By Benjamin Bryce
Canadians frequently draw comparisons to the United States, but they rarely extend their gaze further south. Nevertheless, in a number of areas, Canadian history has been connected to that of several other countries in the Americas. For example, the Canadian government’s policies toward aboriginal people find many analogies in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. In areas ranging from land dispossession under the auspices of nineteenth-century liberalism to assimilationist education efforts driven by a civilizing mission, Canada stands beside Chile, Peru, and Mexico almost as much as the United States. In addition, the idea that an emergent network of public schools would promote civic cohesion and ethnic homogeneity in the late-nineteenth century links Canada not only to the United States but also Argentina.
Canadians’ interest in and reaction to mass migration in the early-twentieth century integrated the country into larger North American system. Yet just as playwright Israel Zangwill coined the phrase “the melting pot” in his 1908 play, elites, politicians, and educators in Argentina and Brazil articulated very similar ideas. Zangwill’s protagonist proclaimed that “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.” It is indeed revealing that José María Ramos Mejía, a prominent Argentine intellectual and politician, made similar references to crucibles and racialized European ethnicity when he declared in 1910, “It is in the school that we can find the necessary strength to melt and amalgamate the different races that are constantly flooding the country.”
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