Perhaps Quebec could join the revolution and join France at the diplomacy table than when the revolution comes around they start considering state hood.
Fat chance of that happening with both Québec
and France at the same table. They both hated each other's guts.
----
As for the OP itself:
My apologies if this has been around the block a few times, but what would happen if Quebec joined the American Revolution, perhaps because Benedict Arnold carried a few copies of the Declaration of Independence in French with him? I think the presence of French-speaking delegates to the Constitutional Convention would make the Constitution, and American legal language by extension, have a greater degree of French influence in style.
The problem with that is that the only people in the Province of Quebec (as Canada was officially called back then, though the term remained as convenient shorthand) who supported US independence were Anglophones, primarily clustered in Montréal. (Also, the French translations were badly done because they were not translated properly, inappropriate as they were to the specific context.) With the Canadiens, things were a lot more complex than first glances.
Everyone else was "sounds interesting, but I've got more important things to do" and basically ignored the rebels (with, of course, a few exceptions here and there - the Canadiens were not that monolithic at this point in time). Now, whether or not one could point to the church hierarchy trying to keep in the British government's good favors or not is an open question, but I think it was in the Canadiens to be indifferent to the whole thing, supporting none of the two sides. That was what doomed the Revolution IOTL - this indifference and lack of making a good case to the Canadiens. Had the Americans made a good and convincing case in terminology Canadiens could understand, then we'd see the tide turning. Now, whether or not the Province of Quebec (as it stood during this period, with territory from the Detroit River to the Torngat Mountains in northern Labrador) becomes the US State of Canada is an open question, but considering that the only people from there that the Continental Congress would interact with are either likely foreigners (cf. Fleury Mespet), recent American immigrants, and/or members of the local Francophone upper class (or what remained of it), and also the pre-approval mentioned in the Articles of Confederation - one could get a possible picture from that.
And that's for attemtping to try to sign the Francophone majority on board. Just having copies of the Declaration of Independence in French translation is not good enough; many of the grievances expressed by the more numerous American colonists never really applied. And that's the problem of the US making its case - it would have to be done within the cultural context of the Canadiens as
they understood it, and there's was a different reality.
First off, the Québec Act - or, to give it its formal name, the British North America (Quebec) Act, 1774 (14 Geo. III c. 83). No, it was not given act as a random act of kindness, nor for that matter was it to pacify the French-Canadians. Also, it wasn't a sui generis solution just specifically for Canada. That kind of legislation was actually built on precedent deep into British history, of which Scotland was one example (as a union of equals) and before that with what we now call the Crown dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man). Even Wales and Ireland temporarily fell into this before their forced integration into England (in the case of Wales) or the UK (in the case of Ireland - and even then Ireland still retained a civil service based at Dublin Castle and its own body of law and legal system). The case of Canada initially fell into the Welsh/Irish mold of things, as the product of a conquest. So the Québec Act was nothing new nor ground-breaking. Now, having noted that I don't think that Britain would be as generous for the rest of the Empire - the Southern Cone included - as it did for Canada, because of the peculiar local dimension of the Québec Act, one which gets overlooked in discussion of this piece of legislation. Of all the colonies within the British and French empires, Canada and Acadia were actually unique and was set out as a different example from France itself. What should be kept in mind when talking about New France and the Conquest is that rather than as a bog-standard colonial enterprise which France applied to its Caribbean colonies and the rest of the Global South, New France was specifically founded as a reaction against the Wars of Religion tearing apart Europe, France included.
Its founders, including such luminaires like Champlain (who's a quite enigmatic figure himself) and Louis Hébert (one of New France's early governors), conceived New France as one where Catholic and Protestant could coëxist quite peacefully with each other, as if the Wars of Religion never happened, and as part of the Nouveau Monde as a place where Aboriginal people could quite happily be both themselves and as positive and co-equal contributors of New France society. In that sense it was an idealized version of France itself which was better than the France of reality, one which was rooted in the desires of ordinary people. To pilfer some pre-1960s traditional French-Canadian nationalist language (though for a completely different purpose), from the beginning of its conception New France was considered special, as the product of a messianic mission to be an example to the mère-patrie of how things should be like rather than how it became. Now there were those at Versailles (Cardinal Richelieu among them) who tried to subvert that ideal and tried to make New France fit into a box, but fortunately that didn't really happen at all - indeed, we have documentary evidence existing in archives in both France and Canada where successive members of the colonial bureaucracy constantly complained to the Palace about those "ingrates" who threw out all convention and protocol as the bureaucrats and élites themselves knew it and basically had ideas well above their rank and station. In effect the habitants were engaging in a quiet rebellion with the mother country which made life difficult for Versailles - so when the Treaty of Paris came around the French were glad to get rid of their vast holdings in North America - it just simply wasn't worth it, between a perceived disobedient population and a financial sinkhole sunk deeply into a fur industry which did not provide the type of quick riches found in France's Caribbean colonies.
