Restocking the British world: Empire migration and anglo-Canadian relations, 1919–30

Fedorowich, Kent

Abstract

Throughout the 1920s Canadian politicians, immigration officials, eugenicists and political commentators talked about the need to ‘Canadianize’ all migrants who arrived in the dominion, including those from the mother country. This did not mean that Ottawa was out to ‘de-Britannicize’ those arriving from the United Kingdom. British migrants were given preferred status because their common heritage and shared cultural values mirrored those of most Anglo-Canadians. In other words, ‘Britishness’ made up the bedrock of Anglo-Canadian ‘national’ identity prior to the Second World War. Nonetheless, tensions existed between the competing notions of what it was to be ‘British’, ‘Canadian’ or what John Darwin has posited, the formation of a ‘Britannic’ identity. Using the formulation and implementation of assisted migration and empire settlement between 1919 and 1930 as a backcloth, this paper chronicles the long forgotten controversy surrounding the competing national and imperial interests that exacerbated relations between London and Ottawa after the Great War.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 31, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Aug 31, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 30, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 20, 2016
• Journal: Britain and the World
• Print ISSN: 2043-8567
• Electronic ISSN: 2043-8575
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 236-269
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/brw.2016.0239
• Keywords: Anglo-Canadian relations, empire settlement, immigration, emigration, migration, external affairs, Mackenzie King, Leo Amery
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/907811
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/brw.2016.0239
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is the accepted version of an article published in Britain and the World, the final version is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/brw.2016.0239
• Contract Date: Sep 20, 2016