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Who colonized Canada?

North America — the powers that ruled Canada, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Canada?

France, then Britain. France claimed New France from 1534, Britain took it in 1763, and the settler state that followed ran a residential school system for Indigenous children until 1996.

Canada's colonial system was not primarily about extraction of labour but about elimination of nations: the Indian Act, the pass system and the residential schools were designed to end Indigenous peoples as peoples.

Reference

Who ruled Canada, and when

before 1534
First Nations, Inuit and later Métis nations
1534–1763
New France
1763–1867
British North America

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
France, Britain
Independence
Confederation 1867; full legal autonomy 1931/1982
Residential schools
About 150,000 children passed through; thousands died
Indian Act
Still in force, in amended form, since 1876
Finding
The 2015 TRC used the term cultural genocide

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1763

    Britain takes New France; Royal Proclamation defines Indigenous land rights.

  2. 1876

    Indian Act makes Indigenous people legal wards of the state.

  3. 1883–1996

    Residential school system separates children from families.

  4. 2015

    Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls it cultural genocide.

Context

What the record shows

The last residential school closed in 1996 — within living memory of most Canadians alive today.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Canada?
France from 1534 and Britain from 1763; the settler state continued colonial policy toward Indigenous nations long after 1867.
What were residential schools?
Church-run, state-funded boarding schools that removed Indigenous children from their families to suppress their languages and cultures, operating from the 1880s until 1996.
Is Canada still a colonial state?
Indigenous nations and the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission argue that colonial structures — notably the Indian Act and unresolved land claims — remain in force.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Canada

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.