Canada

Canada, officially the Republic of Canada (French: République du Canada; Louisiana Creole: Repiblik Kanada; Cree: ᑳᓇᑖ ᐊᔅᒌ, Kanata Aschii; Sioux: Siháŋska Makȟóčhe‎), is a country in North America. It consists of seventeen provinces, ten autonomous regions, and three territories, extending from the in the north to the  in the south, bordering nine other countries to the east and west, and covering __ square kilometers, the third-largest area of any country. The national capital is and the most populous city and financial center is ; other major urban areas include  (often called the "cultural capital"),, , and.

have inhabited what is now Canada for at least 12,000 years. began in the 16th century, forming the colony of, which covered most of the territory of modern Canada at its peak but lost to  and  to  following the. During the 1790s, in the context of the, settlers waged the Canadian War of Independence against French royalist, republican, and Bonapartist forces as well as amongst themselves, resulting in Canada gaining de facto independence as a , with as king and  the  as regent and later prime minister. After Lafayette's death, the monarchy was overthrown in the Canadian Revolution of 1837, which established the modern Canadian Republic and secured Canada's de jure independence. Canada fought a series of wars of expansion through the 19th century, regaining Louisiana from Spain and obtaining from  and  from British Columbia, as well as defeating a subsequent secession attempt by Louisiana, resulting in the. Indigenous allies in these wars had their lands recognized as Pays Indiens, the precursors of today's autonomous regions.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Canadian society underwent substantial and. In the first half of the 20th century, Canada fought in the First and Second Great Wars and emerged victorious as a ; in the second half of the century it engaged other world powers in the Great Game and asserted a leadership role in both North America and the Francophone world, including through major military interventions in Carolina and Algeria. The, beginning in the 1960s, brought about social changes including , the creation of a , and greater rights and autonomy for Indigenous, Black, Métis, and Creole peoples.

Canada today is a  and an economic and political  sometimes described as a : it is a permanent member of the Society of Nations Council and a nuclear-weapon state, has the world's second- or third-largest, and ranks highly in international metrics of human rights, quality of life, economic freedom, and education. It is a founding member of the North American Community, the Transatlantic Defense Organization, and La Francophonie, and the most populous member of all three. Its and culture are globally influential.

Indigenous peoples


The first inhabitants of North America are generally believed to have migrated to the continent from Siberia via the Bering land bridge around 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. They formed complex societies with agriculture, trading networks, and internal hierarchies. The Mound-Builder cultures, characterized by their large earthwork constructions, flourished in the Mississippi Valley from 3500 BCE onwards, culminating in the urban Mississippian civilization from 800 CE to 1600 CE. The Mississippian city-state of Cahokia, near present-day Saint-Louis, was the largest urban center in the Americas north of Mexico before declining around 1450. Further north, around the Great Lakes, tribes formed larger polities like the Huron Confederacy, the Anishinaabe Council of Three Fires, and the Sioux Seven Council Fires between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

There is a wide range of estimates as to the pre-Columbian population of North America; according to recent estimates, anthropologists suggest there may have been around five million people living in the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries with a further 200,000 to 500,000 in the Saint Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes. The Indigenous population declined by forty to eighty percent as a consequence of European colonization, due to European-introduced diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, as well as conflicts with and repression by the colonists, conflicts with other tribes over trade with Europeans, and the economic and ecological effects of loss of land to settlers.

French colonization
The explorer Jacques Cartier was the first to claim North American territory for France in 1534, under the name of "New France"; he used the word "Canada", from the Iroquoian word kanata for "village", to describe the area around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The French established their first trading post at Tadoussac in 1600 and their first permanent settlement at Quebec (which became the capital of New France) by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. The colony of Acadia in what is now the Maritimes was founded around the same time.

The Saint Lawrence Valley was extensively settled by habitants under the semi-feudal seigneurial system, and the city of Montreal that would become Canada's largest was founded in 1642. Meanwhile, fur traders (the coureurs des bois and voyageurs, who would become legendary in Canadian culture) and Catholic missionaries explored the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley, establishing trading posts and missions and interacting extensively with Indigenous peoples; many of the fur traders took native wives, forming the mixed-heritage Metis culture. The French settlers and their Huron and Algonquian allies fought the Beaver Wars over control of the fur trade against the expansionist, English- and Dutch-backed Iroquois over the course of the 17th century, ending with the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701 after severely disrupting Indigenous society. The colony of Louisiana was founded in the lower Mississippi Valley on the Gulf of Mexico in 1682, with its capital of Nouvelle-Orleans founded in 1718. This colony relied heavily on the forced importation of African slaves to labor in its plantation economy, laying the foundation for the mixed-heritage Creole culture.

France and Great Britain fought five colonial wars in North America between 1689 and 1783. France lost Plaisance and the mainland of Acadia to Britain following the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713. During the Seven Years' War, French colonial forces managed to fend off a British invasion of the Canadian heartland but lost control of the rest of New France; at the end of the war in 1763, France was forced to cede the Ohio and Illinois Countries and the remainder of Acadia to Britain (resulting in the Expulsion of the Acadians, many of whom settled in Louisiana), and Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain, more than halving New France's territory. However, France was able to regain the Illinois Country in 1783 in its successful intervention to support New England and Carolina's wars of independence against Britain, during which the Marquis de Lafayette saw his first service in North America. These colonial wars were a significant drain on France's economy and contributed to the later outbreak of the French Revolution.

