SOME INTER-RELATIONSHIPS IN CANADIAN- 
AMERICAN HISTORY 
In view of the fact that so many interesting and important 
parallels exist in the history of the two countries, it is rather 
surprising that so little attention has been given to the study 
of the history of Canada in the colleges and universities of 
the United States and likewise so little attention to the his- 
tory of the United States in Canadian institutions of higher 
learning. Several factors have contributed to this situation. 
In the first place, the development of Canadian nationalism 
within the British commonwealth of nations, while com- 
paratively rapid, has been gradual, and it has been easy for 
Americans to continue to regard Canada merely as a colony 
belonging to the British Empire. The impartial study in 
either country of the history of the other has also been de- 
layed by the influence of old misunderstandings. The old 
popular antipathy to Great Britain which was transmitted 
from one generation of Americans to another by elementary 
textbooks in American history and by the tendency of earlier 
American generations to look forward to the ultimate annexa- 
tion to the United States of British North America not only 
delayed the recognition of the fact that another nation with 
Anglo-Saxon institutions was growing up alongside the 
American republic but it also tended to place Canada in a sort 
of defensive attitude, — defensive against ideas as well as 
against facts or conditions. 
The World War influenced American thought in many im- 
portant respects, many of which we cannot at present deter- 
mine or evaluate. Two facts, however, which stand out more 
clearly as a result of the history of the last decade are the 
necessity for greater international cooperation and an ad- 
vance in the status of Canada from a position as a self- 
governing colony belonging to the British Empire to that of 
a nation within the British commonwealth of nations. This 
latter fact not only justifies but demands that Canadian his- 
tory should receive more serious attention by American 
scholars. Lines of economic activity do not always coincide 
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