Summary

The field of Canadian foreign policy is often characterized as multidisciplinary. An examination of the evolution of the literature on Canadian foreign policy over the course of the 20th century reveals a field that grew slowly during the two decades after World War I but developed substantially after World War II when Canada’s involvement in global politics shifted substantially when governments in Ottawa rejected a return to interwar isolationism and embraced internationalism. The Canadian foreign policy literature that developed in the 30 years after World War II was dominated by historians and “historically minded political scientists.” This pattern changed with the massification of the Canadian university system, with political scientists dominating the literature after the 1970s. However, the burgeoning literature in the field has been marked by considerable theoretical and methodological diversity, more undisciplined than multidisciplinary.