and it is clear that the South African War, unlike other wars of British imperial expansion, was perceived as a war fought to uphold the political rights of fellow (white) Britons. It was, then, a Greater British rather than a strictly imperial conflict in which Anglo-Canadians sought to stand in solidarity with their fellow British citizens, enhance their position in the Empire, and uphold—as they saw it—British political ideals. ⁴⁶ As the Toronto Globe put it, “The despatch of a Canadian contingent would be… a national declaration of Canada’s stake in the British Empire.” ⁴⁷

Three further points are worth emphasizing. First, that while racial sympathy for the Uitlanders and notions of Anglo-Saxon supremacy were critical motivating factors for Anglo-Canadians, white Protestant Dutch farmers were not easily construed as a racial “Other.” Neither was Anglo-Saxonism an especially helpful rhetorical device in the context of deep French-Canadian opposition to the war. As historian Mason Wade noted a half-century ago, “the ‘pan-Anglo-Saxon’ idea… stimulated French-Canadian nationalism with its strong tendency toward isolationism.” ⁴⁸ For English-speakers, then, Britishness provided a sufficient justification for war. But the language of Britishness equally featured in anti-war arguments, notably from Henri Bourassa, the most prominent French-Canadian opponent of intervention, who upheld the Gladstonian Liberal vision of “decentralization and complete self-government, which has built up the British Empire.” “I am,” he declared, “a disciple of Burke, Fox, Bright, Gladstone, and of the other Little Englanders who made Great Britain and her possessions what they are[.]” ⁴⁹ And third, though Wilfrid Laurier sympathized with Bourassa’s position, he maintained that it was essential that French-Canadians “marchent à la tête de la Confederation” and choose between “l’impérialisme anglais, ou l’impérialisme américain. Je ne vois pas d’autre alternative.” ⁵⁰ At least within the British Empire, Laurier told Parliament, Canada’s participation was voluntary and premised on the established doctrine of colonial autonomy:

I cannot admit that Canada should take part in all the wars of Great Britain, neither am I prepared to say that she should not take part in any war at all … I claim … that, in future, Canada … shall reserve to herself the right to judge whether or not … to act. ⁵¹

In the war’s aftermath, however, Laurier faced renewed pressure from imperialists to commit to a “general military system of the Empire.” ⁵² Significantly, his closest Anglo-Canadian advisor, J. S. Willison, led an emerging group of Liberal imperialists attracted to the idea of a joint imperial “fund for defence.” ⁵³ “Canada,” Willison claimed, “will hardly shirk any legitimate obligation… as an integral part of the British dominions.” ⁵⁴ But the Liberal premier was uncompromising. Canadians, he argued, could easily:

relieve England of any expenditure of a military character in Canada, but anything beyond, which would bring us into a general scheme … would be a mistake. At all events, it is repugnant to the convictions of all my life, and … I am quite ready to take the consequences. ⁵⁵

At the close of the Victorian era, therefore, Canadian Liberals both lauded the Dominion’s growing sovereignty and affirmed its British identity. But Laurier’s Liberal consensus on colonial autonomy showed signs of strain. Two ideological factions began to emerge: an autonomist majority that upheld the Gladstonian vision, and an imperialist minority that took up the cause of closer imperial union. This echoed developments in the United Kingdom, where the post-Gladstonian Liberal party contained a growing imperialist faction, while the Liberal Unionists—who abandoned Gladstone for an alliance with the Conservatives over Irish Home Rule in 1886—became the standard bearers for tariff reform and Imperial Federation under Joseph Chamberlain. ⁶⁰

