Abstract
In February and March 1867, the British parliament passed legislation to unite Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia into a single Dominion. The preamble to the British North America Act stated that ‘such a Union would conduce to the Welfare of the Provinces and Promote the Interests of the British Empire’.1 It is not always noted that Confederation passed through Westminster in the midst of the crisis of the Second Reform Act, the most divisive domestic political upheaval in the four decades between the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the defeat of Irish Home Rule in 1886. Yet the British North America Act was not passed in an imperial fit of absent-mindedness: the British were active participants in the process of Confederation, not mere onlookers. The main thesis of this study may be reduced to a single statement: between 1837 and 1867, the British came to favour the eventual creation of a union of British North America.2
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Notes and References
These issues are also discussed in Ged Martin, An Imperial Idea and Its Friends: Canadian Confederation and the British, 1837–1864’ in Gordon Martel (ed.), Studies in British Imperial History: Essays in Honour of A.P. Thornton (Basingstoke, 1986) pp. 49–94; and Ged Martin, ‘Launching Canadian Confederation: Means to Ends’, Historical Journal, xxvii (1984) pp. 575–602.
The present study also draws upon G.W. Martin, ‘Britain and the Future of British North America, 1837–1867’ (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1972).
Various studies discuss the idea of Confederation in the decades before 1867. Older works which remain useful are R.G. Trotter, Canadian Federation: Its Origins and Achievements. A Study in Nation-Building (Toronto, 1924)
W.M. Whitelaw, The Maritimes and Canada before Confederation (Toronto, 1934).
Chester Martin, Foundations of Canadian Nationhood (Toronto, 1955) is valuable in placing Confederation in a longer perspective, but its usefulness is reduced by the absence of any citation of sources.
For the Loyalist pedigree of Confederation, see Peter J. Smith, ‘The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation’, Canadian journal of Political Science, xx (1987) pp. 3–31
Peter J. Smith, ‘The Dream of Political Union: Loyalism, Toryism and the Federal Idea in Pre-Confederation Canada’, in Ged Martin (ed.), Causes, pp. 148–71. Other essays and articles include James A. Gibson, ‘The Colonial Office View of Canadian Federation, 1856–1867’, CHR, xxxv (1954), pp. 279–313
L.F.S. Upton, ‘The Idea of Confederation, 1754–1858’ in W.L. Morton (ed.), The Shield of Achilles (Toronto, 1968)
Bruce A. Knox, ‘The Rise of Colonial Federation as an Object of British Policy, 1850–1870’, Journal of British Studies, xi (1972), pp. 92–112
Ged Martin, ‘Confederation Rejected: the British Debate on Canada, 1837–1840’, JICH, xi (1982), pp. 33–57
Ged Martin, ‘Britain and the Future of British North America, 1841–1846’, British Journal of Canadian Studies, ii (1987) pp. 74–96.
Phillip A. Buckner, ‘The Maritimes and Confederation: A Reassessment’, CHR, lxxi (1990) p. 21n.
The three most authoritative modern studies are D.G. Creighton, The Road to Confederation: The Emergence of Canada 1863–1867 (Toronto, 1964) [cited as Road to Confederation]
W.L. Morton, The Critical Years: The Union of British North America 1857–1873 (Toronto, 1964) [cited as Critical Years]
P.B. Waite, The Life and Times of Confederation 1864–1867: Politics, Newspapers, and the Union of British North America (Toronto, 1962) [cited as Life and Times].
These should be supplemented by two giant biographies of leading politicians: D.G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician (Toronto, 1952) [cited as Macdonald, i]
J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe, i: The Voice of Upper Canada 1818–1859 (Toronto, 1959) and ii: Statesman of Confederation 1860–1880 (Toronto, 1963) [cited as Brown].
Arthur R.M. Lower, Colony to Nation: A History of Canada (5th ed., 1977, first published 1946), pp. xiii, 471.
Other general works referred to include J.B. Brebner, Canada: A Modern History (Ann Arbor, 1960) [cited as Brebner]
J.M.S. Careless, Canada: A Story of Challenge (rev. ed., Toronto, 1974)
D.G. Creighton, Dominion of the North: A History of Canada (rev. ed., Toronto, 1962) [cited as Dominion of the North];
J.L. Finlay and D.N. Sprague, The Structure of Canadian History (2nd ed., Scarborough, Ont, 1984) [cited as Structure of Canadian History];
R. Douglas Francis, R. Jones and D.B. Smith, Origins: Canadian History to Confederation (Toronto, 1988)
Edgar Mclnnis, Canada: A Social and Political History (4th ed., Toronto, 1982) [cited as McInnis]
Kenneth McNaught, The Pelican History of Canada (rev. ed., London, 1978) [cited as McNaught]
Desmond Morton, A Short History of Canada (rev. ed., Edmonton, 1983)
W.L. Morton, Kingdom of Canada: A General History from Earliest Times (2nd ed., Toronto, 1969) [cited as Kingdom of Canada].
