Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
But what if we think of the US as Canada's Mother Country? Or at least as a country that plays the Mother Country role for Canada? (The latter point being a concession to the fact that we may not have come into this relationship in the way that these things normally happen.)
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The concept of a "mother country" is an interesting and controversial one. It's interesting to think of a "New World" country as being the mother country for another "New World" country.
Usually, the most commonly brought-up "mother country" scenarios are thought of as an "Old World-New World relationship" with settler colonial offshoots like Britain and the US/Canada/Australia/NZ, or Spain and Latin America etc.
But the idea of an older New World (or let's say post-colonial) country being a "mother country" for a "newer" (post-colonial) New World country is interesting -- like is Australia a "mother country" for NZ (similar to Canada, NZ chose not to join the federation of Australia, while different colonies that became Australia did)?
Or is Malaysia, Britain or China the mother country for Singapore?
Is the US also the mother country for Liberia?
Is Britain or France the mother country for Haiti and Jamaica, because it set up the institutions and set the tone for the culture, even though the people (descendants of African slaves) initially never wanted to be brought there in the first place?
Does the modern state of Israel have its mother country be the Biblical Israel, or do any of the western powers (Britain, the US and other allies) and members of the Jewish diaspora all over the world that agreed to and fought strongly for the modern set-up) that helped create the modern nation state ever deserve to be called "mother country" for it, at least as a post 1948 nation state.
I think "mother country" really opens up a real can of worms.
Not saying that Canada's origins versus the US are gonna be as controversial as say what the creation of modern Israel was like, but the concept of "you wouldn't be here without us, we created you, you're an offshoot of us" does rub people the wrong way. I don't think everyone everywhere the world over has a coherent definition of "mother country".