Churchill, Borden and Anglo-Canadian Naval Relations, 1911-14

Martin Thornton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137300867
• eBook ISBN: 9781137300874
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In 1911, Winston S. Churchill and Robert L. Borden became companions in an attempt to provide naval security for the British Empire as a naval crisis loomed with Germany. Their scheme for Canada to provide battleships for the Royal Navy as part of an Imperial squadron was rejected by the Senate with great implications for the future.

1

Anglo-Canadian Imperial Relations in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

‘Daughter am I in my mother’s house,

But mistress in my own.’

(Our Lady of the Snows by Rudyard Kipling)¹

Rudyard Kipling, who lived from 1865 to 1936, was like Winston Churchill winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and he is particularly famous for his short stories and poems and a literary canon that is associated with covering issues of British imperialism and colonialism, especially accounts of British soldiers. Kipling did manage to capture some political and economic issues of imperial relations, and one successful attempt at this for Anglo-Canadian relations was his poem Our Lady of the Snows, published in The Times (London) on 27 April 1897. The words ‘Daughter am I in my mother’s house, But mistress in my own.’ were carried in the first and final stanzas of the poem and cleverly defined the relationship between Canada and the ‘mother country’, Great Britain, towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, the more particular reason for the poem was Canada’s favoured trade policy with Great Britain and a more obscure border dispute in South America, where Canada favoured Great Britain and support for British Guiana, over that of the United States and Venezuela. French-Canadian Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada from 11 July 1896 to 6 October 1911, was to use the above lines from Kipling’s poem in the Canadian House of Commons on more than one occasion, particularly in discussions on the British Empire and to suggest there was Canadian autonomy in relations with Great Britain.²

The Lady of the Snows was quoted by Laurier in the House of Commons at the time of the Naval Service Bill of 1910 and it particularly reflected a view that was also held by many of his Liberal party supporters, but it was also largely the view of Leader of the Opposition, Robert Laid Borden, and the Conservative party in Canada.³ The country was happy to show allegiance to Great Britain and the British Crown, but also proud of its independence, an independence that Laurier referred to on 29 March 1909 as a ‘local independence’.⁴ Canada’s independence was particularly the case because the confederation of Canada in 1867 brought about an internally self-governing federal Canada with responsible government. The Constitution Act 1867 (formerly known as the British North America Act of 1867), an Act of the British Parliament, famously produced a written constitution for Canada. Confederation brought together three colonies in North America as the four founding Provinces of Canada in 1867: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It was not long before these Provinces were joined by Manitoba in 1870, British Columbia in 1871 and Prince Edward Island in 1873. During the Wilfrid Laurier Administration, in the early twentieth century, Saskatchewan and Alberta became part of Canada and the nation constituted nine Provinces and two Territories (Yukon was added in 1898 and Northwest Territories in 1905).⁵ In the early twentieth century, Canada was still a new nation building on the political foundations provided by Great Britain and France. With the existence of the Province of Quebec, the Canadian Government had to take into consideration potential internal divisions because of a French-Canadian population and this further qualified Canada’s relationship with Great Britain. The internal relationship of Quebec to the national Government seemed fairly stable while the French-Canadian Laurier was Prime Minister; he was born and educated in Quebec and had his political constituencies there.

Despite the self-governing nature of Canada, in foreign policy matters Canada was not formally independent from the British Government. Confederation created a new nation state, but did not completely severe Canada’s recognized links with the British Government. A British Empire continued as a collection of self-governing nations and colonies. Great Britain strove for a common centralized foreign policy emanating from Westminster for the countries with Dominion status, but Britain could not take this for granted with regard to Canada. The Anglo-Canadian imperial relationship will be seen to be one driven by negotiations, compromises and arguments rather than domination.

Historians Jack Granatstein and Norman Hillmer expressed the significant and dramatic point that: ‘Canada was born in ambiguity’.⁶ The ambiguity and confusion for Canada was that, early in its existence, it took the description of the ‘Dominion of Canada’ to be an expression of independence and self-assurance, and accordingly Canada worked particularly hard to define its own national identity. However, given that Canada did not have direct control over its own foreign policy and the word ‘Dominion’ became prominent in defining the relationship of Canada to Great Britain; Dominion status took Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Newfoundland and the Irish Free State into a position away from being colonies, but still having formal ties with Great Britain. At the Colonial Conference of 1907 (known as Imperial Conferences after this conference), Canada and Australia were referred to as Dominions. Canada’s pre-First World War policies within the British Empire over naval armaments, other defence matters, international diplomacy and international trade can be thus shown as ambiguous. This ambiguity will be highlighted accordingly in Anglo-Canadian naval relations and the ability of the Canadian Parliament to reject a naval programme promoted by the British Government and negotiated with the Canadian Government. If Canada was voting to support a British Empire foreign policy, was that domestic or foreign policy? This dilemma illustrates the true depth of Canadian independence from Great Britain and the limitations of Dominion status within the British Empire before the First World War.

