Anglo-Canadians

The article is devoted to revealing the role of nationalism in the socio-political crisis in Canadas in the 1830s and the subsequent uprisings of 1837–1838. The author argues that this was the time when colonial politicians and intellectuals began to abandon their British nationalism, which was very characteristic of them before and began to develop the idea of a Canadian nation actively. Unsuccessful attempts to achieve the same rights and privileges that the inhabitants of Britain had convinced the colonists that there was no equality between the subjects of the king in the Old and New Worlds. Therefore, without equal rights, Canadians could no longer consider themselves British. Moreover, the whole system of the colonial government, its legitimacy, and, in the end, their loyalty to the king, were called into question. Moreover, the ideas about Canadians as a nation in Upper and Lower Canada were quite similar and, which is especially noteworthy, were, in fact, civil, not ethnic. But the most important thing was that if the Canadians were not British, then it logically followed that they lived under the rule of foreigners, as the compilers of ninety-two resolutions put it, their land was ruled by a foreign power with a priori different interests, goals, motives than Canadians. And this, in the era of the triumphant march of nationalism across the Western world, was considered a problem of a much larger scale than the struggle for office or reform. This state of affairs was perceived as completely wrong, unfair, and intolerable. And it could not continue indefinitely. Once this idea had won the minds of patriots and reformers, their further radicalization, a complete break with British nationalism, and a confrontation with the empire were inevitable.