Why didn’t the USA annex Canada throughout earlier historic intervals? In brief, as a result of it didn’t need to.
President Donald Trump has drawn widespread criticism (relationship again to earlier than his first time period) for seeing U.S. international coverage in ways in which mirror the worldwide politics of the Nineteenth century somewhat than the twenty first century. There are many causes for this — from his mercantilist financial perspective and readiness to boost tariffs to his devaluing of U.S. alliances and skepticism towards worldwide establishments. Much more so, nonetheless, Trump has drawn consideration firstly of his second time period by repeatedly calling for U.S. territorial enlargement into Greenland, Panama, and Canada.
After reportedly joking about annexing Canada throughout a late November dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump drew headlines in December by describing Trudeau as “governor” of the “Nice State of Canada.” By early January, he started suggesting to “do away with” the U.S.-Canadian border, calling it an “artificially drawn line” and tweeting two photographs of maps exhibiting Canada as a part of the USA. Many observers initially declined to take such statements significantly, however Trump reiterated later in January, “I’d like to see Canada turn out to be the 51st state” and he notably raised eyebrows — and considerations — by together with in his deal with in the course of the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, “Canada … you can at all times turn out to be a state.”
Such rhetoric diverges sharply from each different U.S. president in residing reminiscence.
Since World Battle II, the prohibition of coercive territorial enlargement has been a central function of each worldwide legislation and U.S. international coverage. After President Woodrow Wilson first labored to outlaw conquest by way of the League of Nations, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman made territorial integrity a central precept of the United Nations system. Ever since, the USA has led efforts to discourage and punish would-be conquerors from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin. Certainly, the understanding that the USA doesn’t search to dominate different international locations is central to arguments that these international locations ought to favor its model of worldwide order over alternate options — whether or not led by the Soviet Union in the course of the Chilly Battle or probably by China immediately.
After all, the USA has its personal notable historical past of territorial expansionism — together with to its north. But that historical past neither gives precedent for Trump’s latest statements nor in any approach straight informs them. Certainly, the historical past of U.S. territorial enlargement is much extra nuanced than is usually remembered immediately. Its biggest classes in the end lie in understanding not why Nineteenth-century U.S. policymakers typically tried to annex territory in what’s now Canada, however why they by no means genuinely tried to make it the “51st state.”
Canada and U.S. Territorial Growth
The historical past of U.S. northward expansionism goes again all the way in which to the Revolutionary Battle, however it might be fallacious to recommend that U.S. policymakers have persistently and even continuously tried to annex Canada. The truth is, if we outline “the U.S. authorities” because the federal authorities below the U.S. Structure and “Canada” because the entirety of contemporary Canada (as illustrated in Trump’s map memes), it might be fallacious to recommend that the USA has ever genuinely tried to annex Canada. As an alternative, as I’ve explored at size in The Choosy Eagle, U.S. policymakers between the 1780s and 1870s made periodic makes an attempt to accumulate comparatively sparsely populated areas of what’s immediately western Canada, however they typically rejected the notion of annexing the comparatively populous British colonies in jap Canada. Certainly, setting the soundbites apart, the historical past of U.S. northward expansionism is much extra advanced than we regularly keep in mind.
U.S. policymakers’ eyes turned northward even earlier than the Declaration of Independence, when the Continental Congress invited Quebec, St. John’s Island, and Nova Scotia to affix its members in renegotiating their collective relationship with Britain. Quebec’s comparatively massive inhabitants supplied probably the most important extra leverage, so the Congress appealed to its individuals and approved a land invasion in the course of the winter of 1775–1776 to drive out British forces. That effort led to a disastrous assault on Quebec Metropolis throughout a New 12 months’s Eve blizzard, which left Gen. Richard Montgomery useless and the remaining pressure below Benedict Arnold decimated, disease-ridden, and ravenous. Whereas Commander-in-Chief George Washington acknowledged the geopolitical advantages of together with Quebec and periodically thought-about new northward invasions all through the Revolutionary Battle, he repeatedly dismissed the notion given the Continental Military’s struggles to safe the 13 states and his considerations that allied France — if included in a joint operation — may reassert its personal claims to Canada (having misplaced it to Britain in 1763).
