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In April 1916, the first battalion of Canadian lumberjacks arrived in England to initiate large-scale forestry operations. The remarkable achievements of the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps—who would number almost 32,000 by November 1918—are little known. Astonishingly, over 70% of all the timber used by the Allied armies on the western front was furnished by these men. The county of Devon serves as a useful case study to survey the felling operations undertaken to feed the country’s insatiable appetite for timber. It also provides a lens into the at times ambivalent relationship between the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps and British civilians, on the one hand, and “attached labour”—foreign labourers from Portugal and the growing number of German prisoners of war—on the other.

Throughout the 1920s Canadian politicians, immigration officials, eugenicists and political commentators talked about the need to ‘Canadianize’ all migrants who arrived in the dominion, including those from the mother country. This did not mean that Ottawa was out to ‘de-Britannicize’ those arriving from the United Kingdom. British migrants were given preferred status because their common heritage and shared cultural values mirrored those of most Anglo-Canadians. In other words, ‘Britishness’ made up the bedrock of Anglo-Canadian ‘national’ identity prior to the Second World War. Nonetheless, tensions existed between the competing notions of what it was to be ‘British’, ‘Canadian’ or what John Darwin has posited, the formation of a ‘Britannic’ identity. Using the formulation and implementation of assisted migration and empire settlement between 1919 and 1930 as a backcloth, this paper chronicles the long forgotten controversy surrounding the competing national and imperial interests that exacerbated relations between London and Ottawa after the Great War.

The demands of the Second World War had long-term consequences for Britain's future relations with its four self-governing dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Forged by war, a key component in this evolving diplomatic relationship was the office of the high commissioner, which by 1950, became the main conduit of communications between the British and dominion governments. This essay introduces some of the main actors and tensions within the ‘family circle’, especially during the first three years of the conflict, when, after the fall of France in June 1940, the British Empire stood almost alone until the United States entered hostilities in December 1941. Christened the ‘junior war cabinet’, the influence of the dominion high commissioners reached its height in 1940, only to decline rapidly with the coming of Winston Churchill to power in May 1940. Indeed, their influence within Whitehall was directly linked with who was dominions secretary and the influence, or not, they had wit...

This article explores a number of key facets of Vincent Massey's tenure as Canada's wartime high commissioner in London between 1939 and 1942. Using the personal tensions and mutual suspicions which existed between Massey and the mercurial Canadian prime minister, W. L. Mackenzie King, this essay analyses how Massey and his dedicated staff coped with the increasing and punishing workload during the first three years of the Second World War. Wheat, wartime finance and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan dominated Anglo-Canadian relations during the early stages of the war when the British Empire/Commonwealth stood almost alone against the European dictators. What emerges is that, despite King's attempts to restrict Massey's authority in wartime London, the pressure of prime ministerial work in Ottawa allowed Massey, for the first time since his appointment in 1935, to exert the authority and responsibility he so desperately craved prior to the war. However, this essay is not just about high policy a...

In 1938 Sir Gerald Campbell arrived in Ottawa to take up the position as the United Kingdom’s high commissioner. Not much has been written about the man or his period in office (1938—41). Indeed, the sketchy and simplistic assessments of Campbell, which historians on both sides of the Atlantic have relied on for more than four decades, are seriously flawed and out of date. Using the fraught negotiations of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as a backcloth, and in the light of the rich archival material now available, the article seeks to redress and revise the hitherto poor assessment of Campbell’s performance as Britain’s third high commissioner in Canada. Far from being a weak or second-rate official who was constantly being manipulated by the wily and politically savvy dominion premier W.L. Mackenzie King, Campbell proved more than equal to the challenge. However, this analysis is not simply an examination of the personal and professional relationships between Campbell and Mackenzie King. An examination of Campbell’s career in Canada provides an important insight into the ever-changing relationship between Britain and its increasingly restless dominion partners, which overlapped with a critical period of the Second World War when Britain and its empire stood virtually alone against the Axis powers.

For most of the Second World War, German and Italian agents were actively engaged in a variety of intelligence gathering exercises in southern Africa. The hub of this activity was Lourenco Marques, the colonial capital of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). One of the key tasks of Axis agents was to make links with Nazi sympathizers and the radical right in South Africa, promote dissent, and destabilize the imperial war effort in the dominion. Using British, American, and South African archival sources, this article outlines German espionage activities and British counter-intelligence operations orchestrated by MI5, MI6, and the Special Operations Executive between 1939 and 1944. The article, which is part of a larger study, examines three broad themes. First, it explores Pretoria's creation of a humble military intelligence apparatus in wartime South Africa. Secondly, it examines the establishment of several British liaison and intelligence-gathering agencies that operated in southern Africa for most of the war. Finally, it assesses the working relationship between the South African and British agencies, the tensions that arose, and the competing interests that emerged between the two allies as they sought to contain the Axis-inspired threat from within. © 2005 Cambridge University Press.

