Trump's Canada and the Plantagenet Bid for Scotland
Separated by seven centuries, the campaigns of Edward I and Edward II of England against Scotland and Donald Trump's approach to Canada might seem an odd pairing. One is a story of medieval feudal law and pitched battle (and a blockbuster movie – Braveheart); the other, a story of tariffs, social media posts, and trade negotiations. Yet both cases involve a larger, wealthier power asserting that a smaller neighbour is not truly a separate nation at all, but rather a dependency that properly belongs under its authority - and both reveal how that claim, once made explicit, tends to harden the very national identity it was meant to dissolve.
The Plantagenet Claim
Edward I ("Longshanks") did not begin as Scotland's conqueror. In 1290, following the death of the child-queen Margaret, the "Maid of Norway," Scotland faced a succession crisis with thirteen competing claimants. The Scottish nobility invited Edward, as a respected - and until now reasonably friendly - neighbouring monarch, to arbitrate what became known as the "Great Cause." Edward accepted, but only after extracting a crucial concession: that the Scots first acknowledge him as their feudal overlord. Having secured that formal submission from enough of the nobility, he selected John Balliol as king in 1292, then proceeded to treat Balliol not as a sovereign but as a vassal, overturning Scottish court judgments and summoning Balliol to answer for them in England.
When King John Balliol finally rebelled and allied with France in 1295, Edward invaded outright in 1296, sacking Berwick, defeating the Scots at Dunbar, and forcing Balliol's abdication. He removed the Stone of Scone - the ancient coronation stone of Scottish kings (see my book – The Case of the Beth-el Stone) to Westminster, installed English administrators, and by all appearances treated the kingdom as annexed. As Edward I crossed back over the border to England he is said to have stated with relish,"A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd."
Cometh the hour, cometh the man and so William Wallace and Andrew Moray entered the fray to repel Edward (and later Robert the Bruce took up their standard) in a war that would stretch on, with interruptions, for decades. Edward II, less capable a soldier and less astute a politician than his father, inherited the war and suffered its most humiliating reverse to the Bruce’s outnumbered army at Bannockburn in 1314, a defeat that effectively secured de facto Scottish independence even though formal English recognition (in the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton) did not come until 1328, under Edward III.
The Trump Approach
Donald Trump's approach to Canada, since the start of his second term in 2025, has been economic and rhetorical rather than military (although no doubt influenced by a successful adventure in Venezuela), but it follows a recognizably similar logic: the claim that the smaller neighbour's independence is not fully legitimate or sustainable, paired with pressure intended to make continued sovereignty costly. Trump has repeatedly argued that Canada receives the practical benefits of American power - trade access, a defence umbrella - without bearing equivalent obligations, and has floated Canada becoming "the 51st state" as the logical resolution, framing it as something that would eliminate tariffs entirely and lower Canadians' taxes. He has referred to successive Canadian leaders, first Justin Trudeau and later Mark Carney, as "Governor," a title that implicitly denies them status as heads of a separate state.
The instrument of pressure has been trade rather than the sword: tariffs on steel, aluminium, autos, and other goods, at various points escalated toward 50 percent and beyond, along with the framing of these measures as a response to fentanyl trafficking and Canada's trade relationship with China. When talks have broken down, tariffs have taken effect on tens of billions of dollars of Canadian goods, prompting Canadian retaliatory measures in turn. Canadian leaders - Trudeau flatly, and Carney more diplomatically, although equally firm - have rejected the statehood suggestion outright while still negotiating on trade, insisting Canada is responding to what it describes as an attempt to weaken it economically rather than treat with it as an equal.
Points of Comparison
Several parallels stand out. First, both cases begin from a legalistic or rhetorical assertion of prior right rather than a simple demand for territory: Edward I invoked feudal overlordship established, however dubiously, through the Great Cause arbitration; Trump invokes economic entanglement - subsidy, trade deficits, and defence spending - as evidence that Canadian sovereignty is already a kind of fiction. In both cases, the stronger party frames annexation not as conquest but as a favour being offered, or a status merely being formalized.
Second, both use economic and status leverage before, or instead of, direct force. Edward extracted homage before arbitrating the succession, then used feudal legal mechanisms to erode Balliol's authority before invading. Trump has relied on tariffs and public pressure rather than any suggestion of military coercion, and Canada, unlike thirteenth-century Scotland, has the diplomatic and economic weight to resist through countermeasures rather than armed revolt.
Third - and this is the pattern historians of nationalism should find most instructive - both campaigns appear to have strengthened, rather than weakened, the target nation's sense of distinct identity (The same is apparent with Ukraine in the face of Russia’s similar illegal predations).
The Scottish wars produced the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), one of history's most quoted assertions of national sovereignty (ironically, including influencing the US’s Declaration of Independence), and cemented Wallace and Bruce as enduring symbols of Scottish nationhood. Similarly, commentators have noted that Trump's rhetoric has, if anything, hardened Canadian public opinion against integration and fed a resurgence of Canadian nationalist and "Buy Canadian" sentiment, an ironic outcome for a strategy premised on the idea that Canadian nationhood was thin to begin with.
Where the Comparison Breaks Down
The differences matter as much as the similarities. Edward's campaign involved actual invasion, brutal occupation, and the deaths of thousands; Trump's has involved tariffs, tweets, and trade negotiations, however aggressive in tone. Medieval Scotland could not retaliate economically against England in any comparable way (although Wallace, while Guardian, did reach out to strengthen trade relationships with continental Europe), whereas Canada, as one of America's largest trading partners, has real capacity to impose costs on the United States in return. And the international order of 2026 - with its treaties, alliances, and normative attachment to the inviolability of borders - makes outright annexation of a G7 democracy a vastly more improbable outcome than the medieval overlordship claims that were, in their own era, a recognized (if contested) form of interstate relations.
Still, the underlying dynamic - a larger power's claim that a neighbour's sovereignty is provisional, met by that neighbour's hardening resolve to prove otherwise - is one that history seems to repeat, whatever century, and in whatever form that coercion shapes itself. John Barbour in his famous 14th century book about Robert the Bruce wrote, “A! Fredome is a noble thing!”. It’s something all autocrats and wannabe autocrats seem to forget.