Canadian Rebellions Research Articles

The New History of the Canadian Rebellion, 1837-38: New Directions, New Interpretations, New Framework

In Canada, the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38 is often still treated as a local, ethnolinguistic conflict pitting French-speakers against English-speakers. However, new research, and publications have challenged conventional narratives and have pushed historiography into exciting new directions. This article proposes an analysis of the new history of the Canadian Rebellion. It will analyse some of the most interesting and cutting-edge new directions, interpretations, and methods of this historiographical framework. It will, amongst other things, demonstrate that this new history of the Rebellion challenged the conventional white-settler narrative, bringing to light new perspectives, those of marginalized and racialized populations. It will also demonstrate that by taking the Rebellion beyond the constraints of provincial and national borders, this new history of the Rebellion has demonstrated that it had significant transnational implications, particularly in the United States.

Rumours, Ruffians, and the U.S.-Upper Canada Border

This article surveys the history of the American social and political reaction to the events surrounding the Upper Canadian Rebellion. It focuses on the efforts of Michiganders and members of secret societies who supported the rebellion and Patriot War and on their experiences of engaging in revolutionary activities. By engaging with an enemy abroad, whether real, or imagined, these Americans sought a panacea to ease their generational and nationalistic angst. In return, they believed that liberating Canadians from British tyranny would cement their legacies in American history. This heroism, coupled with the formation of a secret society, the Hunters’ Lodges, temporarily distracted these Americans as well as some government officials from economic hardship, domestic and political turmoil, and perhaps most importantly, a rapidly changing world.

Democratic Struggle or National Uprising? The Canadian Rebellions in British Political Thought, 1835–1840

ABSTRACT This article argues that the role of the 1837–38 Canadian rebellions in early nineteenth-century British political thought has been under-appreciated. It shows that they were the occasion of major reconceptualizations of two important terms that would later become central to the political lexicon of modern Britain: ‘democracy’ and ‘nationality’. From the perspective of the Tories and Whigs who framed the rebellions in terms of ‘nationality’, the Canadian debate required reconfiguring previous uses of the word, in order to argue that some ‘nationalities’ were more worthy of respect than others, and that protecting ‘nationality’ could be compatible with membership of an imperial, multi-national state. Additionally, it also reinforced previous negative uses of ‘democracy’ by critics of the rebellions relying on familiar tropes inherited from the French Revolution. But the debate also showcased the quickly shifting Radical uses of both words. For the Radicals, who framed the Canadian crisis in terms of ‘democracy’, it provided a platform to deploy emerging Tocquevillian understandings of democracy in the North American context and reintroduce the word in British political discourse. Via the Durham report of 1839, it also established more civic-minded Radical redefinitions of ‘nationality’ as a core argument for British imperialist policy.

Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion edited by Maxime Dagenais and Julien Mauduit

Revolutions Across Borders:Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion edited by Maxime Dagenais and Julien Mauduit. Un article de la revue Ontario History (Volume 112, numéro 1, spring 2020, p. 1-131) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Canadian Rebellion, the American South, and Slavery

ABSTRACTIn the past few decades, thanks in large part to the work of several historians that appears in my edited collection, Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion (2019), there is a growing trend to consider the Canadian Rebellion within an American historical and historiographical context. Despite this exciting new research, most studies on the Rebellion and the United States continue to focus on the northern borderland. However, the Canadian Rebellion was a significant event that gained attention all over the United States, including the American South. Similar to the North, the American South was also invested in the outcome of the Rebellion. This was due to one reason: slavery. By specifically focusing on the American South and, more importantly, its influence on American foreign policy during the period, I want to encourage historians to take a more definitive stance; that slavery—just like the Panic of 1837, the Anglo-American rapprochement of thepost-War-of-1812 period, or the fear of British retaliation—played a major role in the United States Government’s official opposition to the Rebellion.

Dismemberment at Windmill Point

Drawing on personal letters, published memoirs, and court martial records, this article investigates the gendered and ethnic implications of the Battle of the Windmill in November 1838. While this invasion of Upper Canada by the Hunter Patriots has often been seen as the final chapter of the 1837 Canadian Rebellions, it was also an episode imbued with Irish fraternal societies, Irish politics, notions of Irish manliness, and the attempts of Irish settlers to earn their place within “respectable” Upper Canadian society. The scandalous castration of an Irish officer and the mistreatment of dead soldiers’ bodies stood in direct contrast to the value each force placed on heroic martial manliness. Despite the relatively small size of the battlefield, the legacy of the battle itself significantly impacted how Irish settlers were treated in Upper Canadian society at the end of the 1830s.

