Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

"forcing more than a million of them to migrate south" is complete revisionist history.

I'm not talking about 18th century, I'm talking of the 1850-1950 period. There were 5.4 million people living in Québec in 1900, and many left because of a lack of opportunity. Obviously if the west had been theirs they would have moved to the Francophone west, not to some southern Anglophone US states where they felt alienated.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

There were some French coureurs des bois living further west than that. Not in settlements, but among the Indians.

It's quite clear that without the British conquest, all of the West would have become if not French, at least Francophone. The British conquest blocked the westward expansion of the French Canadians, forcing more than a million of them to migrate south to Anglophone US states. Long term this was far more detrimental to the Francophone North America than the temporary Anglo domination of Québec.

You've overlooked that Rupert's land was established in 1670, long before the Conquest. It even took in a large part of what is now Quebec, in addition to most of the West.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

More likely, istm, that U.S. Manifest Destiny would have seen much of the West taken by the USofA.

Would the USA have existed in the first place? Let's never forget that the USA exist precisely BECAUSE of the British conquest of Canada (which led both the American colonists to detach themselves from London as they did not fear the "French papists" anymore, AND pushed France to support their independence movement to avenge itself of the Canadian conquest by the UK).

Without the 1760 conquest, the 13 colonies would have remained British colonies for many more years. How history then evolves in the 19th century is hard to say. Probably many repeated wars between France and the UK. In any case North America would be a very different place today.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

You've overlooked that Rupert's land was established in 1670, long before the Conquest. It even took in a large part of what is now Quebec, in addition to most of the West.

Nobody lived there. It was purely a commercial enterprise, similar to the French fisheries in Newfoundland.

[kool maudit]

I don't really get these arguments in favour of "the Irish are British". It is not how they understand or see themselves. This is the key factor, and relates to the idea of self-determination. Obviously, one can always sit at a remove looking at street signs, skull shapes or whatever else and make alternate classifications, but what's the point?

In a thread about the identity of a still-stateless people within what was once the British Empire, it seems jarring to blithely deny the history and importance of Irish independence.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't really get these arguments in favour of "the Irish are British". It is not how they understand or see themselves. This is the key factor, and relates to the idea of self-determination. Obviously, one can always sit at a remove looking at street signs, skull shapes or whatever else and make alternate classifications, but what's the point?

In a thread about the identity of a still-stateless people within what was once the British Empire, it seems jarring to blithely deny the history and importance of Irish independence.

Well, depending on how you define who is Irish, there are 15 or 30% of the Irish who literally are British.

(I don't deny the existence of the Irish as a distinct people BTW. Though that doesn't mean I can't enjoy discussing just how distinct they actually are. Relative to the Scots, for example. Distinctiveness between peoples and nations is a highly variable thing.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I'm not talking about 18th century, I'm talking of the 1850-1950 period. There were 5.4 million people living in Québec in 1900, and many left because of a lack of opportunity. Obviously if the west had been theirs they would have moved to the Francophone west, not to some southern Anglophone US states where they felt alienated.

I have always envisioned that a scenario where France retained much of present-day Canada would have yielded a colder francophone version of Argentina here. Hopefully with a better economy and saner governance.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Well, depending on how you define who is Irish, there are 15 or 30% of the Irish who literally are British.

(I don't deny the existence of the Irish as a distinct people BTW. Though that doesn't mean I can't enjoy discussing just how distinct they actually are. Relative to the Scots, for example. Distinctiveness between peoples and nations is a highly variable thing.)

I guess the thing is that "British" strikes me as an almost purely political construct, like "Yugoslav". The "peoples" within are the constituent nations, including the English. So yes, Ireland was one of those and is not so different from Scotland except in that it achieved independence while Scotland has not yet done so. But once you're out of the Union, you're not British to me almost by definition. You're what you were before.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't really get these arguments in favour of "the Irish are British". It is not how they understand or see themselves.

Of course they don't see themselves as British! Some English establishment made them go through some terrible starvation in the mid 19th century. It was so bad that some had to eat their dead.
Some moms would require their kids to feed on their wrecks once they would be dead from the famine.
Do you think they would ever forget?

