Why Canadian History Is Boring

The H-Canada academic mailing list, a part of the well-known H-Net network, features the sort of messages that might be expected of such a list: conference announcements, job listings, enquiries as to the state of scholarship on gender in Manitoba and, periodically, excursive discussions of the state of Canadian studies. The latter revolve around the entwined themes of historical memory, public ignorance of history, how to get students interested in Canadian history and, a while ago, “why Canadian history is so boring,” in exactly those words.

Such anxieties do not come from nowhere, so it is not entirely surprising that Robert Bothwell’s Penguin History of Canada should bring them back to mind. The problem is real, but the problem is with the subject, in both senses of that term, rather than the work, still less the author.

Professor Bothwell is a prolific authority on many aspects of Canadian history—foreign policy, nuclear power, the lives of...