Une Constitution pour l’Empire: sur les origines de l’idée fédérale au Québec, 1765-1815

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Une Constitution pour l’Empire: sur les origines de l’idée fédérale au Québec, 1765-1815
Abstract
The author points out that in the reorganisation of the British imperial government which began in the mid-eighteenth century and continued through the American revolution, officers of the Crown in the Anglo-American colonies who would remain loyal after 1783 attempted to conceptualise a constitutional regime built on the creation of a federal structure uniting the American colonies. Developed mainly in the projects elaborated between 1783 and 1815 by William Smith (1728-1793) and Jonathan Sewell (1766-1839), both Loyalists who moved to Quebec, the author maintains that these proposals for colonial federation also came to form an important pole within Lower Canadian political discourse and came to define the mechanisms of political domination which imperial-minded thinkers and politicians would attempt to impose on the colony after 1822. The author argues that in the Lower Canadian political context, federalism therefore represented a model of government which allowed for the perpetuation of imperial political hegemony rather than an ideology which foreshadowed the coming of modern Canada.
Publication
Les Cahiers des Dix
Volume
No. 66
Pages
25-54
Date
2012
Language
fr
URL
Citation
Harvey, Louis-Georges. “Une Constitution pour l’Empire: sur les origines de l’idée fédérale au Québec, 1765-1815.” Les Cahiers des Dix No. 66 (2012): 25–54. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cdd/2012-n66-cdd0527/1015071ar.pdf.
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