Master of Persuasion: Brian Mulroney’s Global Legacy by Fen Osler Hampson
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019876376 |
| Author | Kim Richard Nossal |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
influence Canadian politicians to look closely at the Australian legislation as a
model for a comparable response in Canada.
This is an important book, which should stimulate much debate in Canada over
the past, present, and future of Canada’s relations with the PRC.
Fen Osler Hampson
Master of Persuasion: Brian Mulroney’s Global Legacy
Signal/McClelland & Stewart: Toronto, 2018. 272 pp. $35.00 (cloth)
ISBN: 978–0-7710-3907-2
Reviewed by: Kim Richard Nossal (nossalk@queensu.ca), Centre for International and
Defence Policy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
This book, Fen Hampson tells us at the outset, was written to fill a particular void
in the scholarly literature on Canadian foreign policy. On the one hand, there are
numerous journal articles and chapters in books on different aspects of the foreign
policy of the Progressive Conservative government that held office between 1984
and 1993. There is the Canada Among Nations series, inwhich Hampson himself was
deeply involved:this series first appeared in 1984, the year that Brian Mulroney came
to office, and since then has provided an indispensable annual survey of Canadian
foreign policy. There is also Diplomatic Departures, the collection that Nelson
Michaud of l’E
´cole nationale d’administration publique and I edited in 2001.
On the other hand, in the 25 years after Mulroney left the prime ministership, no
single-authored book on his foreign and defence policy was written—a marked
difference, as Hampson notes, from the number of single-authored books on the
foreign policy of 20th-century Liberal prime ministers like Lester B. Pearson and
Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Hampson notes this difference in treatment, but does not explore the possible
reasons for the void—other than to suggest that it is more than an oversight.
Whatever the reason, the absence of a single-authored, book-length treatment of
the foreign policy of the Mulroney era is indeed strange, particularly since, as
Michaud and I argued in 2001, many of the foreign policy decisions of the
Progressive Conservative government he headed represented a substantial—and
consequential—departure for Canada in world affairs.
This survey of Mulroney’s foreign policy fills the lacuna well. While this book
falls into that liminal category of histories that are written after the passage of
sufficient time for some digestion but before the release of the historical documents
of the era, Hampson’s exploration does have the advantage of benefitting from the
input of some of the key principals during this period, including Derek Burney,
Mulroney’s chief of staff, and Mulroney himself.
The title of the book—Master of Persuasion—signals clearly that this is a book
by a fan. It is, thus, not surprising that Hampson seeks to showcase the significant
accomplishments of Mulroney and his government in foreign policy rather than try
to cover every major foreign policy issue. Nor is it surprising, given the broad
482 International Journal 74(3)
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