Dominion of Canada
Overview
Dominion of Canada
In 1867 the British Parliament passed the British North America Act, creating the Dominion of Canada. Originally, the Dominion consisted of the four provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. These four provinces represented the ethnic and geographic diversity of the Dominion. Over the next century Canada evolved into an independent nation which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. In this respect Canada was one of four sets of British settlements colonies which became independent nations. Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, became independent through emergence as dominions within the British empire, while the United States, a fourth set, became indepent through political revolution and a war for national independence. All four share a number of characteristics of development in common, including British and European cultural foundations, a common political tradition that facilitated the development of representative and responsible government, the marginalization of indigenous peoples, and defining divisions within each society which grew out of the different groups which came to each.
Learning Objectives
- Explain how and why Canada secured national independence
Key Terms / Key Concepts
British North America Act: act passed by the British Parliament creating the Dominion of Canada; a key step in the process by which Canada became an independent nation
John Macdonald: architect of the Dominion of Canada and its first prime minister; provided the first vision for Canada as an independent, transcontinental nation in North America
National Policy: John Macdonald’s policy for the development of Canada, including protective tariffs and westward expansion
The Canadian Provinces
Quebec, the oldest of the provinces, was founded in the early seventeenth century as New France along the St. Lawrence River. During seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, Quebec developed and grew slowly with small settlements along the St. Lawrence. Despite this slow development and growth Quebec became a major center of French colonial culture. In the 1763 the British acquired it as part of the Treaty of Paris which ended the French and Indian War. From then French Canadians struggled to define their place under British sovereignty.
Ontario, began as Upper Canada after the French and Indian War. Originally it was a refuge for Loyalists driven out of the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolution. The name Upper Canada referred to its position upstream from Quebec along the St. Lawrence; Quebec was known as Lower Canada during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The juxtaposition of English Upper Canada and French Lower Canada came to be one of if not the defining division in Canada.French settlers founded Acadia in the early seventeenth century, and the British divided it into several new British colonies, including New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These two colonies were the foundations of maritime Canada.
Moving toward Dominion
During the first half of the nineteenth century Canadian domestic sovereignty developed within the context of British imperial authority. The British government allowed for increasing Canadian domestic autonomy, in part as a correction of the mistakes it made in its efforts to tax the Thirteen Colonies during the 1760s and 1770s. In response to 1837 – 8 uprisings in Lower and Upper Canada toward the end of securing more representative government, the British government commissioned a study of the Canadian situation the next year. This report called the unification of Upper and Lower Canada and provision for responsible and representative government through an elected provincial legislature.
Over the next twenty-five years Canada developed a political structure within its provincial legislature that allowed for the representation of most of its interests. Many in Canada sought greater autonomy in the British empire, an aspiration shared by residents of two other settlement colonies within the empire: Australia and New Zealand. John Macdonald, an immigrant from Scotland, worked within this system to create the Dominion of Canada. He was the architect of Canada’s original vision for nationhood. He sought to create Canada as an alternative to the U.S., and he worked to realize this vision as the Dominion’s first prime minister. In 1878 he articulated Canada’s National Policy, which included the implementation of protective tariffs to safeguard Canada’s developing manufacturing industries, the construction of a transcontinental railroad to solidify eastern and western Canada, and the settlement of the western provinces.
The single greatest influence on the creation of the Dominion of Canada was the United States. Canadians both respected U.S. accomplishments in the development of their own nation and feared the possibility of U.S. conquest. Canada had been a target of conquest for the U.S. during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. In part, Canadian respect for and fear of the U.S. drove Canada’s own expansion to the Pacific Ocean, both to match U.S. expansion and prevent the U.S. from boxing in Canada.
The Dominion of Canada epitomized the maturation of British imperial policy, providing for the transition from colony to sovereign dominion within the British empire. The British government only applied this policy to settlement colonies founded by British settlers, including Australia and New Zealand, along with Canada. This policy was another response to the American Revolution. India, not being a settlement colony in which indigenous peoples were marginalized, was not granted dominion status during the nineteenth century and, therefore, had to work harder to secure national independence in 1947.
French Canadians in Canada
One of the greatest challenges that Canada has faced in its maturation as a nation is finding a place for French Canadians and the French-Canadian province of Quebec. The division between English Canadians and French Canadians is the most visible division in Canadian society, in its own way as visible as the division in the U.S. between those of European ancestry and those of African ancestry. Since 1763 French Canadians have had to deal with the British conquest of Quebec in the French and Indian War. In 1774 the British Parliament passed “the Quebec,” by which the British government promised to respect French laws, customs, and institutions, along with the Catholic Church, in Quebec. This act succeeded in partially appeasing many French Canadians, leading to more acceptance of British rule.
