The Bank of Nova Scotia in the Caribbean, 1889–1940

By examining the activities of the Bank of Nova Scotia, this article demonstrates that Canadian banks established branches in the Caribbean to finance trade with the United States rather than with Canada. The expertise of Canadian banks in the management of branch networks and in the finance of international trade was the basis on which they successfully filled an important gap in the provision of banking services for the Hispanic Caribbean and offered strong competition to the American banks that expanded into the region after 1914.