Crantor said:
....Yes they were able to keep their civil code and what not but this was done out of necessity rather than by any gesture of goodwill. However the first governor was very sympathetic to the french I will admit. Remember that the British had a consistant policy of assimilation. Most Seigneurs went back to France. Those that stayed kept title only. The british utterly took control of anything political and or economic. And ask the Acadians what they think of British enlightenment.
Just throwing in some balance. >
Crantor, I am afraid that we have much to disagree on.
My principle disagreement is with your assertion that Britain had a consistent policy of assimilation. Actually Britain, as an entity represented by her government more often than not had a policy of accomodation rather than assimilation. This was particularly true during the Georgian period that encompasses the fall of Quebec. It was that policy that resulted in the American unpleasantness of 1774. His Majesty's government of 1763 signed a treaty with many native leaders accomodating their needs by restricting settlers to the east of the Appalachians and the Alleghenies.. The combination of being thus restricted and being taxed for the privilege of paying for the border forces (as well as paying off the debt for removing the French threat) was what provoked the Americans to rebel.
By comparison Native leaders from India, Polynesia and Africa, including Zulus, were welcomed as Kings and Princes at Court in Britain. You might recall that before the American sugar planters staged the coup that overthrew her, Hawaii was a Monarchy, ruled by a Queen under the protection of the British. That is one of the reasons that Britain continues to retain some goodwill in parts of the Arab world. (Jordan, Kuwait and Oman come to mind).
Curiously, many of Britain's colonial wars resulted from Reforming policies that were seen as cultural imperialism causing insurrection as opposed to Conservative policies that encouraged trade with the local establishment. Other wars resulted from a need to protect settlers. Settlement was not a continuous government policy. Many governments saw settlers as more trouble than they were worth. Factories and commercial colonies were another matter entirely. That, in fact, was one of the dominant factors behind the British success in India. It never had more than 100,000 Britons over there and aside from the odd individual that went native they all saw themselves as Brits first and intended to retire back in Britain, not take up a life in India. In late Victorian times, after the East India Company had been Nationalized and settlement in Canada and Australia had become the vogue, then some chose to retire to here and pursue their commercial interests over here. That was after Canada had been privatised and handed over to a local government of settlers.
It is interesting to note that today most of the native land claims start with their citing the Act of 1763 where the British Government treated with each of the native nations as separate sovereign entities and recognized their rights to land, lifestyle and sovereignty. Apparently, even today, the natives find that Act to be an acceptable basis of accomodation. The problems arise because we settlers don't find it acceptable.
With respect to the first Governor, I am not sure if you are referring to Murray or Carleton. Both of them treated the locals reasonably well and if I am not mistaken they and their successors regularly found themselves at odds with the both commercial and settler interests in Quebec - at one time resulting in the Anglos burning the legislature.
By the way you may want to look into the way that Religion impacted the discussion between the French and English populations. The Brits were not uniformly Protestant, this was particularly true for Scots and Irish. The Protestants were not uniformly Presbyterian - the Church of England types liked the hierarchy. Likewise the French were not uniformly Catholic. There is strong evidence that the early settlement was actually a Huguenot project driven by La Rochelle interests until Richelieu took charge of the situation. Further, the French while attending Catholic churches were not attending Roman Catholic churches. They were attending French Catholic churches. From 1682 the French Clergy explicitly rejected Rome's authority and made themselves creatures of the French Crown, just like the Church of England clergy. However they neglected to tell their parishioners.
Finally, with respect to Acadia Britain's concern in that regard was with the French Clergy, not with the locals. Many of the soldiers serving in Nova Scotia, including officers, ended up marrying local girls and found themselves tasked with having to evict relatives. To remove the influence of the French Crown the Brits offered the locals the option of Catholic priests, appointed by Rome, not Britain, to replace the Louis XV's french priests. For much of the period between 1713 and 1755 Acadia's defence, infrastructure and governance was dependent on a Huguenot from the Languedoc in France name of Paul Mascarene. For much of the time he was de facto Governor. He along with many other inhabitants of France and Germany, found refuge from the French Crown in Britain and the Colonies and places like Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. People like the Faneuil's of Boston - a place where many of the Acadians ended up finding refuge with their Anglo-French relatives.
The defining struggle of the Acadian period was not the Anglo-French struggle. It was a struggle between the Bourbons of Spain and France and the Stewarts of Scotland, backed by their commercial supporters and the Franco-Catholic church and the Protestants of All of Europe, including Occitanes, Savoyards, Normands, Bretagnais and Germans of the Upper Rhine, occasionally backed by the Hapsburgs of Austria and the Catholic Church in Rome and their commercial interests. As a basis of comparison you might want to check into what the Bourbons did to their subjects in Savoy, the Languedoc and the Palatinate and what the Stewarts did to their subjects in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Galloway. Words like "The Dragonnades", "The Killing Times" and "The Devastations" are the common descriptors.
Final point on the Seigneurie - a number of Bigots removed themselves from New France. Jesuits were expelled. However the Seigneurie that owned and farmed land stayed and, as you noted, retained Title to that land. In 1766 the French Catholic Bishop Monseigneur Briand was allowed back into Canada by the Brits, and by 1767 the Sulpiciens and Ursulines, both French Catholic orders, were operating freely in Quebec. Just so long as they didn't preach "insurrection".
It is WAY too simple to look at the period from 1638 to 1838 through the prism of 19th century nationalisms and conclude that France and Perfidious Albion have always been opposed. 'T'ain't so.
Cheers Sir.
(PS - I apologize for my usual on-line editing style - as of 8:41 there will be no more edits and I further apologize for dragging this discussion further OT).
