Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport
And what about Alsace (Elsaß) in France? Although German dialects were spoken in Elsaß for most of its history, the dominant language in Alsace today is French.
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The MAJOR difference being that the Alsatians willingly turned into French citizens, which was never the case for the French Canadians. They never accepted to become "British". Also, the way Alsace became French is vastly different from the way French Canada became British. In the latter case, it's a clear war of conquest and annexation against the will of its inhabitants, in the former case it's much more complex as Alsace was torn by war during the Thirty Years War (between Germans, before any involvement by France), and Alsatian Protestants fearful of the incoming arrival of the Catholic troops of the emperor called for French troops to garrison their cities and towns to protect them against the emperor (that's how it started).
Then Alsace became French more as a result of diplomacy than as a result war and conquest per se. Initially Richelieu's plan was for Alsace to be given to a Protestant German duke allied with France, in order to create a buffer state allied with France separating France from the Holy Roman Empire, but the duke unexpectedly died, and after that like I've said many towns and cities in Alsace asked for French protection because they feared brutal retaliation by imperial Catholic troops. In the end, after France defeated the imperial army, these territories were ceded by the emperor to France, but it was only about 1/3 of Alsace, and the rest followed over the years in a complex series of episodes linked to feudal rights (which were crazily intertwined in the Holy Roman Empire) that would be too long and complicated to explain. The annexation was gradual, from the late 1640s to the late 1790s (the Republic of Mulhouse only became French in the 1790s when it decided to join the French Republic).
Then unlike the Brits, the French royal authorities cleverly kept a light touch in Alsace: no inflows of French colonists, no subjugating the local population to French law (local customary German laws remained until 1789), no deportation of the elites and merchant community, no taxes (newly annexed provinces were usually exempted of most taxes by the French kings), and no customs duties imposed (until 1789, the customs border of France still ran along the summits of the Vosges, and Alsace had no customs border with the Holy Roman Empire, as before the 1640s). Also the German-language university of Strasbourg was preserved until 1789. Etc. Etc.
It's simply not comparable with how French Canada was treated after 1760.
Then of course there was the French Revolution when all provinces were treated as equal, and representatives from all provinces swore in 1790 their free belonging to France in the Fête de la Fédération. It may only be symbolic, but in politics symbols are important. Then all the particular laws and customs of Alsace were eradicated during the French Revolution, but this was a movement of building an equal society by getting rid of privileges all across France that wasn't specific to Alsace, so it was not perceived by the Alsatians as something being done "against" them, and in fact they eagerly took part in it as they too were eager to build a free and equal society (various prominent French generals during the French Revolution were Alsatians, such as Kléber; how many French Canadian generals in the British Army post 1760?).
So both cases are vastly different. This is why today Alsace is integrated within France, whereas Québec still is a thorny issue in Canada. History matters.
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