I've recently been doing a lot of reading/watching/listening about the American Revolution. One thing that keeps confusing me is when things like "Invading Canada" is discussed when talking about the battles at Montreal and Quebec.
What I don't understand is if the authors are using that terminology for the benefit of modern readers or if that was how they would have thought about it at the time. I feel like I remember quotes from during the revolution that reference "Canada" but I don't know what that name meant to them.
Were the Canadian colonies ever considered to be "American" colonies? Was Canada considered just a region, like New England or the Middle Colonies? Was Nova Scotia viewed as more foreign to Massachusetts than say North Carolina? Or were they just the Northern colonies the same way Georgia was a Southern Colony?
When the Rebels referred to the "13 Colonies" was this only after it was clear that no one else was joining or were the 13 always distinct "American" entities, viewed as foreign to the "Canadian" ones?
Edit: I have read some on the reasons that the Canadian colonies didn't join and I feel like I understand their reasons. What I'm trying to get at specifically, was whether before the Revolution how foreign would the American Colonies view the Canadians?
Is this map an accurate reflection of their world view? I feel like that is a very typical map you could find in a US text book. But I wonder if it falsely implies a sense of "foreigness" of Canada that didn't actually exist at the time.
Canada was a French colony until the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, when it was ceded to the British Empire.
For most of American Colonial history, British subjects lived in fear of attack from the Catholic French from their colonies to the North.
At the start of the American Revolution, Canada had only been British territory for 13 years and would still have been thought of as "other" to citizens of the 13 Colonies, which had always been British Colonies.
What I'm trying to get at specifically, was whether before the Revolution how foreign would the American Colonies view the Canadians?
By "Canadian" you mean the colonies that are now part of Canada, not just Quebec, I'm assuming.
Nova Scotia, which at the time included what is now New Brunswick, was closely tied to New England. By the 1770s about half the population of Nova Scotia had been born in New England. When the government of Nova Scotia sought to draft men to serve in the British army stationed in Boston many towns asked to be exempt. A petition from Yarmouth put it: "We were almost all of us born in New England, we have Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in that country," and are "divided betwixt natural affection to our nearest relations, and good Faith and Friendship to our King and Country."
There were rebellions in Nova Scotia and a desire to link up with the other rebel colonies. The Continental Congress wanted to see Nova Scotia join, but lacked the naval power required to do much to help. Still, due to the threat of rebellion and the strong ties between the people of Nova Scotia and New England, government in Nova Scotia allowed the Yankees of the colony a kind of de facto neutrality.
Quebec was different, with most of its population being French-Canadian. And Newfoundland "shared none of the grievances of the continental colonies", as Meinig puts it. And, cut off from contact with New England by British Navy, became "completely bound to Britain economically and politically". In addition, Newfoundland had no assembly of its own and was exempt from the Navigation Acts.
In the other direction from Canada, there were British colonies in Florida and the West Indies. Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the colonies in the West Indies were very sympathetic to the American rebels but due to British naval power had to remain "officially loyal". They supported the rebellion in many small ways though (like opportunistic trading with american privateers). The assemblies of Jamaica, Grenada, and Barbados actually formally declared their sympathy for the American cause. The British colonists in the West Indies were not generally seen as "foreigners". An obvious example: Alexander Hamilton, who was born in, and grew up in the West Indies.
Source: The Shaping of America: Atlantic America, 1492-1800, Donald W. Meinig.
I have read some on the reasons that the Canadian colonies didn't join and I feel like I understand their reasons. What I'm trying to get at specifically, was whether before the Revolution how foreign would the American Colonies view the Canadians?
The nuance you're overlooking in your question is that the American colonies themselves would have differing views of the Canadian colonies depending on their geographic and economic relationships.
Your maritime states and New York did a lot of trade and travel between the major cities, and they certainly wouldn't view each other as foreign. These areas were also pretty diverse (as these things went) in both nationality and religion.
I think the biggest differences would be more a conception of class than "foreigner." Well to do British colonists read and spoke French, traveled to Europe, &c. However, since Quebec and the northern areas were considered extremely "frontier," the lifestyles differed considerably than the average resident of Boston or Charleston.
i learned in graduate school that there were 7 reasons that the Canadian colonies did not secede with the Americans. A lot of comes down to proximity (I know it seems odd, but Halifax Nova Scotia is a direct line from the English Isles-- ) the lack of political enlightenment during the 1760s (the Great Awakening did not happen in Canada) and the idea that one of the major reasons that the American colonies were seceding were to protect their slaves and smuggling. Once the British courts decided that it was legal to ban slavery in territories, Hamilton (* I will edit this due to a semantic disagreement-- he married into a family of slave owners in the north) along with others got a little upset and fomented revolution. No slaves in Canada (well, very few) and thus no constituency to protect slaves. There are some social differences (for example, the puritans came from people who were kicked out of England or left because of persecution, while the English in Canada were more 'conservative' linked to the elite back in England and had much less motive to rebel) and of course the Quebec question made them even less likely to secede. In general, its an excellent question as it drives to the heart of the motivations for the US rebellion against the English and the reasons were not to promulgate Murican exceptionalism. The elite in the US had interests to protect; the English elites in Canada felt more protected within a larger empire as their interests were not threatened by growing antislavery agitation in Parliament.