Even after securing independence from Britain, Article XI of the Articles of Confederation — in impact between 1781 and 1789 — prolonged an open-ended invitation: “Canada, acceding to this confederation, and becoming a member of within the measures of the USA, shall be admitted into, and entitled to, all some great benefits of this union.” Whereas this invitation could be an uncommon function for a nationwide structure, it makes extra sense when contemplating that the articles created an alliance, not a unified nation-state: “a agency league of friendship” specifying that “every state retains its sovereignty.” Accordingly, the 13 states had nothing to lose and all the pieces to achieve from encouraging Quebec to forged off the British crown and be part of them. That modified when the U.S. Structure merged their home politics below a shared federal authorities. Notably, the Structure has by no means contained any such invitation for Canada to affix. As an alternative, after 1789 federal coverage started exhibiting a brand new expansionist sample (each typically and towards Canada): pursuing extra land somewhat than extra individuals.
In 1812, the USA as soon as once more declared battle on Britain and invaded Canada. But the Battle of 1812 was not a land seize. The truth is, it marks an vital case in U.S. foreign-policy historical past for exactly the alternative cause. The Battle of 1812 marked the primary main event when U.S. policymakers declined to pursue a probably worthwhile alternative to annex neighboring territory. With Britain distracted by the Napoleonic Wars, expansionist policymakers might need ready a sturdy navy pressure able to driving Britain off the North American continent as soon as and for all and securing regional hegemony. But most historians of the battle agree that annexing Canada was not the U.S. battle intention. Certainly, neither President James Madison’s administration nor congressional leaders wished to annex Canada. As an alternative, the Battle of 1812 was an episode of coercive bargaining. After years of British restrictions on U.S. commerce and impressment of U.S. sailors into the Royal Navy in the course of the Napoleonic Wars — and years of failed efforts to press Britain to repeal these restrictions by way of financial sanctions beginning with President Thomas Jefferson’s embargo — battle supplied the final supply of leverage over Britain, and Canada represented its most tangible weak spot. As I wrote in Diplomatic Historical past, “The battle was a determined act on the a part of U.S. leaders delivered to their wits’ finish by British maritime restrictions, which had been themselves determined acts by a British authorities preventing for its life towards Napoleon.”
Removed from genuinely attempting to overcome Canada, Congress declared battle with a woefully underprepared navy, and the Madison administration lobbied the British for peace (with the maritime restrictions eliminated) as quickly as battle was declared. In a continuously misquoted soundbite, Secretary of State James Monroe wrote to U.S. chargé d’affaires in London Jonathan Russell that it is likely to be “tough to relinquish territory which had been conquered” — not as a secret confession of expansionist intent, however somewhat as a possible argument to persuade Britain to again down on the maritime restrictions and keep away from battle altogether. As an alternative of coveting annexation, policymakers fearful about its potential home penalties: the way it may upset the rising sectional stability of energy between North and South, spark secessionist actions, and corrupt U.S. society by assimilating Quebec’s largely French and Catholic inhabitants (together with British loyalists who had fled north after the revolution). Whereas just a few congressmen from border areas did advocate expansionism, even they focused sparsely populated areas north of the Nice Lakes somewhat than the inhabitants facilities of Quebec.
This east-west divide in U.S. northward expansionism, rooted within the interaction between democracy and xenophobia, hardened additional in the course of the many years that adopted. Many know of President James Polk’s aggressive diplomacy over Oregon in the course of the mid-1840s, which spawned slogans like “Fifty-4 Forty or Battle!” and “The one solution to deal with John Bull was to look him straight within the eye.” In 1818, the U.S.-Canadian border east of the Rocky Mountains had been set at 49° however the space west of the Rockies between Mexico (42°) and Russian Alaska (54°40’) remained below joint U.S.-British management. Polk selected confrontation, urgent U.S. claims to your entire area till June 1846, when information of British battle preparations mixed with Congress’ declaration of battle towards Mexico the earlier month raised the specter of a two-front battle and prompted him to accept extending the 49° border to the Pacific.
