Legacies of historical globalization

Word	What it means
Historical globalization	The period from about 1500: exploration, mercantilism, colonization, industrialization, imperialism and decolonization.
Mercantilism	An economic system where a colony supplies raw materials and buys back manufactured goods, to enrich the home country.
Colonialism	Control of a territory and its people by another country.
Imperialism	The broader policy of extending control, of which colonization is one method.
Eurocentrism	Judging other cultures by European standards and assumptions.
Assimilation	Absorbing a people into the dominant culture, replacing their own.
Cultural genocide	The destruction of a people's culture, language and social structures. The term the TRC used for residential schools.
Indian Act	1876 legislation giving the Canadian government control over most aspects of First Nations life. Still in force in amended form.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission	Reported in 2015 after hearing thousands of residential school survivors; issued 94 Calls to Action.
Reconciliation	Repairing the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples — a process, not a transaction.

The Columbian exchange. Plants, animals, people and diseases moved between the Americas and the rest of the world. Potatoes and maize went east; horses, wheat and smallpox went west. Disease was the most devastating element, killing a large majority of Indigenous populations in many regions, often before most Europeans arrived.

The transatlantic slave trade forcibly transported an estimated twelve million people from Africa to the Americas over roughly four centuries, supplying the labour for the plantation economies.

Mercantilism built colonial economies to serve a home country. That structure outlasted the empires, which is why so many former colonies still depend on exporting raw materials — the clearest link between this related issue and the next one.

Eurocentrism is the worldview running underneath. It shows up in maps, in whose account is treated as the default history, and in the assumption that one path of development is the path. Naming it is often what a source question is looking for.

Treaties. The numbered treaties were understood very differently by the two sides — as a sharing arrangement by many First Nations, as a land surrender by the Crown. Canadian courts have repeatedly affirmed them as binding today, and that gap is at the centre of many modern cases.

The Indian Act, 1876. It regulated status, land, governance and culture, and much of it remains in force. It is the clearest example of a legacy that is still operating rather than only remembered.

Residential schools. The intent was assimilation: separate children from family, language and culture. Roughly 150,000 children attended, the last school closed in 1996, and the TRC concluded in 2015 that the system amounted to cultural genocide.

The Calls to Action are recommendations to governments, churches, schools and other institutions — not law. That is why progress depends on political will, and why it can be measured and reported on.

Three distinct peoples. First Nations, Métis and Inuit are named separately in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Treating them as one category is a common and consequential error.

The case for responsibility. The benefits and harms of historical wrongs are still distributed today — in land, wealth, health and education outcomes. The claim is about ongoing effects rather than inherited guilt, and that distinction is what makes it arguable rather than emotional.

The case against. Responsibility cannot be inherited; nobody alive made those decisions; and policies aimed at the past may not be the best way to improve the present. A good essay states this version accurately before answering it.

Forms redress can take. Apology, compensation, land claim settlements, self-government agreements, changes to what is taught in schools. They are not alternatives to each other, and arguing about which matters most is a legitimate essay.

Reconciliation is not a transaction. The TRC framed it as a relationship to be rebuilt, requiring acknowledgement, action and time. Treating it as a single payment is the misunderstanding the Commission specifically argued against.

• Treating First Nations, Métis and Inuit as one group.
• Calling everything genocide, or refusing to use the term the TRC used. Say which is meant and why.
• Presenting only one side of the responsibility argument.
• Vague dates. 1876, 1996, 2015 and 1982 all matter here.