Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
[...] I'm happy to buy a large part your explanation - particularly that Bacon overstates the situation rather than makes it up - but his reasoning is not all based on bombast by politicians. There are both immediate and historical reasons for some level of - let's call it - disagreement between the two countries at the time, which is why the situation as Bacon presents it does not seem unreasonable. Sure, things may not have been as a strong as Bacon would have us believe, but his presentation is not totally without substance. [...]
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Just to add to this, I see
Wikipedia has this:
Quote:
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Anti-Americanism reached a shrill peak in 1911 in Canada.
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and while annexation is not stated as an explicit part of that "shrill peak" in the linked article (although "economic annexation" is), I can imagine (given the historical situation) it being described as such by (parts of) the general populace. (
One of the downsides of interviewing witnesses long after the event is that witnesses are notoriously unreliable even immediately after the event; the tricks our memories play with us over the long term just exacerbate the problem.)
I guess my point is, while annexation may not have been a serious consideration of the time, strong anti-American sentiments apparently did exist around this period and leaves the general gist of Bacon's presentation (in this regard) intact.