Much less broadly remembered, nonetheless, are the lengths to which U.S. policymakers had gone just a few years earlier to keep away from battle in jap Canada somewhat than pursue territorial enlargement there. Starting in November 1837, a rebel in what’s now Quebec and Ontario supplied the primary widespread proof of Canadian dissatisfaction with British rule — a golden alternative for any would-be expansionists beneath the border. But President Martin Van Buren selected to strictly implement neutrality, ordering border states’ governors to stop U.S. residents from aiding the rebels. Even after British forces killed a U.S. citizen whereas storming the steamboat Caroline — the occasion that sparked Secretary of State Daniel Webster’s well-known memo to his British counterpart elucidating the legal guidelines of battle — Van Buren issued a neutrality proclamation and despatched Gen. Winfield Scott to the border to suppress the spreading battle fever somewhat than fan it in service of expansionism. Two years later, Maine’s governor John Fairfield supplied one other pretext for expansionism: In response to timber poaching in a disputed space between Maine and New Brunswick, he despatched state militia north to occupy the realm and requested federal assist. But Van Buren instantly condemned Fairfield’s actions, and congressional leaders like Henry Clay refused to permit one state to “draw your entire Union, with out their consent, into battle with a international energy,” empowering the president to rally 50,000 militiamen to make sure border stability by overwhelming each any Canadian belligerents and Maine’s personal pressure.
The late 1860s supplied one other golden alternative to outsource the prices of a northward invasion, this time to the Fenian Brotherhood (the U.S. department of the precursor to the Twentieth-century Irish Republican Military), which stockpiled surplus arms and arranged Irish-American veterans to invade Canada in hopes of gaining leverage to discount for Irish independence. The Fenians loved substantial recognition amid U.S. perceptions that Britain had favored the South in the course of the Civil Battle, for instance by supplying the Confederacy with the warship Alabama that had preyed on Union delivery. This time, furthermore, the U.S. navy was each massive and skilled, drawing jealous value determinations from European powers because of its expertise utilizing fashionable applied sciences and methods in the course of the Civil Battle. But as an alternative of selling Canada’s annexation, President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Henry Seward undercut the Fenian raids by seizing their weapons, reinforcing U.S. neutrality, and even transporting people residence from the Canadian border at public expense after they promised to not have interaction in additional raids. President Ulysses Grant continued this method after assuming workplace in 1869.
In distinction, the identical U.S. policymakers did pursue annexations within the huge, sparsely populated continental northwest, together with Russian Alaska in addition to British Columbia, Rupert’s Land, and the Hudson’s Bay Firm’s North-Western Territories. Seward readily accepted Russia’s supply to promote Alaska for $7.2 million in March 1867, seeing it as helpful to safe Russian friendship and to incentivize the next annexation of British Columbia (now sandwiched between U.S. territories). Hoping to “pay for British Columbia with the Alabama claims,” Seward sought to rally public opinion towards favoring U.S. annexation amongst Vancouver’s residents (numbering lower than 10,000). Britain’s jap Canadian colonies successfully swayed public opinion towards deeper integration with themselves in the course of the winter of 1867–1868, nonetheless, and Parliament’s dedication to construct a transcontinental railroad that summer season proved a extra engaging supply. The Grant administration nonetheless held out hope of annexing western Canada in the course of the 1869 Purple River Rise up amongst Winnipeg’s Métis inhabitants, maneuvering behind the scenes to maintain the door open for a possible alternate of territory for the Alabama claims. The rebel proved short-lived, nonetheless, and Britain pacified native considerations by instituting authorized protections for the Métis.
With all believable diplomatic pathways to additional enlargement in western Canada closed, the Grant administration formally deserted any additional northward territorial ambitions. As an alternative, it negotiated the 1871 Treaty of Washington resolving all main U.S.-British disputes — together with not solely the Alabama claims but in addition northeastern fishing rights, border waterways, and a boundary dispute over the San Juan Islands. British energy remained a possible risk to U.S. pursuits, nonetheless, and Canada remained its most weak strain level. Accordingly, navy planning for doable northward campaigns continued. In 1887, for instance, a dispute over fishing rights prompted the U.S. Navy to survey Canada’s defenses and develop plans for a possible three-pronged marketing campaign to conquer Canada ought to battle get away. Even after preventing as allies in World Battle I, Britain remained uniquely able to threatening the continental United States by way of its navy and management of Canada, so U.S. planners continued to take the prospect of a future U.S.-British battle significantly in the course of the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties. Whilst they thought-about it “extremely unbelievable,” they fearful that ongoing U.S. financial penetration into areas previously dominated by Britain may immediate a British effort to remove that business risk, in order that they devised Battle Plan Purple — which proved to be the final U.S. plan for potential battle with Britain as their subsequent alliance throughout World Battle II and the Chilly Battle rendered such planning out of date.
