“Unfrenchifying” Quebec

In keeping with the overall theme of the contested nature of British rule, this chapter investigates the establishment of the first French-language newspaper, Le Canadien, demonstrating the way in which the French Canadian political opposition appropriated the tenets of classical republicanism to break the natural equation between Britishness and liberty. Because of this move, the English press was compelled to embrace Court Whig political discourse so that political allegiances and ideologies were now synonymous with two ethnic political factions. The discourse of political opposition was not derived from the model of the American Republic, as historians have previously contended, but was adapted from a longstanding mode of political argument within the colony and was driven by an often stridently anti-Catholic and anti-French British nationalism.

“The World is Made for Men”

Canvassing the criminal and civil courts of Quebec, this chapter uncovers the patterns of male assault, both against other men and against women, with a focus upon the ways in which quotidian social practices defined a variety of modes of masculine behavior, which reinforced and subverted cultural codes of normative manhood built around patriarchal authority. This chapter argues that there was considerable state and non-state violence within the colony, which was used as a primary instrument by which to demarcate small differences of rank, and that while insults and assaults largely occurred within ethnic enclaves, over time these became increasingly characterized by interethnic conflict.

“In this Increasing Commercial Emporium”

From the perspective of governing elites on both sides of the Atlantic, the expanding world of goods was seen as a civilizing and assimilative process, but using an analysis of litigation this chapter shows that while enticing French Canadians into the marketplace did integrate them into global networks of trade and credit, they nevertheless sought to don British dress and purchase British manufactured goods to articulate and enhance their own identities. Not only does this chapter shift the historical gaze from production to consumption, but it greatly expands the term merchants beyond those large overseas merchants who have been well studied, to incorporate the vital world of licit and illicit trade by shopkeepers, artisans, women, and peasants, to draw attention to the importance to the internal circulation of goods. My exploration of the regulatory apparatus of government as well as the everyday understanding of goods, credit, and debt shows, however, that the eighteenth century was not a pivot to modernity; rather, conceptions of the marketplace remained tied to an older moral economy outlook.

Introduction

This chapter canvasses the recent historiography on Quebec and discusses new developments within the history of the British Empire and the new legal history. It presents the principal theoretical framework of the book which has sought to expand conventional notions of the terrain of the political, to include not only the official transcript of government officials, but to examine the realm of opposition political commentary in the newspapers, as well as the terrain of the small politics of everyday life as articulated by ordinary people in the criminal and civil courts. It also demonstrates the importance of analyzing competing concepts of Britishness and the ways in which these sustained policies of British rule which sought to assimilate the French Canadian majority in Quebec, a perspective which presents a new portrait of post-Conquest Quebec which highlights ethnic conflict and the important role played by British nationalism in the development of French Canadian collective identities between 1763 and the Rebellion of 1837.

The Making of Britannicus Canadensis

This chapter examines the growing political opposition among English-speaking political commentators against the Quebec Act of 1774 which protected French Canadian interests by preserving their right to practice their Catholic religion and use French civil law. It shows the way in which classical republican discourse diverged from that in the Thirteen Colonies and Britain: it absorbed Wilkite and radical Whig tenets into Country Whig principles, and these became increasingly inflected by a rabidly anti-Catholic and anti-French Canadian perspective as opposition writers sought to repeal and replace the Quebec Act. This chapter also traces the development of voluntary associations and clubs which functioned as an out-of-doors political opposition prior to the establishment of an assembly under the Canada Act of 1791, thereby elucidating the emergence of a public sphere which fostered a variety of local projects aimed at subverting French Canadian political rights, French law, and the seigneurial system.

Conclusion

This chapter provides a concluding summary of the book. As it demonstrates, British policymakers as well as the local governing elite of Quebec hoped to establish a system of rule based on assimilating the French Canadian majority to British institutions, culture, and language. However, it also outlines the multiple ways in which British systems of governance and rule of law were contested not only through quotidian social practice, litigation, collective resistance, and cultural discourse more broadly. Where previous studies of colonialism have largely focused upon the subjugation and marginalization of racialized others, the book analyses how various techniques of rule were deployed to suppress the political activism of French Canadians, and how these became increasingly more authoritarian and anti-democratic in direct relation to the assertion of French Canadian claims to equality as British subjects.

“Qu’il étoit maître chez lui” (He is the master of his house)

Arguing against traditional liberal narratives of the linear development of unfree labor, this chapter explores the politics of the counterrevolution by examining the way in which the master and servant acts of 1802 enhanced patriarchal government and the authority of male household heads over their dependents in the wake of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. It also shows how these new legal strategies to enforce subordination among marginal peoples took particular aim at French Canadians during a period of intense political ferment and rebellion in the colony. These amplified existing perceptions of French Canadians as seditious others. It explores the ramifications of these acts in terms of the practices of ordinary plebeian families, in which their broader meaning for reinstantiating hierarchy and subordination was challenged. The master and servant legislation aimed to circumscribe various freedoms, including the freedom to choose one’s sartorial presentation, an aspect of liberty that was consciously fostered as an element of political freedom.

“Thy Mangl’d Empire”

By analyzing the protests of merchants against the Stamp Act and other taxes, this chapter revises previous interpretations which have argued that there was no political agitation in Quebec similar to the Patriot opposition in the Thirteen Colonies. It also explores the emergence of classical republican modes of political discourse within the weekly newspapers and the censorship of radical Whig discourse throughout the American Revolution, demonstrating how political commentary thus became increasingly anti-American and more loyalist in tenor. It also compares the divergent strategies to maintain the allegiance of the French Canadian majority and the indigenous allies by the British government and Governors Carleton and Haldimand during the American Revolution, to show the emergence within official governmental circles of greater condemnation of the French Canadian majority who were represented as proto-rebels.