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In December last year, US President-elect Donald Trump suggested that Canada become a part of the United States. He later referred to now-resigned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a ‘governor.’ Again, on December 18, Trump suggested on his social media platform Truth Social that Canada should become the 51st state of America. “No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State,” he wrote.
In January this year, Trump and his supporters continued talks of Canada joining the US. In a January 7 press conference, he ruled out the use of military force to annex Canada but said that he would use “economic force” instead.
Trump’s proposals have been widely decried by America’s northern neighbour with Trudeau stating that there wasn’t “a snowball’s chance in hell” of Canada becoming America’s 51st state. However, looking at the early history of the United States, and certain Canadian annexation movements, territorial expansion does not seem outside the realm of possibility.
The United States of America was formed after 13 British colonies declared independence from the British Empire in 1776. Its first major expansion came in 1803 when it purchased Louisiana from the French, nearly doubling the country’s territory. In 1845, disputes across the southeastern border led to the Mexican-American War. Emerging victorious, the US obtained the northern half of Mexico, including what is now the state of California.
This period was characterised by the term ‘Manifest Destiny’. Coined by newspaper editor John L O’Sullivan, it referred to the belief amongst American leaders and citizens that the country’s national power was inevitable to be extended across the continent of North America. However, O’Sullivan was wary of the prospect of America being dominated by a non-white race. He also believed that the world would end in 1945.
Writing about the mindset at that time in the article ‘Alternative Wests: Rethinking Manifest Destiny’ (2007), historians Andrew C Isenberg and Thomas Richards Jr state, “O’Sullivan’s predictions may have been stunningly incorrect, but they were typical of most mid-nineteenth-century Americans who lacked a coherent vision of what U.S. expansion would look like – if it happened at all. Canada, Oregon, Alta and Baja California, Texas, New Mexico, Cuba, and the Yucat´an: all were possible…or none were possible.”
Nevertheless, like O’Sullivan, many Americans worried about the prospect of a non-white race dominating their country. Echoing colonial narratives, in 1867, when America purchased Alaska from the Russians, white supremacists like John C Calhoun, the senator from South Carolina, warned against letting “any but the Caucasian race” into the Union.
However, as historian Daniel Immerwahr writes in How to Hide an Empire (2019), while the prospect of granting Exquimaux (native Alaskans) equal citizenship was concerning, “the deal went through only because, in the end, there weren’t that many ‘Exquimaux,’ and there was quite a lot of Alaska”.
Beginning with the passage of the Guano Islands Act in 1856, the United States began expanding beyond North America. Under it, Washington had the right to claim any uninhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the book American Empire (2003), geographer Neil Smith refers to these islands as “geographical crumbs”. While at the time, insular possessions of the US were small, today, the overseas territories contain over four million people.
Most of America’s claims in the Pacific were abandoned due to counter-claims from other competing powers. Significantly though, it retained Hawaii after annexing the kingdom in 1898. The same year, America also annexed what is now the Philippines, only granting the islands independence after the conclusion of World War Two.
While American idealism is founded on the principles of freedom and democracy, in its early days, America was imperialistic, even threatening to invade Canada on several occasions.
As early as the Revolutionary War of 1775, American rebels attempted to seize the provinces of Montreal and Quebec from the British. In fact, the original Articles of Confederation in the United States had pre-approved Quebec for membership in the new country. The Americans assumed that citizens of these regions would gladly take up arms against their British colonialists but were rapidly proved wrong.
Again, in 1812, the United States worked up the nerve to invade Canada with President Thomas Jefferson believing that it would be a “mere matter of marching” northwards and seizing Quebec. The National Park Service notes in an article about the comment that many in the United States wrongly “assumed that the Canadian population would welcome the arrival of American forces”. However, Canada, a British colony at the time, once again resisted the advances of its southern neighbour.
“A call to arms rang throughout the country, echoing from lake to river, and piercing the inmost recesses of the forest,” writes W A Foster, a co-founder of the Canada First movement. “How must the pulses of the young men have throbbed as they grasped the trusty rifle.” In the end, the British torched the White House in 1814 and while neither side claimed victory, neither conceded defeat. This would be the last time America attempted to claim Canada by force. However, in 1866, it did attempt to sway them into joining the United States.
Introduced by Massachusetts Congressman Nathaniel Prentice Banks, the Annexation Bill of 1866 was intended to appeal to Irish Americans who were hostile towards the British. The bill would have authorised the President of the United States to, subject to the agreement of the governments of the British provinces, “publish by proclamation that, from the date thereof, the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia, with limits and rights as by the act defined, are constituted and admitted as States and Territories of the United States of America”.