And as for the Conquest? The Canadiens just simply carried on as they always did and well honed with their experiences with French colonial bureaucracy basically applied the same tactics to the British conquerors. They weren't going to let something as pesky as a religious test (which officially barred Catholics from openly practicing their religion and participating in public life) to stand as a barrier. The difference? The British Army was willing to go along, as far as it could, until they received orders from Whitehall to act differently. In reality things kept going on as before because the Army quickly realized that if they actually carried out its instructions the place would fall apart rather quickly. All the Québec Act did was just provided a de jure stamp of approval to what had been going on de facto and which required an insane amount of figleaves to cover it all up, thanks to the persistence of the Canadiens in insisting in carrying on life as it always had; the British basically very quickly learned the lesson the French did not when it opened Pandora's box. But any colonial power could have done the same bargain in Canada the British did, and for proof of that we actually have Louisiana. When Louisiana became part of the Spanish Empire in 1763, the Spanish administered Louisiana much like how the British Army initially administered Canada. Indeed, so much of Louisiana life continued as it did under French rule that the administrators in Havana required translators who could explain in Spanish what was going on. Now, granted, much like with the British in Canada, the Spaniards did try to make Louisiana a proper Spanish colony but just like with Canada, that didn't really work out as planned. Had Louisiana remained Spanish after 1802 (instead of being retroceded to France) and thus became part of Mexico one New Spain became independent (for la Luisiana was formally a district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain) I would not be surprised if the arrangement continued and thus Louisiana would remained as before, only with the administration based in Mexico City rather than Havana. Would certainly make for an interesting TL.
Which brings up an essential difference between Spanish America and New France. While New France was formed in reaction to events in Europe, Spanish America was founded as an extension of Spain in the New World, as an expansion of the Reconquista. The institutions set up by the Spanish and which were inherited by its successor nations reflected this fact as well as its tendency to leave well enough alone (particularly in cases like Mexico and Peru) and just expanded on what already existed. [...] While French-Canadians loved to complain about Anglo-American capital and the British/Anglo-Canadian colonizers conspiring to keep French-Canadians down and in their place, French-Canadians honestly didn't have anything comparable to the rest of the Global South despite the poverty of the majority since even in the dark ages of French-Canadian history there was always some retention of the fluidity of French-Canadian society and an unusually remarkable ability to adapt to new situations; French-Canadians never lived in a society as rigid as that which existed in the British Empire in the Global South.
As it turned out, there were many cases in Canada where the British occupiers, with the tacit consent of those who were colonized (and a keen sense of bending the law and looking the other way to make things work, in an early case of "
para Inglés ver" (
explained on the Portuguese Wikipedia) long before that concept arrived in Latin America), allowed things to go on de facto within their new colony that they would never have allowed either back home or within its already existing colonies. For example, many bureaucrats, civil law notaries, and other officials who did not join the boats crossing the Atlantic back to Europe were basically expected to work as per normal, even with the restrictions due to the Oath of Allegiance, even up to the point IIRC of using English "substitutes" (if that term could be used here) as cover for the real bureaucrats. Heck, even
the Vicar-General and later Bishop of Quebec at the time was "drafted" in to help, since Catholicism was never really banned and Canadiens who wanted to remain religious and those British who wanted a docile populace knew how to jump the hoops within British law to permit the free exercise of Catholicism despite the letter of the law mandating the establishment of the Church of England in the then-Province of Quebec. In effect, during all this time no serious effort was made to introduce Protestantism in Canada - at least not until the British lost during the American Revolution. Or, if you want to put it another more racist and stereotypical way, the British were so overcome and seduced by a certain sense of Latin charm and sensibility introduced to them by the French in Canada that the colonizer ended up with no other choice
but to fight to preserve the rights of their newly colonized, whether or not they wanted to do so. In that sense, therefore, the Canadiens were never subject to the same restrictions as what the Irish experienced, and even without the
Quebec Act the situation would likely be the same in Canada as IOTL before the
Quebec Act came into being and thus everyone would bend over backwards to make sure everything was working as it should, the law be damned and whether or not the Catholic Church was given legal recognition. All the
Quebec Act did was to legitimize the situation so that the British Army in Quebec didn't have to feel embarrassed when explaining their conduct unbecoming to their superiors; it basically didn't change a thing on the ground except giving peace of mind to both Westminster and Whitehall - the first Canadian victory on the road to gradual independence, if you will. Of course, the rest of what was the early version of British North America did not see things that way, seeing as the
Quebec Act was lumped in with all the other "Intolerable Acts".
