Review: [Untitled]

Reviewed Work(s):
Canada and International Civil Aviation, 1932-1948 by David Mackenzie
John R. M. Wilson
The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 2. (Apr., 1991), pp. 641-642.
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Canada
writing was obviously bad by modern standards. As
Taylor makes clear, there was wholesale plagiarism by
authors of earlier works. Even that was preferable to
those who seemed to write from no sources at all.
There were also good histories, however, at least given
the limitations of the times. Many authors diligently
rummaged through government documents and old
newspapers. Others interviewed sources at great
length. Several volumes were well written. At their best
the so-called amateurs were as capable as the professionals who succeeded them. Taylor has a sure feel for
textual analysis and an excellent turn of phrase that
allows him to bring these qualities out. The gentleman
scholars whom he is analyzing would have been impressed by his literary ability and probably disturbed by
his ability to dissect their underlying purpose.
Although this is a solid book throughout, some parts
are more convincing than others. Most impressive is
Taylor's recounting of the way in which partisan political viewpoints captured historical writing and created
that "national school" of history in central Canada.
Somewhat less convincing is the author's account of the
convenient collapse of amateur historical writing on the
eve of the new professionalism of the late nineteenth
century. I am not sure from my own readings in the era
that the crisis was quite as deep as he would have it. It
is also unfortunate that the author decided to exclude
writers from the West. Although the West was settled
relatively late, it had a strong tradition of amateur
historical writing by the later nineteenth century.
Those points aside, this is an informative and useful
addition to our understanding both of Canadian historical writing and of the nineteenth-century sensibil.
A

DOUG OWRAM

University of Alberta
DAVID MACKENZIE.
Canada and International Civil Auiation, 1932-1948. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
1989. Pp. x, 314. $40.00.

David MacKenzie specializes in Canadian diplomatic

and political history in the 1930s and 1940s. His
previous book dealt with Newfoundland joining the
Canadian Confederation in 1949. In this volume
MacKenzie focuses on the period from 1932, when
Quebec's challenge to the national government's authority over civil aviation was rejected, to 1948, by
which time the basic ground rules of international civil
aviation had been determined. The book details "the
efforts made to establish an international system for the
regulation and operation of international air services
an; the role play'ed by Canadians in its development"
(D.
5).
\1
' MacKenzie treats international civil aviation as
an element of government policy and weaves a complex tapestry of the relations between the bureaucratic
and political levels of government (with modest success) and Canada's relations with the United States and
the United Kingdom (more effectively).

The story culminates at the Chicago International

Civil Aviation Conference in November 1944. After a
long build-up focusing on Canada's role as an honest
broker between the British and Americans (including a
lengthy chapter from the perspectives and archives of
those powers), the issue was joined at the conference.
Britain, with perhaps 12 percent of commercial air
traffic in 1945, confronted the United States, with over
70 percent. T o try to ensure British competitiveness
after the war, the U.K. delegation, led by the rude,
arrogant Lord Swinton, sought to establish a multilateral organization that would not only provide technical
uniformity but also allocate routes, rates, and frequency of service. The Americans successfully resisted
and argued for bilateral negotiation of routes and
services. By stalemating the conference, they rendered
that outcome inevitable and, dealing from a position of
strength, subsequently gained a lion's share of traffic
for the United States. The British essentially joined the
Americans at their two-nation Bermuda Conference in
January 1946, made the best of their not inconsiderable strengths, abandoned their pleas for empire solidarity, and left the Canadians and other Commonwealth countries to fend for themselves.
Much of the book is devoted to discussing battles
over the "five freedoms" of aviation, an important but
somewhat esoteric dispute that often leaves the reader
bumping into trees but lacking a sense of the forest.
Fortunately, appendixes have the texts of various
agreements and lists of the freedoms, and the reader is
directed there at appropriate points in the narrative.
For someone with only casual interest in the subject,
however, perusing the last four pages of the book
would reveal the essence of MacKenzie's story and save
considerable time.
American readers may be struck by similarities between the Canadian and American experience that are
common knowledge north of the border. Both countries used airport construction as a relief measure in
the 1930s, and both pursued a policy of cooperation
but not commitment in international affairs. Likewise,
Canada found aviation challenging its aloofness from
the world even as the United States did; MacKenzie
suggests that air flight, possibly as much as the war
itself, ended American isolation forever.
The author has done a good job of research in
Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Ireland, drawing on the appropriate archives and
conducting a number of interviews. His writing is
competent, although he fails to bring to life most of his
characters, even C. D. Howe, Canada's first Minister of
Transport and the most omnipresent and admirable
figure in the book. The book thoroughly covers its
relatively narrow topic. The University of Toronto
Press, unfortunately, detracts somewhat from the presentation with a number of typographical errors, an
annoying, unorthodox use of dashes, and the use of
half-size capital letters for abbreviations, which makes
"US" or "UK" fade into the text instead of standing
out. Still, such caveats aside, the book is generally

Reviews of B o o b
attractively done and will be a basic source for scholars
interested in Canada's impressive role in the emergence of the international civil aviation scene we know
today.
JOHN R. M. WILSON

Southern Calijornia College

LATIN AMERICA
ROBERT M. LEVINE. Images

of History: Nineteenth and Early

Twentieth-Century Latin American Photographs as Documents. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1989. Pp.
xi, 216. $72.50.

