Canada and the World: Trade, Diplomacy and War

Course Code: POLS 2000

Academic Year: 2024-2025

As Canadian soldiers continue to fight and die in the war in Iraq, Canadian citizens have been struggling to come to grips with their new international reputation. For people who thought of their soldiers more as peacekeepers rather than warriors, this transition has been unsettling. However, Canada's role in the world has undergone several transitions throughout its history. How we come to understand these transitions requires an in-depth examination of the different roles Canada has assumed in the world over the past 150 years. Since 1867, Canada's politicians, diplomats, professionals, businesspeople, soldiers, and citizens have cultivated relations with their counterparts in the world's most powerful and poorest nations and engaged in some of the most significant events in all of human history. This course examines Canada's past and present, and assesses the many different domestic and external influences that shaped Canada's foreign policy in the face of a changing world.