That’s probably an overstatement. Quite a few, but certainly not all, Tories stayed behind in the new republic. None were rubbed out by Continental death squads.
Just to be clear, the F&IW lasted from 1754-63. George III was king only for the last three years. George II, his grandfather, was the monarch for the first four years of the war, when British policy was largely set, and not by him but his ministers, first and foremost Pitt the Elder.
I’ve wondered too if the difference in population was a factor. The American colonies just barely mustered an army strong enough to mount the war. Funding was always a major problem. There were several points when lack of pay and supplies made it difficult for Washington to keep the army together. We were fortunate England didn’t unleash its full military powers against us. The Canadian colonists had even fewer people and resources available to fight.
You’re still making the assumption they wanted independence and would have otherwise be willing to fight for it had they resources.
There was a significant portion of the American colonists who didn’t really care about that either.
The Canadians were, by and large, satisfied with British rule. Overtures were made by the Americans and rebuffed. Add the invasion attempt, and they really weren’t interested in partnering up.
Again, there appears to be a touch of modern revisionism of the brave Americans fighting for freedom or some such. That’s great for patriotic speeches, but it’s not a good basis for historical motivations.
When the British taxes in America were at their highest, they were still significantly lower than what people were paying back in Britain. And even more significantly, as was already pointed out, the Americans raised their taxes as soon as they declared independence.
If the war was really about money, the Americans would have stayed a British colony and paid less. The war was about political control - that’s what they didn’t have before independence.
That coalition happened AFTER the American Revolution.
“Canada” as it is currently understood wasn’t the same thing in 1776. Ontario did not exist at all; it was part of Quebec until 1791 and in 1776 had very little English settlement. Britain’s “Canadian” colonies - the term would not have been used much then - were Quebec, which has pointed out had little reason to join the Thirteen Colonies, and the Maritimes, where the only major population centre of English colonists was in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was geographically separated from the Thirteen Colonies and American sea raiding turned public opinion there strongly against the revolution. New Brunswick was not a separate colony at the time, and Prince Edward Island (then called Saint John’s Island) and Newfoundland were very geographically isolated from the Colonies and, like Nova Scotia, subject to raids and maritime warfare by American forces, which understandably didn’t endear them to Revolutionary ideals.
In truth, the main reason Canada did not join the Revolution is that there really wasn’t a Canada. There was Quebec, with every reason to not join, a tiny scattering of English colonists who were physically distant from the Colonies by the standards of the time. The total population of English colonists in “Canada” in 1776 was probably not thirty thousand. There were far more people in Philadelphia than in “English” Canada.
The Revolution is what CREATED English Canada; refugees from the Colonies at least doubled the English population of Quebec and the Maritimes, which kick started further English immigration into what gradually became thought of a a distinct entity of “Canada.”
Interesting response RickJay. I didn’t know how settled Canada was in the 1770’s. How much of it was French and how much English. Thank you for clearing that up.
That coalition also happened a lot more in high school Canadian history textbooks and Heritage Minutes than in reality. For most of Canada’s history, Franco-Canadians were pretty actively discriminated against, even in Quebec, where most positions of power were held by Anglophones in Montreal and the Eastern Townships, and the Catholic Church in Quebec actively discouraged French participation in Canadian politics, and First Nations people had their land taken from them, were forced to sign unequal treaties which the government then violated, and then were forced to assimilate, and give up their cultures, languages, and religions in the Residential Schools.
Stuff’s certainly more pluralistic now, but for most of Canada’s history, it very much was us vs them thinking.
Apparently some Canadians did join the Revolution and fought with the Americans:
The 2nd Canadian Regiment, also known as Congress’ Own or Hazen’s Regiment, was authorized on January 20, 1776, as an Extra Continental regiment and raised in the province of Quebec for service with the Continental Army under the command of Colonel Moses Hazen. All or part of the regiment saw action at Staten Island, Brandywine, Germantown and the Siege of Yorktown. Most of its non-combat time was spent in and around New York City as part of the forces monitoring the British forces occupying that city. The regiment was disbanded on November 15, 1783 at West Point, New York.
Not just the Quebec Act, but remember that the French tried to transplant the feudal Seigneural model to Quebec, so lack of freedom and oppressive taxation by an aristocratic class were a fact of life until the British conquest. The British occupation felt just the opposite to Quebec; there was not a traditional self-reliant self-government of the people being suppressed like the way the Thirteen Colonies saw their situation; it was also a liberation. They just didn’t have the same grievances.
However, the people who objected to leaving British rule (united Empire Loyalists) thoughtfully came up to Canada from the colonies and populated Ontario with English speakers in the years after the revolution. Ontario in 1770 was practically deserted, by the early 1800’s it was thriving.
The Receiver General is responsible for receiving payments to the Government of Canada, issuing payments from the Government of Canada and prepares the Public Accounts of Canada. Costs associated with the monarchy are those tied to the Governor General and 10 Lietenant GGs and remain within Canada as part of the Canadian political framework.
The American independence put an end to taxing the colonies, and in a few years Britain would be at war with revolutionary/Napoleonic France. How did Britain deal with the loss of revenue and the titanic new costs?
Trade with the colonies stimulated the British economy, which paid out in increased tax revenue from the trade. After the war, trade between the UK and US resumed and that kept money coming in. It’s not like all business was cut off.
Also, Britain didn’t have to pay for the colonies anymore, so that’s one less cost center. I have no idea what the real numbers are, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it cost Parliament more money to support the colonies than they were directly bringing in taxes. But the overall economic effect would still be positive for the various industries involved (the East India Company, for example).
As for the cost of the new wars, taxes in the UK itself went up and they took on lots of debt. Basically the same thing happened in the US during WWII - taxes went up and lots of debt got piled up.
vomit_comet, neither political jabs or ethnic slurs are permitted in General Questions. This is an official warning. Keep this stuff out of this forum, and for that matter off the board in general.
It is unlikely Britain was making a lot of money off the Colonies. The population of the Colonies in 1776 was perhaps two and a half million, of whom perhaps 500,000 were slaves, as compared to Britain’s approximately 8.5 million, who were taxed at a vastly higher rate.
I’ve read one estimate that said that the North American colonies were net losses…basically, the annual net benefit in lower prices was about 75,000 pounds, while the administrative cost was about 400,000 pounds.
Canada was not sufficiently developed. The New England states had their budding industries that Britain wanted to keep as providing raw material, while the South had huge slave plantations. Slavery was beginning to be deeply frowned on in old England and the plantation owners wanted no part of the obligations imposed by the British master servant obligations. Blackstone and Adam Smith don’t address this directly, but the treatment of laborers in the UK made slavery a long term losing proposition with the British Parliment and the Southerners saw the writing on the wall. The Northerners were being inconvenienced by the short term restrictions on industry, but that would probably have gone away. But they didn’t know that. The coalition that allowed the North and South to unite for independence put them on the path to Civil War over slavery.