Canadian capital and secondary imperialism in Latin America (original) (raw)
Related papers
Imperialism or global capitalism? Some reflections from Canada
Studies in Political Economy, 2019
In the context of a revived debate over Canada’s location in the global political economy, this paper highlights two recent changes to the property relations of capitalism that problematize the conceptual framework of theories of imperialism and depend- ency: first, new rights for financial institutions that challenge attempts to surmise meaning from the nationality of capital, and, second, new rights for corporations that restrict nation-states from limiting their accumulation activities.
Canada, Empire and Indigenous People in the Americas
Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, 2009
This article argues that Canada is an imperial power in the global order, and that more traditional notions of Canada as a rich dependency or arguments that call for a project to defend Canadian sovereignty fail to properly account for this. Central to the Canadian state project, both in its historical and contemporary manifestations, is an agenda of accumulation by dispossession, in which Indigenous nations are a central target. In the period of neoliberalism, Canadian capital, facilitated by the state, is searching out new spaces of accumulation in Canada and abroad, particularly in Latin America, and Indigenous land and labour are crucial to its success. Instead of defending Canadian sovereignty, the Left must respond by developing a sharp anti-imperialist analysis of Canada’s role in the global economy. This article will draw on the policies and strategies of Canada’s mining industry, which is a powerful actor at home and abroad, as one important example of the imperialist dynam...
Writing in 1947, Vincent Massey, until recently the Canadian representative in London, reaffirmed his longstanding opposition to Canada's involvement with the Pan-American Union (PAU). The lack of Canadian membership in this hemispheric body was considered a sign of Canada's disinterest in Latin America, or what Massey termed a "friendly detachment." As the future governor general explained, such detachment sprang from the fact that, for Canadians, "The western hemisphere will always mean less to us than the northern hemisphere." The following year, Massey estimated that the Western hemisphere was not "a unit in a geographic sense," for Canada was physically separate from the rest of the Americas, with the obvious exception of the United States, a country that dominated much Canadian thinking about foreign affairs. In addition to this geographic gulf, he judged, too, that there were "striking cultural differences between the nations of North and South America." Such differences did little to foster a common hemispheric identity. In his overall opinion, since Canada had "much more in common both culturally and politically" with European states and the "sister nations" of the British Commonwealth than with Central and South America, it belonged "to the northern hemisphere rather than to the western, for in the northern half of the globe are both Great Britain and the United States" (Massey 1947; 1948, 694). While clearly an over-generalization, Massey's sense of Canada's geographic position and cultural orientation reflected a view dominant among the country's foreign policymaking elite throughout much of the twentieth century. The stress on Canada as a transAtlantic country is a notion deeply rooted not only in Canadian geography, but also in cultural identity. And as Massey had readily admitted, locating Canada and Canadians outside of the Western hemisphere and apart from Latin Americans helps to explain the country's historical-and even continued-aloofness from the region.