Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s

Empire to Umpire provides a survey of Canada''s foreign policies and varying roles in international affairs, from dutiful member of the British Empire to second-tier power and peacekeeper. Beginning before the turn of the century when Canada took its first faltering steps into nationhood, Norman Hillmer and J.L. Granatstein, two of Canada''s leading historians, offer fresh insights into the events, the ideas, and the personalities that have influenced Canada''s participation in world affairs. Two competing forces dominate our international persona: the reliance on imperial strength, first British then American, for our security and economic prosperity; and the strong impulse to do what is right in, and for, the world. What happens when the "choirboy at the Concert of Nations" is called upon to sing duets with a dowager aunt or a rich southern uncle? That is the story Hillmer and Granatstein succeed in telling in this richly illustrated history of Canadian foreign policy.