Not so long ago in Québec, there were bombs blowing off, threats to security of the common man who always faced the risk of getting got in cross fire between the Canadian Army and the militants of the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec, a militant organisation whose goal was secession of Québec from the rest of Canada), and above all CONFLICT. By conflict I mean the cause, the latent problem underneath the surface, not the symptoms - the violence. What is there to know about Québec for readers who don’t know much about its history? Here’s a little digest in a approximative chronological order.

1. The French came and some settlers established themselves in Nouvelle-France, the “French colony”;

2. The British also came and settled nearby, the “British colony”;

3. There was already people there, natives, of various nations: Cris, Innus, Montagnais, Ottawa, Algonquins, Iroquois, Abenakis, etc.;

4. The French and the British killed and dispossessed the natives of their land in order to exploit the resources of North America, thereby creating a CONFLICT (We’ll come back to this one in a later post);

5.  The British fought a war with the French and won over the French colony;

6. The USA came into existence further to its independence from the UK;

7. The British merged the British colony and the French one into one polity, “hoping” that its peoples would merge and forever happily live together (THEORIES VARY ON THIS ONE! THERE’S ALSO ANOTHER EXPLANATION THAT HS TO DO WITH NO.6 ABOVE.), thereby creating another CONFLICT.

That’s the one I’m interested in, no. 7. I would summarize it as “The After-Effect of Imperialism”. Interestingly, China and India have not been at war until recently in their history. Here’s what Madhavi Thampi wrote about it in “India and China: colonial encounters”:

“Hence, an important outcome of the colonial era was the reconfiguration of the political map of this region of Asia. By the end of this period, India and China stood next to each other as the two giants of Asia. For their own reasons, the British had welded India together as one political-administrative unit, while Indian nationalism provided a strong ideological force binding it together. Around the same time that this new India was freed from colonial rule, China too, after several decades of weakness, foreign occupation and civil conflict, once again stood united under one strong state power. It had in addition gained international recognition as one of the Five Great Powers. Advances in transport and communications over the preceding century had also narrowed the distance between these two countries. The stage was set, as it were, for the rivalry and the jockeying for power and influence that continues to this day.“

Well, well, well… Where did I read that anyway Asia is too big to be run by one single superpower? Perhaps it couldn’t be any better than what it is like now. But nonetheless, I hear just about every week or so that the problems of war with India are caused by foreign influences, those who sell weapons. Meanwhile, India is the 8th largest purchaser of weapons - not little money - and its 600 million + poors still die… but it can fight back its neighbors Paskistan, China, etcetera!!!