LESTER B. PEARSON, CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY, AND THE QUEST FOR WORLD ORDER

My dissertation concerns Lester Pearson and the development of Canadian foreign policy. Its focus is the history of political thought underlying contemporary Canadian foreign policy. Canadian ideas about international politics underwent a radical transformation around the turn of the century. For more than a century, Canadian foreign policy was guided by the conscious evaluation of interest and power, specifically British power, British interest, and the international distribution of power. When Lester Pearson became a principal architect of foreign policy in 1946, he might have relied upon the guidance of almost forty years of Canadian-made Canadian foreign policy. That he did not rely on this experience is a clue to the radical transformation Canada's statecraft underwent in the first third of the twentieth century. In a few short years the accumulated teachings of Castlereagh, Palmerston and Disraeli largely disappeared. New worldviews emerged. Diverse and often implacably opposed to one another, these new approaches were of one mind in their distrust of traditional approaches. By 1945 the new ideas meant to guide the new age of Canadian foreign policy had been discredited. Pearson's challenge was to build a foreign policy in a nation where the greatest diplomatic successes had been forgotten and where the prevailing approach to international affairs had proved a failure.