Opportunism and Goodwill: Canadian Business Expansion in Colombia, 1867-1979

Canada’s social, economic, political, and environmental impacts on the Western Hemisphere have been largely overlooked by historians and other social scientists. Most narratives of the relationships between North America and the emerging markets of the south disproportionately focus on the United States. By downplaying Canada’s role, these narratives have fallen short in reconstructing the history of the region. Opportunism and Goodwill fills in these historical gaps, looking at the dynamics of the relationship between Canada and Colombia as they were spearheaded by Canada’s private sector.

Stefano Tijerina argues that since the first era of globalization during the second half of the nineteenth century, Canada’s private sector has carved out niche markets across Latin America, sometimes working independently and in other instances working on behalf of foreign interests. In his historical analysis of these temporal and spatial dimensions, Tijerina shows that the long-term economic development of Canada and Colombia was intertwined and interdependent, ultimately stressing the importance of transnational approaches to the study of history. Contributing to questions about Canada’s ＂goodwill＂ and other benevolent constructs, Opportunism and Goodwill sets the historical foundation for current debates about Canadian industries across the world.