The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution

By Philip Lawson

Book Overview

Philip Lawson examines the profound effect that the conquest of Quebec had on British politics and imperial thought in the years leading to the signing of the Quebec Act in 1774. He reinterprets the standard accounts of the conquest of Quebec in 1760, challenging prevailing ideas about political traditions and philosophical assumptions in mid-18th-century Britain.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773506985
• ISBN13: 9780773506985
• Release Date: November 1989
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 1 Pages

Customer Reviews

Richard Montgomery

Inasmuch as I live in Montgomery County, several years ago my wife and I visited the NY home of Richard Montgomery, one of the heroes of the American Revolution. Probably there are few states east of the Mississippi that lack a Montgomery County, or a city named for him. He died in the Canadian campaign. I began to wonder why the French Canadians did not rise against their British masters and assist the American invaders. It seemed a natural, yet it did not happen. This book answers my question. After the conquest of the French colony the British had great difficulty deciding how to provide democratic rule for it. The French colonists were Catholics; by law, Catholics were excluded from holding office in Britain. By the time of the American Revolution, the Brits had worked out the problem, giving the Canadians rights denied to Catholics in Britain. The Americans were anti-Catholic, so the French colonists had no interest in joining them, or in attempting to assert their own independence if they were to have such neighbors. The Brits had given them a better deal.