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  7. Political History Group

Political History Group

The Political History Group (PHG) aims to promote and support research in political history and the study of political history in Canada .  It considers “political history” in very broad terms, and encourages the study of politics, public policy, governance, the state, political economy, political sociology, civil society, elections, foreign policy, international relations, legal history and other facets of political life from diverse theoretical and empirical approaches.  We are affiliated with the Canadian Historical Association, and our members include graduate students, professors and other scholars and public historians interested in political issues.

The 2024 Prize winners are:

Political History Prize Best Article (English Language)
Sam Eberlee. “The View from Langley: The CIA and Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the Era of ‘Canada First’ Economic Nationalism,” Canadian Historical Review, 104, no. 3 (September 2023): 367-85.
In a very readable study, Sam Eberlee imaginatively uses recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency files to consider outsiders’ views of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and his government’s policies and places them against a background based on available Canadian sources.
Best Book in Political History Prize

Daniel Macfarlane. Natural Allies: Environment, Energy and the History of US-Canada Relations (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).

Macfarlane offers an innovative reinterpretation of Canadian-American relations through the lens of the environment, braiding diplomatic history with environmental history in a way that reinvigorates both fields. Expansive in both its territorial and temporal breadth, and based on impressive research in a vast literature, this book still manages to offer a concise argument in favour of appreciating the centrality of environmental diplomacy to the inter-state relationship. This is an important reinterpretation of the “nature” of that historic relationship, at a time when energy and the environment increasingly shape our future.

The PHG awards many prizes including:

The Best Book Prize prize is awarded for an outstanding, well-written book judged to have made an original, significant, and meritorious contribution to the field of Canadian political history.

See Prize Winners

Best English-Language article prize in Canadian political history

See Prize Winners

Best French-Language article prize in Canadian political history

See Prize Winners

Please contact the committee’s secretary should you have any questions or if you wish to join the group’s listserv.