From the perspective of global historical development, the historical short-lived area is mainly concentrated in north and south America, because this area was originally the area where the Indians lived, but later became a colony of European countries. For example, the history of the United States is actually a process from colony to independence. Although it is now nominally a country, Canada is a member of the Commonwealth of Britain with the right to self-govern, although it is very independent, but it is different from other independent countries in the world in terms of national integrity. Because independent countries have their own heads of state, while the head of State of Canada is the Queen of England.
Before the 16th century, Canada did not exist as a state of state. This area was inhabited by Indians and Inuit, who were the first owners of canada. But now it is the domain of white Europeans, and I wonder how Canada describes the history of their ancestors invading and colonizing the local indigenous people?
In 1535, the then King François I sent the navigator Jacques Cartier to explore the New World, the goal was to find India, but did not expect That cartier to come to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cartier did not find Asia, but found a new continent "Quebec", the local Indians called "Stadakona". Two Indians told Catier the route to "Canada," a name that was mistranslated at the time, but is now a Canadian name.
Even when France made Canada its colony, the British had already come to Canada. The British were more numerous than the French, and by the 17th century, Britain and France had fought a "7 Years' War" around Canada, and France was defeated and had to cede the Canadian colonies to Britain. But the descendants of the French did not leave Canada and still live in Quebec.
When the British occupied Canada, it became an overseas british province. In the 19th century, with the establishment of the provinces, canada became an autonomous member of the United Kingdom. It was not until 1926, when Canada gained diplomatic independence from Britain, that Canada became de facto independent. In 1931, Canada became a member of the Commonwealth, but did not have the power to amend the Constitution. It was not until 1982 that Canada was granted independent constitutional power.
Blushing history of the country
From the brief history of Canada, the history of Canada is not long, and it is most accurate to use one sentence: the history of Canada is actually the history of European plundering of the land where the indigenous people lived, and it is also the result of the two old empires of Britain and France after the competition in Canada. But now these bloody and barbaric histories of plunder have become what Canadians call "history."
According to the "jungle principle", the history of colonization and plundering by European countries will be glorified as a "glorious history", and European countries and descendants who remain in Canada do not have to blush at all about the bloody history of their ancestors. But the local Aboriginal people do not see it this way, they believe that Canada is a local indigenous territory, but it is only occupied. This has led to two different views of history in a country. However, there are few indigenous people in Canada, and they have no history of independent statehood themselves, and the strong historical view can always assimilate the views of indigenous peoples.
To look at the history of a country, we must go back a long way, not just look at the history of conquest. If the history of Canadians is to be traced, the longest time is only traced back to Britain and France, and it has nothing to do with Canadian Aborigines. Therefore, Canada's sense of history is not good, no matter how it is pursued, the country still cannot get rid of the brutal history of colonial indigenous peoples for three hundred years.
Some say that Canada has a poor sense of history, and there is a key factor that cannot be ignored. This country is the most typical immigrant country in the world, and the population and ethnic number change every year. The main population of Canada is of British and French descent and descendants of other European countries, while the true owners of indigenous peoples such as Indians, Miti and Inuit account for only 3%, which is an extremely small proportion.
Britain and France: Canada's Pre-Founding History
Located in North America, Canada is the second largest country in the world by area. Today, its territorial area stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. If combined with the United States, their combined territory accounts for more than seventy percent of the entire North American area.
The original inhabitants of Canada were Inuit and Indians from the north. According to research, these people have been haunting the major plains and lakes and forests of North America since at least 4000 BC. Around the 16th century, with the development of geographical discoveries, more and more Indigenous Europeans continued to migrate to the Americas. Their chosen destinations were the West Indies, along the Atlantic Line and near the Great Lakes, which naturally included the geographical extent of present-day Canada.
Cartoon map of Canada
As early as the end of the 10th century, Europeans had already entered the Canadian area. According to historical records, in 986 AD, the Viking "Red Beard Eric" was sentenced to exile for murder. On the way north, he stopped in Newfoundland and was regarded by Europeans as "the first to set foot in the Americas". Since then, large-scale development of Canada has been rare in history.
It was not until 1534 that the French explorer Cartier was ordered by King François I of France to explore a new shipping route to the East. As the saying goes, "There is a heart to plant flowers and flowers, and there is no heart to plant willows." Just as Cartier was fretting over his inability to find a passage from the northwest to the East, his discovery of Canada inadvertently opened the frenzy of Europeans into the boreal Americas.
