Defending Canada: Canadian Military Preparedness, 1867- 1902

Abstract

There has been an impression created by scholars that Canadian politico-military actions were taken to benefit Great Britain and fulfill the needs of the Empire. This thesis contends that decisions surrounding military preparedness, defense spending and the militia made by the Canadian government were designed primarily to protect and foster Canadian state interests that slowly evolved over the three decades before the Boer War in 1899: in the first phase, continued military solidarity with the British was demonstrated, especially during the Red River Rebellion (1869-1870); in the second phase, new threats and armed deployments showed an obstinate desire for autonomy at the expense of military Imperial-Canadian cooperation, demonstrated by the purely Canadian operation in the Northwest (1885) and of outright refusal to engage in overseas endeavours (Nile Expedition 1884-85); the last phase saw an amalgamation of the previous phenomena of imperial solidarity and colonial autonomy – that is to say, Canada attempted to decide for itself which military ventures in which it would engage, but Canadian leaders operated in a political world and they had to satisfy, at times, certain segments of the Canadian population that continued to have strong ties to the Empire. This transition from reliance, to obstinacy, and finally to reluctant cooperation, demonstrates that Canada attempted to become more autonomous as the decades passed, a stage that was later reached during the First World War. In brief, then, Canada attempted to act in its own interests, rather than in those of Great Britain in the last third of the 19th century.