In the meantime, the notion of annexing Canada turned a comparatively clear boogeyman inside U.S. politics, revived solely in service of different political agendas. Whereas self-interested personal actors sometimes advocated a voluntary annexation, the U.S., British, and Canadian governments all noticed worth in sustaining a secure and peaceable border. Certainly, the U.S.-Canadian border could be hailed because the world’s longest demilitarized border properly into the twenty first century.
As this historical past exhibits, U.S. policymakers between the 1770s and 1870s maintained common curiosity in annexing sparsely populated areas of western Canada by diplomatic means if doable. Whereas a hypothetical third U.S.-British battle would possible have prompted one other northward U.S. navy marketing campaign that will have resulted within the conquest of elements of what’s now Canada, such counterfactual situations are in the end unrealistic given that each president from 1815 via to the current has favored peace over northward territorial enlargement (notably in distinction to Madison’s and Monroe’s salami ways to annex Florida and Polk’s battle with Mexico). Way more noteworthy are the limits on U.S. territorial ambitions: Whereas varied policymakers tried to accumulate sparsely populated western areas, additionally they displayed an equally longstanding disinterest in annexing comparatively populous jap Canada. In doing so, they reversed the logic of many theories of great-power politics, which might predict sustained early efforts to soak up Quebec and drive Britain off the continent with the intention to safe regional dominance.
Lastly, it’s price observing that regardless of U.S. policymakers’ disinterest in annexing Canada’s individuals, invasions from the south did play a serious position in fueling the emergence of Canadian nationalism. The navy campaigns in the course of the Revolutionary Battle and the Battle of 1812 supplied highly effective historic touchstones for future narrators of Canadian nationalism, and the Fenian raids reignited safety fears north of the border sufficient to gasoline the 1867 consolidation of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada (joined shortly thereafter by Manitoba and British Columbia). On this approach, the prospect that the USA may annex Canada proved much more important to the latter than the previous.
The Implications of Trump’s Expansionist Rhetoric
For all Trump’s discuss, the possibilities of the USA annexing Canada throughout his second time period stay low. The Canadian public overwhelmingly opposes it (90 %, in response to a latest survey by the Angus Reid Institute) and the U.S. public does too. With no deal in sight, it’s much more possible that Trump intends his expansionist rhetoric to unsettle the diplomatic established order in service of different objectives. As former senior adviser to Trudeau Gerald Butts remarked, “Trump used this ‘51st State’ line with Trudeau loads throughout his first time period. He’s doing it to rattle Canadian cages.”
This doesn’t imply that Trump’s rhetoric is inconsequential — removed from it. Trump’s discuss of territorial enlargement has already generated vital penalties. Most notably, it has served up rhetorical ammunition to different revisionist powers, particularly Russia. Past reasserting Russian pursuits within the Arctic (which each Canada and Greenland contact), Russian media figures have already used Trump’s statements to defend Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, even saying that “Trump’s place basically gave Moscow the proper to demand the restoration of its personal former Soviet empire, together with the Baltic nations of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.” Such whataboutism muddies the waters of worldwide diplomacy in ways in which erode the delicate energy derived from 75 years of sturdy U.S. assist for the territorial integrity norm. Whilst varied elements of U.S. international coverage have sparked resistance — from Chilly Battle interventions to the Battle on Terror — the USA has persistently attracted allies and companions in different areas partially as a result of they know that they’ve much less to worry from it than from their neighbors. The much less distinguishable U.S. international coverage turns into from Russian or Chinese language international coverage, the less causes different international locations should favor U.S. pursuits over these of its geopolitical rivals.
