In this final episode of the creation of Canada series, we discuss the Treaty of Washington, which was a treaty between the British Empire and the United States of America in 1871. It was a landmark agreement that cemented the relationship between the two countries and cemented their place in the history of Canada.
00:01:41.080So it's, you know, the final two episodes here aren't necessarily as exciting as some of the earlier ones.
00:01:47.040It's more about tying up the loose ends of Confederation and, you know, the entrance of some of the later adopters of Confederation, you know, being admitted into the Union, the Dominion.
00:02:01.200So, yeah, this will be a shorter episode for sure, although there is some definitely some interesting stuff in this one.
00:02:19.100Um, and how that actually leads to the inclusion of Manitoba as the fifth province in Confederation.
00:02:26.080Uh, we'll get into, uh, more Fenian, uh, action, more, uh, a little bit more insight into how Johnny MacDonald went about, uh, you know, his political maneuvering and statecraft.
00:02:39.680Um, this episode in particular really highlights that he was a very shrewd, calculated and, and skillful, you know, crafter of state.
00:02:47.680Uh, he knew what he was doing and he did it very effectively.
00:02:50.900Um, as well as, uh, we'll get into, uh, you know, issues in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, uh, some other things as well.
00:03:00.140Um, and a little bit of what's going on in Europe at this time.
00:03:03.900Um, but, uh, yeah, with that, we won't, uh, belabor it too long.
00:03:09.000We'll get right into it here in a second.
00:03:10.840Uh, just before I do that though, uh, I'll just acknowledge these now Malibu Coke, uh, gifted 20 subscriptions.
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00:03:29.980You're also a regular contributor and I appreciate that, uh, 10 subscriptions.
00:03:34.680I think at one point there was more, uh, subscriptions gifted than there were people in the audience from those two.
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00:04:14.220It's called the border confirmed, uh, the treaty of Washington.
00:04:20.140So, uh, if you're not familiar, the tree of Washington, 1871 was basically the negotiations between the British empire and the United States on some lingering issues that, you know, began before and during and after the civil war.
00:04:35.520Um, so there's some issues, there's still, you know, border disputes in some, you know, specific regions of North America at this time between Britain and America.
00:04:44.740Um, America had a list of grievances and, you know, what wanted compensation for certain things that happened during the civil war that they, you know, placed at the feet of the British.
00:04:56.200Uh, and there was also, you know, just some, um, uh, issues with like fisheries and stuff like that.
00:05:03.560So this, basically that treaty kind of firmed up, uh, Anglo American relations, you know, until, until today there was really, you know, that, that was kind of the end of hostilities, uh, so to speak for, for the British empire in America.
00:05:17.720And, uh, yeah, obviously you get the beginnings of the relationship that they have today and did throughout the 20th century.
00:05:24.700So, uh, fairly, fairly important, not obviously well known or, you know, uh, widely discussed when it comes to general European history, but in, in terms of relations between the British and America, it, it is fairly significant as well as for Canada, because, uh, we were kind of a negotiating tool and a bargaining chip in this process.
00:05:44.180And you'll, you'll, you'll see that in this episode.
00:05:45.940So, uh, I won't, uh, make you wait any longer.
01:00:18.300The Islanders liked their way of life so well, they might have stayed independent forever.
01:00:23.340But they tried to build a railroad, and as the debts grew, so did interest in confederation.
01:00:29.980When the details of the arrangement with the Dominion were revealed, the Islanders had good reason to cheer, their railroads, their debts, and their absentee landlords had all been taken care of.
01:00:44.940On July 1st, 1873, the Little Island became part of confederation, and MacDonald had reached his goal. The second transcontinental nation had been realized.
01:01:02.740We began by noting fear, fear of the United States as a leading cause of confederation, and so it was.
01:01:13.800But Canadians should also remember what Americans might have done and did not do.
01:01:20.460The American Civil War was the most terrible event in North American history.
01:01:25.380It was not entirely surprising that despair over apparent national disintegration should cause a Secretary of State to consider briefly annexing Canada as a diversion.
01:01:35.480Nor was it surprising that in the victorious Union, manifest destiny should appear again.
01:01:41.080Nor that there was some hostility to Canadian confederation.
01:01:46.040Much of the hostility came simply from traditional American dislike of a despotic monarchy on their border.
