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This article explores the intersecting of liberal internationalism and settler colonialism by tracing the Canadian governmental response to the emergence of International Labour Organisation (ilo) Convention 107 (1957) and Recommendation 104 (1957), the first international treaties regarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples in independent states. Drawing upon the archives of the ilo, Canada’s Department of External Affairs and Department of Citizenship and Immigration, notably the latter’s Indian Affairs Branch, the article investigates the convergence of mid-twentieth-century notions of Indigenous rights and the global phenomenon of “development.” It also explores how, amid anti-colonial resistance, decolonization, and an emerging international human rights regime, settler states responded, not least by seeking to blunt if not defeat the ilo initiative. In addition to yielding greater understanding of the origins and emergence of the ilo instruments, this analysis contributes to critical interrogations of Canadian liberal internationalism by revealing how Canadian settler preoccupations were projected abroad and shaped the international system’s evolving treatment of Indigenous Peoples. It also offers a different perspective on Canadian Indian policy by revealing the “global” dimension of an allegedly “domestic” question. Finally, the article highlights a parallel history of Indigenous internationalism speaking back to a world order constructed on Indigenous displacement and dispossession. Le présent article étudie les liens entre l’internationalisme libéral et le colonialisme de peuplement. À cette fin, il relate la réaction du gouvernement canadien devant l’émergence de la Convention 107 (1957) et la Recommandation 104 (1957) de l’Organisation internationale du Travail (oit), premiers traités internationaux portant sur les droits des peuples autochtones dans les États indépendants. À partir des archives de l’ oit, du ministère des Affaires extérieures et du ministère de la Citoyenneté et de l’Immigration du Canada, notamment de sa Division des affaires indiennes, l’article analyse la convergence entre les droits des autochtones, tels qu’ils étaient perçus au milieu du XXe siècle, et le phénomène mondial du « développement ». Il étudie également la manière dont les États colonisateurs, dans un contexte de résistance anticoloniale, de décolonisation et d’émergence d’un régime international des droits de l’homme, ont cherché à amoindrir, voire à faire échouer, l’initiative de l’oit. En plus de permettre de mieux comprendre les origines et l’émergence des instruments de l’oit, cette analyse aide à poser des questions pertinentes au sujet de l’internationalisme libéral canadien, car elle révèle comment les préoccupations des colonisateurs canadiens ont été projetées à l’étranger et ont joué un rôle dans l’évolution du traitement des peuples autochtones par le système international. Elle offre également une perspective différente sur la politique canadienne à l’égard des autochtones en révélant la dimension « mondiale » d’une question prétendument « intérieure ». Enfin, l’article met en lumière une histoire parallèle de l’internationalisme autochtone qui réagit à un ordre mondial construit sur le déplacement et la dépossession des autochtones.

IN THE SPRING OF 1959, the UN press service and Canada's Department of External Affairs (DEA) announced that the "rivers, forests, cities and industries of western Canada and northwestern United States [would] serve as a laboratory in economic and social development for a new-type training center." (1) The Regional Training Centre for United Nations Fellows at the University of British Columbia would "enable trainees from underdeveloped countries to study and observe activities in fields such as hydroelectric power, water development, mining, forestry, land management, cooperatives, credit unions, social welfare, and public administration." (2) Press reports explained that the "unique international venture," involving the UN, the Canadian government, and UBC would be located in the Pacific Northwest because "in the past 50 years this area has experienced a most remarkable expansion of population and of economic development." (3) Infused with the postwar optimism associated with Canada's economic progress, British Columbia's resource boom, and international development, the announcement simultaneously highlighted and obscured a history and ongoing reality of settler colonialism and, more broadly, the extent to which Canadian participation in development assistance rested upon a foundation of Indigenous dispossession. This article explores how settler colonialism intersected with the UN's training centre at UBC, which is built on the territory of the Musqueam people. It uncovers what the Centre's origins and activities say about understandings of development after 1945, especially the Canadian dimension of this global history. Specifically, it interrogates development's pedagogical dimension. Situating "technical assistance" and efforts to identify best practices into the literature on imperialism and settler colonialism, it highlights how, notwithstanding progressive motivations, Canadian academic involvement in development efforts rested upon and reified settler colonialism at home and abroad. (4)

How has race shaped Canada's international encounters and its role in the world? How have the actions of politicians, diplomats, citizens, and non-governmental organizations reflected and reinforced racial power structures in Canada? In this book, leading scholars in Canadian international relations grapple with these complex questions, destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world. Dominion of Race exposes how race thinking--normalizing racial differences and perpetuating them through words and actions that legitimize a discriminatory system of beliefs--has informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. Four themes develop throughout the volume: the relationship between empire, identity, and liberal internationalism; the tensions between individual, structure, theory, and practice; the mutual constitution of domestic and international spheres; and the notion of marginalized terrain and space. While the contributors reconsider familiar topics, including the Paris Peace Conference and Canada's involvement with the United Nations, they also enlarge the scope of Canada's international history by subject, geography, and methodology. By demonstrating that race is a fundamental component of Canada and its international history, this book calls for reengagement with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historical record.