But the gulf between these factions was not unbridgeable. In some ways, Laurier and Chamberlain even cooperated effectively. ⁶¹ Each hoped to consummate an “Anglo-Saxon alliance” between the British Empire and the United States: “the most potent factor that has yet taken place… in the advancement of civilization,” according to Laurier. ⁶² To this end, London and Washington established a Joint High Commission in 1898 to resolve outstanding North American disputes. And in a novel arrangement, it was Laurier and the Canadian government that led the British side in negotiations, even breaking off discussions when the Americans refused arbitration over the British Columbia–Alaska border. The “Alaska Boundary Question” was eventually settled in 1903 by a judicial tribunal, “to be composed,” as Laurier put it, “of jurists of repute taken from the American judiciary and from the British judiciary[,]… ‘British’ in its most extensive sense, including, of course, Canada.” ⁶³ But there was dismay when the United Kingdom’s Lord Alverstone sided against his Canadian colleagues in favour of the US claim, a “betrayal” that seemed to confirm Britain’s willingness to sacrifice Canadian interests to appease Washington. “This Alaska business,” an aging Goldwin Smith wrote cheerfully to Henri Bourassa, “has had a good effect in breaking the ice of conventional ‘loyalty’ and inclining people towards an increase of self government.” ⁶⁴ In retrospect, John Dafoe agreed, the “rankling sense of injustice… planted the idea… that the time had about come for Canada to take charge of her external affairs.” ⁶⁵

The British Liberal party’s return to power at Westminster in 1904–1905 provided a further push in that direction. Canada increasingly bypassed the Colonial Office to conduct what were termed “external” rather than “foreign” relations, thus maintaining the pretence of imperial diplomatic unity. Over the next decade, Laurier’s Liberals entrenched and expanded bilateral Canadian-American relations with James Bryce, the new British ambassador to the United States of America, acting as the de facto Canadian envoy. Laurier further expanded Canada’s diplomatic contacts across the British Empire, continental Europe, China, and Japan, as well as a growing body of international institutions. The 1907 Imperial Conference enshrined the principle of colonial autonomy with respect to defence, while the 1909 signing of the Boundary Waters Treaty with Washington, and the establishment of a tiny but official Department of External Affairs, signalled the Dominion’s new international status. Even more significantly, when the Liberals concluded a free trade agreement with the United States in 1911—a development with serious ramifications for the British Empire as a whole—Ottawa negotiated bilaterally with Washington. ⁶⁶

By the early twentieth century, then, Canada wielded an increasingly autonomous foreign policy. But the British Dominions, constitutionally and in international law, remained dependent colonies. Liberal autonomists and imperialists alike agreed that the only satisfactory solution to the colonial dilemma was a full measure of Canadian sovereignty—either as an independent state or as part of a federalized empire. ⁶⁷ The issue became acute in 1909, when the growing Anglo-German arms race seemed to threaten Britain’s naval supremacy. New Zealand, for its part, contributed a dreadnought to the Royal Navy, while Australia established its own Dominion fleet. Canadians, meanwhile, initially agreed to establish an autonomous Royal Canadian Navy as their primary contribution to Greater British defence. ⁶⁸ On 29 March 1909, the Canadian parliament unanimously endorsed “the speedy organization of a Canadian naval service… in close relation to the imperial navy… [and] in full sympathy with the view that the naval supremacy of Britain is essential to… the safety of the empire and the peace of the world.” ⁶⁹

French-Canadians, however, were wary of contributing to imperial armaments, and disagreement soon emerged among Anglo-Canadian Liberals over how to proceed. One group, led by the Toronto branch of the imperialist Round Table movement, argued for an emergency contribution to the Royal Navy and the longer-term establishment of representative pan-British institutions. Organized around Alfred Milner’s “Kindergarten”—a group of young, Oxford-trained administrators who played key roles in the unification of South Africa following the 1899–1902 war—the Round Table became a sort of progressive imperial think tank that reached the height of its influence in the years prior to the Great War. It recruited colonial students at Oxford who, along with established journalists, professors, politicians, and financiers, formed the central nodes of an imperialist network that spanned Greater Britain. ⁷⁰ The other side, more classically Gladstonian in their idea of empire, supported the development of local navies on the basis of Dominion sovereignty, and staunchly opposed any moves toward imperial centralization. “Those… whose ideal is an alliance of free and equal nations,” wrote O. D. Skelton, professor of political science at Queen’s University and an anti-imperialist often mischaracterized as anti-British, “advocate… a naval unit under Canadian control.” ⁷¹ This autonomist faction, though without the administrative apparatus of the Round Table, was itself imperial in scope. As English journalist Richard Jebb explained, “in the Britannic politics of our time… we find an opposition between the centralisers and the autonomists, each with their more or less definite policies: on the one side, Imperial Federation; on the other, Britannic Alliance.” ⁷² The latter, Jebb argued, identified with “the Liberal policy of Laurier.” ⁷³

