Quebec Act

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The Quebec Act (actually An Act for making more effective Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America ) of 1774, a resolution of the British Parliament (14 Geo. III c. 83), was supposed to change the situation in the North American colonies of Great Britain rearrange. It was valid until 1791.

As one of the Intolerable Acts ("intolerable laws"), however, it brought the Thirteen Colonies , from which the United States emerged almost a decade later , against the colonial government of Great Britain and ultimately led to independence. In Canada it led to a stronger loyalty of the Catholic population to the Anglican colonial power, first of the French defeated in 1763, then from 1778 also of the immigrant Irish.

In addition, the Indians were granted rights to their residential area for the first time, which was to be protected from non-Indian settlement. Today's First Nations refer to these British provisions, which were incorporated into the treaties of Canada, which was founded in 1867 .

Content and story

The resolution received the approval of the king on June 22, 1774 and was valid from May 1, 1775.

On the one hand, an Indian area protected from immigration should be created. A huge area around the Ohio , which included southern Ontario , Illinois , Indiana , Michigan , Ohio , Wisconsin and part of Minnesota , was to be attached to the province of Quebec . There were also areas in the east ( Labrador , Ile d'Anticosti and Iles de la Madeleine ).

At the same time he guaranteed the followers of the Catholic denomination free exercise of religion. The oath of allegiance that civil servants had to take renounced the corresponding formula, which the Protestant denomination knew as the sole basis. Eventually French private law was restored, while English law remained in the state and criminal prosecution areas .

Schematic representation of the Constitution of Quebec, 1775

The decision was taken in the same session of parliament as the measures against the rebellious colonists in the Thirteen Colonies . In the eyes of these colonies, from which the United States later emerged, he hindered the settlement of the westward areas by assigning them to the province of Quebec or protecting them as Indian territories, and he prevented the colonies from being adequately represented in parliament. The Quebec Act was one of the "intolerable laws", the intolerable acts .

In the Peace of Paris in 1763 France had lost its colonies in North America except for Saint-Pierre and Miquelon , the British now called Canada Province of Quebec . The Royal Proclamation , the royal proclamation of 1763, had not only greatly reduced New France and promised an elected representative of the colonial population, but it also stipulated that French who wanted to enter the civil service had to swear an oath of allegiance to the king who had given them banned their usual denomination. However, the British were a small minority at the time. The Quebec Act now defined an area that was significantly enlarged to the south, allowing civil servants to retain their denomination, as well as the return of the Jesuits . The Irish Catholic Relief Act of 1778 strengthened the involvement of the Irish , who were also Catholic .

The Quebec Act also determined the structure of the government. The governor was appointed by the crown. He was to rule with the support of the Legislative Council , a group of 17 to 23 men who formed a kind of upper house (dissolved in 1838). To the disappointment of the colonists, there was no question of an election. The feudal French form of society with the corresponding land, tax and service relationships was restored, while outside of the francophone areas this was to be replaced by a township system based on the American model .

The Quebec Act was replaced by the Constitutional Act of 1791, which created the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada , whose social development drifted sharply apart, which in turn encouraged separatist tendencies.

literature

  • Reginald Coupland: The Quebec act. A study in statemanship , Clarendon Press, Oxford 1925.
  • Hilda Neatby: The Quebec Act. Protest and policy , Prentice-Hall of Canada, Scarborough Ontario 1972, ISBN 0-13-748129-2 .
  • Alain-G. Gagnon, Luc Turgeon: Managing Diversity in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Canada: Quebec's Constitutional Development in Light of the Scottish Experience , in: Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 41 (2003) 1-23.
  • Karen Stanbridge: Quebec and the Irish Catholic Relief Act of 1778: An Institutional Approach , in: Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003) 375-404.

See also

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See The 5 Acts