France and Britain had been arch enemies for centuries. New France (Quebec) was taken over by the British. Ben Franklin had a newspaper in Montreal. You’d think there’d be some influence and rationale for Quebec to secede from Britain and join the US during the war of independence, but it didn’t. Why not?
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In 1774, the British passed the [Quebec Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Act). This act protected French religion and culture in Quebec and expanded Quebec’s borders.
This was one of the Intolerable Acts that inspired the Revolution. The American were infuriated that the British would dare to allow the Quebequers to remain Catholics and that the British allowed the French Quebequers to acquire new land.
It does not make any sense for Quebec to join a revolution where they were seen as the bad guys. The Quebers at that time had a much better deal with the British than with the Colonists.
Quebec was under British control, as you said – there was no French military forces there.
However, the first major operation the Continental Army undertook *was* to invade Quebec and push out the British forces, to get the French Canadiens to side with them. It ended up a disaster, and was also the first major defeat suffered by the Continental Army.
Long story short… the US did send an invitation, but it was refused. The benefit the UK gave Quebec (could stay french and catholic) is one of the main reasson why the US wanted to separated to begin with. Look up the intolerable acts.
I don’t see why you would join someone revolting over the fact that you exist. And, looking at how the millions of french in Louisiana was forcibly assimilated… quebec picked the right team in the end.
US tried to take over quebec afterward and failed. They took control of montréal for a year, and the whole population revolted agaisnt them. They were defeated in Quebec city afterward.
Probably because the Quebec economy was much more firmly tied to Europe (being mainly tied to fur exports to UK/France and Wheat exports to british colonies in the west indies), lacking the large plantation owners that were so influential for the politics of the early United states (All the major players in early US history were plantation owners).
Great Britain had also been very careful to place British loyalists at key positions in the former french colony, putting their thumb much more firmly on Quebec than the Thirteen colonies while still making it very clear that they weren’t trying to impose protestantism on the province (allowing the french to retain language, culture and religion).
[This](https://www.sar.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Other-Colonies-by-Daniel-Haulman.pdf) reads like a high school essay, but I quickly checked a couple of the facts and it seems to check out. Needs citations before I’d take it as truth, but makes sense.
Basically: the British allowed Catholic French aristocracy in Quebec (both the city and the colony) to maintain vast tracts of land and collect money from their tenants as long as they swore allegiance to the King. Also there was still a lot of enmity between Catholics and Protestants (the overwhelming majority of the revolutionary leaders) and the Quebeçoise thought they might be forced to convert or become second class citizens.
Quebec always wanted to be its own country. Also they would rather salt their lands and commit mass suicide than be forced to speak English.
If the US had taken Quebec by force and had it as a state at some point, they would probably have seceded by now. Canada at least mostly allowed Quebec to do almost everything they want within reason, that wouldn’t fly in the early US.
Last but not least I am under the impression there was some bad blood between the Quebecois and the early US. Don’t forget the only people to ever successfully raze the White House were Quebecois. The one the US has today is not the original White House.
Britain gave liberty of cult to the catholics, and rub the back of the church, so that the priest told people to follow the british orders. beside part of the reason america decided to get independant was because of the act of Quebec, that restored french civil law and gave more territories to Quebec. So Quebec had not much to gain at this moment in history to join the USA
When the British took control of Canada after the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years War), they actually ‘gave’ the mainly Francophone, mainly Catholic Quebecers a great deal of legal rights and protections, such as the right to freely practice Catholicism (the oath of allegiance to the British government originally referred to Protestantism), instituted French legal codes as opposed to British legal codes for the practice of private law, so on and so forth.
Because of this, the Quebecers actually tended to prefer the British governance over the increasingly-rebellious American colonies to their south, largely because the Americans ***did not*** ***like*** the Quebecers, for a number of reasons.
The American colonies had, just a few years before, fought a major war against the Quebecers (and French Canada was a major threat to the American colonies from both regions very beginning, along with French Native American allies). But even ignoring that, and the other religious, societal and cultural issues, the American soldiers of that war ***expected to get paid for their service***.
And in the American colonies, which were perpetually-cash-strapped by design (the British mercantile system was designed to funnel raw resources from America to Britain, not money from Britain to America, and pretty much all of the North American colonies were ***poor as fuck)***, most of that pay had historically come from either loot, or from land-grants taken from conquered land.
But since Quebec was now part of the British empire, their land and property was protected. And vast swathes of what is now the American Midwest (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, etc) were now protected and Americans were prohibited from settling them. American veterans of the French and Indian Wars were turning to their governments, expecting to get paid, and their governments were turning to the British government, who basically responded with “***fuck you, pay me***”, levying taxes and tariffs and fees onto colonies, and when those colonies protested the taxes, sending military forces to their homes, dissolving local governments, prohibiting protests……. you know where this is going.
TL, DR: The Quebecers didn’t join the American Revolution largely because the British ‘allowed/protected” them in what they wanted to do (Be Catholic, protect their land claims and property, keep French law, etc), and even more than that, the Americans were largely-against the Quebecers for cultural and societal reasons
However, it is important to recognize that other Canadian now-Provinces were much more sympathetic to the Americans, at least at first. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, heavily settled by and linked with New England (even to this day), were sympathetic to the American revolutionaries, Nova Scotia in particular.
A stint of bad luck (British troops were rushed to garrison the provinces and subdue revolutionary intent), bad choices (George Washington didn’t want to invade a province that wasn’t actively rebelling , thinking it would make the Revolution look like aggressors) , and fuckery on the Americans part (American privateers decimated shipping around the Canadian Maritimes, which fucked things up for the British military but also made life hard for Canadian civilians) ended up keeping those Canadians out of the Revolution.
It is also important to note that the Americans did have volunteers come down from Canada to help the Revolution: the 1st and 2nd Canadian Regiments were made of Quebecers.
Having met exactly 12 people from Quebec, if things haven’t changed too much, there’s a decent chance the colonies didn’t like them any more than the rest of Canada does now.
The very short version:
1. The québécois had just spent 100 years viewing the English colonies as arch-enemies and hated opponents, so they were in no rush to join up.
2. The English had basically just given them self-rule, so independence didn’t offer them anything they didn’t already have.
3. The English had also guaranteed their Catholicism, so they were less than enthused about the idea of chaining themselves to a bunch of Puritans.
4. The French Crown had lost to the British despite having a huge navy, vast wealth, and the world’s best army. So they were rightly skeptical of the chances of victory of a group of amateurs with no money, no training, and no navy.
5. They were used to high taxes and they didn’t have a trade with the Caribbean being strangled by British regulations, so they basically saw the Americans as a bunch of spoiled whiny slave traders who weren’t worth helping.
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