1. The Limits of Alliance: Cold War Solidarity and Canadian Wheat Exports to China, 1950-1963.
- Author
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DONAGHY, GREG and STEVENSON, MICHAEL D.
- Subjects
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WHEAT , *COLD War, 1945-1991 , *EXPORTS , *INTERNATIONAL relations , *INTERNATIONAL trade ,CANADIAN foreign relations - Abstract
Although Canada was a committed member of the western alliance and publically supported Washington, DC's efforts to isolate communist China, Ottawa embarked on large-scale wheat sales to Beijing in the late 1950s in the face of sustained US opposition. Drawing on a broad range of archival records, this paper explores the three main factors that encouraged the Canadian government in this course: growing doubts about the wisdom of isolating communist China; mounting anger at Washington, DC'S use of subsidized wheat sales to capture traditional Canadian markets; and a surging sense of Canadian nationalism that sought a distinct role for Canada on the world stage. Clearly, as was so often the case in postwar Canadian foreign economic policy, a narrowly defined national interest easily trumped the ideological pressures of western solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
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