Absurd Counterfactual Department: The Plains of Abraham

Last night while drinking heavily, a Bloquiste and I mused about a few decisive moments in Quebec history. The discussion boiled down to two major counte-factuals. In the first, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham goes the other way and Quebec remains part of the French Empire. In the second, the US war effort in 1812 is less inept, and the United States manages to seize Canada from the British.

The first is interesting in the context of the American and French Revolutions. I am curious as to how a French controlled Canada would have affected British and French policy during the American Revolution. I wonder if the continued possession of a North American colony would have made the French more reluctant to support American independence; I doubt that French absence would have reversed the course of the war, but it probably would have extended its length by several years. The question would then become the disposition of Canada during the Napoleonic Wars. Would Napoleon have sold Canada to the US along with the Louisiana Purchase? Would the British have invaded Canada? If so, what would the reaction of the United States have been? I’m inclined to think that the latter, at least, is quite likely, given that Great Britain rolled up most of France’s other colonies during the wars. Such an action might well have served to bring France and the US closer together, perhaps bringing the US into the war before 1812.

The second counterfactual is interesting in terms of its effect on American domestic politics. The Bloquiste I was speaking with seemed to believe that Quebec would have done better in the United States than in Canada, which is a line of thinking that I found odd. I really have no idea how the United States would have dealt with the presence of a large French speaking minority within its borders. I doubt that Quebec would have been accorded the privileges that it currently holds under the Canadian system, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a significant degree of political tension developed between Quebec and the rest of the US. The impact on US domestic and foreign policy is also interesting. I suspect that Quebec’s presence in the US would have strengthened the hand of the North in the various struggles over slavery between 1820 and 1860. I have no idea what the actual impact of that would have been, though. On the foreign policy front, I wonder if James K. Polk would have felt as compelled to steal a third of Mexico if Canada had been freely available. The answer to that is probably yes…