Transcription of introduction of PhD dissertation defence presentation speech
Date: Tuesday April 29th, 2025
Title: The Conquest Disease, a process of cultural absorption
Author: Frida Sylvestre, PhD Candidate
The first war that was waged by the American people happened many years before their War of Independence, which lead to the foundation of the United States of America. The opponents were Native tribes, eventually backed by French colonists from the north calling themselves Canadiens.
For over a century, these fierce opponents brought intermittent terror and unrest to colonists deploying under the British flag. The few surviving then brutal guerrilla like assaults cultivated mythical horror stories that carried fear and resentment through generations.
Then inflicted brutality and horror got absorbed and perpetuated, after being regurgitated and reinterpreted, tenfold. And what followed the War of Independence was in fact a deliberate institutional vengeful reckoning against then enemies, throughout the North American continent.
It happened as the United States waged war against Spanish colonies while trying to eradicate numerous Native tribes to the limits of the Pacific Ocean. It happened as the northern British colonies absorbed the Canadien and Acadien identities while trying to decimate Native cultures.
And the same phenomenon happened following each major struggle attaining North America since then. Thus British North America then Americans and Canadians got to culturally absorb multiple Native identities, as well as the French Canadien and Acadien identities, Spanish Colonial identities, African identities through slavery, Eastern and Western European identities, fascist and Nazi ideologies, East-Asian identities, Soviet and Russian identities, Islamic and Muslim identities, and many more.
That's a lot to take in and process in the course of a very short history, and it means the essence of each and all conquered cultural heritages got to be absorbed, incubated, amalgamated then dispersed into the actual cultural fabric. It also explains some cultural differences between the United States and Canada.
This thesis will try to demonstrate how naturally, gradually and seamlessly a conqueror culture end up being influenced by defeated cultures and ideologies, how cultural absorption phenomenons are unsuspected and unavoidable, and how it all translates into the politic and economic policies emanating from past and actual United States and Canada administrations.