Robert Laird Borden

Prime minister of Canada (1911-1920)

• Born: June 26, 1854
• Birthplace: Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Died: June 10, 1937
• Place of death: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

As prime minister of Canada during the years of World War I and the Peace at Versailles, Borden played a crucial role in transforming the status of Canada from that of a dominion to that of a nation.

Early Life

Robert Laird Borden was born in the small village of Grand Pré, Nova Scotia. His mother, Eunice, a woman of strong character and high energy, exercised a dominant influence on his life. His father, Andrew, owned a farm but chiefly was occupied in business affairs, in which he was only moderately successful. At age fifteen, Borden cut short his formal education to accept the post of assistant master at the private school he attended. At age nineteen, Borden accepted the position of assistant master at Glenwood Institute at Matawan, New Jersey. Remaining in teaching offered very little in the way of future prospects. He therefore turned to the study of law at a Halifax law firm and was admitted to the bar in 1878. After his marriage to Laura Bond in 1898, Borden, strikingly handsome, founded a law firm in Halifax that later became one of the largest and most successful in the Maritime Provinces. In 1896, he accepted the Conservative nomination for Halifax, largely as a result of his friendship with Sir Charles Tupper, one of the original “fathers of confederation.”

Borden was for the most part an obscure back-bench member of the opposition in his first term in the Canadian parliament. He was, however, invited by the Conservative Party caucus in 1900 to assume the temporary leadership of the party. He remained in that position, despite some dissatisfaction within his party, until 1911, when Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals lost the election to the Conservatives. In Parliament, Borden had gained a reputation as a very hardworking person who had an extraordinary mastery over detail, but who lacked eloquence in debates in the House of Commons.

Life’s Work

As prime minister of Canada for nine years, Borden’s major concern was Anglo-Canadian relations, and within those relations the changing structure of the British Empire. During the early years of his ministry as leader of the Conservative Party, Borden was considered to be a strong supporter of the Empire and the imperial connection in general. By the end of his ministry, and mainly as a consequence of the events of World War I and Canada’s participation in those events, he would be the most instrumental of all dominion statesmen in having changed the structure of the Empire into what is now known as the British Commonwealth of Nations. His role in promoting greater dominion autonomy within the Empire during the later stages of World War I was absolutely crucial.

In the first years of his ministry, Borden’s devotion to a close imperial tie was manifested in attempting to persuade the Canadian parliament to contribute to the cost of the construction of three new British dreadnoughts for the Royal Navy. A bill for this purpose was put forward at the behest of Winston Churchill, who was then Great Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill’s plea came as a result of Germany’s spectacular rise in naval armaments. Borden’s naval bill appropriating the money for these ships was defeated by the Canadian Senate in 1913, and with the bill’s defeat, Borden’s first attempt to maintain and strengthen Canada’s imperial connection failed somewhat ignominiously.

With the outbreak of World War I, Borden’s view of the imperial connection would undergo an astounding change. Sometimes in advance of Canadian nationalism, sometimes carried along by it, Borden, more than any other imperial statesman, was responsible for what ultimately amounted to a revolution within the British Empire. As a result of a trip to Great Britain in 1915 and the treatment he received at the hands of the government in London, his views of Canada’s relationship to the Empire changed markedly and initiated on his part an ever-increasing tendency to emphasize Canadian national interests over imperial interests. Canada had placed a large number of men in the field and was, in addition, making enormous economic sacrifices in a military effort over which it had little or no control. This lack of consultation, both in principle and in fact, led Borden to assert Canadian interests with increasing frequency as the war progressed.

As a consequence of dramatic increases in Canadian casualties in the field, Borden traveled to London again in 1917, expressly to press David Lloyd George for a greater Canadian voice in the direction of the war. Indeed, Borden at one point in their conversations threatened to withdraw Canada from the Empire unless Britain saw fit to give Canada a larger voice in the direction of the war. This threat was instrumental in Lloyd George’s ultimate decision to create a novel governmental body known as the Imperial War Cabinet, which included the prime minister of Britain and all the other prime ministers of the dominions, creating a body through which the dominions would receive a greater voice in the direction of the war. Borden had established once and for all the principle of shared authority in imperial military policy.

