Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World - Hardcover

Webster, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 077481683X ISBN 13: 9780774816830

Publisher: UBC Press, 2009

Synopsis

The history of Canada's postwar foreign policy is dominated by Cold War narratives - the Gouzenko Affair, UN peacekeeping missions, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. By contrast, the story of Canada's response to decolonization in the Global South is less well known. Fire and the Full Moon focuses on Canadian-Indonesian relations to explore a larger question: Was Canada's postwar foreign policy guided by an overarching set of altruistic principles, or did its policy objectives in the South follow a different path? It frames Canada's response to the Indonesian struggle for independence in the context of other regional decolonization movements and US and Commonwealth relations with Asia and shows that Canada operated as a loyal member of the Western alliance, hoping that Indonesia would follow Canada's own, non-revolutionary, model of decolonization and development. Canadian economic development policies caused Canada to overlook Indonesian human rights violations in East Timor. Fire and the Full Moon is a work of trans-Pacific international history that reassesses Canada's foreign-policy objectives in Indonesia, and its own national image, which will appeal to students of diplomatic history interested in Asia and the developing world.

About this title

Review:

Fire and the Full Moon is a most welcome addition to the literature of Canadian foreign policy. Strikingly well written and deeply researched, the book explores an area that Canadian diplomats often ignored or took for granted – relations with Indonesia, one of the largest countries in Asia, and, in the 1960s especially, the epicentre of the Cold War in Asia. Webster expands our understanding of Canadian foreign relations in the twentieth century and reminds us of the importance of the Third World in the definition of Canadian policy abroad. (Robert Bothwell, author of Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984)

Webster’s detailed analysis of the perspectives of Canada’s foreign policy-makers and politicians on Indonesia, and Asia more generally, forms the fascinating core of this book. Fire and the Full Moon is about the disjuncture (intended or not) between the rhetoric and self-image of Canada’s foreign policy-makers and the reality of their actions. This is first-rate scholarship. (Jacques Bertrand, author of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia)

About the Author:

David Webster is an assistant professor of international studies at the University of Regina.

About this edition

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 077481683X
• ISBN 13: 9780774816830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272