Turmoil in the Rest of the World
How did Canada compare to the world’s other nations during the Confederation decades? The answer to that question is essential if one is going to make a judgment on the nature of the country at this stage of its development. The failings and successes of Canadian society cannot sensibly, or fairly, be compared only against modern standards. Understanding the contemporary issues facing the rest of the world serves another valuable purpose, because over the next 150 years, millions of immigrants from around the globe would come to play their part in shaping Canada’s modern temperament. For those who do not trace their ancestry in Canada back to the Confederation decades, it’s also useful to have a basis of comparison.
Of these regions, European nations were a distant third in influencing Canada during the Confederation decades, well behind Britain and America. In Europe, like the United States during this period, events were much harsher and more disruptive than in Britain or her North American colonies.
For example, during these decades, France endured violent disturbances, ideological conflicts, and major wars. Yet France had little significant impact on Canada, even in her former North American colonies. After 1759, with French Canada ceded to Britain, the flow of French-speaking settlers all but ceased.
Later, when France created her own empire, her colonists migrated to North Africa and Indo-China rather than Canada. As a result, French-speaking Canada remained effectively isolated from the rest of the French world. While French Canada remained relatively tranquil, France was wracked by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Bourbon Restoration. As a result, French-Canadian culture grew and prospered with a very different character than its European parent.
During the Confederation decades, the revolutionary spirit behind the Revolution of 1848 and the Second French Republic was followed by an anti-democratic Second French Empire under Napoleon III. While there was relative peace in Canada, France fought wars with Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Second French Empire collapsed after its defeat by Prussia, creating behind it the Third French Republic. And in the final phase of this period, the Third French Republic was domestically more democratic and tranquil, but like the rest of Europe, France was also in a feverish and violent scramble to secure foreign colonies.
Germany, for the initial years of the Confederation decades, consisted of thirty-nine independent realms. It was a time characterized by political manoeuvrings to create a single country, all of it overshadowed by a series of three major wars — with Denmark, Austria, and France. For Germany, like France, the period was a time of rapid economic modernization and violent uprisings. Industrial growth was matched by the demand for democratic reform. The urban poor, students, and the liberal middle classes all appealed for fundamental democratic change. It eventually came, but in fits and starts. These years also saw the beginnings of large-scale migration to the United States.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was created from the amalgamation of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, was one of the most diverse and important states of this period. Because of the various peoples it ruled, it was in some areas highly industrialized and in others almost feudal. This contiguous European empire had national elements that were Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Serb, Ukrainian, Italian, Croatian, Slovenian, Romanian, Bosnian, and Slovakian. It was understandably a convoluted agglomeration that placed competing demands on its complex and inefficient central government.
Russia, a vast empire stretching over two continents — from Poland to the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic Ocean to Mongolia — was for the most part intensely rural and backward. Russia was a graceless powder keg of an empire with only a few industrialised cities west of the Urals. The Russians lost a war fighting Britain and France in the Crimea, but later had success tearing chunks from the decaying Ottoman Empire and an enfeebled China.
Russia abolished serfdom in 1861. Much like the United States with slavery, this was the most prominent event in Russia’s nineteenth-century history. At the time, 37 percent of the population were serfs. Freeing the serfs meant millions of landless people drifted into the cities searching for work. Throughout the Confederation decades, Russia was in serious trouble. She had no sizeable middle class, an oppressive, despotic, and overly centralized government, medieval conditions of poverty, and dozens of angry and alienated ethnic and religious minorities. It was about as different a country from Canada as one could imagine.
Of the major European nations of the era, Italy went through the most unstable period. It was for the most part poor, agricultural, intensely regional in outlook, and riven by a bewildering number of political ideologies. Many of Italy’s small constituent states and kingdoms were under foreign or papal rule; and initially, there was no overriding sense of national spirit, such as existed in France or Germany. These decades were a time of shifting loyalties and violent political upheavals. Italians suffered through numerous civil conflicts, frequent insurrections, and major external wars with France and Austria. In the highly fractured south, a state of near anarchy existed for most of the Confederation decades. South of Rome, the period was characterized by widespread lawlessness, large-scale banditry, and rule by large private armies, or “mafie.” Italy was eventually unified in 1871, but the new state struggled with unresolved tensions and had dramatic cultural, political, and economic differences between the prosperous urban north and the agricultural south.