In essence, the bill would have annexed Canada, albeit before Canada became a country. Eventually, in 1867, the territories that are now Canada voted to form a confederation of states independent of the US. However, talks of annexation continued amongst Canadians.
The first Canadians to seek unification with the US were rebels from Upper and Lower Canada who fled British forces to America in 1838. In the article American Republicanism at a Crossroads (2020), historian Julien Mauduit writes that “when they rebelled, the republicans, or patriots, of Lower and Upper Canada envisioned forming sovereign states within the American union”.
Initially, they were greeted by much support, especially amongst the borderlands. Newspapers published articles in their favour, locals held public assemblies championing their cause, and thousands of people joined secret societies pledging to free Canada from British imperialism. To many, the rebellion was a chance to complete the American Revolution and rid North America of the British.
However, in January 1838, a group of British military men crossed into American territory, seizing a ship called ‘Caroline’. To many, war with Great Britain appeared imminent. In the aftermath, then US President Martin Van Buren made a public cry for neutrality. Half a century since the revolution, America had become dependent on British trade, the very same fuelling America’s westward expansion. Van Buren, along with several prominent politicians and members of the media, feared that aligning with the rebels would lead to war with Britain and subsequently cost Washington its most important trade partner. Swiftly, the rebel movement was extinguished, with Van Buren even sending forces to the borderlands to prevent a military uprising.
However, in 1860, the conversation about Canadian annexation was raised again. That year, United States Secretary of State William Seward predicted that British North America (Canada was still not a country) would join the United States. In 1867, three regions – the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined together to create Canada. However, one territory remained apprehensive.
In British Columbia, residents were fearful of being surrounded by America and advocated for annexation with the US. When the issue of confederation came up in 1867, petitions circulated in favour of joining the United States.
The first, in 1867, was addressed to Queen Victoria and demanded that either the British government assume the colony’s debt to the US (significant at the time) and establish a steamer train link, or allow the colony to merge with America. In 1869, a second petition was formed, asking then US President Ulysses Grant to negotiate American annexation of the territory from Britain. Despite grassroots support, neither provision gained popular attention, and in 1871, British Columbia was admitted as a Canadian province.
That alone did not stop calls for annexation.
During the 1880s and 1890s, Quebec-born physician Prosper Bender moved to Boston upon growing disillusionment with the Canadian experiment. A staunch proponent of annexation, Bender wrote an article for the North American Review in 1883, stating that many Canadians believed that annexation by the US would occur “within the present generation, if not sooner”. His reasoning was that Irish Catholics, comprising a fourth of Canada’s population, would rebel against the British for their occupation of Ireland. Further, he noted, they would be joined by a majority of youth who see the United States as a land of opportunity.
While the threat never materialised, the matter was never really settled. As P Bender notes in an 1883 article titled ‘A Canadian View of Annexation’, while the question doesn’t figure prominently for parties on either side of the divide, “there can be no doubt that it is one of those important dominant issues never wholly out of sight.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, certain fringe Canadian parties advocated Canada joining the United States. None ever made it to an election. While Canadians always maintained a positive impression of the US, according to Pew research across the last quarter century, only 7 per cent potentially supported annexation as per a Leger Marketing survey from 2004.
While those numbers would suggest that Trump’s comments were made in jest or grandiosity, certain factors complicate the equation – not least, the trade between Canada and the United States.
America’s economic influence has driven annexation movements in the past. In 1893, a small group of sugar- and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to Hawaii, deposed Hawaii’s queen, seizing 1.75 million acres of royal land for Washington.
Today, Canada is facing similar economic pressure with Trump threatening to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Ottawa. In a statement released earlier this week, Scott Crockatt of the Business Council of Alberta said, “Businesses are preparing today for the very strong likelihood that they will see tariffs. If they are in the most severe version — the 25 per cent across the working board — it’d be economically devastating.”
Since Trudeau tendered his resignation, Trump has doubled down on his threats. On Tuesday, the president-elect said that the US is “not treated well” by Canada and threatened to use sanctions to force it into compliance or annexation. He further commented, “Get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security. They’re great, but we’re spending hundreds of billions here to protect it.”
American expansionism is not a new concept. The country went from 13 states in 1776 to 50 today. If Trump makes good on his statement, Canada could become the 51st.