At the 1911 election, however, Laurier’s government succumbed to Robert Borden’s refashioned Conservative party with its rhetoric of progressivism and imperialism. ⁷⁴ In Quebec, the Liberals faced vehement opposition from insurgent Nationalistes led by Frederick Monk and Henri Bourassa, who, despite their “unholy alliance” with Borden’s Conservatives, argued that a Canadian navy portended involvement in overseas imperial wars. In the English-speaking provinces, Liberals bled support to the Tories over their free trade agreement with the United States. ⁷⁵ But the naval question remained the dominant issue in the election's aftermath. Though leading autonomists like John Dafoe and O. D. Skelton acquiesced to a one-off contribution to the Royal Navy if combined with a Canadian fleet, Laurier feared the political consequences for the Liberals in Quebec. ⁷⁶ In 1913, the Liberal-dominated Senate rejected Robert Borden’s Naval Aid Bill—which proposed a direct contribution to Britain alongside a Canadian navy—and the saga of Canada’s naval policy reached a political impasse. In the end, historian C. P. Stacey quipped, Canada “produced the bitterest of controversies, but no ships.” ⁷⁷

As ever, the key fault lines in the naval debate were between Anglo- and French-Canadians on one hand, and Anglo-Canadian imperialists and autonomists on the other. Yet conspicuously absent was any serious movement to extinguish the British connection. In fact, Henri Bourassa, whose anti-navy position derived from hostility to “imperialism and militarism,” ⁷⁸ affirmed that “the development of the various portions of the Empire, on the basis of nationalism and autonomy, is… the safest guarantee of imperial unity.” ⁷⁹ Among Anglo-Canadians, moreover, the maintenance of the British connection underpinned both sides of the argument. The Liberal imperialist minority aimed for Dominion representation at the heart of the Empire, even as they couched their position in the language of colonial autonomy. As Edward Kylie, a young Toronto Round Tabler, explained:

The free Dominions viewed with suspicion … everything which seemed to threaten their autonomy. What we now describe as Colonial Nationalism was their reply to the earlier Imperialist movement. Its victory has been so complete that Imperialists themselves frankly recognise it … In short, every extension of Liberal principles, which Imperialists consistently oppose, warms the heart … of the Britisher beyond the seas. The Empire itself is an idea, a dream, a vision … [and] should the time come to construct a more closely-knit system, Liberals, from their sympathy with self-government, will have the best opportunity of reconciling Colonial rights with Imperial demands. ⁸⁰

The Great War for Empire

On 5 August 1914, Adam Shortt, the Queen’s University political economist and an elder statesman among Canadian Liberal intellectuals, wandered the streets of the imperial capital in the wake of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. “The great fear has been realized and the world is at war, including Great Britain and the rest of the Empire,” he wrote from London to his wife in Kingston, Ontario. ⁸² Across the ocean at Murray Bay (now La Malbaie), Quebec, Shortt’s friend and colleague George Wrong, the University of Toronto historian and son-in-law of former Liberal leader Edward Blake, was enjoying that most Canadian of pastimes—a summer holiday at the cottage. Amid wild rumours and financial panic, Wrong’s reaction was much the same. “The die is cast,” he recorded in his diary. “Britain declared war on Germany last night and now we shall have the most stupendous struggle in the history of the world.” ⁸³

