From colonization to today.
Unlike many nations, Canada’s separation from British rule unfolded gradually and largely peacefully rather than through armed revolution. Confederation in 1867 united the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada, establishing self-government in domestic affairs while Britain retained control over foreign policy, defense treaties, and constitutional amendments. Canadian troops’ […]
Brazil’s path to independence began with the Portuguese royal family’s flight to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 to escape Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal, which made Brazil the seat of the empire for over a decade. When King John VI returned to Lisbon in 1821, he left his son Pedro behind as regent. The Portuguese parliament, […]
Bolivia’s independence movement grew out of more than a decade of upheaval in Upper Peru, the colonial territory that would become the modern nation. Local uprisings against Spanish rule broke out as early as 1809 in cities such as La Paz and Chuquisaca, though these early revolts were suppressed. The struggle that followed was shaped […]
For much of the twentieth century, the territory then known as British Honduras remained a Crown Colony administered from London, with limited local political power. That began to change after 1954, when a new constitution introduced universal adult suffrage and allowed local parties to compete for office. The People’s United Party, founded in 1950 and […]
Calls for political change in Barbados grew out of the labor unrest of the 1930s, when descendants of enslaved plantation workers pressed for relief from poverty and for voting rights then restricted by income and property requirements. Grantley Adams helped found the Barbados Labour Party in 1938 to channel these demands, and gradual constitutional reforms […]
