Colonial Testimonial

The return of Donald Trump has reminded many Canadians of our happy differences from our neighbours. We feel that Canada is the peaceable kingdom. We celebrate our state’s formation as a compromise between francophone and anglophone, Catholic and Protestant communities. We recall that when the architects of Confederation planned the westward expansion of the new dominion, they looked to Ottawa to quell the violence that was disfiguring the American frontier.

Yet historians of settler colonialism look askance at the belief that there is anything distinctive or superior in Canada’s origins. They dismiss as trivial the ideological differences between such varied polities as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Israel. What such countries share, they argue, is a determination to displace and if necessary to eliminate the indigenous inhabitants of the lands over which they claim sovereignty, so that they can be handed to new arrivals. Armies, schools, and statutes...