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Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: the Iß^'J-^S Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada

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Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: the Iß^'J-^S Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: The iß^'j-^S Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada MICHEL DUCHARME ALF A CENTURY AGO, two histoHans, Robert Palmer and Jacques Godechot, proposed that the late-eighteenth- H. century revolutions of the Atlantic World be inte- grated into one analytical framework. They argued that the American Revolution of 1776, the Dutch uprising of the 1780s, the unrest in the Austrian Low Countries afrer 1787, the French Revolution of 1789, and all of the European revolutions of the 1790s were, in fact, a single phenomenon. It was, in their view, as if one single, great revolution had shaken the Atlantic world between 1776 and 1800.' 1. Robert R. Palmer and Jacques Godcchot's proposal first appeared in 'Le problème de l'Atlantique du XVlIlème au XXème siècle,' in Storia Contemporánea, Relazioni del X Congress« Internazionale di Sciaize Storicbe 6 vols. (Florence: G. C. Sansoni Editore, 1955), 5: 219-39. Each wrote a history of the .Atlantic Revolution: Robert R. Palmer, Tbe .'ige of the Democratic Revohition. .*í Political Histoiy of Europe and Ameiica. i-j6u-iHoo, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959); Jacques Godechot, Les Révolutions ('770-1-jç^) (1963; reprint, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), 99-177. MICHEL DUCHARME is an assistantprofessorof history at the University of British Colum- bia. The ideas discussed in this paper were first developed in his Ph.D. dissertation, 'Aux fondements de l'Etat canadien. La liberté au Canada de 1776 à 1^41' (McGill Universit)', 2005). The author wishes to thank .Ajuia de Aguayo (Dawson College, Montréal) for her usefial comnienB and editing work and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds pour b Formation de Chercheurs et I'.Aide à la Recherche (FCAR) for their support. Copyright © 2007 by American Antiquarian Society ! 4Ï3 414 American Antiquarian Society Fven if we can appreciate the transnational ambition of their analysis, we must recognize that this description ofthe so-called 'Atlantic Revolution' was really quite limited in scope, as it fo- cused only on the United States and Europe.^ Not a single word was said about Saint Domingue, although its unrest and revolts of the 1790s eventually led to the creation of Haiti in 1804. In fact, if we exempt the United States, it was as if the entire New World had gone missing from this Atlantic Revolution. In recent decades, historians, including many participants in this confer- ence, have tried to correct this deficiency They successfully inte- grated the nineteenth-century Central and South American revo- lutions by exploring Spanish and Portuguese colonial histories.^ Finally, it can be said that the historical analysis ofthe Atlantic Revolution covers all Europe and America, between 1776 and 1840. Or can it? There is, in fact, one country's history that con- tinues to be left out ofthe Atlantic framework: Canada's. When Canadian historians have studied Canadian history at the time of the American and French revolutions, very few have tried to integrate it into an Atlantic framework. The only confer- ence to deal with the relationship between Canada and the Atlan- tic Revolution was held in 1969, at the Université de Montréal. The conference proceedings were later published in the Annales historiques de la Révolution française (n)-j^). Then, during the 1970s and 1980s, Jean-Pierre Wallot showed some interest in this framework. In 1995, Allan Greer encouraged others to study the 2. Many American and European scholars bave followed the path opened by Palmer and (îodeehot. See, among others: Bemard Bailyn. The Ideological Origins of the Ame-rican Rnwlu- tion (Cambridge: Belknap Press ofthe Harvard University Press, 1967); Cïordon Wood, Tbe Creation of the Ameiican Republic, ii'j^-i'jHf) (1969; reprint. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); J. G. k. Pocock, The Machiavellian Mnment (Princeton: Prince- ton University Press, 1975}, 333-552; Simon Sbama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netl)erlan(Li, ¡rHo-iHi^ (^977; reprint, London: Harper Perennial, iy92);J. G. A. Pocock, 'The Dutch Republican Iradition,' in Tbe Dutcb Republic in tbe Eighteenth Centuty: Decline, Enlightamient and Revolution, eds. Margaret Jacobs and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt (Ithaca: Cor- nell University Press, 1992), ïSH-i^y, Stephen SmaU. Political Thatight in h-elanil, ¡-¡-jo-tyçH: Republicanisin, Patrioti.m/ and Radiailhm (Oxibrd: Oxford University Press, 2002); Annie Jourdan, Zv/ Révolution, une exception française {Paris; Flammarion, 2004). 