A common situation? Canadian technical advisors and popular internationalism in Tanzania, 1961–1981

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1960s and 1970s, technical advisors participated in postcolonial development efforts and popular internationalism. This article addresses the politics of technical assistance as an entry point for exploring the wider shared histories of Tanzania and Canada. It shows how Canadian advisors reflected on ujamaa, race, and their relationships with Tanzanians. And it charts how lived experiences shaped their commitments abroad as well as back at home. Insisting that technical assistance is part of Tanzanian transnational history, the essay argues that Canadian advisors were divided on the politics of poverty. They held liberal and left internationalist perspectives, two overarching ways of understanding global structures that were opposed as well as internally varied. The first vision presumed that developmental work had mutualistic benefits within global capitalism. The second stressed solidarities for a building an anti-imperialist world and, in different ways, involved social democrats, New Leftists, and Black Canadian and Indigenous activists. Debates eventually led to a left-leaning attempt to rethink technical assistance.