Nevertheless, they see themselves as English-speakers in the broad sense of this contemporary world.
It's no accident that they turned their island into some sort of tax haven, to be appealing to large corporate headquarters.
They are quite like Conservative Englishmen in that respect.

They're a Catholic tax haven. Monaco without the sunny weather of the French Riviera.
That's about it to me.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I guess the thing is that "British" strikes me as an almost purely political construct, like "Yugoslav". The "peoples" within are the constituent nations, including the English. So yes, Ireland was one of those and is not so different from Scotland except in that it achieved independence while Scotland has not yet done so. But once you're out of the Union, you're not British to me almost by definition. You're what you were before.

You're not wrong. Interesting how the "British Isles" moniker has remained for the archipelago, though I guess it's not that different from "North America". Canadians live in North America, but aren't Americans.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I'm not talking about 18th century, I'm talking of the 1850-1950 period. There were 5.4 million people living in Québec in 1900, and many left because of a lack of opportunity. Obviously if the west had been theirs they would have moved to the Francophone west, not to some southern Anglophone US states where they felt alienated.

Western Canada wasn't some economic powerhouse during this time. The majority of the land given to new immigrants in the Prairies was tough to work and not extremely productive. New England at the time was one of the largest textile manufacturing centers in the world outside of Manchester. People will typically gravitate towards a situation that provides the best prospects of economic stability for their family.

Disenfranchised African Americans didn't leave the Jim Crow south to go farm in North Dakota or even parts of Oklahoma where established black communities existed. The emigrated en masse to places like Chicago, Detroit, Boston, etc. where they most certainly felt alienated in many aspects, but there were ample opportunities to put food on the table.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Western Canada wasn't some economic powerhouse during this time. The majority of the land given to new immigrants in the Prairies was tough to work and not extremely productive. New England at the time was one of the largest textile manufacturing centers in the world outside of Manchester. People will typically gravitate towards a situation that provides the best prospects of economic stability for their family.

Disenfranchised African Americans didn't leave the Jim Crow south to go farm in North Dakota or even parts of Oklahoma where established black communities existed. The emigrated en masse to places like Chicago, Detroit, Boston, etc. where they most certainly felt alienated in many aspects, but there were ample opportunities to put food on the table.

This is true to some degree though there was interest on the part of French Canadians to remain on Canadian soil, and a couple hundred thousand did move to Ontario and another couple hundred thousand probably scattered across the Prairies as well over a half century or a century. There are lots of actual towns with French names and a smattering of francophones remaining that are a testament to that.

Another thing is that there is recorded correspondence between FD Roosevelt and Mackenzie King discussing how the US does a much better job of assimilating French Canadians than Canada does, and that this is a good solution to the "problem".

[lio45]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't really get these arguments in favour of "the Irish are British". It is not how they understand or see themselves. This is the key factor, and relates to the idea of self-determination.

That’s the “Saskatchewan sees itself as a Nation, therefore everyone must agree that it’s one” argument…?

Since when is one’s own opinion the key factor? If I think I’m smart but everyone else thinks I’m dumb, am I smart or am I dumb? You say the former; I say the latter…

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Another thing is that there is recorded correspondence between FD Roosevelt and Mackenzie King discussing how the US does a much better job of assimilating French Canadians than Canada does, and that this is a good solution to the "problem".

yes, and that is a stain on Canada's history.

That said, the implicit goal of integrating newcomers into Quebec is to assimilate them into the French-Canadian culture. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (I know that it is not exactly the same thing, but the means to achieve the ends isn't really much different).

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

There were some French coureurs des bois living further west than that. Not in settlements, but among the Indians.

It's quite clear that without the British conquest, all of the West would have become if not French, at least Francophone. The British conquest blocked the westward expansion of the French Canadians, forcing more than a million of them to migrate south to Anglophone US states. Long term this was far more detrimental to the Francophone North America than the temporary Anglo domination of Québec.

The Haudenosaunee had the French in North America pretty hemmed in regardless of whether the British conquest had happened.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't really get these arguments in favour of "the Irish are British". It is not how they understand or see themselves. This is the key factor, and relates to the idea of self-determination. Obviously, one can always sit at a remove looking at street signs, skull shapes or whatever else and make alternate classifications, but what's the point?

In a thread about the identity of a still-stateless people within what was once the British Empire, it seems jarring to blithely deny the history and importance of Irish independence.