Second, Trump’s expansionist rhetoric undermines U.S. nationwide safety by impairing its alliances and border safety. Trump has lengthy failed to know NATO’s significance, threatening to withdraw the USA from the alliance throughout his first time period. Any alliance is simply as sturdy because the political will behind it, so Trump doesn’t have to withdraw from NATO to basically weaken it. How can U.S. allies depend on somebody to assist defend them who refuses to rule out utilizing pressure to overcome territory from a kind of very allies? Diluting alliance cohesion weakens the USA by lowering the chance that its companions will supply their very own assist when it’s wanted — as they did after 9/11, the one time NATO’s Article 5 has ever been invoked.
Past its alliances, any navy strategist or scholar of worldwide relations will observe that the only biggest benefit the USA has over its geopolitical rivals is its geography: particularly, secure continental borders which have facilitated comparatively amicable relationships with its neighbors for greater than a century. In Joseph Nye’s phrases, echoed by numerous others: “America is surrounded by two oceans and two pleasant neighbors, whereas China shares a border with fourteen different international locations and is engaged in territorial disputes with a number of.” This ends in vastly completely different pressure postures and capabilities. Whereas China’s navy is quickly modernizing, a lot of its power is deployed alongside its prolonged land borders with Russia and India. In distinction, the U.S. navy can focus a lot of its consideration on varied abroad theaters exactly as a result of the U.S.-Canadian border has been demilitarized for thus lengthy.
Third, Trump’s rhetoric deliberately disparages Canada’s sovereignty. Portraying Canada as on par with any of America’s 50 part elements somewhat than as a sovereign equal erodes one other central precept of the present worldwide order, harkening again to an age of European imperialism by which different international locations had been routinely denied recognition of their full sovereignty, typically on racialized grounds. Moreover, it’s noteworthy that Canada is internally composed of 10 provinces and three territories, but Trump has constantly spoken of it turning into “the 51st state” somewhat than elevating the full variety of U.S. states to 63. Doing so makes for a headline-grabbing soundbite and asserts a predominant U.S. bargaining place that Trump would absolutely like Canada to just accept (although there isn’t a signal it is going to accomplish that).
But additionally it is instrumental. Within the unlikely occasion that annexation involves cross, Canada turning into the 51st state would give it solely two seats inside the U.S. Senate, minimizing the ensuing acquire in home political affect for whichever social gathering Canadians usually tend to assist (trace: not Trump’s). As I’ve examined at size in The Choosy Eagle, such home prices profoundly formed the sample of U.S. territorial enlargement, time after time providing the important thing cause why the USA kept away from pursuing extra alternatives to broaden than it did. The annexation of Texas, for instance, was accompanied by a heated debate over whether or not to confess it as a single state or divide it into a number of states. Certainly, Greenland’s comparatively small inhabitants is probably going a key cause why Trump covets it and never, say, Cuba.
In conclusion, the historical past of U.S. northward expansionism gives insights into why the USA by no means annexed Canada, why Trump has framed his expansionist rhetoric particularly methods, and the way pricey that rhetoric is for U.S. international coverage. Whereas U.S. policymakers in the course of the early to mid-1800s pursued sparsely populated western areas of what’s now Canada, and strategists continued planning for northern campaigns in any potential U.S.-British battle into the Thirties, at no level because the Structure was ratified has annexing Canada as an entire been a central purpose of U.S. international coverage. As an alternative of belittling his diplomatic counterparts, Trump would serve U.S. nationwide pursuits higher by reemphasizing assist for worldwide territorial integrity — a norm that each advantages U.S. nationwide safety and distinguishes what the USA can supply as a world accomplice versus various visions for world order espoused by Russia or China.
Richard W. Maass is affiliate professor of political science at Previous Dominion College, the place he leads the U.S. international coverage focus inside the graduate program in worldwide research. He’s the writer of The Choosy Eagle: How Democracy and Xenophobia Restricted U.S. Territorial Growth (Cornell College Press, 2020) and his analysis has been revealed in journals together with Texas Nationwide Safety Overview, Worldwide Safety, Worldwide Research Quarterly, and Diplomatic Historical past.
Picture: The Loss of life of Basic Montgomery within the Assault on Quebec December 31 1775 by John Trumbull, accessed by way of Wikimedia Commons.
