Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

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The point was they couldn't hold the Canadian colony. Britain didn't give home-rule to Canada because of their good-will. American belligerence towards European presence in the New World, and their rise as a major military and economic power, made holding Canada practically impossible by the mid 1800s (for example, it was untannable for Britain to maintain a large military presence in Canada anymore). Britain fully expected Canada to be annexed. Without the civil war and reconstruction preoccupying Americans during the critical early and fledgling years of the Canadian Dominion, I don't think Canada would have survived as a nation.

In another thread, I also made an argument for another major mitigating factor with respect to Americas, namely, the native populations were wiped out by old-world diseases which prevented local rebellions from succeeding and allowed Europeans to establish large population centers.

But the article literally argues that the British loss of the American colonies in 1776 is an example of how an empire can’t retain territory at a month’s remove.

To which the existence of British colonies in Canada after 1776 is kind of a direct rejoinder, right? The eventual loss of those colonies is irrelevant to the point that you can’t explain the American revolution as being an inevitable consequence of remoteness.

An empire can't retain hostile and unpacified territory beyond a certain limit - which may be set by time, communications, access to local resources and imported logistics, other factors, and all of the above.

If the territory is fully pacified with no significant resistance and/or it's run by dedicated loyalists with plentiful local resources the limit doesn't apply.

Basically an empire can only retain territory against an active threat or resistance within certain limits. If there is no active threat, or the threat is too minor to be a concern, the territory can be considered stable and fully colonised.

Aha. So the rule is: empires can only hold territory that they are able to hold. Got it. Useful predictive principle.

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