Norway "must really drop their absurd claims such as that to the Otto Sverdrup Islands." Bi-polar international diplomacy: The Sverdrup Islands question, 1902-1930

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and Spread of Nationalism 2nd ed., (New York: Verso, 1991) Nation states are seen by Anderson as imagined communities.valley of col~nialism."~For Britain, Antarctic exploration and expansionism "resonated in a society beset with anxieties about national de~line."~To ardent imperialists the prospects of Imperial expansion in Antarctica functioned as an outlet to once again demonstrate the strength and virility of the British Empire.Norway, in the 1920s and 1930s, is best viewed as an example of what Aristotle A. Kallis describes as a latecomer.Only independent since 1905, the perception in Norway was that "they had started from a territorially underprivileged position" and therefore experienced "a growing domestic pressure for establishing a commanding role in the international system."'0The bi-polar sphere of the international system provided Norway with a source of perceived or imagined national redemption after more than five hundred years under foreign rule.The ability to reach a compromise over the Sverdrup Islands that linked the polar aspirations of Canada, Britain and Norway, was a manifestation of the idea that power is relative not absolute.As David Reynolds points out, the sources of power "are intangible as well as tangible.What matters is not abstract rankings of great powers but the complex balance of forces in each particular power relationship."'' The bi-polar sphere of international relations produced a situation where the greater power of Britain, and thus Canada, was dominant, not paramount.Thus, the interests of minor powers, most importantly Norway, were partially accommodated to safeguard wider British and Canadian economic and strategic interests.Hugh L. Keenleyside "Introduction" in The Growth of Canadian Policies in External Affairs (London: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 8.This process can be seen through the separate Canadian signature of the peace treaty in 1919, the Canadian insistence on the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the refusal to support Britain in the possible war against the Turks in 1922, the independent signature of the Halibut treaty with the U.S. in 1923, the refusal to be bound by the Locarno Treaty, the establishment of a Canadian diplomatic service in 1927-28, the Balfour Report and its implementation as the Statute of Westminster in 1931.Max Jones, The Last Great Conquest: Captain Scott's Antarctic Sacrifice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 12. 10 Aristotle A. Kallis, "Expansionism in Italy and Germany between Unification and the First World War: On the Ideological and Political Origins of Fascist Expansionism."European Historv Ouarterlv 28, no. 4 (October 1998), 440.Although Norway was not a fascist state in this period, the dynamic of Norway's Polar expansionism fits within the framework of Kallis' argument.David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 2oth Century (London: Pearson Education, 2000), 5.Islands reached in 1930 cannot be understood if the agreement itself, or Canadian polar politics, are not seen within the context of the larger issues concerning British and Norwegian interests in the bi-polar context of the same period.By applying this wider perspective this thesis offers new and important insight on the historical development of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago.

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