| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In its first 2 decades the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA), Canada's premier foreign policy think tank, never functioned merely as a neutral and apolitical research organization. Under the leadership of Edgar Tarr, president of the Monarch Life Assurance Company, and in its capacity as the Canadian Council of the transnational Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), in the 1930s and 1940s the CIIA became an instrument that championed Canadian national autonomy and sought to expand Canada's international role, while challenging British imperialism, racism, and Anglo-Saxon dominance. Prominent Canadian diplomats and other officials were complicit in this enterprise, which reached its apogee at the IPR conference held at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, in December 1942. The CIIA's activities during this period revealed the porosity and imprecision of the boundaries in Canada between the state and non-state realms. Throughout World War II, DEA and other Canadian government representatives attended CIIA and IPR conferences as "official non-officials," effectively cooperating with private individuals in a network of purportedly non-governmental organizations that enabled Canada to exert leverage on the British government, reject British leadership, align itself with the United States, and secure a greater world role. CIIA leaders and Canadian officials also consciously encouraged nationalist forces in India, China, and Southeast Asia that sought to reject colonial rule and Western dominance. CIIA activities thus became part of a web of diplomatic interactions across a transnational network of think tanks within and outside the British Empire that had their own impact upon international affairs.
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