Quebec nationalism
Quebec nationalism or Québécois nationalism is a political ideology that prioritizes cultural belonging to, the defence of the interests of, and the recognition of the political legitimacy of the Québécois nation. It has been a movement and a central issue in Quebec politics since the beginning of the 19th century. Québécois nationalism has seen several political, ideological and partisan variations and incarnations over the years.
Quebec nationalism plays a central role in the political movement for the independence of Quebec from Canada. Several groups and political parties claim to be Québécois nationalists. The autonomist political parties, which do not want the sovereignty of Quebec but the expansion of its powers and the defence of its specificity within Canada, such as the Coalition Avenir Québec, also claim to be Québécois nationalists.
Quebec nationalism was first known as "French Canadian nationalism". The term was replaced by "Québécois nationalism" during the Quiet Revolution.
liberal nationalism
New France
The settlement of New France was made up of 7 regions that spanned from the Maritimes to the Rockies and from the Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Although this landscape was vast, most efforts were made to colonize what is now present-day Canada. After the 17th century, the newly arrived French settlers adapted to the terrain of New France. Over time, these settlers developed a regional Canadian identity. This could be seen in the developing of new accents, creation of new legends and stories, emerging societal traits and the use of the French language. The latter originated with the loss of the settlers' langue d'oïls and the adoption of standard French, which came to be used by the educated classes of the colony. It further developed from the levelling of many langues d'oïl which led to the creation of a local accent.During this time, the newly arrived immigrants were no longer seen as immigrants but rather people who embodied not only a Canadian identity but also a provincial identity as well. Moreover, this was complemented by the fact that 95% of the colonists were Francophones, while the remaining people were English-speaking. However, this would prove to create contention later on.
1534–1774
Canada was first a French colony. Jacques Cartier claimed it for France in 1534, and permanent French settlement began in 1608. It was part of New France, which constituted all French colonies in North America. Up until 1760, Canadien nationalism had developed itself free of all external influences. However, during the Seven Years' War, the British invaded New France as part of the French and Indian War, winning a conclusive victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. At the Treaty of Paris, France agreed to abandon its claims over New France in return for the island of Guadeloupe. From the 1760s onward, Canadien nationalism developed within a British constitutional context. Despite intense pressure from outside Parliament, the British government drafted the Quebec Act which guaranteed Canadiens the restoration of French civil law; guaranteed the free practice of the Catholic faith; and returned the territorial extensions that they had enjoyed before the Treaty of Paris. In effect, this "enlightened" action by leaders in the British Parliament allowed French Canada to retain its unique characteristics. Although detrimental to Britain's relationship with the Thirteen Colonies, this has, in its contemporary assessment, been viewed as an act of appeasement and was largely effective at dissolving Canadien nationalism in the 18th century yet it became less effective with the arrival of Loyalists after the revolutions. With the Loyalists splitting the province of Quebec into two identities; Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Canadiens were labelled by the Loyalists as French Canadians.1800s–1880s
From 1776 to the late 1830s, the world witnessed the creation of many new national states with the birth of the United States, the French Republic, Haiti, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Gran Colombia, Belgium, Greece and others. Often accomplished militarily, these national independence movements occurred in the context of complex ideological and political struggles pitting European metropoles against their respective colonies, often assuming the dichotomy of monarchists against republicans. These battles succeeded in creating independent republican states in some regions of the world, but they failed in other places, such as Ireland, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, and Germany.There is no consensus on the exact time of the birth of a national consciousness in French Canada. Some historians defend the thesis that it existed before the 19th century, because the Canadiens saw themselves as a people culturally distinct from the French even in the time of New France. The cultural tensions were indeed palpable between the governor of New France, the Canadian-born Pierre de Vaudreuil and General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, a Frenchman, during the French and Indian War. However, the use of the expression la nation canadienne by French Canadians started being used in the 19th century. The idea of a nation canadienne was supported by the liberal or professional class in Lower Canada: lawyers, notaries, librarians, accountants, doctors, journalists, and architects, among others. The term la nation canadienne-française became more common after the Act of the Union in 1840.
A political movement for the independence of the Canadien people slowly took form following the enactment of the Constitutional Act of 1791. This act of the British Parliament created two colonies, Lower Canada and Upper Canada, each of which had its own political institutions. In Lower Canada, the French-speaking and Catholic Canadiens held the majority in the elected legislative assembly, but were either a small minority or simply not represented in the appointed legislative and executive councils, both appointed by the governor, representing the British Crown in the colony. Most of the members of the legislative council and the executive council were part of the British ruling class, composed of wealthy merchants, judges, militia officers and other members of the elite supportive of the Tory party. From early 1800 to 1837, the government and the elected assembly were at odds on virtually every issue.
Under the leadership of Speaker Louis-Joseph Papineau, the i=unset initiated a movement of reform of the political institutions of Lower Canada. The party's constitutional policy, summed up in the Ninety-Two Resolutions of 1834, called for the election of the legislative and executive councils.
The movement of reform gathered the support of the majority of the representatives of the people among francophones but also among liberal anglophones. A number of the prominent characters in the reformist movement were of British descent, for example John Neilson, Wolfred Nelson, Robert Nelson and Thomas Storrow Brown or of Irish extraction, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Daniel Tracey and Jocquelin Waller.
Two currents existed within the reformists of the i=unset: a moderate wing, whose members were fond of British institutions and wished for Lower Canada to have a government more accountable to the elective house's representative and a more radical wing whose attachment to British institutions was rather conditional to this proving to be as good as to those of the neighbouring American republics.
The formal rejection of all 92 resolutions by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom in 1837 led to a radicalization of the patriotic movement's actions. Louis-Joseph Papineau took the leadership of a new strategy which included the boycott of all British imports. During the summer, many popular gatherings were organized to protest against the policy of Great Britain in Lower Canada. In November, Governor Archibald Acheson ordered the arrest of 26 leaders of the patriote movement, among whom Louis-Joseph Papineau and many other reformists were members of parliament. This instigated an armed conflict which developed into the Lower Canada Rebellion.
Following the repression of the insurrectionist movement of 1838, many of the most revolutionary nationalist and democratic ideas of the i=unset were discredited.
Ultramontane nationalism
1840s–1950s
Although it was still defended and promoted up until the beginning of the 20th century, the French-Canadian liberal nationalism born out of the American and French revolutions began to decline in the 1840s, gradually being replaced by both a more moderate liberal nationalism and the ultramontanism of the powerful Catholic clergy as epitomized by Lionel Groulx.In opposition with the other nationalists, ultramontanes rejected the rising democratic ideal that the people are sovereign and that the Church should have limited influence in governance. To protect the power of the Church and prevent the rise of democracy and the separation of church-and-state, Lionel Groulx and other intellectuals engaged in nationalistic 'myth-making' or propaganda, to build a nationalistic French-Canadian identity, in purpose to protect the power of the Church and dissuade the public from popular-rule and secularist views. Groulx propagated French-Canadian nationalism and argued that maintaining a Roman Catholic Quebec was the only means to 'emancipate the nation against English power.' He believed the powers of the provincial government of Quebec could and should be used within Confederation, to bolster provincial autonomy, and advocated it would benefit the French-Canadian nation economically, socially, culturally and linguistically. Groulx successfully promoted Québécois nationalism and the ultra-conservative Catholic social doctrine, to which the Church would maintain dominance in political and social life in Quebec. In the 1920s–1950s, this form of traditionalist Catholic nationalism became known as clerico-nationalism.