Review: The Writing of Canadian History
| Author | Margaret Prang |
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070207803300114 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
262
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
THE
WRITING
OF CANADIAN
HISTORY
Aspects
of
English-Canadian
Historical Writing:
1900-1970
Carl
Berger
Toronto:
Oxford
University
Press,
1976,
x,
3Oopp,
$12.50
It
has
long
been
fashionable
in
some
circles
to
laugh
at
the
mere idea
that
Canada
has
an
intellectual
history.
That
the
disposition
to
be
amused
by
the
suggestion
that
Canadians
have
had
ideas
about the
world
around
them
which
are
worthy
of
systematic
study
is
now
in
decline
owes
more
to
Professor Carl
Berger
of
the
University
of
Toronto
than
to
any
other
scholar.
In
The
Sense
of
Power,
published
in
1970,
Berger
explored
Canadian
attitudes
towards
involvement
in
the British
empire
and
traced
the development
of
a
sense
of
Canadian
nationality
before
World
War
I.
In
the
present
volume he
has
examined
the
writ-
ing
of
history
by
English-Canadian historians
from
the
advent
of
pro-
fessional
historical
writing
in
the
work of
George
M.
Wrong
and
Adam
Shortt
through
to
Donald Creighton
and
W.L.
Morton.
The
other
major
historians
accorded intensive
study
are
H.A.
Innis,
A.R.M.
Lower,
and
F.H.
Underhill,
with
considerable
attention
to
a
good
number
of
their
lesser
contemporaries.
Berger's
approach
is
strongly
biographical
but not
in
any
narrow
sense.
In
attempting
to
understand
the
forces
which
have shaped
histo-
rical
writing
in
English
Canada
he
places his
historians
firmly
in the
context
of
their
own
experience
of
their
times.
The
result
is
a
subtle
and
provocative
exposition
of
the
way
each
generation
of
historians
has
framed historical
debate
to answer
the
question
which
seemed
im-
portant
at
the
time.
Not
surprisingly,
in
a
country
whose
life
has
always
been overwhelmingly
influenced
by
developments
beyond
its
boundaries,
a
continuing
preoccupation
has
been
the growth
from
colony to
nation, with
the
changing
balance
of
relations
with
Britain
and
the
United
States
always
in
the
foreground.
Another
theme
which
runs throughout
the
book
is
the
role
of
the
scholar
in
society. Berger
clearly
prefers
the
detached
scholarship
of
H.A.
Innis
to
the
journalis-
tic
involvement
in
contemporary
affairs
of
F.H.
Underhill,
and
leaves
no
doubt
as
to
his
judgment
about
the
relative
contributions
of
the
two
to
Canadian
culture.
As
the
first
full-scale
study
of
Canadian
historical
writing
in
English
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