Having set this precedent, Borden soon began to carry this principle into all phases of imperial relations. When the armistice was announced in November, 1918, Borden hastily sailed to Britain with the intent that Canada be consulted as to the terms of peace, a demand that came as a complete surprise to the British government. He demanded of Lloyd George that Canada, as well as the other dominions, be given representation at the Peace Conference at Versailles, which in effect meant a demand for international recognition for Canada and the other dominions as autonomous nations. He also demanded that when the peace treaty was signed that it be submitted to the Canadian parliament for ratification. Moreover, Borden in 1920 asked for and secured from the British government separate Canadian diplomatic representation at Washington, thus giving Canada an international status it did not possess prior to that date (inasmuch as its interests in the United States had previously been represented through the British embassy). Therefore, as a consequence of Borden’s efforts and demands, Canada had entered World War I as a dominion; by 1920 it was for all practical purposes a sovereign nation-state.

Significance

When Borden became the Conservative prime minister of Canada in 1911, he was considered by most political experts in that country to be an uninspiring but careful administrator and a devout adherent to the cause of British imperialism. When he resigned his office in 1920 because of ill health, he had become a strong Canadian nationalist and one of the most important architects of what was to become the British Commonwealth of Nations.

The rather remarkable transformation of Borden’s views from imperialist to nationalist can be accounted for primarily in terms of the rising tide of dominion nationalism in general, and Canadian nationalism in particular. Had World War I not occurred, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Borden would have remained the “old” imperialist he had been during his earlier years in Canadian politics. As a statesman of the senior dominion, however, he took an unprecedented lead in pressuring British officialdom to make dramatic concessions to Canadian autonomy as well as the autonomy of the other dominions within the Empire.

Beginning his political career as a true believer in the old imperialist system, he ended that career by taking the lead in asserting boldly and aggressively the rights of the dominions, and in the process, unconsciously perhaps, found himself revolutionizing the entire nature and structure of the Empire. In the realm of important Canadian domestic legislation, there is little of significance to which Borden could point. Indeed, there is little to indicate that he made any progress in the age-old problem of the relation of English-speaking Canada to Quebec, or French-speaking Canada. In fact, he only heightened those historical tensions by unsuccessfully attempting to force conscription on Quebec in 1917. Nevertheless, it is clear that Borden put his unique and lasting stamp on British imperial policy and therefore on the long history of the British Empire.

Bibliography

Borden, Robert L. Canada in the Commonwealth: From Conflict to Co-operation. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1929. Treats the historical development of Canada’s relationship to the British Commonwealth and the part that Borden played within the context of that development.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs. Edited by Henry Borden. 2 vols. Toronto, Ont.: Macmillan, 1938. Contains the significant correspondence of Borden during his years in office. Also represents Borden’s personal views and interpretations of domestic and imperial events in which he played an important role.

Brown, Robert C. Robert Laird Borden. Vol. 1. Toronto, Ont.: Macmillan, 1975. A highly informative biography, especially in terms of Borden’s early years and those forces that helped shape his political career and attitudes. It possesses much interesting and useful information on events that had an important bearing on his official life.

Dawson, Robert M., ed. The Development of Dominion Status, 1900-1936. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965. A historical overview of the nature of the changing status of the dominions within the Empire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the crucial years of the twentieth century. By far the best documentary history of the period. Dawson’s very full commentary is exceedingly valuable.

Glazebrook, George P. de T. A History of Canadian External Relations. Rev. ed. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, 1966. An excellent survey of Canadian dealings with Great Britain as well as with the other dominions and the United States.

Lloyd George, David. War Memoirs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1934. A splendid source on the British effort in World War I as well as the British prime minister’s views of and insights into the problems connected with the dominions’ participation in that war effort.

Lower, Arthur. Colony to Nation. 4th ed. Don Mills, Ont.: Longmans Canada, 1964. This work is an excellent interpretive history of Canada, representing as it does an impartial attack on imperialist methods.

Wilson, Harold A. The Imperial Policy of Sir Robert Borden. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966. A detailed account of Borden’s imperial policy as prime minister, with an emphasis on the effect that policy had on the changing nature and structure of the British Empire.