there is more, but that is all off the top of my head. (As I said, there are 7 reasons from one of my texts, but I cannot remember all of them) Anyone else? I just remembered another one-- disagreements over the cod fisheries. These Canadian-English fishers had different interests than American fisheries.
Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick) and Prince Edward Island (then known as St. John (-'s) Island) were the two Maritime colonies at the time. The two combined had once been the French colony of Acadia, but Nova Scotia was taken in 1713 by Britain. Notably, importantly, it was still full of French-speaking Acadians.
The first Anglo-filled settlement in Nova Scotia would be Halifax in 1749, and the Great Upheaval of Francophone Canadians would happen in 1755 and continue on throughout the Maritimes as New Brunswick was captured in 1755 with the Battle of Fort Beausejour and Cape Breton (including PEI) in 1758 when Amherst captured Louisbourg.
Postwar, the 'New England Planters' would move into the empty colony and fill it up. By the time of the American Revolution the Yankee colonists WERE sympathetic to their cousins in New England, and hated the Governor Legge. But not only were they concerned with simple survival as a new colony, they were under the influence of Britain's premiere naval base in the Americas, Halifax.
Simply put, too many British troops against too few Patriot colonists in a newly-settled colony. This is best seen in the 'Eddy Rebellion' in New Brunswick that DID go on longer then you'd think for such a hastily-made expedition, yet also fell to a small number of British troops (and this happened before the 1776 reinforcements that would eventually sail on to fight in the New York campaign).
SOURCES: https://books.google.com/books?id=pT0PAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=acadia+population+1710&source=bl&ots=EvfnFVmzok&sig=sQQWyRIaG62NF9UxWEpQCENtuoU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qkAlU6X_GcTCywHhkYDoCg&ved=0CG0Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=acadia%20population%201710&f=false (lack of Englishmen till Halifax's founding in 1749 and notes on New England Planters in the marshlands)
http://minerdescent.com/2012/10/15/new-england-planters-in-new-brunswick/ (New England Planters in New Brunswick)
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/static_content/ACAD/acadpress/theyplantedwell/014-028Longley.pdf (New England Planters in Annapolis and Nova Scotia proper)
Followup: Does anyone feel the geographical distance and terrain was a hindering factor in the collusion of the Canadian and American colones? A lot of forest still exists to this day between Maine, New York and Quebec and Montreal.
There was a post that pointed to the wikipedia page of the first Continental Congress but I think it was deleted so I'm just going to respond to the OP with this.
Following the sources on that page I found this link to the papers of the first Continental Congress which includes this:
Resolved, That an address be prepared to the people of Quebec, and letters to the colonies of St. John's, Nova-Scotia, Georgia, East and West Florida, who have not deputies to represent them in this Congress.
So it seems to me that Quebec may have been viewed as more foreign or "other" but St. John's, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas are referred to in the same manner as Georgia is. It doesn't seem unreasonable to infer that those British Canadian Colonies were viewed similarly to the way Georgia, which did become part of America, was.
Does anyone with more experience analyzing documents like this have an opinion on this interpretation?
I watched these two films last year linked below from the NFB (National Film Board of Canada) released in 1967 discussing not only the various factions and divisions of British North America but also the various alliances which seemed confusing based on not only what the various regions were leaving Europe for but also the changing alliances in Europe as time progressed. They cover the resistance on not only ethnic grounds but also religious differences, economics and pure survival alliances.
I found the films fascinating to watch from 2014 as the world has changed a great deal since 1967 and the celebration of Canada's 100th anniversary and the various projects completed to celebrate Canadian heritage at the time.
At the end of the day I took away despite in hindsight the logical reasons for the American colonies and French Canada to join against British was the religious cultural differences kept the highly Catholic French from joining what was viewed as a Protestant Merchant entity of the American colonies and how the British were able to parlay these differences in their favor.
The geography and channels of how information were distributed played a role in the differences between the various groups too.
Here are the videos from the NFB:
https://www.nfb.ca/film/new_england_new_france_1490_1763
Was the US and Canada ever becoming one entity ever a possibility? Meaning, is it through some small quirk of history that what is now the United States and Canada are not one large country or was that never even a thought?
