Yay! Question for me. You are in for a long one. Alternatively, this question could be: Why does Québec exist as Québec today?

I will use your comparison with Louisiana to better contrast with Québec. I will then discuss how Louisiana was formed. I don’t mean the State; I’ll leave others to that task. Rather, its population and French twist.

A few groups have lived there that spoke French, many of which were deported by the English in the 1750s and 1760s. Following the War of Austrian Succession, France gave modern-day New-Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (Let’s call it Acadia) to the English but kept modern-day Québec.

The idea for the English is that in the medium-term they would get Québec (and they did in 1760) who was still French. But they were worried about one thing: that the French population in Acadia would support the French and possibly be a problem for the English. The solution was simple: get rid of the French colonists in their territories. It would also provide a great benefit to the English colonists who would acquire the land of the deported Acadians.

They shoved them on ships and sent them to a few places (Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Caribbean, France, Falklands… some even were left to die on the ships with no destination. Some ended up as slaves in Haiti or working in plantations in the thirteen colonies). A good amount of those who were shoved back to France (about a quarter of them) and there, the Spanish government recruited them. Although they had previously refused to swear oath to Great Britain, Spain was a catholic country and owned Louisiana since 1963.

In the end, about 18 000 people lived in Acadia and 12 000 were deported, 8 000 of which died in the process. Louisiana received most of those, in addition to existing French colonists there. The French in Louisiana would eventually become the Cajuns (coming from Cadiens in French).

So far, we have Louisiana which have belonged to France, then Spain, which allowed them to keep speaking French and since Spain is also catholic and civil law, everything was dandy.

France got Louisiana back in 1801 from Spain and then, sold it to the United States in 1803; the Louisiana purchase. Laws in place to protect French were enacted and for the next 60 years or so but after the civil war, the government gradually forced francophones to go to school in English until even catholic school had to be in English. Eventually, speaking French became synonym with being uneducated and gradually, French fell out of favour with most.

Now contrast that with Québec. The English conquered Québec in 1760 and installed a regime in 1763. The French were no longer a problem (no need to deport them) and frankly, the population was too important for that to be attempted. The deportation of Acadians was already one of the largest ethnic cleaning to be systematically done and it was not really a possibility to do the same for Québec. In order to ensure Québec would stay under British rule, the Québec act ensured that the clergy, the nobility, and the population would find it comfortable under British rule. And it worked. The thirteen colonies mostly failed to get would-be Québécois on their side and lost when they tried to take Québec city.

The point here is that so far, there is protection for French-speakers on both sides (In Louisiana and Québec). But the nature: one is kind of given, the other protected by the empire and its decrees. Let me exemplify: a notable fact is that following the American revolution, the loyal British subjects moved to modern-day Ontario and Québec. The English (loyalists, merchants, etc.) eventually asked, as it was common in British colonies, to give Englishmen an assembly. So far, the British had refused to give them to Québec and only accepted insofar that it was set up to ensure the Popists would not have too much power. The English in Acadia were refused their assembly exactly for that reason; too many Frenchies.

Great Britain gave the 10 000 or so English in Upper Canada (Modern-day Ontario) 16 representatives and the 160 000 or so lower-Canadians (modern-day Québec) 50 representatives. I won’t spend too much time on the Constitutional Act and the Union Act except if you have questions as this is getting long. The point is that French-Canadians were given a surprising amount of power for a colony under British rule even if it did not equal their English counterparts living amongst them.

Fast forward to the 1870s.

Following the American civil war, the French in Louisiana lost a lot of rights. On the other hand, the important French population in Québec, along with institutions giving the French power allowed them to protect their religion, laws, and language. The creation of Canada in 1867, along with Québec as a province did see something similar to the US though: oppressing of French-speaking communities in the rest of Canada continued though with Métis repression by Prime Minister John A. McDonald who hanged Louis Riel or Rule 17 in Ontario which prohibited French education for a while and failing to recognise French schools until the 60s. In other words, despite the protection provided to Québec, the culture and institutions in Canada did profoundly weaken French-speaking communities.

It’s a lot of stuff right now but if you read it so far, it will become obvious once I point out why Québec preserved its identity and not Louisiana. Namely: overtime, acts and constitutional documents as well as decisions made by London ensured that the place given to French-speakers and their identity was protected. French-speakers in Louisiana, and in the rest of Canada, did not have the same level of protection granted to them as it depended on the goodwill of the English majority rather than bureaucrats in London who cared more about keeping the peace while ensuring the interests of English-speakers. Still today, being served and French is considered a right at the federal level with provincial jurisdictions, on their end, routinely not taking measures to ensure access to services in French. Overtime, Québec was able to leverage its demographic weight and powers to increasingly make more requests to the federal government in Ottawa and take the measures deemed necessary to protect its identity, something that was not possible in the smaller French-speaking communities or in Louisiana where despite their numbers, relied on the goodwill of legislators and politicians to enact laws rather than hard constitutional principles or imperial decisions.

French became the language of about 25-30% of the population and at this point, they had fought the English (revolution of 1837-38), and overtime keeping the peace with them ensured giving them the minimum to ensure their cultural survival until they were able to affirm themselves.

One last point. Québec, as well as other French-speaking communities, were usually catholic. This meant that they usually had much bigger families and Québec was often able to increase its share of the population by virtue of having significantly greater demographic growth. In the case of Québec, their powers given to protect their heritage in addition to powerful uh, baby-popping, helped ensured demographic importance. I did not know how to introduce this part so I just added it here. Priests were actively encouraging French-Canadians to get those babies poppin’ and this ensured, to some extent, the relevance of the French-speaking demographic.