From the late 1950s to the mid-1990s, Canadian policy-makers shared a remarkably similar world view that shaped their approach toward South African apartheid and the risks it posed to global race relations. Why did Ottawa take a leading role internationally in addressing an issue seemingly peripheral to its national interests? Canada, Apartheid, and the Defence of the Liberal Order argues that for Canadians, the struggle against apartheid was not just about South Africa or racial injustice.
Daniel Manulak draws on newly declassified files, interviews, and other key materials to produce the definitive investigation of Canada’s response to apartheid. Over nearly four decades, despite taking various approaches to the issue, Canadian officials held a consistent view of the dangers posed by the apartheid regime: the West’s association with Pretoria’s organized racial oppression threatened to undermine the appeal of the liberal world order. In opposing apartheid, Canada was defending a global system predicated on norms, rules, and institutions in which Ottawa had a real stake both geopolitically and, more significantly, ideologically.
By unravelling the thread of racial perceptions woven through the liberal order, this thought-provoking and persuasive study reveals Canada’s liminal position in the apartheid story and global politics to be as much a social matter as a question of power dynamics.