Wars of Independence
The French Revolution broke out in 1789, at first transforming France from an absolute into a constitutional monarchy. Inspired by the ideals of the revolution and Enlightenment, and by the independence of Carolina and New England, many Canadian colonists, particularly among the wealthy seigneurial class, began agitating for greater representation and autonomy, particularly with regard to France's restrictive trade regulations. In 1790, these patriotes staged an uprising that unilaterally established an elected Legislative Assembly alongside the royally-appointed Sovereign Council. Initially the patriotes were supportive of continued ties with France, but grew alienated as the revolutionary regime grew increasingly radical. This split was exacerbated by the arrival of moderate-liberal emigres from France, most prominently the Marquis de Lafayette who was given command of the Legislative Assembly's militia and set about reforming it into a regular army, and by the abolition of the French monarchy in 1792 which threw Canada's status as a royal colony into question.

The Assembly declared Canada independent of France in 1793, and the Council responded by declaring the Assembly abolished, sparking a civil war between liberal and conservative factions. This conflict became the First War of Canadian Independence when the British invaded in support of the Council, in the hopes of using Canada as a royalist base to restore the French monarchy, but the Assembly's army commanded by Lafayette fought the British and Council to a draw, after the British army was devastated by the Canadian winters, resulting in the 1796 Treaty of Quebec establishing Canada as an independent constitutional monarchy in personal union with France, with Lafayette as regent and the Assembly and Council sharing power in a bicameral system. However, Louis XVIII, the Bourbon pretender to the throne of France, rejected this arrangement, so the new Canadian throne was instead taken up by his cousin Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans. After Napoleon took power in France, he dispatched the Leclerc Expedition in 1801 to attempt to reclaim Canada by force, but Lafayette once again took command of the army and repelled the invasion by 1803 after it too was decimated by successive winters, in the Second War of Canadian Independence, though France would not recognize it until after Napoleon's death in 1814.

Monarchy
After the ceasefire in 1803, Lafayette's regency ended and Louis Philippe appointed him prime minister instead. Political tensions persisted between liberals who desired further democratizing reforms and conservatives who sought to maintain the status quo of royal power, with the former coming to be known as the Party of Movement and the latter as the Party of Resistance.

After the Seven Years' War, Louisiana became part of the Spanish colony of New Spain. Spain was compelled to return it to France in 1803-4, but British troops quickly occupied it, preventing French rule from taking effect and returning it to Spain again. New Spain and the rest of the Spanish Empire in the Americas were plunged into political chaos by the French invasion of Spain in 1808-9; in Louisiana, a rural insurgency began in support of the Spanish Bonapartist regime, with the hope of being returned to France once again. Napoleon's defeat in 1814 made this impossible; instead, in 1815, the rebels seized Nouvelle-Orleans and declared independence as the Republic of Louisiana.

The new republic appealed to Canada for aid and was supported by Lafayette and the Movement but opposed by the Resistance and vetoed by Louis Philippe. The king's hand was forced when the Illinois Voltigeurs crossed the Mississippi and captured Saint-Louis without authorization; facing a mutiny if he recalled them, he instead dispatched the rest of the royal army to support them and they traveled down the Mississippi to join the rebels at Nouvelle-Orleans, where (with the famous assistance of the pirate Jean Lafitte) they drove back several Spanish attempts to reclaim the colony until Spain recognized Louisiana's independence in 18__. Louisiana then agreed to join Canada in the Treaty of Saint-Louis, which included the deeply controversial condition that the continued legality of slavery in Louisiana be guaranteed, as well as that the capital be moved to a more central location. The annexation of Louisiana approximately doubled Canada's land area, although most of this territory was still controlled by native tribes and unsettled by Europeans.

Administrative divisions
153,512,647

Provinces
142,870,833


 * Arkansas: Moyenne-Louisiane, Les Arcs
 * Colorado: Les Roches, Hauts-Arcs, Piémont
 * Iowa: Aiouez, Nebrasque, Platte
 * Michigan: Entrelacs, Chersonese, Pays-Haut du Sud, Mackinac du Sud / Bas-Mackinac, Mascoutenich; Boodawaadamiiwaki
 * Minnesota: Haut-Mississippi, Isantis
 * Trois-Rivieres: Tripotamie, Trifluvie, Mauricie, Nebesec,

Autonomous regions
* Eeyou Istchee, Nitassinan, and Nunavik collectively form the constituency of Ungava, which has one seat in each house.

3,525,668

Kīwēhtin, ᑮᐍᐦᑎᐣ

Territories
* Saint-Pierre votes for Council under the jurisdiction of Saguenay. ** Guadeloupe and Martinique each send a non-voting delegate to the Council.

Population

 * Canadian portion: 24,067,928
 * US states wholly included: 81,190,939
 * Portion of Texas: 6,653,507 (to Mexico: 2,973,076; independent Texas: 15,518,978)
 * Colorado: 	5,773,714
 * Montana: 1,085,407

Ethnicity

 * Indigenous: 7,559,820
 * Ojibwe/Anishinaabe: 3,307,420(?!)
 * Sioux: 1,701,110
 * Cree: 1,308,900 (or 356,655)