For a selection of articles, see Ramsay Cook (ed.), Confederation (Canadian Historical Readings, no. 3, Toronto, 1967).
J.H. Dales, The Protective Tariff in Canada’s Development (Toronto, 1966) pp. 145–9. Dales quoted Innis, Creighton, Brebner, Easterbrook and Aitken but exempted Lower and Chester Martin from his ‘historians’ stereotype’.
Buckner argues that opposition to Confederation in the Maritimes has been exaggerated, ‘The Maritimes and Confederation’, pp. 1–30, esp. 5–7, reprinted in Ged Martin (ed.), Causes, pp. 86–113. See also D.A. Muise, ‘The Federal Election of 1867 in Nova Scotia: An Economic Interpretation’, Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, xxxvi (1968), pp. 327–51, and Brian D. Tennyson, ‘Economic Nationalism, Confederation and Nova Scotia’, in Ged Martin (ed.), Causes. pp. 130–41.
Ronald L. Watts, ‘An Overview’, in R.L. Watts and D.M. Brown (eds), Options for a New Canada (Toronto, 1991) p. 12
Robert C. Vipond, Liberty and Community: Canadian Federalism and the Failure of the Constitution (Albany NY, 1991) p. 17
D.J. Bercuson and B. Cooper, Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec (Toronto, 1991) p. 75.
E.W. Watkin, Canada and the States: Recollections 1851 to 1886 (London, 1886) pp. 2, 65b.
Watkin’s role was seized upon as early as 1924 by R.G. Trotter, Canadian Federation, ch. xiii (‘Introducing a Promoter of Empire’) and enshrined in Cambridge History of the British Empire, vi: Canada and Newfoundland (1930) pp. 443–4, 462. Watkin also appears in Brebner, pp. 282–4; Careless, Canada: A Story of Challenge, pp. 241–2; Dominion of the North, pp. 292–3; Colony to Nation, p. 317; Mclnnis, pp. 344, 363; and Kingdom of Canada, p. 312. This is one of several examples which call to mind the term ‘historians’ consensus’, as used by Dales. Watkin also figures large in an important economic interpretation, Stanley B. Ryerson, Unequal Union: Roots of Crisis in the Canadas, 1815–1873 (2nd ed., Toronto, 1973) pp. 322–3, 343.
An important attempt to interpret the financial aspect of the British role is D.W. Roman, ‘The Contribution of Imperial Guarantees for Colonial Railway Loans to the Consolidation of British North America 1847–1865’, (DPhil. thesis, Oxford, 1978).
J.M.S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas: The Growth of Canadian Institutions (Toronto, 1967).
Margaret A. Banks, ‘Upper and Lower Canada or Canada West and East?’, CHR, liv (1973) pp. 473–80.
British figures from B.R. Mitchell with P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962).
As argued by R.C. Nelson, W.C. Soderlund, R.H. Wagenberg and E.D. Briggs, ‘Canadian Confederation as a Case Study in Community Formation’, in Ged Martin (ed.), Causes, pp. 50–85, esp. 59–60, 75–6. Compare S.A. Saunders, The Economic History of the Maritime Provinces (Fredericton, 1984) pp. 98–100.
R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engermann, Time on the Cross (2 vols, London, 1974) i, p. 250; ii, p. 163.
Sharp differences in per capita commodity income by region in 1870 are demonstrated by the maps in Kris Inwood and James Irwin, ‘Canadian Regional Commodity Income Differences at Confederation’ in Kris Inwood (ed.), Farm, Factory and Fortune: New Studies in the Economic History of the Maritime Provinces (Fredericton, 1993) pp. 99–100.
Lucas, ii, p. 212; A. Trollope, North America (2 vols, London, 1968 ed., first published 1861) i, p. 55.
Douglas McCalla, ‘Railways and the Development of Canada West, 1850–1870’ in A. Greer and I. Radforth (eds), Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto, 1992) pp. 192–229.
