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Today is the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in WW1. In the opening battle the main military formation of the small British Dominion of Newfoundland; the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was sent over the top of the British trenches into no-mans land where they were utterly annihilated in a span of 30 minutes by the German Army: "Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day. For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 90 percent" (Nicholson, 2007). For a country with a population of only 250,000 in 1914 that represented a significant loss of the most productive section of the working population (young, healthy males). Compared to the population of modern day Canada (pop 36million), this would amount to the loss 110 000 soldiers in one day (nearly twice the size of the current Canadian Armed Forces). This loss as well as the subsequent losses in WW1 have been blamed for effectively bankrupting Newfoundland and causing Newfoundland to vote away its Dominion status to return to direct British rule and in 1949, with a war-ravaged UK no longer willing or able to financially support the colony, the choice to join Canada as the 10th province. So my question is: if the Royal Newfoundland Regiment had not been deployed at the Battle of the Somme and had survived the war mostly intact would Newfoundland have fared significantly better in the post-war years and manage to weather the Great Depression with its Dominion status intact and eventually devolve into a sovereign country along with the other British Dominions rather than than having to seek direct support from first the UK and then later Canada at the cost of its independence? In short: did the Battle of the Somme singlehandedly destroy the possibility of future Newfoundland nationhood?

Source articles:

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/26/48358...centenary-symbolizes-great-loss-for-canadians

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/newfoundland-beaumont-hamel
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