André Siegfried

French academic, geographer and political writer.

André Siegfried was the preeminent French geographer of his generation. He wrote definitive studies of nations around the world, including New Zealand, Britain, France, the United States, and Canada. He pioneered the field of electoral geography, the study of the interaction between geography and politics. Siegfried was widely admired within France and internationally for his incisive and thoughtful analyses of the social, economic, and political processes that shape societies.

André Siegfried first travelled to Canada in 1898. He made two subsequent trips after the turn of the century, including during the campaign for the 1904 federal election, which was won by Sir Wilfrid LAURIER's Liberals. Siegfried's observations during these visits lead to his first work on Canada, Le Canada, les deux races: problèmes politiques contemporains (1906), published in 1907 as The Race Question in Canada. Siegfried identified with penetrating clarity the central issues in the country at that time. He presented a psychological profile of French and English Canadians, and the inevitable "rivalries" between them. He examined the strong influence of the Catholic Church on education and politics in Canada, and also discussed the shifting influence of Britain, France, and the United States on the emerging nation. The final chapter of the book, "The Future of Canada in North America," contemplates Canada's future as either a de facto British colony, an independent nation, or an annex of the United States.

André Siegfried took up the question of Canada's increasingly prominent role in world affairs in his 1937 Canada. In the preface to this work he describes his ongoing fascination with a country that he describes as "American geographically, British politically, largely French in origin, and yet world-wide in its international preoccupations.