Canada

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1

Consolidating British Rule

When Britain conquered New France, it expected to impose British institutions, including a colonial assembly that would be open only to Protestants. Military governors James Murray and Guy Carleton found that policy unworkable. In 1774 by the Québec Act, Britain agreed to preserve a regime with no elective institutions. The Québec Act entrenched the old French civil law and the seignorial system of landholding and officially recognized the Roman Catholic Church, including its right to impose tithes. By shoring up the society of French Québec, the Québec Act helped reconcile its key leaders—the church and the seigneurs—to British rule. The Québec Act also restored to Québec the land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, which had been included in the lands reserved for the Indians. This helped preserve Montréal’s fur trade and encouraged the indigenous nations to form alliances with the British.

All of the northern colonies were theoretically under the authority of Britain’s governor-general at Québec City, but in practice there were few links among them. Each colony continued to develop in isolation from the others. In Newfoundland, English and Irish settlements had been growing during the 18th century. By the end of the century, Newfoundlanders, rather than fishing fleets from England, caught most of the cod that was exported to Europe and the Caribbean. Newfoundland was not entirely British after 1763, however; France kept fishing rights on the north and west coasts and acquired the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon as a base for its fishing fleets.

Nova Scotia attracted only a few settlers from New England and Britain, but its capital, Halifax, became important as a military base and seaport. Halifax was the site of the first newspaper in what is now Canada (1752) and of the first elected assembly (1758). After 1770 migration from the highlands of Scotland produced a substantial Gaelic-speaking minority in Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island (called Saint John’s Island until 1799) became a separate colony in 1769.

In Québec the population grew, commerce expanded, rural villages developed, and prosperity increased, but French-speaking society, particularly rural society, continued largely unchanged from the days of French rule. The world of most French colonists continued to center on the farm and the parish. There were few schools, and most of the colonists were unable to read and write. Rural prosperity aided the seigneurs, who for the first time could hope to live as country gentlemen on the dues paid by the habitants. The English-speaking population, most of whom were involved in trade, government, or the garrisons, lived mainly in the towns.

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D1

a

The American Revolution

Removal of the French threat, which eliminated the need for British military protection, encouraged the 13 colonies to grow away from their ties to Britain. Barely 15 years after the conquest of New France, these colonies took up armed resistance to British rule, and the American Revolution began. In 1775 American forces harassed Nova Scotia and invaded Québec. They did not win the support of the Nova Scotians, who still depended on British connections. The Americans seized Montréal and besieged Québec City in the winter of 1775 to 1776, but they found little support, and British forces drove them out early in 1776. For the rest of the war, Britain used the forts and seaports of the northern colonies as springboards for its campaigns against the Americans.

The American Revolution created not one but two new nations in North America. When the independence of the United States of America was confirmed in 1783, the northern part of British North America, the future Canada, was left to the British Empire.

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b

Loyalist Immigration

The British were immediately confronted with a dramatic increase in population. Some 40,000 Loyalists—people from 13 colonies who were loyal to Britain—came as refugees during and immediately after the revolution (see United Empire Loyalists). Others, called late Loyalists, arrived in subsequent years. Some of the Loyalists were former members of the urban elite of the 13 colonies, but most were ordinary farmers or townspeople. A tenth of the Loyalists in Atlantic Canada were blacks, mostly escaped slaves who had joined the British cause. Part of the Iroquois confederacy that had allied itself with Britain also joined the migration. Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, founded an Iroquois community on the Grand River north of Lake Erie.

Britain supported Loyalist refugees for several years and provided them with generous land grants in British North America. Almost overnight, Loyalists tripled the population of Nova Scotia. Their arrival caused two new colonies to be carved out of Nova Scotia: New Brunswick and Cape Breton Island (reunited with Nova Scotia in 1820). In Québec, which received about 10,000 Loyalists, Governor Frederick Haldimand decreed that the English-speaking newcomers should not be merged into the French communities. At his direction, most Loyalists in Québec migrated in 1784 to new settlements on the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, creating the nucleus of the future Ontario.

D1

c

The Constitutional Act of 1791

Loyalist leaders soon joined British merchants of Québec City and Montréal in agitating against the Québec Act. It did not provide the British legal institutions, legislatures, and systems of land tenure that the Loyalists and others of British background expected. In response, in 1791 Britain divided Québec into two colonies, Lower and Upper Canada, and gave a new constitution to each. In mostly French Lower Canada, French civil law, the rights of the Catholic Church, and seignorial land tenure were preserved. In mostly English Upper Canada, Protestant churches, particularly the Church of England, were favored, and English laws and land tenure were installed.

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d

The War of 1812

In 1812 the United States declared war on Britain, which was again fighting a global war against France. Both Britain and France had confiscated U.S. ships that were attempting to trade with the other side. The United States declared war on Britain and invaded Upper Canada.

American leaders expected success rather than a repeat of 1775, because most Upper Canadians had only recently come from the 13 colonies. They were wrong. Britain’s professional army, with the support of the colonial militias and indigenous allies led by Tecumseh of the Shawnee, inflicted a series of defeats on the large but ill-trained American invasion forces. In 1812 British general Isaac Brock secured the Canadian frontier at Niagara and captured Detroit.

There was no direct threat to Atlantic Canada because its nearest U.S. neighbors, the New England states, largely opposed the war. In fact, Nova Scotian shipowners enjoyed a bonanza; their vessels went on privateering expeditions, capturing and confiscating American ships. The Americans never effectively threatened Lower Canada. They attempted to capture Montréal in 1813, but the attempts were blocked by British victories at Crysler’s Farm and Châteauguay. However, the 1813 American naval victory at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie renewed the threat to Upper Canada, whose survival depended on command of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. American forces occupied parts of the colony and burned its capital, York (now Toronto), but got little support from the inhabitants.

When the war ended in 1815, the attempted American conquest had been defeated. The war had strengthened anti-American feeling, particularly in Upper Canada, and increased the belief that British North America had a separate destiny. See also War of 1812.

D

2

Expansion

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