Province of Quebec (1763–1791)

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Province of Quebec
Province of Quebec
Historical flag of the VAR
Official languages English France
Capital Quebec
Administrative form British colony
governor see List of Governors of Québec
Existence period 1763-1791
Situation map

The Province of Quebec (English Province of Quebec , French Province de Québec ) was a colony that the Kingdom of Great Britain founded in North America after the French and Indian War.

history

Great Britain acquired Canada through the Treaty of Paris (1763) , since the French King Louis XV. and his advisers preferred the Guadeloupe Territory to New France because of its coveted sugar cane harvest . By the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , the Canadian part of New France was renamed Province of Quebec .

In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act , which allowed Québec to keep the French Civil Code in the judiciary and guaranteed free choice of religion, allowing the Roman Catholic Church to remain in the colony. The act also expanded Québec's borders. The province now also included the Ohio area and Illinois Country ; the boundaries now lay with the Appalachians in the east, the Ohio River in the south, the Mississippi River in the west, and in the north along the areas of the Hudson's Bay Company in Rupert's Land .

Through the province, the British crown retained access to these areas even after the Ohio and Illinois areas were ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) . Through well-maintained trade and military routes across the Great Lakes , the British continued to supply not only their own troops but also an alliance of Indian tribes with the branches of Detroit , Fort Niagara , Fort Michilimackinac and other forts until these outposts passed through the 1794 Jay Treaty were handed over to the United States.

Québec retained its system of rule after it became part of Great Britain. Due to the arrival of loyalists fleeing the American Revolutionary War , the demographic composition of the population shifted in favor of a not insignificant number of English-speaking Anglicans or Protestants from the former Thirteen colonies . These mainly settled in the Eastern Townships , Montreal and in the area west of the Ottawa River, then known as the pays d'en haut . The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the colony along the Ottawa River, so that the western part ( Upper Canada ) was placed under a British legal system. Here the English-speaking residents were in the majority. The eastern part was named Lower Canada .

Province of Quebec Governors 1763–1791

After Montreal surrendered in 1760, New France was placed under a military government. In 1764 a civil government was introduced.

See also

literature

  • Alfred LeRoy Burt: The Old Province of Quebec . Ryerson Press, Toronto / University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1933. Reprinted: McClelland and Stewart, Toronto 1968.
  • Robert Lahaise, Noël Vallerand: Le Québec sous le régime anglais: les Canadiens français, la colonization britannique et la formation du Canada continental . Outremont, Lanctôt, Québec 1999.
  • Hilda Neatby: Quebec: the revolutionary age 1760-1791 . McClelland and Stewart, Toronto 1966.