The consequence of Britain’s decision was evident to both men: Canada, as an integral part of the British Empire, was at war. At an emergency session of Parliament on 19 August, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, now the leader of the Liberal opposition at Ottawa, spoke for the whole Dominion when he declared that Canada was “[r]eady, aye ready” to defend Britain in what he recognized would be a cataclysmic war:

[T]here is in Canada but one mind and heart. Long we have enjoyed the benefit of our British citizenship; to-day it is our duty to accept its responsibilities and its sacrifices … England to-day is not engaged in an ordinary contest. The war in which she is engaged will … stagger the world with its magnitude and its horror. ⁸⁴

Here Skelton hit on a central fact: despite the extension of colonial autonomy into international affairs and the marked growth of Dominion sovereignty over the previous generation, prior to the Great War the colonial dilemma remained unresolved. Canadians played no part in European diplomacy, yet when King George V—on the advice of his government at Westminster—declared war on Germany, he did so as an imperial sovereign on behalf of the entire British Empire. Without being consulted, Canadians found themselves thrust into a general European war. However, it was not strictly true, as we have already seen, that “Canada had no control over its own foreign policy.” ⁸⁶ Indeed, historians too often over-emphasize the dependent status of the pre-war Dominions to bolster a “colony-to-nation” narrative with the Great War as a national apotheosis. But across Canada and the British World, constitutional niceties were irrelevant as people responded to the war with an outburst of Greater British patriotism and imperial iconography. In Toronto, “no one wondered whether or not Canada would follow Britain to war…. ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the King’ filled the air… [and] Union Jacks appeared in windows and storefronts.” ⁸⁷ It was a scene repeated from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, and from the Scottish Highlands to the Australian outback. As Laurier put it, “The union of hearts which exists in the United Kingdom exists also in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand.” ⁸⁸

This sentiment proved critical, given that, as Canada’s foremost Great War historian Tim Cook acknowledges, “as a self-governing Dominion, the Canadian people would choose the extent of their commitment” to the imperial war effort. ⁸⁹ But among contemporaries it was an uncontroversial point that, in constitutional terms, colonial autonomy extended as far as rejecting participation in the war altogether. “As a matter of international law,” explained John Ewart, “Canada is at war when the United Kingdom is at war, yet… Canada must determine… whether or not she will actively participate[.]” To this extent, Canadians were self-governing and “not at all events part of the British Empire.” ⁹⁰ George Wrong, a leading member of the Canadian Round Table, agreed:

Canada has no power to declare war and is technically at war whenever Great Britain is at war. But theories and their applications represent very different things. Canada takes just as much share in the wars of the British Empire as she chooses to take[,] … [and] as far as the self-governing states of the British Commonwealth are concerned, there is really no such thing as a British Empire. ⁹¹

Perhaps most importantly, historians must resist the temptation to read the end of Empire and the decline of British identity—first in the Dominions, but increasingly in Scotland, Wales, and even England itself—back into the early twentieth century. Identities, of course, are layered and multifaceted constructions, but a central element of especially Anglo-Canadian identity as late as the 1960s derived from the consciousness of belonging to a global British diaspora. For those millions of Canadians who emigrated from, or traced their ancestry to, the British Isles, this ethnic nationalism or “British race patriotism” underpinned the Dominion’s imperial connection. “Here in Ontario,” O. D. Skelton commented at the nadir of the struggle in 1917, “the plain fact is that we went into the war wholly from racial sympathy with England.” ⁹³