01:01:55.960Yet the schemes of Banks and Ramsey, the pronouncements of state legislatures, the petitions of annexationists, both Canadian and American, got nowhere.
01:02:05.800The annexation of Canada did not become an American national goal.
01:02:12.140When reports to Secretary of State Fish suggested that most Canadians wanted to join the Union, he was indeed interested.
01:02:19.820But when discreet inquiries convinced him this was not so, he went no further.
01:02:25.360The combination of expansionist nationalism and superior power has frequently led nations into temptation.
01:02:34.560Although many Americans would have liked them to, American governments in these dangerous years did not succumb.
01:02:42.560Anglo-American reconciliation tended to overshadow the acceptance of Canada's nationhood so aptly symbolized by McDonald's lively and exasperating presence at the Treaty of Washington.
01:03:01.120But Anglo-American understanding itself was an indispensable condition of Canada's full independence.
01:03:08.340Now the undefended frontier, so long defended, was ready to become the subject of pious homilies.
01:03:20.900And the two nations could get on with marking it properly.
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01:04:01.220Home soon as a poor volt on it was only the one that was for many days and will have the kind of pious homilies.
01:07:45.140Like, this is something that a lot of modern Canadians have no understanding of, even though a lot of them have an instinctual understanding of this.
01:07:58.040In the opinion of one historian, Canadian Confederation was fundamentally anti-American, a grand design to protect British America from American encroachments.
01:08:13.860But everything we've, you know, reviewed in this series just kind of reiterates that point.
01:08:19.680And it's not necessarily about, you know, distaste or hatred towards Americans, although there certainly is some of that, as we saw in the series.
01:08:29.940You know, there's some negative views towards the United States and, you know, their model, their experiment.
01:08:38.740But really, it was more about protecting, you know, the British method of doing things.
01:09:26.160The reason why they're flabbergasted that Canadians would not want to join the United States is because they do not understand what Canadians are.
01:09:36.380And until they do this kind of research and realize that these things go beyond, like, you can't just override this with a few memes and shitposts.
01:09:49.380You can't override that kind of setting by making some, you know, modern arguments towards, you know, freedom of speech or a Second Amendment or something.
01:10:01.560It's not going to work because it's much deeper.
01:10:04.820The roots of that distrust and that dislike of the American, even if they don't understand why they don't like it, it's inbuilt.
01:10:14.780So you're never going to convince Canadians en masse to support annexation.
01:10:19.860And we saw this repeatedly throughout this series, and it'll come up again in these clips.
01:10:25.120But every annexation movement that ever was attempted, and we saw it, like, there was, in this episode, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Manitoba,
01:10:35.380all of these colonies or all of these regions of Canada had annexationist movements for different reasons.
01:10:41.840And they never solidified, they never metastasized, because there was a fundamental desire by the people living in those areas to remain part of the British system.
01:10:55.800The push for annexationism was always rooted in short-term economic gain by, you know, a few.
01:11:05.380So, you know, that's not a good way, that's not a powerful argument, right?
01:11:13.540And this is something that even a lot of conservatives today don't understand, is that the most powerful political arguments are not economic.
01:11:20.960Even if economics is the most important thing or a driving force behind a lot of what, you know, is happening in any given, you know, political conflict, it doesn't matter.
01:11:33.140The more, there's a reason why conflicts that start for economic reasons are always given moral or ideological reasons over top of the economic ones, because it's not a powerful argument.
01:11:46.920So, you know, anything rooted in a kind of economic sense is typically short-term and typically does not resonate well with the masses,
01:11:59.180especially the masses who are not, you know, affected as much as the, you know, in this case, reciprocity is something that affected more businessmen than, you know, the average Canadian in a lot of ways.
01:12:10.280So, but we'll go, we'll go over to Nova Scotia here first.
01:12:17.000Now, this is, Joseph Howe is a very interesting character.
01:12:20.300I'll play the clip and then I'll talk more about Joseph Howe.
01:12:22.920He didn't come up, I don't believe he came up earlier in the series when I think he probably should have, which is in the 1840s or 1830s.
01:12:30.280But, yeah, he's an incredibly important figure in Nova Scotian history.
01:12:38.060And, yeah, obviously he was opposed to Confederation, but more opposed to annexation by the United States, which is interesting.