We might call it a consensus. Whereas most works of Franco-American history focus on the period between the U.S. Civil War and the Great Depression, scholars would generally agree that the great hemorrhage, la grande saignée, began around 1840. Amid the economic and political turbulence that followed the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838, French Canadians settled […]
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A Complete 180? Webster-Ashburton in Hindsight
This year, August 9 marks the 180th anniversary of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In 1842, the American and British governments, respectively represented by Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, Baron Ashburton, resolved longstanding points of contention and established grounds for better relations in North America. The first point of contention involved the still-unsettled boundary between Maine and […]
Continue readingAmerican Annexation of Canada: The Case in 1845
In his last few years in office, U.S. President John Tyler (1841-1845) devoted considerable attention to—and spent a great deal of political capital promoting—the annexation of Texas. The election of James Polk to the presidency on the same platform in November 1844 attested to the American public’s support for annexation and the Senate acted on […]
Continue readingFrench Canadians and the American Political Promise
In recent decades, Quebec scholars have paid special attention to the américanité of French Canadians—the extent to which they have been culturally, economically, and politically American, whether they be on Canadian soil or in the United States. This conceptual lens has proven its worth not merely in studies of recent Quebec history. When projected over […]
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