Life was somewhat more tranquil for northern Europe’s smaller states. Scandinavia enjoyed an era of relative peace, with the exception of Denmark, which lost a war with much more powerful Germany. Norway and Sweden, somewhat like Upper and Lower Canada, remained unified under a Swedish monarchy, but with separate national institutions. To the south, Spain and Portugal were separate countries, having divided in 1840. Spain lost most of its overseas possessions during this period; and beyond their own colonies, both countries exerted little influence in foreign affairs. They both remained poor, non-industrial, and governed by authoritarian regimes.
On the eastern edge of Europe, the Confederation decades witnessed the beginning of the end of Turkey’s imperial rule. The Ottoman Empire started the period ruling much of southern Europe, large areas of north Africa and most of what we now call the Middle East. However, sclerotic government in Turkey, growing nationalism and ethnic pride in the peoples of southern Europe and the Arab world, as well as north European imperial expansion all resulted in a series of wars and uprisings coalescing to begin the long decline of Turkey’s colonial possessions.
In south Asia, Britain steadily extended and tightened its control over virtually the entire region in a series of small but bloody campaigns, the most important of which was the Indian Mutiny in 1856. The mutiny was ruthlessly supressed, leading to the governance of India passing from the East India Company to the British government, while allowing some form of indirect rule in 175 semi-autonomous “princely states.” These years also saw horrific famines in the subcontinent. In total, during this time, over ten million people starved to death.
Not all was bad in India at the time, though. The Confederation decades were also the years which saw the beginnings of the the Bengali Renaissance, a period of intellectual, creative, and social change in Indian society that continues today.
China’s history during the Confederation decades was a tale of continuous catastrophe and tragedy. The period was dominated by the fourteen-year-long Taiping Civil War, which saw the bizarrely named Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Peace fighting to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Euphemistically called “The Taiping Rebellion” in the West, it was a civil war — one that left a staggering twenty million dead.
Surprisingly, the period was also a time of massive population explosion as China grew to four hundred million people. The entire country, which was supported by a fragile system of subsistence agriculture, was, however, characterized by regular crop failures. During this period, the country suffered from floods, droughts, and famines, all of which took a toll on its population.
At the same time, China had to fight several wars on its borders with European powers and Russians. It was unsuccessful in all of them. China lost its lands north of the Amur river to Russia, while the two Opium Wars and numerous skirmishes with Britain saw the establishment of eighty “Treaty Ports,” cities that were in reality colonial possessions of Britain and that allowed it to forcibly open China’s markets to the Europeans. The existence of the Treaty Ports had the unintended consequence of accelerating the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.
In the Confederation decades, much of Africa, particularly West Africa, suffered from the long-term damage of the European and Arab slave trades. East Africa had long been open to the outside world, with Portugal controlling much of the coast for the early part of the nineteenth century. In the middle part of the century, the Sultan of Oman seized control of the coast, re-establishing Muslim control. While the coasts had been opened up to outside control, at the outset of the period, by virtue of the continent’s geography and climate, most of the interior of Africa had been virtually closed to exploration. This began to change in the 1840s when the major European powers began the scramble to carve out colonies for themselves.
Latin America, before and during this period, had almost no influence on Canada, as the continent struggled to free itself from Spanish and Portuguese domination. For both Africa and Latin America, the Confederation decades were not prosperous times. Most African nations in this period forfeited their natural resources and eventually found themselves left with wildly unstable political systems. South and Central America fared somewhat better. Most achieved independence earlier, but development was glacially slow as many struggled with despotic regimes, border conflicts, and civil wars.
By comparison with the rest of the world, Canada led an enchanted existence during the Confederation decades. Life was insulated and blissfully secure from the problems that assailed the rest of the world. Except for America and Britain, the other nations of the world with all their troubles and calamities could have been on the moon. Canada was almost uniquely fortunate in having a tranquil and relatively peaceful childhood and adolescence. That situation would change abruptly when, a generation later, an angry Serbian student shot the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, on a Sarajevo street.