Fall of New France changed the world

Of all the events that occurred in North America since the arrival of Europeans, the fall of New France and its capital, Quebec is the keystone on which the world today depends.

From this single event flowed two major and a host of minor revolutions, the rise of the United States and the global asendency of the English language. From it also arose another type of pluralistic state in Canada, and the possibilities of global linkages that this model portends for future generations.

The Seven Years War (1756-63) has been called the first real world war. It involved all the major European powers and was fought in and over their colonial possessiongs around the world.
On a single day in 1759 Britain defeated France in two theatres half a world apart: in the Battle of Pondicherry, which gave her control of India, the jewell in the crown, and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which gave her control of North America.

Taken together, these victories replaced France as the leading world power. It is the second that concerns us here.

Until this time Britain's colonies in North America were spread in a narrow band along on near the eastern seaboard. Even with the "Indian lands" their colonists later coveted, they were boxed in by French forts along the Saint Lawrence, down the Mississippi and on the lower Great Lakes.

The outcome of the Seven Years War changed all this. It placed the entire eastern half of the continent under a single colonial power. Potentially, it opened up the interior to English speaking settlement, though this did not occur for some time.

But with the First Nations farther inland no longer allied with and armed by the French, the tables tipped in favour of the one remaining European power. And with the fear of France removed, the Thirteen Colonies became more assertive.

They no longer depended on Britain for defence, and therefore felt safe to push the British out. The American Revolution became possible and imminent after the colonies of eastern North America were unified under a single flag.

The replacement of France by Britain as the leading world power also opened the way to Britain's eventual eclipse by the United States. It divided British industrial and commercial power. The American War of Independence became a precedent for other revolutions.

The French Revolution was inspired in part by the success of the American one. The new French Empire that emerged under Napoleon weakened the British, even though they ultimately triumphed over it.

Other New World colonies in the Americas rebelled against their Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters in the hope of form a United States of South America. Though this did not materialize, the loss of these possessions sent out a signal that the day of European domination was over.

Though Britain's Second Empire remained standing for almost another two centuries, the hand writing was on the wall. It was no longer tenable for a European kingdom to control vast territories and populations abroad for its own local advantage. Two world wars in the twentieth century finally brought this to an end.

Though British politcal hegemony would decline, Britain's cultural and economic legacy was not exhausted. The US would carry the English language to a new global supremacy, and surpass British inventiveness in what would become the American military industrial complex. Another part of the British legacy would be carried forward in the northern half of North America.

Britain's generous treatment of the French colonists she acquired in the Seven Years War was motivated not only by a desire to counter American assertiveness to the south. It also grew out of Britain's own experience as a pluralistic state: the United Kingdom of Great Britain which included the principality of Wales.

Though Britain's treatment of its Irish subjects was far from exemplary, she went to significant lengths to incorporate, not assimilate, the different peoples on her own island. This was taken even farther in the New World.

The religious and cultural rights extended to the so-called "conquered" French colonists laid the basis of a second North American state. French speaking voyageurs and Scots traders were the backbone of the fur trading enterprises that linked Canada from east to west by canoe.

Their waterways were the routes followed later by transcontinental railways. And the political alliances that followed grew out of a sense of Britishness that was based on ideas of inclusiveness rather than ethnicity. This is the basis of the current Canadian federation.

All these developments could not have occurred as they did if the colonial leadership of the continent had not passed from French to British hands in the treaty of 1763. Had the order been reversed--had British tenure given way to French supremacy--progress would have been very different.

French government was not inclined to favour the moves that led to eventual democracy. In fact, it was early British sympathies for colonial grievances that allowed the American liberty movements to flourish until they reached the point of no return. Had French troops been occupying the Thirteen Colonies, reprisals and repression would have been much more severe.

Likewise, had the British been succeeded by the French in Canada, rather than the reverse, it is unlikely the language, religion and culture of the Anglo colonists would have been tolerated or encouraged. There is a French cultural imperialism that has no equivalent in English speaking society, even at the height of the Raj.

French and English influences in North America occurred in the order that gave us the best of both. The passage of leadership from one to another was crucial to the strength of the modern world, and the two countries that emerged in North America.