Trump's annexation talk extends a long U.S. tradition of political miscalculation about Canada
President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he wants Canada to join the United States have become a staple of his presidential transition.
President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he wants Canada to join the United States have become a staple of his presidential transition. But the sentiment — like Trump’s breezy confidence about its ease and popularity — is far from new.
Such talk has sprung up practically throughout the whole of American history, often buttressed by the idea that Canadians were clamoring for it, too.
Amid the War of 1812, President Thomas Jefferson told Philadelphia newspaper editor Thomas Duane that “the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.) Among other things, the National Park Service notes in an article about the comment, many in the United States wrongly “assumed that the Canadian population would welcome the arrival of American forces.”
Later in the 1800s, a degree of pro-annexation sentiment developed within each of the major U.S. political parties, according to historian John W. Quist, united by a common thread that annexation of Canada “would occur peacefully and be welcomed by Canadians.”
And now there’s Trump, posting on social media that “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.”
Rating: 5