Victorian England's string of imperial successes in Africa and Asia, which gave London control over a quarter of the globe and over a fifth of its people, sparked a wave of romantic enthusiasm for the Empire.

A slump in world trade, unrelenting pressure from Vancouver logging interests, and the persistent arguments advanced by Sir Sandford Fleming, a leading advocate of the Pacific cable, prompted it to accord the colonies a new importance.

When Australia failed to respond promptly to a 1909 offer to conclude a treaty on the narrow basis it favoured, Ross erupted with exasperation: "From several successive Ministers, I have heard [such] strong expressions of sympathy towards the desires of the Canadian Government in regard to preferential trade that I am almost inclined to think that such sentiments are nothing more than empty platitudes."

Frustrated by his repeated inability to persuade Britain to eject France from its possessions in the New Hebrides, the Australian prime minister, Alfred Deakin, arrived in London for the 1907 Colonial Conference determined to change the very basis on which the empire was organized.

The success enjoyed by Hughes and Borden in demonstrating that British and Dominion interests could be accommodated within a single imperial foreign policy, provided a temporary basis for continued Australian-Canadian cooperation.

A breach in the Canadian-Australian relationship over the fate of Germany's Pacific colonies was only narrowly averted when officials devised a compromise[clarification needed] that satisfied both Hughes' desire to annex New Guinea and Borden's wish not to alienate American president Woodrow Wilson, who was committed to the principle of self-determination.

Although Meighen was a staunch imperialist, he could not ignore the fact that renewing the Anglo-Japanese alliance would almost certainly strain Anglo-American relations and force Canada into the untenable position of having to choose between its two major allies.

Unlike his predecessor Meighen, an imperialist at heart who opposed the Anglo-Japanese Treaty only as a matter of necessity, King shared his mentor's determination to avoid all external entanglements that would weaken the bonds between French and English Canada.

Casey, then serving as an Australian liaison officer in London, watched the Canadian prime minister with bewildered fascination: "Surely no one man can claim credit for having done so much as Mackenzie King to damage what remains in these autonomous days of the fabric of the British Empire.

Mackenzie King's liberal philosophy was offended by the prospect of raising Canadian tariffs on imports from third countries in order to give Australia an increased margin of preference for dried fruit.

McDougall, a close advisor to the Australian prime minister, gleefully waited for depression "to drive Mackenzie King into a much more helpful attitude towards Empire economic cooperation.

The Canadian attitude was unsettling and seemed to indicate that Canada no longer shared Australia's interest in co-operating with the British Commonwealth, a suspicion which seemed confirmed by the meagre results of the 1937 Imperial Conference.

[citation needed] In the first days of the war, Canada renewed its suggestion that the two countries exchange High Commissioners and Australia readily approved of a step that now appeared to affirm imperial unity.

At the same time, the Australian and Canadian High Commissioners in London, Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Vincent Massey respectively, took the lead in organizing support for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, the centrepiece of Canada's early war effort.

[citation needed] Misled by Burchell's inexperienced successor, Major-General Victor Odlum, into believing that Canada was ready to assist Australia with men and munitions, the Australian Minister of External Affairs, Herbert Evatt, submitted an anxious request for help.

As Cold War tensions reduced the likelihood that the great powers would achieve a sufficient level of cooperation to ensure the survival of the U.N., discretion seemed the greater part of valour.

After a meeting with Princess Elizabeth and the infant Prince Charles, Lester B. Pearson confessed to his diary the "hope that relations... were not further disturbed by the fact that I was able to make the baby laugh while [J.B.] Chifley [Curtin's successor as prime minister] was not.

Ottawa worried that the new government's aggressive anti-communism and its increasingly suspicious attitude towards Indonesia might inhibit the West's ability to secure Cold War allies among Asia's newly independent states.

Percy Spender, the coalition's first minister of external affairs, held Canada partly responsible for the frustrating delays he encountered in establishing an aid program for Southeast Asia.

Growing allied tension over the strategy to be pursued in response to Chinese intervention in the Korean War threatened the Anglo-American harmony upon which both Canada's and Australia's foreign policy was predicated.

For the Australian foreign minister, whose country's isolated location prompted an enduring fear that its Anglo-American allies might become too focused on the Soviet threat in Europe, Pearson became an important source of information on developments in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

For instance, when Canada agreed to sit on the three international control commissions established in 1954 as part of an effort to contain conflict in Indo-China, contacts between Australian and Canadian representatives became "very close and continual."

Casey and Pearson also came to form the core of a small group of powers that quietly sought a solution to one of the principal obstacles to Asian stability, Communist China's continued exclusion from the international community.

After two years of discussions, which were complicated by Canadian efforts to protect its dairy and agricultural industries, a new trade agreement with most of the substantive provisions found in its 1931 predecessor, came into effect in June 1960.

When Jean-Luc Pepin, the minister of industry, trade and commerce, sought Australian agreement for a regular program of ministerial visits in order to revitalize the relationship, he met with little interest.

When reviewing the matter with Arthur Menzies, Canada's long-serving and trusted high commissioner in Canberra, Australian politicians complained loudly that Trudeau had made no effort to understand Australia's perspective on Indo-China.

Canadian officials were delighted to see a new interest in Canada from Australia, and were intrigued by Whitlam's attempts to carve out a more independent foreign policy from Britain, likely making it more dynamic in the Pacific and perhaps a useful partner.

Australia's new conservative Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, seemed to adopt a harder line on Cold War issues this his predecessor, Gough Whitlam, but shared his vision of a more independent foreign policy.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Canada and Australia found themselves comfortably aligned not only when dealing with such Pacific questions as Cambodia's civil war, but also when confronted by crises in Southern Africa, Afghanistan and Poland.

When the Australian foreign minister, Andrew Peacock, expressed keen interest in exploring new bilateral initiatives in 1980, Canada seized the occasion to press for a formal mechanism that would provide overall direction.