HISTORY AND CHRONOLOGY OR THE USE OF DATES
Geography is one of "the eyes of history"; chronology, or the arranging of events according to their dates, is the other. This suggests that dates are to be used merely as a help in "seeing" events in history in their proper order, so that their relations to other events may be better understood. When these relations are seen, the dates lose much of their value.
For example, let us consider the following dates: 1763, 1774, 1775, 1783, 1791. The short interval between 1763, when Great Britain finally assumed control of Canada by treaty, and 1774, when the Quebec Act was passed, helps to make clear the reason for the French citizens receiving so many concessions. They outnumbered the English so much that these concessions were deemed necessary to hold their allegiance to the Crown in face of the efforts made by the discontented New England colonies to get their support in the coming revolution against Great Britain. The success of the Act was shown in 1775, when the invasion by the revolutionists failed. The war of the Revolution was ended by treaty in 1783, and Canada received as settlers, principally in Upper Canada, the United Empire Loyalists, whose ideas of government were so different from those of the Lower Canadians that the separation of Upper and Lower Canada by the Constitutional Act of 1791 became necessary. These dates, so close together, emphasize the rapidity with which events moved in that period, as well as the sequence of cause and effect. We think also of the dates of Cartier's voyages, 1534, 1535, and 1541, merely to raise the question as to why so much time elapsed between the second and third voyages. When these points are properly seen, the events are kept in place by their relation of cause and effect, and the dates lose their value. Moreover, the relations thus discovered will do most toward fixing these dates in the memory. It should be understood, therefore, that dates are only a means to an end, not an end in themselves.
It is important also to know the dates of certain events when we are studying the history of several countries, in order that we may consider together those events that are contemporary.
There are, of course, some dates that should be remembered because of the importance of the events connected with them, for example: 1066, 1215, 1492, 1603, 1688, 1759, 1776, 1789, 1841, 1867.
In the Junior Forms, because the pupils are still lacking in the "historical sense," little emphasis need be put on the giving of dates. A few of the most important may be given in Form II, but it is very questionable if they have any significance to the pupils at this early stage.