Court painting: François I in the palace
Since then, the nationals of Britain, France and other countries (including the people of the North American colonies) have gradually begun to move towards Canada. Europeans can be found everywhere in Newfoundland, Quebec, Nova Scotia, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Generation. After the Seven Years' War, most of France's territory in Canada was seized by the British. Because the development of Canada for a long time was mainly carried out by the French, the sudden entry of the British in the local area aroused great resentment among the local residents.
From the mid-18th century to the victory of the American Revolutionary War, this period was the period when the British sent a large number of British Natives to Canada. During this period, Canada went from a French colony with a relatively simple ethnic composition to a mixed colony dominated by both British and French residents. In the Constitution of the United Kingdom of 1791, Quebec was divided into two Canadian zones. "Upper Canada" has since evolved into english-speaking Ontario. "Lower Canada" was renamed Quebec, and local residents continued to speak French as their mother tongue.
Beautiful Quebec landscapes
The United States and Britain: Canada's Gradual Independence
Although the Americans achieved their independence through war in the 18th century, they were far from being able to lay down their arms satisfactorily. Some of the driven Out British troops, still armed with advanced guns and with a look of disgust, looked down menacingly in the north of the United States.
After an overly compromised contract, the British mostly felt frustrated and unhappy. In their eyes, American independence is tantamount to a rebellion. With the defeat of the war against the United States, Britain's international status has become more and more low. In 1812, a long-planned war of expansion began in present-day southeastern Canada. The popular Americans looked at the weakness of Canada's defense emptiness and tried to end the British king's rule over Canada with a series of intense wars.
A comic depicting the U.S.-Canada War
On more than one occasion, the Confederate Conference put the matter of the northward advance on the agenda. These Puritans, who had just driven out the "British villains," believed that their ideals were the future direction of North America. Therefore, the liberation of the Compatriots who were "enslaved" by the British in the Canadian Belt became a kind of redemption for them.
At a time when the Napoleonic Wars were beginning in Europe, Britain did not have enough troops to cope with the bad situation. And after the independence of the United States, the head of state of the British Empire blocked the way for the United States to export agricultural products and raw materials to Western Europe for a long time, which also caused strong dissatisfaction among hawkish members of the US Congress. On June 18, 1812, the United States Congress voted to declare war on Britain. Thus began the war that would determine Canada's future destiny.
The American Revolutionary War, which had just ended in the smoke of war
The war was divided into two fronts, naval and land battles. In the Early Atlantic Naval Battles of the early years of the war, the Royal Navy's "luxury team" in The Waters of the Americas did not play much of a role. The U.S. Navy, though extremely small, is flexible and maneuverable. Before the British ships discovered their activities, they could carry the cargo they were carrying. On the other hand, the British army really paid a very high price for occupying the sea control.
Later in the war, thanks to the victory in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was able to successfully draw a large number of soldiers and fleets from Europe to support the American campaign. The United States suffered many setbacks at sea and on land, and even Washington, D.C., was burned by the British. Because the Canadians had long feared that the Puritans of america would forcibly convert their faith after occupying their homeland, they all worked particularly hard to serve the King in battle. During this period, the American militia lost the courage of the Great Patriotic War and lost after a short engagement with the Canadians.
Washington, D.C. Capitol
At the height of the war, British warships sealed off several important ports of entry for the United States to the east, and the northeastern and northern parts of the Continental United States were occupied by Canadian militia. A considerable number of Indians also took the British side in this battle, fighting bravely to defend their homeland in Canada. However, in the later stages of the war, the battlefield between the two sides gradually changed from the sea familiar to the British to the land familiar to the Americans.
General Andrew Jackson, a great man who is not very familiar to the people of china, is the "anti-British hero" in the eyes of the Americans. After successive defeats of the Americans, he led the Southern militia and locals to repel the British attack one after another. In 1815, the British king, suffering from domestic famine and turmoil, agreed to reconcile with the United States again. This time, Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Ghent, which preserves Canada's independence, which provides for the reverting of the border between the two countries to the pre-war period and establishes the special status of the future Dominion of Canada.
Participants in the signing of the Ghent Agreement
Independent Confederation of Canada
In July 1867, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom formally signed the British North America Act, and the four colonies of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in today's southeastern Canada were combined into an independent Canadian Federation with independent legislative, executive and judicial powers. Although the Canadian Confederation at this time still has the Queen of England as the head of state, belonging to the British Royal Family, and even lacks independent diplomatic rights, it cannot be regarded as a country in our modern sense.
