Where Have all of Canada's Diplomatic Historians Gone

It has been nearly 20 years since University of Toronto's Michael Bliss expressed his intense dismay with state of historical scholarship in Canada its impact on what he called Canada's current constitutional political malaise. Bliss's Creighton centennial lecture, subsequently published in Journal of Canadian Studies, decried trend among historians of Canada to turn away from political constitutional towards exploration ofthe experiences of people in relationships flowing from such non-national connections as region, ethnicity, class, family, gender. At time, Brian Murrone/ s government had reopened a discussion of Canadian constitution Bliss was appalled unwillingness or inability ofthe historical profession to provide relevant context foundations for a fulfilling discussion. We do not know who we are as Canadians, he wrote, and our historians have not been of much help recently in that quest for public self-understanding.1Bliss was not first historian to note decline of political as a professional discipline in Canada. John English had made similar, albeit less inflammatory, observations five years earlier. reviewing recent political he observed, is struck fact that so much political is now written political scientists. For English, decline was particularly noteworthy in international relations, where [historical questions which are preserve of historians in other nations are territory upon which some notable debates among political scientists have occurred.2If English was more subtle than Bliss, Jack Granatstein was more confrontational. His best-selling book of 1998, Who Killed Canadian History, a polemic on decline of teaching scholarship of national history, marked pinnacle (or nadir) of what historian Christopher Dummit has recently called history wars. To summarize, 1980s 1990s witnessed a confrontation between an old generation of nationalist Canadian historians, wedded to a belief in value of studying great powerful, a younger group of scholars dedicated to using new methods approaches to scholarship to insure that stories of those who had been left out of national narrative for so long were finally told. Writing as a member of new generation, Dummit has concluded that the battle has been won. With a few grumpy exceptions, university professoriate has been won over to a more inclusive history. The victory, he explains, was not achieved purely on merit. Indeed, scholars of old national continue to experience popular success. Rather, indusivist school triumphed by more sure method: attrition through retirement. Bliss, Granatstein, their colleagues remain active, but they no longer hold tenured positions at universities. In their place are a cadre of scholars focused on decentring, disrupting, or fragmenting kind of national that Bliss Granatstein wanted historians to celebrate.3 Dummit is not entirely excited about change. Like Bliss Granatstein, he too is concerned with failure of inclusivists to reach a popular audience, about lack of intellectual debate within a discipline now so dominated a particular school, inability of inclusivists to craft an alternative national narrative to one that they have torn down so aggressively. Nonetheless, with nationalists having been so thoroughly routed from academy, it is hard to imagine that change is forthcoming.This situation is all more depressing given similarities between Bliss's time today. Whereas 20 years ago, Canadians re-examining themselves as a national people were most concerned with internal dimensions dynamics of federalism in post-Cold War era, today, in preparation for Canadian forces' departure from Afghanistan, public faces another question of identity

Archaeology · BLISS · Constitution · Context (archaeology · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Canadian Policy and Governance · Classics · Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism · History · Law

• Confessions of a Teacher, and Historian, of Canadian Diplomacy

  Open Access•Adam Chapnick•Canadian Historical Review•2015

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