During the early days of the Second World War, the British government created a number of clandestine agencies whose mission was to undertake covert intelligence and propaganda work. One of the problems these organizations, such as SOE and the PWE, experienced was the lack of qualified linguists who could be used in the murky world of espionage, political warfare and counter-propaganda. By early 1941, unable to find large numbers of qualified people in Britain or the Empire, Whitehall – in desperation – looked towards the United States with its large Italian emigre community and the little known anti-fascist organization known as the Mazzini Society. This article is a study in failure. Using British attempts to forge a Free Italy movement between 1941 and 1943, it examines the sometimes farcical attempts by SOE, and later the PWE, in recruiting Italo-Americans for clandestine political warfare work in the fight against fascist Italy.

(2003). Mapping the British world. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 1-15.

Just days before the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, the Foreign Office in London received a letter from Ian Morrison, late Honorary Attaché to the British embassy in Tokyo, who was returning to the United Kingdom via south China. For the past month, Morrison had been enjoying the allure of Hong Kong. Astounded by the bustle and ‘ever-fresh beauty’ of this prosperous corner of empire, one of the first impressions upon his arrival in the colony was its remarkable isolation.

(2002). Ex-Servicemen and the Politics of Soldier Settlement in Canada and Australia, 1915–1925. War & Society: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 47-80.

(2000). Decolonization Deferred? The Re‐establishment of Colonial Rule in Hong Kong, 1942–45. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 28, International Diplomacy and Colonial Retreat, pp. 25-50.

It was during the Second World War that the Allies developed a sophisticated intelligence system to harness information garnered from the hundreds of thousands of Axis captives taken during hostilities. Indeed, prior to 1942, many Allied field commanders displayed a healthy scepticism towards intelligence obtained from this source. Such suspicions were eventually overcome. This article examines British efforts during the formative period 1939–42 when an integrated infrastructure was painstakingly established to extract, collate and assess material obtained from Axis POWs. It not only examines the intelligence organisations which were established by each of the British armed services, but also analyses the variety of military and political information obtained and how it was interpreted and disseminated.

Diplomacy and decolonialization, John Darwin decolonization deferred? - the re-establishment of colonial rule in Hong Kong, 1942-45, Kent Fedorowich Britain, the United States and the end of the Italian Empire in Africa, 1940-52, Saul Kelly divisive decolonization - the Anglo-French withdrawal from Syria and Lebanon, 1944-46, Martin Thomas filling the void - the emergence of early Vietnamese trade with China, 1945-50, Christopher E. Goscha division and discord - British policy, Indo-China, and the origins of the Vietnam War, 1954-1956, Phillip Hughes after decolonization - Australia and the emergence of the non-aligned movement in Asia, 1954-55 Christopher Waters Britain and the Cyprus problem at the United Nations, 1954-58, Edward Johnson causes and consequences of France's departure from Algeria, 1958-62, Sabine-Marie Decup Britain, the United States and the demise of the Central African Federation, 1959-1963, L.J. Butler Britain, the Cold war, and the Congo Crisis, 1960-63, Alan James Britain and Portuguese Africa, 1961-65, Glyn Stoner revolution and reaction - South Arabia in the aftermath of the Yemini Revolution, Simon C. Smith Britain, Konfrontasi and the end of empire in south-east Asia, 1961-65, John Subritski decolonization by default - Suriname and the Dutch retreat from empire, Bob Moore the end of Australian rule in Papua New Guinea, Hank Nelson.

When the Anglo-Irish campaign ended in July 1921, the British government, in accordance with the agreed settlement, initiated the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.). For over a century the Irish police force, renamed the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1867, had carried the burden of policing in Ireland, and after 1916 it bore the brunt of escalating republican intimidation and violence. Now that the conflict was over and the R.I.C. faced dissolution, a number of questions remained outstanding. What would Whitehall do to assist former members of this force once British troops had withdrawn? What contingencies, if any, had been made by the British government for the speedy removal of these men who could not remain in Ireland ‘simply because they [had] performed their duty fearlessly as loyal servants of the Crown’? Was compensation forthcoming, and if so, what forms would it take? One suggestion which received close scrutiny was their resettlement in the overseas dominions — but how receptive were the dominion governments to this proposal?

Mapping the British world - Carl Bridge and Kent Federowich British emigration tot he Empire-Commonwealth since 1880 - from overseas settlement to diaspora? - Stephen Constantine a new class of women for the colonies - "The Imperial Colonist" and the construction of Empire - Lisa Chilton the Welsh world and the British Empire c. 1851-1939 - an exploration - Aled Jones and Bill Jones revisiting Anglicisation in the 19th-century Cape Colony - Vivian Bickford-Smith the Crown, Empire loyalism and the assimilation of non-British white subjects in the British world - an argument against "ethnic determinism" - Donal Lowry Britishness and Australia - some reflections - Neville Meany Hugh Wyndham, Transvaal politics and the attempt to create an English country seat in South Africa, 1901-14 - Ian van der Waag casting daylight upon magic - deconstructing the Royal Tour of 1901 to Canada - Phillip Buckner communication and integration - the British and Dominions Press and the British world - Simon J. Potter "brushing up your Empire" - dominion and colonial propaganda on the BBC's Home Services 1939-45 - Sian Nicholas.