Social Studies 9

A political revolution is a fundamental, often rapid overthrow of who governs and how — the American Revolution replaced colonial rule with a republic; the French Revolution overthrew a monarchy; the Haitian Revolution ended slavery and colonial rule and founded a new nation.

The Industrial Revolution was an economic revolution: goods that had been made by hand in homes and workshops were now mass-produced by machines in factories, which reshaped work, wealth, and where people lived (crowding into growing industrial cities).

A social revolution changes who has rights, status, and a voice in society — shifting class structures, challenging old hierarchies, and redefining who counts as a full member of the nation.

Technological revolution came from advances in science and technology and, above all, new methods of transportation — the railway, steamships, cars, and aircraft — which moved goods and people faster and farther than ever before.

Closer to home, the Red River Resistance and the Northwest Resistance were the Métis nation resisting the loss of their land and rights as Canada expanded west — political struggles over who would govern a territory and its people.

Colonialism is a colonizing nation settling and administering another people's territory directly — in Canada this included the numbered treaties, the Vancouver Island treaties, and the wider interactions between Europeans and First Peoples.

Imperialism is a nation extending its power and control over other peoples and territories — sometimes through direct settlement, sometimes through economic and military domination.

Treaties were understood very differently by each side: First Peoples often understood them as agreements to share land, while the Crown treated them as surrenders of it — a gap with lasting legal consequences.

The Scramble for Africa was European powers rapidly dividing and colonizing almost the entire African continent in the late 1800s, drawing borders that ignored existing nations and peoples.

The Indian Act (1876) and the residential school system it enabled were tools of colonial control designed to assimilate First Peoples — their effects, including intergenerational trauma and loss of language and culture, continue today, not just as history.

Demographic shifts are large-scale changes in where and how many people live — driven in this era by slavery (a system of forced migration), and by disease, poverty, and famine pushing people to search for land and a better life elsewhere.

Immigrants — including East and South Asian immigrants — came to BC and Canada for specific historical reasons: the Irish potato famine, recruitment of a Chinese railway workforce, the western settlement campaign, and gold rushes, each group facing real challenges (language, discrimination, dangerous work) while also contributing to Canada's development.

Migration and population growth don't just add people — they change a country's identity, economy, and politics, as new communities bring their own cultures, labour, and political voices.

The reasons for migration are often summarized as 'push' factors (famine, poverty, persecution driving people to leave) and 'pull' factors (land, jobs, and opportunity drawing them to a new place).

Nationalism is a strong shared sense of identity and loyalty to a nation — it can unify a group of people around a common purpose, but it can also divide by defining who belongs and who doesn't.

Canada itself formed through nationalism: Confederation (1867) joined separate colonies into one country, and national projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway and Macdonald's National Policy were deliberately used to build a unified national economy and identity, alongside the growth of responsible government.

Nationalism drove nation-building elsewhere in this same era: Japan's Tokugawa Shogunate gave way to the Meiji Restoration (rapid modernization under a restored emperor), and separate states unified into modern Italy and Germany.

The same nationalism that unites can exclude — building a national identity often meant deciding whose language, religion, or culture 'counted', leaving others out.

Local conflicts happened over land, resources, and jurisdiction close to home — BC's own Chilcotin War and Fraser Canyon War pitted First Peoples against colonial settlers and gold miners moving onto their territory.

Global conflicts drew in nations and empires from across the world — the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Revolution (a revolution that became a global-scale upheaval), and above all World War I (1914–1918).

Regional conflicts reshaped whole countries or regions — the American Civil War over slavery and union, the wars of independence in Latin America, and the Franco-Prussian War that helped forge modern Germany.

World War I was the era's defining global catastrophe: an assassination sparked it, but historians weigh multiple long-building causes — tangled alliances, imperial rivalry, aggressive nationalism, and a military build-up across Europe.

Different-sized conflicts often share the same underlying causes: competition for land and resources, disputes over who has the right to rule, and clashing ideologies or national ambitions.

Discriminatory immigration policies were deliberate government actions targeting racialized newcomers: the Head Tax charged Chinese immigrants a fee to enter Canada, and organizations like the Asiatic Exclusion League in BC pushed to keep out people of East and South Asian descent.

Discriminatory policies toward First Peoples were distinct in target and purpose from immigration policy: instead of keeping newcomers out, they aimed to control and assimilate the peoples already living here.

The Komagata Maru incident (1914) saw a ship of South Asian passengers refused entry at Vancouver under discriminatory immigration law — a defining example of who Canada chose to exclude.

The Indian Act (1876) gave the government sweeping control over the lives, land, and identity of First Peoples, and the potlatch ban outlawed a central ceremonial and governance practice — an attempt to suppress First Peoples culture directly.

During wartime, the government interned people based on their ancestry — World War I internments and discrimination against German Canadians treated people already living in Canada as enemies because of where their families came from.

Physiographic features are Canada's major landform regions — such as the Canadian Shield, the interior plains, the Cordillera (mountain ranges including the Rockies), the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands, and the Arctic — each with a distinct terrain and climate.

Canada's natural resources — forests, minerals, fish stocks, fertile soil, oil and gas — connect directly to major economic activities in each region, such as forestry, mining, fishing, and agriculture.

Physical geography shaped where and how people could settle and travel: the Rocky Mountains were a major obstacle to building the transcontinental railway, while the flat interior plains supported large-scale farming and settlement.

Decisions about resource use (like building a new mine or oil pipeline) affect different groups differently — environmental groups, people employed in the resource industry, First Peoples, and urban versus rural populations often hold very different, legitimate perspectives on the same project.

Canadians in different regions often identify strongly with their local landscape — coastal, prairie, mountain, or Shield identity is part of how regional and national identity has formed.