Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015. xi, 304 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$37.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-7748-2901-4.
Beginning with an imaginative riff comparing Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and Lucknow, Ontario, Ryan Touhey establishes that the Raj administration of India and the British settlement of Upper Canada were well connected in the mid-nineteenth century. But for state-to-state relations Touhey wisely opens with the 1946 appointment of Canada’s first ambassador (high commissioner) to India and the opening of Prime Minister King’s and future Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent’s relations with Prime Minister Nehru himself. Ambassadors exchanged between countries in the Commonwealth have always retained the title “high commissioner” (and for readers outside the limited circle to whom this makes sense, I shall use the terms ambassadors and embassies here for simplicity).
This is a much-needed book in the field of Canada’s (and India’s) bilateral relations, and is based on a painstaking search through the vast (and often nonlinear) RG25 file group at the National Archives in Ottawa. In that Canada had no consulates in India, this book focuses largely on the life of an embassy and more particularly on the thinking of a number of ambassadors, usually in contest with their counterparts and supervisors in Ottawa. Touhey keeps up with the life and times of Indian high commissioners (ambassadors) living in Ottawa and reporting to Delhi. However, India did have consulates, including important ones like Vancouver, so the two structures were never quite comparable. Touhey does, however, refer to files in Delhi about Canada in the National Archives of India. He tries to keep a balance between the official Indian views of these relations and the Canadian views, but the sheer volume of Canadian documents and richness tilts him inevitably towards seeing more through a Canadian lens. And there is an occasional reference to US and UK files, showing that the British and Americans weren’t entirely ignoring what was going on.
There is little treatment of business, intellectual, cultural, migration, or military relations. The purchase and/or donation of wheat, or light aircraft with dual use, are given weight insofar as they affect the overall tone of the relationship. Canadian investment in India occurred only well after 1974, except for the renowned Bata Shoe Company, incorporated and manufacturing just outside Kolkata since the late 1930s. The role of print media in framing and explaining the peculiar stresses and contradictions in the relationship is mentioned and sometimes quoted, but is not a major focus.
This is an excellent study of diplomatic access to the top, the role of ministers of external affairs (both countries used similar names for this activity), and the role of the powerful unelected officials who guarded the doors and crafted the language of policies. Up until 1964, when Chester Ronning was replaced as ambassador in Delhi and PM Nehru died, the relationship had rested in very few hands. Even after the May 1974 nuclear test in Rajasthan, Touhey shows how all the moving parts of the old relationships were intact and could soon go into negotiating action again, a short period after the Canadian denunciations of the test. Given the long Liberal Party hold on the PM’s office in Ottawa (from Pearson’s arrival in 1963 to Trudeau’s departure in 1979) an old boy’s network around foreign policy worked well in Ottawa.
Touhey has skillfully established the scope and depth of the number of ministry officials in Ottawa who had experience with Indian diplomats, largely after the Korean War and in the foundation and operation of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam and Laos. Some of these officials, critical of India’s motives and irritated by Krishna Menon and some of his procedures and decisions (until his downfall and resignation in October 1962), rose steadily to high ranks in Ottawa “with sour memories,” right up to the 1974–1976 period.
In fact, an important exception to the “diplomacy first” thrust of the book is the nuclear relationship which ran through the entire thirty years, right to the May 1976 Cabinet decision to terminate Canada’s commitment to help build another nuclear reactor near Chennai. From those important positions, their skeptical criticism was applied to nuclear cooperation between India and Canada (cooperation that was confirmed profitably when the CANDU reactor contract was signed in 1963), continuing through to the unsuccessful renegotiations in 1974–1976.
Through a study of the stresses and contradictions in this Cold War relationship, Touhey illuminates the power and complexity of Canada’s American and British relationship, and the indirect influence of the Soviet relationship; France, one of Canada’s rivals in the nuclear business in India, is only mentioned. But the Commonwealth donor relationship vs. the Commonwealth voting relationship, the independent CIDA donor relationship vs. the Vietnam Commission relationship, the lack-of-a-Security Council seat relationship for both countries, Indian resentment of Pakistan and China—all these added to the complexity of how India perceived Canadian positions and decisions, and vice versa. For instance, when many other countries in 1971 took positions on supporting either Pakistan or Bangladesh (read India), Canada took no official position, hoping the question would go away. Prime Minister Gandhi, however, had “gone out on a limb” for Bangladesh between September and December, and had a list of countries that had agreed with and supported her; surely she noted Canada’s silence?
This is a good and important contribution to diplomatic history in Asia, weaving in China, Vietnam, and Pakistan. It provides insight into the complicated relations of foreign affairs ministries and their numerous embassies and ambassadors. It adds also to an aspect of state-to-state negotiations which can be compared with US-India or Britain-India relations, particularly in the excellent chapter 10 on the unsuccessful 1974–1976 nuclear bargaining. Those studies scarcely mention Canada, although Touhey’s book cannot avoid having their involvement. In that sense, too, it is very Canadian.
Robert Anderson
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
pp. 190-192