Patricia E. Roy is the winner of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Historical Association.

Canada’s early participation in the Asia-Pacific region was hindered by “contradictory impulses” shaping its approach. For over half a century, racist restrictions curtailed immigration from Japan, even as Canadians manoeuvred for access to the fabled wealth of the Orient. Canada’s relations with Japan have changed profoundly since then. In Contradictory Impulses, leading scholars draw upon the most recent archival research to examine an important bilateral relationship that has matured in fits and starts over the past century. As they makes clear, the two countries’ political, economic, and diplomatic interests are now more closely aligned than ever before and wrapped up in a web of reinforcing cultural and social ties.

Contradictory Impulses is a comprehensive study of the social, political, and economic interactions between Canada and Japan from the late nineteenth century until today.

Greg Donaghy is Head of the Historical Section at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and General Editor of its series, Documents on Canadian External Relations. His publications include Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States, 1963-68, and the edited collection (with Patricia Roy) Contradictory Impulses: Canada and Japan in the 20th Century.

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• Winner, Patricia E. Roy is the recipient of the Canadian Historical Association's Lifetime Achievement Award for 2013.

Contradictory Impulses with its wide range of essays and comprehensive suggestions for further reading, is an important contribution to the literature on Canada and the Pacific in the twentieth century. The book is a welcome contribution to a field still dominated by scholarly interests in Canada and the Anglo-American world and where Canada's connections with Asia and the Pacific are too often ignored or mentioned only in passing.

H-Canada

Contradictory Impulses: Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Century