Historians have traditionally used photographs primarily as illustrations, and frequently their content has
contradicted the thesis of a publication that was derived
from literary sources. In recent decades there has been
an increasing consciousness of photographs as documents with potentials distinct from written records, yet
little formal training is available to historians to aid
them in understanding the peculiarities of the medium. Robert M. Levine attempts to provide such
systematic instruction for scholars of Latin America.
The first half of his book is a survey of the history of
Latin American photography with special emphasis on
the distinct cultural values that adapted the new medium to the peculiarities of neocolonial societies. This
distillation is perhaps the best yet published for the
entire region and represents the work of photographic
historians who have emerged in the various republics
in the past fifteen years. The book is well documented
and can serve as a guide to the current literature in the
field. There are several inaccurate or misleading statements in the text that betray the author's dependence
on specialists in the history of photography and some
outdated publications, but none of these errors distracts from the basic soundness of the text as an
introduction for nonspecialists. Lacking is a sense of
urgency with regard to building a research base for
biographies of the photographers; biographies could
provide insights into intentions and political attitudes.
Without such information we can easily be misled in
interpreting images.
The second half of the book is devoted to an extensive and systematic reading of images, giving specific
visual examples to illustrate each point. The ideas here
reflect the thinking of various critics of photography,
and the examples make the concepts easy to grasp and
extendible to other cases. Each stylistic and historical
point is further explored with consideration for class,
gender, and ethnicity. A good example is the portrait
of nineteen "Pernambucan representatives of the first
sugar conference" in Brazil in 1902, which contrary to
all known written documents and commentaries includes a black among the elite delegation (p. 76).
The poor quality of reproduction in the book is
equally instructive. The author repeatedly points to the
need to work with the richness of detail in original
photographic prints, but the illustrations in this publi-

cation fail to convey that richness, which is precisely

one of the most important qualities of photographs.
Economic struggles with publishers are no less the
responsibility of the historian than the accurate reading
of the visual documentation, and no historian should
attempt to study photographs from poor reproductions.
In this second section, the author becomes an example of precisely the errors that he seeks to help others
avoid, which only strengthens the need for such publications as this one. In his zeal to find relevance to
slavery in a studio portrait of a black, he mistakenly
takes for "iron fetters" the base of a metal posing
support, which was standard in photographic studios
(p. 149).In explaining a view of a Brazilian church, he
confuses the standard symbols of the passion scene on
an outdoor cross with ex-voto offerings. Such misreadi n g ~by an astute critic of photographs-as-documents
should suggest caution to all of us using visual documentation and make this book a must for all area
specialists.
KEITH MCELROY

University of Arizona,
Tucson
The Mexican Empire of Iturbide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1990. Pp. xii, 286.
$39.50.

TIMOTHY E. ANNA.

Timothy E. Anna, author of works on Mexico City

during the war of independence and the demise of
Spain's empire in Peru and elsewhere in America, now
turns his attention to the ephemeral empire of Agustin
de Iturbide, Mexico's liberator in 1821. Throughout
this contentious and tendentious work, Anna insists
that Iturbide's contemporary enemies and, with few
exceptions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexican historians have demonized Iturbide. According to
Anna, they have dismissed him as a traitor, a usurper,
a tyrant, and a fraud, reducing him to the status of
~ e x i c o ' s"most significant non-person" (p. x). There is
nothing novel about Anna's charges. Almost forty years
ago, William Spence Robertson, in the epilogue of his
exhaustively researched and objective biography of
Iturbide, commented on the intense prejudice against
Iturbide in Mexico. Robertson lamented that, while the
liberators Simdn Bolivar and Jose de San Martin were
universally praised, some Mexican historians utterly
failed to appreciate Iturbide. Others, Robertson observed, took sides either as bitter critics or as impassioned champions of Mexico's liberator.
Anna joins the list as an impassioned champion of
Iturbide, and the emperor's contemporary critics and
historians critical of him are treated by Anna as tenpins, to be knocked down at every opportunity. Anna's
main thesis appears to be that Iturbide really wanted to
be a constitutional monarch but was thwarted in his
effort by his enemies in and out of Congress. Yet Anna
admits that, within weeks of his coronation, Iturbide