Still, Canadians today celebrate the day the bill was signed as Canada's Independence Day. At that time, Canada was only four provinces, the south was the powerful United States of America that had just ended the civil war, and the northwest was a large wasteland, and the situation in the nascent Canada was not optimistic.
Crazy expansion
The British had a clear goal of establishing a Confederation of Canada, and they wanted to use the Canadians' own power to prevent American expansion and thus free up their hands to solve the growing French Second Empire. Under the wings of the British Empire, Canada, which had no full state power, could instead confidently expand westward and was supported by the British. The first land purchased by the Canadian Confederation was the Rupert Territory and the Northwest Territory, all of which belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, a fur company under the British administration. With the advent of the industrial age, the profits of the fur trade that flourished in modern times were declining, so the British decisively chose to break their wrists and help the Canadians to negotiate this huge territory with Hudson Bay.
Tu/Rupert area
These two territories were enormous, twice the size of Louisiana, but sold for only £300,000, and these areas evolved into Manitoba (1870), Alberta (1905), Saskatchewan (1905), the Northwest Territories (1870), the Yukon (1898), Nunavut (1999), and northern Ontario and northern Quebec.
After the British cheaply gave away two huge pieces of land, they hoped to continue to restrain the northward expansion of the United States, at that time British Columbia was located in the southwest corner of Canada, between the United States mainland and Alaska, including all the Pacific coastline under the control of the United States in North America, once the Americans seized this area, then not only the United States and Alaska would be connected, but also occupy all of north America's west coast, becoming an unimaginable empire.
To prevent this nightmare from coming, on July 20, 1871, the British formally incorporated nearly a million square kilometers of British Columbia into Canada. So far, Canada has become a north American power spanning two oceans, and its area has been comparable to that of the United States.
Island closure
In 1880, the arctic archipelago in the far north was also given to Canada by the British as a gift, thus allowing Canada to have a large amount of territory and sea in the Arctic and grasp the potential value of the Arctic shipping route. After World War II, the British Empire completely sunset, as the only remaining Newfoundland in North America hanging overseas, Canada through the dividends of economic interests to the Newfoundland people to call, and the Newfoundland people at this time have no choice, and finally officially joined Canada in 1949, becoming Canada's last pocket territory.
Photo/Arctic Islands
With the decline of British power, Britain, unwilling to see the United States dominate the Americas, must create and support a relatively powerful North American power to compete with it. Therefore, the country of Canada originated in England and became infinitely large because of Britain.
Awkwardly maintained state institutions
As we said above, Canada is not an independent country in the full sense of the word because it is a member of the Commonwealth. In our eyes, the head of State of Canada is the Prime Minister of Canada, but in fact, the head of state of the country is the Queen of the United Kingdom. Many people will ask why Canada did not become completely independent from the members of the Commonwealth and become a country in its entirety like the United States.
First, the depth and narrowness of the strategy
Although Canada is large, it is not really livable. To the north is the Arctic Circle, and one step south is to enter the United States. The main area inhabited by Canadians is only the southern area adjacent to the United States, and if they are invaded, they cannot always run north to the Arctic Circle. And staying in the British Commonwealth member states, and the same roots as the Americans, can completely back the "big tree for shade". Therefore, the relationship between Canada and the United States has always been tied together, and the United States and Britain are also alliances, with deep roots and no regard for territory.
The second is to enjoy federal benefits
Canada has also sought the greatest independence in history, and former Canadian Prime Minister Kim has taken a large amount of independence from Britain. Although the symbolic head of state is now the Queen, the members of the Commonwealth are like a small alliance, with developed countries such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as poor developing countries. The relationship between the rich countries needing the raw materials, manpower and markets of the poor countries, while the poor countries needed the investment assistance of the rich countries, was achieved on the preferential terms of the Commonwealth. In fact, Canada does not need that kind of symbolic independence, and it is most comfortable to maintain the maximization of interests.
Third, complete independence has caused problems
Canada is not all of British descent, but also of French descent, as well as a small number of Aborigines. The French mainly live in Quebec, once in the last century to make independence, Canada to achieve nominal independence, French descendants and a small number of indigenous people also have independence demands, will they seek independence? These are all variables, and it is better to maintain this historical state system.