The focus of this book is the decision of Canadian prime minister Robert Borden to embark upon a new naval policy that had at its heart the building in British shipyards of three new dreadnought battleships for service in the Royal Navy. Motivated by a belief that the British Empire faced a deadly maritime challenge from the growing German fleet, the proposed Canadian contribution to the British Empire's defense would, or so Borden thought, enhance Canada's influence in imperial decision making, help preserve peace, and bring Canada more in line with the policy of the other dominions, most of which made a direct and more significant contribution to naval defense. However, Borden's scheme, despite being publicly endorsed by the British government, was extremely controversial in Canada. Many Canadians, for example, objected to the fact that the proposed dreadnoughts were to be built in British shipyards; others thought that the emphasis on battleships over other naval craft was misplaced; others still found fault with a policy that would result in Canadian ships crewed largely by British sailors. Such objections ultimately led to the proposal's failure in the Canadian Senate, which was controlled by the opposition Liberal Party. As a result, by the time war erupted in August 1914, the policy had still not passed this legislative hurdle and remained a dead letter.

Martin Thornton's examination of this story focuses largely on the Canadian political and parliamentary dimensions to the problem. The reasons for the controversial nature of this policy are explored through a survey of the policies advanced by the previous administration of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, by the contrast in the thinking on this matter of the two premiers, and by the numerous twists and turns of the parliamentary battle to enact the new policy into law. The discussion of these issues is rich and detailed and will offer a new element to the tale for those historians who have previously viewed the matter only through its connection with imperial defense, British naval policy, and the Anglo-German naval race.

The emphasis on Canadian politics, while welcome given that this is a subject rarely explored in detail, is somewhat at variance with the title of the book, which promises a much more wide-ranging analysis of Anglo-Canadian naval relations. Although there is quite a lot of comment on the contribution of Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to the development of Borden's thinking on naval matters, one would struggle to say that the book delivers on its wider remit. The issue of the three promised Canadian dreadnoughts and the part they played in the naval policy of the British Admiralty have previously received much attention, most recently in debates between Christopher Bell and Nicholas Lambert in the pages of War in History, about the Mediterranean naval situation and the need to recreate a British Mediterranean fleet. No references to this debate or to the issues that inform it are to be found in this book. Indeed, the whole question of British naval policy is dealt with in a very restricted manner. This is not just a historiographical issue—although that is a problem—but also an archival one. The source base on which the views of the British Admiralty is constructed is largely restricted to one single Admiralty Record Office Case (Case Cabinet 34 in ADM 116/3485) held by the British National Archives at Kew. Other Admiralty papers bearing on this topic, the most important of which are those in the main run of dockets in ADM 1 and in a range of more miscellaneous cases in ADM 116, do not appear to have been consulted. This considerably limits the analysis of British naval policy, which is reduced largely to a bean counting exercise of dreadnoughts available for service in the North Sea. However, much more could and should have been said about naval policy in its wider aspects.

One might be inclined to overlook the shortcomings in the naval aspects of the analysis, especially given the rich levels of detail about the Canadian parliamentary battles, were it not for the relatively high cost of the book. Ninety-five dollars (£60) for a volume that runs to a mere 136 pages (excluding appendices) could not easily be described as value for money. This, of course, is not the fault of the author, but of the publisher, Palgrave, who further exacerbate this problem by the noticeably shoddy manner in which it reproduces some of the photographs included within the volume. Yet despite the expense, the photographic production issues, and the narrow focus, this book offers useful insights into Canadian naval politics before the First World War.