Where ya been? Around here, folks can argue that black is white.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I have always envisioned that a scenario where France retained much of present-day Canada would have yielded a colder francophone version of Argentina here. Hopefully with a better economy and saner governance.

The question is how long France could have held it. If the Seven Years War had ended with France keeping Canada (for example by exchanging it with the sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe which the UK desired), the colonists in the 13 colonies would have been furious, and they would soon have engineered a new war with France, dragging their British metropolis in it. Would France have managed to keep Canada in that new war?

Deep down, what was needed was a reorientation of French public finances towards the Navy. This is what happened after 1760, due precisely to the trauma of losing Canada and India (more due to the trauma of losing India than losing Canada to be fair... the French governor in India was used as a scapegoat and sentenced to death and executed in Paris, whereas the French governor of Canada, who was much more guilty than the French governor in India, saved his life, which tells you all you need to know about how *little* the French authorities valued Canada).

But then this massive increase in French naval investment happened because of that trauma. If France had kept Canada at the end of the Seven Years War, I don't know whether there would have been this massive increase in the French Navy budget and strength (which allowed us to defeat the Brits in the War of American Independence).

But let's suppose this massive increase in French Navy budget would have taken place, that means the next war in the 1780s would have been pretty big, and costly, for both sides. And even if we hadn't lost Canada in that new war in the 1780s, the American colonists would have started another one in the 1800s, etc. I mean short of invading and conquering the UK (an idea which the government of Louis XVI toyed with, then decided to shelve), we would never have been at peace as long as we kept Canada.

So the question is, how numerous the French Canadians would have been by the time we finally lost Canada (as would have surely happened sooner or later).

Now of course in a world where France refocuses all its military efforts towards the navy like the Brits, we can defeat them long term (the French economy was 2 or 3 times larger than the British economy back then), and keep Canada for many decades after the 1760s. In that scenario, I think at some point there would have been a renewed wave of emigration from France to Canada, when Canada reached a point where it became a large and prosperous enough economy. In the 1740s-1750s already there was more and more interest in Canada in France, and more and more businesses trading and investing there. This would surely have ballooned at some point, perhaps in the early 19th century, then it's possible half a million Frenchmen would have moved to Canada, as happened in Algeria.

The question then becomes: what's the extent of that Canada? Does it still include today's US Midwest? That means waging many wars with the American colonists to keep it. And when does it decide to ask for self-governance from France, and perhaps secede entirely?

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Of course they don't see themselves as British! Some English establishment made them go through some terrible starvation in the mid 19th century. It was so bad that some had to eat their dead.
Some moms would require their kids to feed on their wrecks once they would be dead from the famine.
Do you think they would ever forget?

Nevertheless, they see themselves as English-speakers in the broad sense of this contemporary world.
It's no accident that they turned their island into some sort of tax haven, to be appealing to large corporate headquarters.
They are quite like Conservative Englishmen in that respect.

They're a Catholic tax haven. Monaco without the sunny weather of the French Riviera.
That's about it to me.

In French, the word Anglo-Saxon definitely includes the Irish.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Western Canada wasn't some economic powerhouse during this time. The majority of the land given to new immigrants in the Prairies was tough to work and not extremely productive. New England at the time was one of the largest textile manufacturing centers in the world outside of Manchester. People will typically gravitate towards a situation that provides the best prospects of economic stability for their family.

You underestimate how much of a rural, land-based population the French Canadians were back then. You also underestimate the hold of the Catholic church over them, and how they would have liked to keep them, instead of seeing them leave to Protestant urban centers in the US.

Of course the French Canadian Catholic church would have loved to see this million or so people who left go to the west to establish new Catholic communities there. They were just never given the opportunity to do it by the British and then federal government. All they could do was colonize the Abitibi area, and also the Saguenay area, which were areas open to them. Had they been granted Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, they would happily have established some Francophone Catholic utopia there.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

The Haudenosaunee had the French in North America pretty hemmed in regardless of whether the British conquest had happened.

Actually part of the Iroquois were allied with the French. Since the Great Peace of Montréal in 1701 the French were allowed pretty much anywhere in the west. Their relationship with the Indians was far better than that of the British, who had a much more conflictual relationship with the Indians.