During the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries a number of French Canadians across Quebec embraced the economic changes then occurring in British trade and manufacturing. Some of these French Canadians became part of an emerging bourgeoisie in Quebec, particularly Montreal, the province’s largest city. Members of the French Quebec bourgeoisie came to support and work for the creation of the Dominion of Canada. These French Canadians favored the creation of a dominion within the British empire because of the economic prosperity such a dominion promised for them. They believed that they could protect their French-Canadian culture as part of the new dominion. After the creation of the Dominion, French Canadians continued to participate in the Dominion legislature, along with the Quebec provincial legislature. A number of French Canadians have served as Canadian prime minister, the first being Wilfrid Laurier, who served from 1896 to 1911. Laurier embodied the belief that French Canadians could work and prosper within an explicitly diverse Canada.
Throughout Canadian history a number of French Canadians have sought greater sovereignty for Quebec. Their goals have ranged from greater control over their own cultural affairs within Quebec to national independence for Quebec. Unlike the Confederates in the U.S., such French Canadians have pursued these sovereignty agendas largely without violence. One such effort was a sovereignty referendum in Quebec in 1995, which barely failed to secure the majority of votes necessary to proceed toward Quebec independence.
Westward Expansion
Over the next forty years the Dominion came to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean, as well as eastward, adding to the Dominion the provinces of Manitoba in 1870, British Columbia in 1871, Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic coast in 1873, and Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905. In this respect Canada caught up with the U.S. in reaching the Pacific coast. As part of Canadian westward expansion, the Canadian government constructed a transcontinental railroad to match the U.S. transcontinental railroads, completing it in 1885, sixteen years after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, also paralleled the U.S. in two other ways: One was the attraction of immigrants to their lands during the latter half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries; the other was the marginalization of indigenous peoples.
While Canadian westward expansion paralleled U.S. westward expansion across North America during the nineteenth century, Canadian marginalization of indigenous peoples was less prominent than such marginalization in the U.S., for that matter, Australia and New Zealand. Throughout Canadian history most of the non-indigenous peoples of Canada have lived along a narrow southern band, within one hundred miles of the U.S. border. This has meant less conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples across most of the rest of Canada. One of the few prominent uprisings of indigenous peoples illustrates this generalization, the 1869-70 Red River Rebellion, led by Louis Riel, who identified as a Metis. The Metis were a people of mixed French and indigenous ancestry who lived in the western prarie regions of Canada. They rebelled against the Dominion government, based on their complex indigenous and French ancestry. In another context, that of imperialism, this failed uprising was similar to other unsuccessful uprisings against imperial control in other American nations, Africa, and Asia.
An Expanding and Maturing Dominion
During the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, the process by which the Dominion of Canada emerged as an ally and partner of the UK was punctuated by participating with the UK in the Boer War in southern Africa and in the two world wars. After the First World War, in 1931, Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, secured control over its foreign policy with the Statute of Westminster, which was another key step toward nationhood. Parliament passed it partly due to the service of Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand troops in the Allied war effort of World War I. These three dominions were effectively full-fledged partners with the Allied powers in the First World War.
Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, also fought as Allied powers in the Second World War. After the Second World War, each would continue to participate in international affairs, including in military alliances with the United Kingdom and the United States. Canada, along with the UK and the U.S., was one of the original members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed to protect Europe from external aggressors, such as the Soviet Union. Canada also was one of the original members of the United Nations, and it has contributed both people and money to UN efforts to maintain peace and order around the world. Such participation in the UN and NATO represents another step in Canada’s maturation as a nation.
Canada is one of four sets of settlement colonies established by the British that secured their independence. Of the other three Australia and New Zealand, like Canada, became independent within the empire, maturing into members of the British Commonwealth—the successor to the empire. The U.S. violently established its independence as a result of disputes over tax policies. All four have been the beneficiaries of British political tradition, practice, and history. They are part of the legacy that the British empire has left for representative and responsible government.
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Title Image - 1885 James Ashfield photo of 1884 Robert Harris painting, "The Fathers of Confederation" Attribution:Photographer: James Ashfield, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Provided by: Wikipedia. Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fathers_of_Confederation_LAC_c001855.jpg.License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Boundless World History
"North America"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/north-america/