This article engages with the entangled histories of Canadian foreign aid and relations between Indigenous peoples and Canada. Specifically, it traces a proposal in the early 1950s to use the Colombo Plan, the Commonwealth development program in which Canada was a participant, to transfer yaks from India for use in the "development" of the Inuit population in northern Quebec. While the relocation was ultimately never realized, the episode reveals how questions of race and empire, not least the environmental dimension of these, along with the priority accorded to promoting a liberal-capitalist version of "modernization," informed the imaginary underpinning the Canadian state's engagement with Indigenous populations and the Global South. More broadly, the subject matter highlights how the history of Indigenous-settler encounters informed Canadian attitudes regarding development assistance, and vice versa.

How has race shaped Canada's international encounters and its role in the world? How have the actions of politicians, diplomats, citizens, and non-governmental organizations reflected and reinforced racial power structures in Canada? In this book, leading scholars in Canadian international relations grapple with these complex questions, destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world. Dominion of Race exposes how race thinking--normalizing racial differences and perpetuating them through words and actions that legitimize a discriminatory system of beliefs--has informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. Four themes develop throughout the volume: the relationship between empire, identity, and liberal internationalism; the tensions between individual, structure, theory, and practice; the mutual constitution of domestic and international spheres; and the notion of marginalized terrain and space. While the contributors reconsider familiar topics, including the Paris Peace Conference and Canada's involvement with the United Nations, they also enlarge the scope of Canada's international history by subject, geography, and methodology. By demonstrating that race is a fundamental component of Canada and its international history, this book calls for reengagement with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historical record.

How has race shaped Canada's international encounters and its role in the world? How have the actions of politicians, diplomats, citizens, and non-governmental organizations reflected and reinforced racial power structures in Canada? In this book, leading scholars in Canadian international relations grapple with these complex questions, destabilizing conventional understandings of Canada in the world. Dominion of Race exposes how race thinking--normalizing racial differences and perpetuating them through words and actions that legitimize a discriminatory system of beliefs--has informed priorities and policies, positioned Canada in the international community, and contributed to a global order rooted in racial beliefs. Four themes develop throughout the volume: the relationship between empire, identity, and liberal internationalism; the tensions between individual, structure, theory, and practice; the mutual constitution of domestic and international spheres; and the notion of marginalized terrain and space. While the contributors reconsider familiar topics, including the Paris Peace Conference and Canada's involvement with the United Nations, they also enlarge the scope of Canada's international history by subject, geography, and methodology. By demonstrating that race is a fundamental component of Canada and its international history, this book calls for reengagement with the histories of those marginalized in, or excluded from, the historical record.

In addition to engaging with the three commentaries regarding the historiographical essay under discussion, this author’s response considers the future of Canadian international history by posing the following questions: (1) who is Canadian international history for?; (2) what is Canadian international history in service to?; and (3) how should we explore Canadian international history? The answers to these questions emphasize the value of a more inclusive and expansive approach.

The early twenty-first century witnessed a shift in Canadian international action, how such action is portrayed, and how Canada’s international history is deployed to understand Canada and its evolution. This shift has contributed to a growing awareness of the intellectual and political significance of Canada’s international history and a heightened awareness of the need for a re-engagement with this history to produce more complex narratives. Demonstrating and encouraging such a re-engagement is the purpose of this historiographical article, which traces the writing of Canadian international history from its origins to a period of crisis in the last three decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, it explores how “empire” and its legacy run through this historiography’s various overlapping currents. Flowing from this discussion, the article highlights three “tragedies” that have marked the historiography and that are reflective of, and linked to, tragedies in the history of Canadian encounters with the world. This is followed by an examination of current trends that are contributing to a renewed, more expansive literature, thereby emphasizing the value and potential of Canadian international history as a means to obtain greater understanding of Canada as a project of rule.

This essay brings environmental and diplomatic history into conversation in order to examine the Trudeau government’s response to the 1969–70 voyages of the oil tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage. By passing the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and extending Canada’s territorial sea to 12 miles, Ottawa successfully instrumentalized the heightened environmental concern of the period in order to press Canadian claims to sovereignty in the Arctic. The essay demonstrates that this custodial approach was consistent with the functionalist tradition in Canadian liberal internationalism. More broadly, it reveals the promise of re-examining Canadian international history through the prism of environmental history.

Decolonization's impact was by no means restricted to the Global South. It is impossible to understand developments in the Canada-Quebec-France triangle in the 1960s without referring to the discourse, ideas, and examples of anti-colonial resistance that marked international life after the Second World War. In addition to influencing the postwar development of France and Quebec, the decolonization phenomenon figured prominently in the process of rapprochement that developed between them in the post-1945 period. After discussing the global reach of decolonization, this article examines its impact on the Canada-Quebec-France triangle. Particular attention is paid to its intellectual and political consequences, notably the 'Quebec as colony' metaphor and the reimagining of France as a champion of decolonization. The intersection between these two ideas was crucial to the evolution of the France-Quebec relationship.