I’m too lazy to look up all the details, but I remember Dr. Lee in my freshman history class more than 50 years ago saying that among Bismark’s goals when he took power in the German Confederation was to kick Austria out of the Confederation so that Prussia would have greater power. He was successful in so doing and Austria became a separate state.
Away from the few Russian fur-trading villages, probably few of them even knew about it. There are stories about the militarization of the territory in WW2 in which the Army constantly ran across natives who didn’t even know they were Americans.
That reminds me - did the Newfoundlanders get a say about becoming Canadians, or was that decision made for them in London and Ottawa?
The same was true of Indians who lived on the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark spent a great deal of time explaining that the French and the Spanish weren’t in charge anymore (if indeed, from the Indians’ perspective, they ever were).
There was a public referendum in 1948 between three options: independence, joining Canada, or remaining governed by the UK. No option gained a majority in the first round (the vote was around 45-40-15, respectively), so there was a run-off election in which Newfoundlanders voted to join Canada 51-49.
Didn’t the local authorities wanted it to be a vote just between independence or remaining a British colony and London added joining Canada to the ballot against their wishs?
If I remember correctly, merger with Canada was added due to the lobbying efforts of Joseph Smallwood, who became the first post-union with Canada premier of Newfoundland.
The option of joining with Canada was added to the referendum by the British government, after the Convention elected to decide the future of the colony had rejected this option, at the insistence of the minority Confederate Association faction led by Joey Smallwood. Smallwood has the reputation of having dragged Newfoundland kicking and screaming into Canada, although the British government was certainly helping push.
I don’t really think that counts since the German Confederation didn’t really have sovereignity over its member countries. Certainly the member states had been conducting their own foreign policies since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Plus one the Confederation’s few effective units, the Zollverein custom union, included every member of the Confederation except Austria