3. See, among others: David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutio-nary Studies (Blooming- ton; Indiana University Press, 2002); Lester D. Langley, Tbe A?fiericas in the Age of Revolu- tion, l-j^o-'iS^o (New Haven; Yale LTniversity Press), 1996. Jaime ¥.-. Rodriguez O., ed., Mexico in the Age of Democj-atic Revolutions: ij^o-iS^o (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994). The 18^ 7-5 8 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada 415 1837-38 Canadian rebellions as part of an Atlantic revolution, without venturing to do it himself. In 1998, Jean-Pierre Boyer, a communications professor at the Université du Québec à Mon- tréal, tried to integrate Québec in the Atlantic framework in an essay published at the end of a French translation of Thomas Paine's 77?^ Rights of Man.•^ However, most French-speaking Qué- bec historians, such as Yvan Lamonde, Gérard Bouchard, and Louis-Georges Harvey, prefered to study Québec history in its North American context, which they called 'l'américanité,' rather than in its Atlantic context'^ In English Canada, historians were perhaps a bit too eager to promote what distinguished Canada from the United States to really try to integrate the Canadian past into the Atiandc framework. So, for instance, English Cana- dian historians writing on that period focused their attention on the arrival ofthe Loyalists afrer the American Revolution so as to establish the emergence ofa distinct Canadian identity."^ 4. Jean-Pierre Wallot, 'Révolution et réfoniilsiiie <lans le Bas-Canada (1773-1815),' Annales hisíoriijues de la Réi'olution française, 45: 213 (1973): 344-406; Jean-Pierre Watlot, 'Frontière ou fragment du système atlantique: Des idées étrangères dans l'identité bas- canadienne au déhut du XlXe siècle,' Canadian Historical Association Histoncal Papers (1983): 3-14; Allan Cîrcer, •iH37-ií<38: Rebellion Reconsidered,' Canadian Historical Re- vire: 76 (1995): I-18; Jean-Pierre Boyer, 'Le Quebec à l'heure des révolutions atlantiques,' in Thomas Paine, Les Droits de IHomme, ed. Jean-Pierre Boyer (Sillery, Québec: Septen- trion, 1998), 355-424. 5. For'l'américanité', see: Yvan Lamonde, '.American Cultural Infiiience in Quebec: A One-Way Mirror,' in Problems and Oppotninities in US-Qnelnr Relatioiis, eds. Alfred Ü. Hero, Jr. ami Murcel Daneau (Boulder, Colo.: Westvicw Press, 1984), 106-26; Gérard Bouchard and Y\-an Lamontle, eds., Québécois et Améticains: La culture //uébécoise auxXIX^ et XX*^ siècles (Montréal: Fides, 1995); Louis-Georges Harvey, Le Printe?nps de l'Amérique finnçaise: Américanité. atiticolonialh?ne et répiélieanisme dans le discours politii/ne québécois, ¡iSn^-iS^I (Montréal: Boréal, 2005). Gérard Bouchard has integrated this 'américanité' in a broader fnunework: the new societies. See Genèse des nations et cultures du nouveau monde. E'sai d'hi.\'toire comparée (Montréah Boréal, 2000). 6. For recent works on the loyalists, see: .\nn Gorman Condon, The Envy of the Ameri- can States: The LoynlLrt Dreafti for New Bninraick (Fredericton, N. B.: New Ireland, 1984); Wallace Brown and Herewaril Senior, Victorious in Defeat: The Loyalists in Canada (To- ronto: Methuen, 1984); Christopher Moore, The Loyalists: Reivlution. /ú'//f, tnid Setllejncnt CToronto: Macmillan, 1984); Walter Stewart, Tn/e Blue: The Loyalist Legend (Toronto: Col- lins, 1985); Neil MiicKiiuion, This Utifiieridly Soil: The Loyalm Expérience iv Nova Scotia, ¡jSj-i-jifi (Montréal and Kingston: McGilt-Queen's University Press, [986);J.M. Bum- sted, 'The Loyalist Question on Prince Kdward Island, 1783-1861,' Island Magazine 25 (1989): 20-28. On the loyalist myth, sce:Jo-Ann Fellows, 'The Loyalist Myrh in Canada.' Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers (1971): 94-111; Norman Knowles, Invent- ing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts ('Ibronto; University ofibronto Press, 1997). 4i6 American Antiquarian Society It is true that the British North American colonies that eventu- ally became Canada did not join tbe thirteen colonies in their revolution. It is also true that these same colonies did not take the opportunity to declare their independence during the French Revolution, or during the subsequent French Revolutionary War. This is not to say that the American and French revolutionary and republican ideals did not spread throughout the colonies dur- ing the 1780s and '90s. This is especially so in the portion ofthe province of Québec tbat became Lower Canada in 1791. Fleury Mesplet, for instance, a Frencb printer who had come from Philadelphia to Montréal in 1776, remained in the city after the withdrawal of American troops in May \-]-]6J Between 1785 and his death in 1794, he indirectly promoted republican ideals tbrough his bilingtial newspaper. La Gazette de Montreal/ Tbe Montreal Gazette. The promotion of republican and revolution- ary principles was not only the work of people within the colony. In June 1793, Edmond-Charles Genêt, the French minister in Philadelphia,
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