Book Launch: Canada, Apartheid, and the Defence of the Liberal Order

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, but defending a global system predicated on norms, rules, and institutions in which Ottawa had a real stake both geopolitically and, more significantly, ideologically.

 

The Bill Graham Centre is pleased to sponsor a launch of a major scholarly history of this topic with the author, Daniel Manulak, and a leading policymaker in formulating Canada's response to apartheid, the Rt. Hon. Joe Clark.

 

Daniel Manulak has a PhD in History from Western University and is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

 

The Rt. Hon. Joe Clark was Prime Minister of Canada from 1979 to 1980 and Secretary of State for External Affairs from 1984 to 1991.

 

Sponsored by the Graham Centre, Trinity College