But historian Phillip Buckner has rightly emphasized that Canadian “Britishness” also took the parallel “form of [a] civic nationalism that included the adoption of certain values and institutions defined as ‘British.’” ⁹⁴ This allowed French-Canadians, Irish Catholics, and other non-“Anglo-Saxon” peoples to subscribe—albeit unevenly and with important reservations—to a liberal idea of British citizenship that arguably provided an intellectual foundation for Canadian multiculturalism. ⁹⁵ As George Monro Grant asserted in 1896, “to suppose that national unity requires uniformity of language and race is an abstract conception scarcely worth refuting[.]… [N]ational life does not depend on identity, but rather on differences that are transcended by common political interests and sentiments.” ⁹⁶ These overlapping ideas of Britishness—the sense of belonging to a global British community defined by race as well as liberal political institutions—were critical to war mobilization across the Dominions. ⁹⁷ Canadians, argued former Manitoba Liberal MP Clifford Sifton, looked “to our own history, that is, the history of England,” to see that as Britons they were obliged to defend “the principles of liberty, which are their birthright.” ⁹⁸ “The democracies of Greater Britain,” George Wrong similarly claimed, would “stand together in all parts of the world to support the traditions of British liberty.” ⁹⁹

Finally, there was a third key element in the decision for war: a belief that the conflict provided an opportunity for Canadians to prove themselves on the world’s stage—and even, some hoped, to consolidate Confederation by uniting behind a great national endeavour. It was in this respect that Sifton looked forward to Canadians discovering their own “national soul” through a shared wartime experience. ¹⁰⁰ In a post-war assessment, O. D. Skelton identified the range of factors that fuelled Canada’s commitment to the war effort: “the call of the blood, imperialist sympathy with outraged Belgium and bleeding France, hatred of German militarism, pride in Canadian achievement—all would urge the sons of Canada.” ¹⁰¹ When Britain declared war on Germany for its invasion of France through neutral Belgium, 30,000 Canadian volunteers, more than half of whom were born in the United Kingdom, sailed with the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). ¹⁰²

The horrifying reality of the Great War soon touched all Canadians. The Second Battle of Ypres (22 April–25 May 1915) served as a baptism-by-fire for Canadian forces, while the Battle of the Somme, which ran from 1 July 1916 through November of that year, became synonymous with the bloodletting that defined the war. Amazingly, the trauma led to a stiffening of resolve, but also to a palpable shift in Canadian sentiment. This reflected a growing belief that the Dominion’s immense sacrifice went unappreciated in Britain, and reinforced a perception of haughtiness and incompetence in the London-directed war effort. From the outbreak of the conflict, Clifford Sifton complained, the CEF “should have been officered, commanded, [and] administered as a Canadian force,” rather than broken up to serve in British units. ¹⁰³ Thus when Premier Robert Borden raised Canada’s enlistment target to 500,000 and renewed its recruitment campaign, he reorganized the CEF with Canadians in senior administrative positions. ¹⁰⁴ This evidenced what John W. Dafoe identified as the war’s influence on the development of “a more robust and self confident Canadianism.” ¹⁰⁵

Historians have tended to interpret this assertion of national sentiment and the corresponding “Canadianization” of the war effort as evidence for the fraying of imperial ties. In this narrative, the Battle of Vimy Ridge (9–12 April 1917), the first engagement where the Canadian Corps fought together as a national unit, features prominently. ¹⁰⁶ Yet the nationalist mythology was in many ways a post-war invention. ¹⁰⁷ In fact, in 1917, imperialism appeared ascendant as Alfred Milner, flanked by leading members of the Round Table, joined David Lloyd George’s new coalition government at Westminster, which endorsed the creation of a so-called Imperial War Cabinet. ¹⁰⁸ At the same time, Canadian Liberals reaffirmed their commitment to a “Britannic alliance.” Though O. D. Skelton advised Wilfrid Laurier to take a “pretty radical stand on the question of imperial relations” after the war, ¹⁰⁹ his conception of Canada’s role in international politics was shaped by its membership of what he called “the Five Nations… of the British Empire”—that is, Britain plus the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. ¹¹⁰ Dafoe was even more explicit: “A permanent alliance of British nations dedicated to the cause of civilization and progress appears to me a sublime conception,” he confided to George Wrong, “[but] [w]e cannot be a nation in Canada if we are simply a province of the empire.” ¹¹¹ The key point of contention, then, was not the British connection but the final resolution of the colonial dilemma. “Perhaps it is not too late,” Wrong mused in language lifted practically verbatim from John Ewart, “and we shall yet see the Kingdom of Canada, one of various kingdoms under our common sovereign. More than any other, this title would negative the impression that Canada is a dependent state.” ¹¹² Henri Bourassa—now the leading Canadian critic of the war—equally affirmed Canada’s essential Britishness, once more turning the language of British Liberalism against imperialism:

My desire for the disruption of the British Empire is not because it is British but because it is Imperial. All Empires are hateful. They stand in the way of human liberty and true progress, intellectual and moral …  All that is good in British ideals, and there is much of it, would be better served by the free action of several independent British communities than by the common action of a monstrous Empire … British nations have to choose between British ideals and British domination. I stand for ideals against domination … in the name of British liberty. ¹¹³

In hindsight, the Imperial War Cabinet further entrenched the Gladstonian vision. For the first time, the Dominion premiers were included at the highest levels of British strategic planning and briefed on top-secret military intelligence. Of course, self-interest and sheer desperation motivated Lloyd George’s calculation. The British Army stood depleted, and he was “convinced that we should take the Dominions into our counsel in a much larger measure…. We can hardly ask them to make another great recruiting effort unless it is accompanied by an invitation to… discuss the situation with us.” ¹¹⁴ Though constitutional changes would wait until the end of the war, the War Cabinet nonetheless produced Resolution IX, recognizing the Dominions as “autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth” with the “right… to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations.” ¹¹⁵ To be sure, this language was ambiguous—imperialists envisaged the Imperial War Cabinet as the germ of further Greater British institutions, while autonomists objected to labelling as a “Cabinet” what was in reality an intergovernmental conference. But the precedent was established. The Dominions, O. D. Skelton wrote approvingly, “had helped to pay the piper, henceforth they would insist on a share in calling the tune.” ¹¹⁶

The year 1917 proved to be among the most consequential in the history of the twentieth century. While Britain moved to recognize Dominion sovereignty, the United States of America entered the war on the Allied side and the Russian Empire collapsed in revolution. ¹¹⁷ In Canada, these events bolstered Premier Robert Borden’s case for military conscription, and the 1917 election split the country as well as the opposition Liberals along “racial” lines. Borden’s newly formed Unionist party, a coalition of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals, swept to power with overwhelming support in the English-speaking provinces. The “Laurier Liberals,” campaigning on the promise of a referendum, were reduced to a Quebec-based parliamentary rump. Yet for most Liberals, the debate over conscription hinged on questions of national unity, majority rule and minority rights, and the most effective contribution that Canadians could make to the war effort. Not all conscriptionists were imperialists, and neither—with the notable exception of Bourassa—were anti-conscriptionists necessarily anti-war, short of compulsory overseas service. ¹¹⁸

Though “Laurier Liberals” lamented the schism between Anglo- and French-Canadians, only John Ewart publically called for an end to the British connection. The Imperial War Cabinet entailed the subversion of Dominion sovereignty, he argued, which justified the creation of an independent Canadian republic. ¹¹⁹ But as John Dafoe discerned, Ewart was “too suspicious, both as to the designs against our independence by the British authorities and the supposed willingness of some of our public men to have these designs succeed.” ¹²⁰ Indeed, Ewart’s political isolation and his post-war return to constitutional monarchy proved that, even under the extreme conditions of conscription and total war, Canadian Liberals remained deeply attached to the symbols of the British connection. The significance of this dual identity, Canadian and British, during the Great War was apparent in the complaint of Sir Arthur Currie, the Canadian commander at Vimy Ridge and a known Liberal, over the newspaper reports from London: “We are British, certainly, and proud to be called such, but a certain section of the English press are evidently determined on a policy to ignore the word ‘Canadian.’” ¹²¹