“[T]Hose Who Had Money Were Opposed to Us, and Those Who Were Our Friends Were Not the Moneyed Class”: Philadelphia and the 1837–1838 Canadian Rebellions

ABSTRACTIn early January 1838, weeks following a disastrous military defeat at the hands of the British at Saint-Eustache, in the British colony of Lower Canada, two patriotes leaders, Dr. Robert Nelson and Dr. Edmund O’Callaghan, arrived in Philadelphia. Their mission was to find military and financial support among local residents for the 1837 Rebellion. A few days later, they left empty-handed and disappointed. According to O’Callaghan, those who supported them were incapable to help, while those who had the means to offer concrete assistance were, quite simply, opposed to their crusade. Why did Nelson and O’Callaghan leave empty-handed? Were O’Callaghan’s assumptions about the people of Philadelphia correct? This article explains why the Patirote mission to Philadelphia failed and suggests that O’Callaghan was incorrect. The mission did not fail because their allies were too poor while those with money opposed them. Instead, though many actually hoped that the rebels succeeded and offered much moral support and encouragement, all were quite simply unwilling to offer any military or financial support, citing American neutrality, economic uncertainty, and the fear of British retaliation.

Choosing Peace and Order: National Security and Sovereignty in a North American Borderland, 1837–42

This article considers the international ramifications of the Canadian Rebellions of 1837, in particular their impact on US politics and policy-making as well as on the state of the international border. The Rebellions and the ensuing border raids led to the deployment of US and British forces in the borderlands, not in pursuit of war but in the interest of peace. Ignoring popular agitation in the Canadian colonies and in border states, the British and US governments expressed their commitment to peace and recognised that continued friendly relations required further assertion of central state authority on both sides of the boundary line. Thus, the events of 1837–42 mark an important advance in the development of national security and national sovereignty in North America. This paper expands upon purely national depictions of the Canadian Rebellions and integrates international developments by utilising a borderlands approach and traditional diplomatic history.

The Democratic Idiom: Languages of Democracy in the Chartist Movement

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Democratic Idiom: Languages of Democracy in the Chartist Movement*Peter J. GurneyPeter J. GurneyUniversity of Essex Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 86, Number 3September 2014 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/676730 Views: 524Total views on this site Citations: 9Citations are reported from Crossref © 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:George Ouma Ogal, Eliud Kiruji Kirigia, Victor Ondara Ntabo, Unpacking modified idiomatic expressions in Kenyan political discourse: A cognitive linguistic perspective, Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT 10, no.22 (Aug 2022): 48–65.https://doi.org/10.46687/QCDQ4857Anna Plassart, Hugo Bonin Democratic Struggle or National Uprising? The Canadian Rebellions in British Political Thought, 1835–1840, Global Intellectual History 7, no.11 (Jan 2020): 28–46.https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2020.1711530Hugo Bonin Between panacea and poison: “democracy” in British socialist thought, 1881–1891, Intellectual History Review 31, no.44 (Sep 2020): 671–691.https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2020.1810911Hugo Bonin Friend or foe? British receptions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 1835–1885, British Politics 4 (Jun 2021).https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-021-00182-8Hugo Bonin From antagonist to protagonist: ‘Democracy’ and ‘people’ in British parliamentary debates, 1775–1885, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 35, no.44 (Nov 2019): 759–775.https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz082Mike Sanders Coordinating chartist poetry: Past, present, future, Literature Compass 17, no.55 (Mar 2020).https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12567Valerie Wallace Introduction: Empire of Dissent, (Feb 2018): 1–31.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70467-8_1Josh Gibson The Chartists and the Constitution: Revisiting British Popular Constitutionalism, Journal of British Studies 56, no.11 (Jan 2017): 70–90.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2016.121Matthew Hale, Graham Raymond, Catherine Wright List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2014, The Economic History Review 68, no.44 (Oct 2015): 1388–1440.https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12237

Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion 1812–40 (review)