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897 were imperial celebrations that Canada entered into with enthusiasm and ceremony. A stability within the Empire appeared to be evoked with the Queen’s 60 years on the throne and imperialists in Canada were given further encouragement in that Britannia still ruled the waves. As diplomat Oscar Skelton put it:

In the gorgeous pageants of the Jubilee year, in the business discussions of the Colonial Conference, and in their sequel in participation in the Boer War, Canada seemed to the world to have committed herself indefinitely to the laudation and support of the new imperialism which was dominating the policy of Britain …⁷

An ethno-linguistic link of Anglo-Saxons between Canada and the mother country was reinforced with a spiritual support evoking expansionism on Christian grounds. However, the Catholic identity of a French-speaking population in Quebec did not quite fit the picture of Anglo-Saxon superiority that would qualify Canada’s relationship to the British Empire. The promotion of French-Canadian nationalism can be associated with the countervailing drive for Anglo-Canadian cooperation, but it was not a drive that over-rode that cooperation.

A new imperialism describes the protectionist approach to the economic and political interests within the British Empire of the early twentieth century. A pride in the Empire very much suited the British and was cultivated, but it also suited some Canadians. If a federalist structure were possible for the British Empire, even through a fairly informal use of conferences and councils, then a fiscal responsibility might follow from the Dominions. For Great Britain, the resources of the Empire could be used as a command feature to retain the British Empire. Canadians could support the Empire because the Canadian position in the world could be promoted through the advancement of the British Empire. This view will be evident amongst many senior Liberals and Conservatives in the debates pursued in Canada, particularly debates about Canadian responsibility over the maintenance of the British Empire and the contribution and support to be made in military matters.

Yet Canada did not contribute directly to imperial naval defence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but it will be shown to have benefitted from a large British naval expenditure in the North American and Pacific stations. As Canada’s geographical expansion after confederation shows, there was a large inward expansion that was coupled with the building of the trans-Canada railway between 1881 and 1885. For Canada, this railway reflected the importance of transport and travel, and in turn the economic and financial attributes of the British Empire and a Canadian nation. Canada did not need to build large ships they had built a very long railway. Canadian money was directed internally and Canada’s size was its defence.⁸ Canada’s westward expansion and economic growth, despite the much smaller population was not unlike that of the economic development of the United States. Also, being next to the United States helped Canada feel relatively safe against external enemies and as a consequence could concentrate on its own internal development. Also, there were a number of shared values of the two democracies based on the nature of their European immigrant settlement.

In contrast to a view that there was a harmony of interests with the United States, is the rather strong perspective amongst Canadians that the defining feature of Canada after confederation is that Canada is not the United States. Canadians in certain periods become wary of the relationship with the United States, particularly the threatened economic, political and military autonomy of having the powerful United States as a neighbour. Canada did not have the revolutionary struggle that defined the creation of the United States or the Civil War that almost tore it apart and Canada adopted and retained through the early twentieth century a strong British Empire relationship. This Anglo-Canadian relationship manifested in different ways, often influenced by the type of prevailing crisis that existed within or towards the British Empire.

The issue of Canada’s contribution to a military support of Great Britain became a serious issue with the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 in South Africa. In a move that fell short of the Canadian Government exactly sending troops to South Africa, they permitted in excess of 7,000 troops to participate in this war. Carman Miller examined the circumstances surrounding ‘… some 7,368 restless, adventurous young Canadians who served in the South African War – the men who assisted Britain paint another portion of southern Africa red’.⁹ However, it can also be argued that the Boer War did much more for Canada and defined Canadians ambivalent attitudes towards Empire in much that followed, setting strong differences between English and French-Canadian nationalism that would run through the naval debates of the early twentieth century. For historians, the South African War and the debates over a Canadian Navy have sat awkwardly with explanations of Canada’s rise to national identity and unity. In fact, the drive for Canadian nationalism appeared to be subsumed within issues of imperialism as Canada involved itself in imperial crusades like the Boer War and the later First World War.¹⁰ Miller argues:

Most Canadians regarded imperialism simply as a means to ‘mature nationalism,’ a half-way house between the dangers of independence and the humiliation of continuing colonial dependency. Some shrewdly viewed it as a sound investment, an insurance policy, and cheap form of collective security. In short, they saw imperialism as a highway to a larger world. By sharing the responsibilities of empire they expected to help shape those imperial policies which affected Canadian interests. In their mind, ‘Canadianism’ was but the extension of imperialism.¹¹

Sir Wilfrid Laurier was still Prime Minister at the time of the South African War and was reminded in later naval debates that he permitted troops to go to South Africa rather than sending them and it was the British Government that paid for the largest portion of expenditure on Canadian troops during that particular War.¹² The Laurier Government was responsible for what was described as the ‘despatch of a contingent’.¹³ Lord Strathcona (Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal), the Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1896 to 1914, paid the cost of providing nearly 600 mounted men for a regiment (Strathcona’s Horse), and although the Canadian Department of Militia recruited for the South African War, the cost was largely covered by the British Government. The Canadian Government paid out $2,800,000 towards the Boer War, but had no say in the particular decision-making related to it.¹⁴

Not until the Statute of Westminster of 1931 did the creation of a Commonwealth of nations actually defi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Anglo-Canadian Imperial Relations in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• 2 The Rise to Eminence of Winston S. Churchill and Robert L. Borden
• 3 Winston S. Churchill Fears the Worst
• 4 Robert L. Borden, Canadian Naval Issues and His Visit to Great Britain of 1912
• 5 Policy Developments and the Two Memoranda of 1912
• 6 The Naval Aid Bill and the Canadian House of Commons: The Long Debate Begins
• 7 The Naval Aid Bill Reaches Closure in the House of Commons
• 8 Rejection by the Canadian Senate, 1913
• 9 Aftermath: Canada, Great Britain and Developments in International Affairs, 1913–14
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index