Privilegium of 1873 (Canada)

"[4] A similar Privilegium had been signed with Catherine the Great of Russia when Mennonites first immigrated from Prussia to the Russian Empire in the 1770s.

In 1873, twelve Mennonite delegates from southern Russia set out to North America to investigate new lands.

Of the 12 delegates, four decided to accept Canada's offer of land in the newly formed province of Manitoba.

Representatives of the Bergthaler and Kleine Gemeinde churches, David Klassen, Jacob Peters, Heinrich Wiebe, and Cornelius Toews, signed the agreement with John Lowe, Secretary of the Canadian Department of Agriculture, and beginning in 1874 and the years that followed, 21,000 Mennonites immigrated to this part of Canada, including the East Reserve, as established in the original agreement, and later the West Reserve and other areas.

[5] During the 1920s, many conservative Mennonites left Canada for Mexico and Paraguay after the Canadian government broke the promise of private school as agreed in the Privilegium.