Conclusion: Imperial internationalism

The end of the Great War came suddenly in 1918. With Russia defeated, Germany turned its full strength to the Western Front for a spring offensive. But while the British line bent, it did not break, and soon hundreds of thousands of US troops poured into Europe. In the final “Hundred Days,” the Canadian Corps played a disproportionate role and suffered disproportionate casualties, as Allied forces pushed toward the faltering German Empire. On 11 November 1918, Sir Wilfrid Laurier wrote to his successor W. L. M. King: “The end… is almost incredible; but so it is. It is now time for the Liberals to look out and prepare for the active work that faces us.” ¹²²

That work included grappling with the sudden changes that the war had wrought in Canada’s imperial and international relations. But there were also important continuities that recalled George Brown’s vision of “pass[ing] at once, without any violent change in our institutions from the condition of dependent colonies to that of an independent nation… while we maintain, at all events for a very long time to come, our connection with the grand old British Empire intact and unimpaired.” ¹²³ The inclusion of the Dominion premiers, led by Canada’s Robert Borden, in the British Empire Delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference forced London to concede new precedents with respect to colonial autonomy in international politics. Canada, along with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, and even British India, famously signed the Treaty of Versailles, and were granted separate representation in new international institutions, including the League of Nations. John Dafoe, who attended the Paris Conference with the Canadian delegation, noted the triumph of the Gladstonian vision—even if it was a Conservative prime minister who, “once he got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and widened them.” ¹²⁴ Moreover, with Britain focused on the reconstruction of the international system; the emergence of alternative ideas of global order embodied by the League and the concept of “internationalism”; and the pronounced rise of isolationist sentiment among Canadians, the imperialist movement suffered a precipitous post-war collapse. J. S. Willison, now an advisor to Borden, lamented to Alfred Milner that “one hardly knows where to find solid ground…. I fear that we have been putting too much emphasis on autonomy and not enough on Empire.” ¹²⁵

By the early 1920s, then, the direction of travel seemed clear—though, as historian Margaret MacMillan reminds us, despite unprecedented recognition in global councils, Canada’s post-war status remained ambiguous. ¹²⁶ However, Canadian Liberals broadly agreed—or at least acquiesced—that the Dominion “should assume… practical independence and carry on her own Foreign policy.” ¹²⁷ In 1922, under new Liberal premier W. L. M. King, Canada pointedly refused to back London in the Chanak Crisis, which threatened war in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. This assertion of colonial autonomy was followed in quick succession by the Balfour Declaration in 1926, which reaffirmed the principle of equality between Britain and the Dominions, and the Statute of Westminster in 1931, whereupon ratification Canada ceased to be a dependency of the United Kingdom.

And yet the British connection endured. After 1931, Canadians remained British subjects with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London as their highest court of appeal. In some ways, the British World became even more tightly integrated. The 1932 Ottawa Agreement instituted a system of imperial preferential tariffs in the midst of the Great Depression, British capital continued to outrank US and even domestic investments in the Canadian economy (and actually increased its percentage from 1920 to 1939), and the flow of British migrants to the Dominion revived following its wartime collapse. ¹²⁸ Though the political, cultural, and economic pull of the United States grew stronger during the interwar years, ostensibly “continentalist” Liberal intellectuals nonetheless regarded Canada as “an independent British nation” and part of a defensive “Britannic Alliance” in international politics. ¹²⁹ As O. D. Skelton, the architect of Canadian foreign policy under W. L. M. King, explained succinctly in 1926, “We are British North America; Britain is British West Europe.” ¹³⁰ In 1939, when Europe peered into the abyss of a new dark age, it was this sense of global Britishness that impelled Canadians to cross the ocean and again contribute their quota to the defence of the Empire.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.