Reviewed by: Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion 1812–40 Phillip Buckner Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion 1812–40. J.I. Little. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. 191, $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper In the nineteenth century the Eastern Townships, the region south of the St Lawrence River and north of the American border, was geographically part of Quebec, but until the demographic victory of [End Page 767] the French Canadians in the latter part of the nineteenth century it remained culturally distinctive. In several books and a vast number of articles Jack Little has explored the history of the Eastern Townships, and in Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion 1812–1840 he traces how people in the region responded to the War of 1812 and the Rebellions of 1837–8. Most of the immigrants to the southern heartland of the Eastern Townships came from south of the border and the region was part of the northern frontier of New England settlement – a classic borderland. Little uses the borderlands approach cautiously and effectively. Its main advantage, he points out, is that 'it shifts the focus of attention from the central state to local communities as active agents in history' (7), but he is critical of those borderland historians who overemphasize the common features of contiguous societies and reduce the border to an artificial line in social space that has no meaning. As Little shows, during the War of 1812 most of the American-born settlers in the Eastern Townships rejected allegiance to their country of birth, and a substantial number served in Eastern Townships militia and volunteer units. Although they were undoubtedly motivated by a strong sense of local identity rather than any broader imperial loyalty, and close border ties persisted after the War of 1812, by the time that the Rebellion of 1837 broke out, the inhabitants of the Eastern Townships had developed a strong sense of regional identity 'that was quite distinct from that on the other side of the border' (56). In short, the region was no longer a borderland in any meaningful sense, although it had not completed the transformation from a society whose political and social values were essentially American to one that defined itself as British Canadian. The rebellions of 1837–8 were important in that transformation. Initially the patriote movement had widespread support among the rural population of the Eastern Townships. In his meticulously researched study Little shows just how widespread it was. What then prevented the Eastern Townships from supporting the rebellions? Little's answer is that the majority were frightened into supporting the colonial administration because of their minority status in a French-Canadian nationalist republic. Although he blames 'the paradoxical role that Papineau's rather conservative and intransigent ethnic nationalism played in alienating what might have been a powerful source of support' (106), he insists that his study of the Eastern Townships undermines Durham's argument that tensions between the two major linguistic groups lay at the root of the Lower Canadian rebellion. But does it really? The majority of the reformers [End Page 768] in the Eastern Townships certainly did want to put an end to the selective distribution of patronage to a small British elite and they did want greater local control over their own affairs. But these were objectives that could have been achieved without rebellion – a rebellion that only a small minority of the population of the Eastern Townships supported. Little stresses the key role in drumming up anti-francophone sentiment played by the constitutionalist press. But they did not have to invent the threat posed to the long-term survival of the English-speaking population if the imperial government had simply given in to all the patriotes' demands. Ironically in the long run there was really no future for the Eastern Townships as an English-speaking enclave, even within a Quebec that remained an integral part of a Canada with an English-speaking majority. How much more quickly would this region have lost its distinctive character within a French-Canadian dominated colony or an independent republic? The anti-colonial...

The Canadian Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 as a Borderland War: A Retrospective

Historians of Southwestern United States history and culture have created the concept of a borderland to explain the historical circumstances of the area where Anglo-America ran into Hispanic America. Its application to the Upper Canada-Great Lakes area during 1837-1838 will allow a re-interpretation of the Canadian Rebellions of 1837 and the subsequent invasions of 1838 as part of a borderland war. Hopefully this approach will eliminate any tensions over the nationalist component of the Canadian Exiles or American Patriot Hunters. I also want to focus on the Battle of Prescott or the Windmill as the significant event of this borderland war, relying on the writings of two of the Exile narrativists, William Gates and Stephen Wright. Finally I hope to contribute some reflections on the significance of these Exiles/Patriots after almost twenty years of an acquaintance of sort with them.

Representations of the First Colonial “Civil War” in Victoria’s Reign: the Canadian Rebellions in the English Press (1837–1838)

This article examines the various representations circulating in the British press of an unexpected and peculiar occurrence: a “civil war” which took place in the white colonies of Canada in 1837–38. In fact, the terms used to refer to the event varied according to the sources. English leaders and editorials reported on a “civil war” in the colonies, while American newspapers whose despatches were quoted verbatim in the English press, more often referred to “rebellions” or “insurrections”. By reflecting on such a discrepancy in the representations of this colonial crisis, we might wonder why what seemed to clearly have been short-lived insurrections rapidly controlled by the British army, were represented under the alarming colours of “civil war” in England, in the press and in official despatches. Combined to the frightful news from Canada, Victorian fears of the civil war were also heightened in 1837, by the representations of civil wars and revolution published by Edward Gibbon and Thomas Carlyle whose histories of the decline of the Roman Empire and the French revolution. The Canadian “civil war” was described as a threat to the harmonious working of the British parliamentary monarchy at home and in the Empire. It led the press, moderate and radical, to reassess the values of the “English” Constitution and the capacity of British colonists as well as “the mob” to work with it, at a timely period: the beginning of Victoria’s reign and that of her second Empire.

