Review: Jean Monnet and Canada Early Travels and the Idea of European Unity

Abstract

JEAN MONNET AND CANADA Early Travels and the Idea of European Unity Trygve U gland Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 109 pp, $29.95 (doth) ISBN 978-1-4426-4310-9Jean Monnet (1888-1979) was not one to let a good crisis go to waste. No surprise, then, that the European Union's seemingly endless agony over the euro should have led many to ask what counsel this tireless and creative founding father of European would offer today's leaders. A believer in the power, durability, and accumulated wisdom of institutions, Monnet might well press them to seize the moment, follow the logic of integration, and take another bold step in the direction of supranational economic governance. But he would then immediately confront the living legacy ofthat rival Frenchman, Charles de Gaulle, whose insistence on the primacy of national governments is reflected in the Merkozy partnership that has shaped Europe's response to its financial crisis.The persistent vitality of Monnet' s ideas is reason enough to continue exploring their origins. That is one attraction of Trygve U gland' s brief but lively account of Monnet' s early years - a narrative that traces the roots of his innovative, pragmatic theory of European back through his in international business, the League of Nations, and the promotion of inter-allied cooperation in both world wars. A second attraction, particularly for readers, is Ugland's thesis that Monnet's travels in Canada prior to World War I much of his thinking about designing institutions and getting things done in international relations.A Norwegian-born political scientist at Bishop's University, Ugland covers a great deal of ground in this book. His earlier work on the state control of alcohol, combined with a passion for Europe, drew him naturally to Monnet, whose family produced a prominent brand of cognac. Not yet 20, Monnet was first dispatched to Winnipeg in 1907 to develop a market for it. Until 1914 he returned repeatedly, visiting most of the country and establishing privileged, profitable ties with the Hudson's Bay Company as the distributor of Monnet cognac. Ugland argues that Monnet's Canadian school of experience (49) was the source of the personal theoretical code that inspired and spurred him to promote European integration (9-11).Monnet's impressions from these early visits to Canada were undoubtedly seminal. His exposure to the west in him visions of progress, expansion, organization and - not least - a working federal system. Two subsequent engagements with Canada reinforced his ideas about practical international cooperation. First, during World War I he arranged for the Hudson's Bay Company to become the French government's purchasing agent for food, raw materials, and manufactured goods - a supply system then extended to several other allies. Monnet's next transatlantic venture was a scheme hatched in 1938 to evade America's neutrality act by assembling military aircraft in Canada from components shipped across the border from American factories. Their destiny was the French air force, desperate to counter the growing threat of the Luftwaffe. In all of these commercial and diplomatic enterprises, Canada was for Monnet an indispensable link. …