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The Newfoundland Referendums of 1948 were a series of two referendums to decide the political future of the Dominion of Newfoundland. Before the referendums, Newfoundland was in debt and went through several delegations to determine whether the country would join Canada, remain under British rule or regain independence. The voting for the referendums occurred on June 3 and July 22, 1948. The eventual result was for Newfoundland to enter Canadian Confederation. ==Background== Newfoundland is the oldest settled region in what would become Canada but was the last to obtain either a local representative government or responsible government. In 1832, it received local representative government in the form of a locally elected body of officials overseen by a governor. The British granted responsible government, in which the government is responsible to the legislature and elected officials occupy ministerial jobs, only in 1855.〔 Newfoundland did not send any delegates to the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, which was to discuss a union of Maritime colonies. Later that year, Newfoundland attended the Quebec Conference, called by John A. Macdonald to discuss a greater British North America union. The two Newfoundland delegates, Frederick Carter and Ambrose Shea, returned in favour of a union with Canada. However, Confederation was highly unpopular with the Newfoundland public, and the Government of Newfoundland did not send representatives to the London Conference of 1866, in which the British government and the colonies agreed to the terms the ''British North America Act''. Opponents of Confederation decisively won the Newfoundland general election, 1869. By the 1920s and the 1930s, Newfoundland was almost $40 million in debt, and on the verge of economic collapse. A commission recommended Newfoundland to be "given a rest from party politics"〔 and to be administered by a special Commission of Government. Chaired by the governor, it would consist of three people from Newfoundland and three from the United Kingdom.〔 Backing the recommendation was the United Kingdom, which agreed to take on Newfoundland's debts. The Commission of Government began on February 16, 1934, governing the island until it entered Canada in 1949. Prosperity returned when the Americans were invited to the island by Britain to set up military bases in 1941 to 1945. The ''American Bases Act'' became law in Newfoundland on June 11, 1941. As Earle (1998) finds, Newfoundland girls married American personnel by the thousands, "the Yanks' jaunty manner and easy social ways making an often stark contrast to the Canadian servicemen who at this time began to coin the epithet 'Newfie.'" The American connection worked so well that the Canadian government in Ottawa feared that Newfoundland would join the US. Earle concludes,"In 1948 there was a short-lived but lively movement for economic union with the United States." The British government, keen (if not desperate) to cut expenditure after World War II, hoped that Newfoundland would decide to join the Canadian Confederation and end the rule by commission. Newfoundland first asked Canada for help in a return to responsible government, however. The response from the Canadian government was that it was not interested in helping Newfoundland economically unless Newfoundland joined the Canadian Confederation.〔 Canadian opposition to greater American influence in Newfoundland was an important reason for Canada seeking a referendum before the return of responsible government. A self-governing Newfoundland might have included some form of association with the United States as a choice on the referendum ballot, which its citizens might have chosen in a free vote in 1948, leading to annexation. The British did not want their colony to become an American possession, and the Canadian government, despite convinced that absorbing Newfoundland would not benefit Canada economically, thought that much less bad than the prospect of the country being almost completely surrounded by American territory. The British government refused to allow the people of Newfoundland to vote on union with the United States. Although the US recognised the strategic importance of Newfoundland, the administration of President Harry S. Truman realised the necessity of British and Canadian cooperation in the Cold War. Also, pro-annexation Newfoundlanders expected that they would be admitted as a US state, but the Truman administration knew that it would be very problematic for that to be passed through the Congress. (Had the Newfoundland debate taken place a decade later, with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as states being secured, the political climate in Washington might have been quite different.) After receiving assurances that the Canadian government would honour the leases for bases on Newfoundland, the US State Department decided not to press the issue.〔Karl McNeil Earle, "Cousins of a Kind: The Newfoundland and Labrador Relationship with the United States" ''American Review of Canadian Studies,'' Vol. 28, 1998〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Newfoundland referendums, 1948」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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