Radical agitation and the Canada question in British politics, 1837-41

This article re-examines the problem of radical disunity after 1832. The main focus is on radical attitudes towards the second Melbourne ministry (1835–41) and its handling of the Canadian rebellions of 1837. Even when the government's imperial difficulties created a suitable opportunity to rekindle their reform campaign, radical leaders failed to co-operate effectively and made little headway in mobilizing and harnessing popular support. This defeat can be profitably explored through the experiences of Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783–1869), who emerged as one of the most energetic and strident critics of British policy in Canada during and after the rebellions. Despite his best efforts, Thompson was unable to win over other radical leaders or to attract a large following, a failure that highlights the wider constraints faced by radicalism in this era.

Reconsidering the Collective Impulse: Formal Organization and Informal Associations among Workers in the Australian Colonies, 1795-1850

This paper presents a reinterpretation of the causes for the US Patriot movement of 1837-38, which rose up in support of the Canadian rebellion in Upper Canada (UC) initiated by William Lyon Mackenzie (the companion rebellion in Lower Canada is not considered in this paper since its causation was arguably considerably different). Most traditional treatments of this event, by US historians in particular, are stuck in narrative mode and lack convincing interpretation and analysis. The US Patriot war is usually quickly dismissed as the work of a few Anglophobes and adventurers seeking land and coin. The hypothesis advanced here suggests that the US Patriot movement and its progenitor rebellion in UC may be seen as an expression of the social class tensions growing out of the transition from a subsistence-barter/household economy and culture to the more impersonal commodity market economy — a transition that was proceeding in an uneven and combined manner on both sides of the nominal Canada/US border. Mackenzie's UC rebellion was both motivated by and encouragement to radical Democratic anti-bank forces in the US. Historians are urged to consider the Patriot movement in the larger context of class conflict and accommodation then being played out on a shared Canadian/American stage.

The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism, 1837-1839

The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism, 1837-1839

The State of Tutelage in Lower Canada, 1835-1851

Most of the postmortem examinations of the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38 identified one of its leading causes as faulty political education, but competing interpretations of education existed.1 The British Whigs and Radicals charged with reorganizing Canadian government after the Rebellion argued that the colonial population needed to be placed under far more extensive relations of tutelage than those implied by attendance at school as an antidote to revolution. Their analysis connected reform of governmental institutions, inspection and investigation of local condi? tions, and common schooling with a host of other attempts to reconfigure social solidarities in the colony and to reconstruct the colonial state. An alliance of imperial officials, anglophone capitalists and reformers, and, often grudgingly and ambivalently, sections of the francophone petite bourgeoisie attempted to translate this analysis into practice in the decade ofthe 1840s.2

The patriots and the people: the rebellion of 1837 in rural Lower Canada

The Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837 has been called the most important event in pre-Confederation history. Previously, it has been explained as a response to economic distress or as the result of manipulation by middle-class politicians. Lord Durham believed it was an expression of racial conflict. The Patriots and the People is a fundamental reinterpretation of the Rebellion. Allan Greer argues that far being passive victims of events, the habitants were actively responding to democratic appeals because the language of popular sovereignty was in harmony with their experience and outlook. He finds that a certain form of popular republicanism, with roots deep in the French-Canadian past, drove the anti-government campaign. Institutions such as the militia and the parish played an important part in giving shape to the movement, and the customs of the maypole and charivari provided models for the collective actions against local representatives of the colonial regime. In looking closely into the actions, motives, and mentality of the rural plebeians who formed a majority of those involved in the insurrection, Allan Greer brings to light new causes for the revolutionary role of the normally peaceful French-Canadian peasant. By doing so he provides a social history with new dimensions.

George Bancroft on the Canadian Rebellions and the American Revolution

George Bancroft on the Canadian Rebellions and the American Revolution

From folklore to revolution : Charivaris and the Lower Canadian rebellion of 1837∗

(1990). From folklore to revolution : Charivaris and the Lower Canadian rebellion of 1837. Social History: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 25-43.

European enlightenments and Canadian rebellions

European enlightenments and Canadian rebellions