Perceptions of the Maritimes are discussed in Chapter Four. There is some emerging difference of emphasis among economic historians about the dependence of the province of Canada on imported British capital. For an effective summary of the view that British governments manipulated the colonial need for access to capital to sustain a British North America separate from the United States, see P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 (London, 1993) pp. 258–73. Douglas McCalla has argued that much of the capital required for the development of Upper Canada was locally generated, and that comparison with adjoining American states suggests that larger projects could have been financed independently of the colonial connection. While accepting that Canada benefited from indirect British subsidies, notably through expenditure on garrisons, McCalla also suggests that the three largest British-financed transportation projects were of limited benefit. The Rideau Canal, a defence project, quickly became irrelevant. The Grand Trunk Railway was ‘neither the only nor even the best possibility for completing the core Canadian railway system’. Most notably, the enlargement of the Welland Canal, financed by the loan which the British government used as a carrot for securing Upper Canadian acquiescence in the Union of 1841, was an ‘inappropriate strategy’, creating a waterway which rarely functioned above 15 per cent of its capacity.
(Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada 1784–1870 (Toronto, 1993) esp. pp. 202, 126.) What McCalla terms the ‘overbuilding’ of the Welland as a ship canal is of some importance in this discussion, since Cain and Hopkins revealingly talk of the ‘St. Lawrence Seaway as a conduit for trade between Britain and the mid-west of America’. (Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, p. 259.) The Seaway was opened in 1959, and the Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest use of the term from 1921.
C. Dickens, Pictures from Italy and American Notes (London, 1859 ed.) p. 205. The description was of Halifax in 1842.
For the evolution of colonial self-government, see Phillip A. Buckner, The Transition to Responsible Government: British Policy in British North America 1815–1850 (Westport, Conn., 1985)
Ged Martin, ‘The Canadian Rebellion Losses Bill of 1849 in British Polities’, JICH, vi (1977) pp. 3–22.
J. Pope, Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald (Garden City NY ed., 1921) p. 29n.
The resolutions are given in O.D. Skelton, Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Gait (ed. G. MacLean, Toronto, 1966) pp. 283–4.
Pope, Memoirs, pp. 216–17; Canadian Presbyter, September 1858, quoted R.W. Vaudry, The Free Church in Victorian Canada (Waterloo, Ont, 1989) p. 76.
For the Trent crisis and its political implications, see W.L. Morton, Critical Years, ch. 6, and R.W. Winks, Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years (rev. ed., Montreal, 1971) ch. 6.
For the military problems, see Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America (London, 1967) ch. 7
J. Mackay Hitsman, Safeguarding Canada 1763–1871 (Toronto, 1968) ch. 8.
Bruce W. Hodgins, John Sandfield Macdonald 1812–1872 (Toronto, 1971).
J. Young, Public Men and Public Life in Canada: The Story of the Canadian Confederacy (2 vols, Toronto, 1912) i, pp. 197–8.
Macdonald to Lindsey, confidential, 24 September 1858; same to same, 14 June 1860, in J.K. Johnson and C.B. Stelmack (eds), The Papers of the Prime Ministers: The Letters of Sir John A. Macdonald 1858–1861 (Ottawa, 1969) pp. 84, 214.
For an attempted revision of the politics of the Great Coalition, see Ged Martin, Faction and Fiction in Canada’s Great Coalition of 1864 (Sackville, New Brunswick, 1993). For examples of emphasis upon the aim of British North American union, see McNaught, p. 122 and Structure of Canadian History, p. 174.
W.M. Baker, Timothy Warren Anglin 1822–1896: Irish Catholic Canadian (Toronto, 1977) pp. 69–79
A.G. Bailey, ‘Railways and the Confederation Issue in New Brunswick, 1863–1865’, CHR, xxi (1940) pp. 367–83, and ‘The Basis and Persistence of Opposition to Confederation in New Brunswick’, CHR, xxiii (1942) pp. 374–97
J.K. Chapman, ‘Arthur Gordon and Confederation’, CHR, xxxvii (1956) pp. 142–57.
Baker, Anglin, ch. 7; J.K. Chapman, The Career of Arthur Hamilton Gordon, First Lord Stanmore 1829–1912 (Toronto, 1964) ch. 2, esp. pp. 36–7.
G.P. de T. Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada (2 vols, Toronto, 1964 ed.) i, p. 172.
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Martin, G. (1995). British North America on the Eve of Confederation. In: Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837–67. Cambridge Commonwealth Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11479-5_1
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