All M. Carleton, with all due respect, did [with regards to the Quebec Act, 1774] was have something which already existing de facto since the Conquest legitimized as de jure. The British recognized early on, even w/o Guy Carleton, that if they tried Anglicizing the population from the word go it wasn't going to work as the entire place would stop functioning. So the British engaged in a lot of deception with their overlords to ensure that both sides were satisfied, even with the Oath of Allegiance taken into account. As I see it, Canada with no Quebec Act would be no less different that with the Quebec Act in place IOTL; the only differences would be related to the British already on the ground trying to make sure their cover didn't get blown because then things would get wicked problematic very fast. Then and only then would you get a largely indifferent and very pragmatic and accommodating populace joining the rebels against the advice of almost everyone, the Catholic Church and the nationalist élites be damned. (Their cousins across the Atlantic would probably be horrified, of course, even when supporting the US elsewhere and otherwise, but at that point there was nothing they could probably do - it was already out of their hands to begin with, even during the French colonial period.)
For one thing, at this point in time (until IOTL the Rebellions in the late 1830s) whatever nationalism existed among Canadiens was much different from the traditional French-Canadian nationalism we're all accustomed to. Much like the vast majority of the populace, Canadien nationalism tended more towards the pragmatic side of things. This was the crux of their general attitude towards anyone in power as well as their indifferent to neutral attitude towards the Americans. Respect them for who they are and they'll reciprocate by trying to stay in your good graces (with beneficial results for both sides). If you try pushing them towards uncomfortable positions (as IOTL the Château Clique found out to its detriment), then expect a similar reaction in turn (even if it means linking up with those who want to lash out against the UK for their own reasons). For the period, well before the Americans caught on, that was a liberal position to take, which makes sense for a people whose nationalism at this point in time was pretty liberal and tolerant to begin with and which frustrated Versailles a lot as well as the British during the 1820s and 1830s.
As an aside:
Which brings me to my final observation, this time on the rebellions in Lower Canada, which Lord Durham completely misunderstood, and in particular after the failed Rebellions of 1837-8, combined with the disastrous implications in the Durham Report that wanted to force all French-Canadians to assimilate into "civilized" (read: British/Anglo-Canadian) society. Much like the Québec Act, there are a lot of misconceptions that float around 1837 which have been used to support one side or another. Reality, as it always has a habit to do, is much more complex. The reality is that there too was a non-linguistic/non-ethnic basis to the rebellions in Québec - heck, a good portion of the leadership was actually Irish (with their own issues pertaining to British rule). Furthermore, 1837 was not an attempt to secede from the British Empire (those moves actually happened
after 1837 failed and most of the leadership fled into exile in the United States to avoid capture), but as a rebellion designed to pressure the colonial government to attempt reforms to better reflect reality and grant democratic rights to the majority population - much like similar rebellions back in Europe in the same decade and concurrent with similar rebellions and sentiments in the UK itself. Unfortunately, the reality was totally ignored by Lord Durham and his
Report on the Affairs of British North America, aka the Durham Report - the Report insinuated that French-Canadians had "no history and no culture" (which the intelligentsia denounced and thus tried to present their case, which probably partially explains Québec's obsession over history, though one could also assume that Lord Durham read it through a class-riddled analysis with French-Canadians collectively representing the lower classes of which he would no doubt be familiar with in England), and it was he who would over-simplify and heavily distort 1837 as being a clash of cultures between the English and the French, which he believed could only happen if the Canadiens simply did not exist and were forcibly assimilated into the English population. When the Act of Union of 1840 tried to put into practice, French-Canadians went on the defensive and became more insular, and from there changed considerably in reaction by accepting some (but not all) of the realities of being a colonized people as would be found in the Global South. Before 1837, French-Canadians had a confident nationalism which was open and welcoming, similar to liberal views elsewhere in the Anglosphere but rooted deep into French-Canadian culture as a reaction against the French colonial period. They welcomed British colonialism despite the implications (although it could be argued that "welcomed" would be too strong of a word, as I've noted already) and later on the restrictions placed on French-Canadian representation in the colonial Legislative Assembly. After 1837, things changed considerably, as if
la nation was chastened by what had happened. While there were still those who preached the old liberal nationalism and the constructiveness of working with
l'autre côté, the nationalist movement became more conservative, more isolationist,
ultramontane, and shaped the opinions of Québec to the outside world and to a considerable segment of its own people for generations - complete with the pillars for survival. Indeed, survival - la survivance - was the watchword during this period (and arguably a continuation of the resistance to the British by acting as French-Canadians always did), which led to an informal division of power between the 'English' and the 'French' (themselves much more diverse than the nationalists were willing to let on by misusing terminology to present a simplistic worldview for a very complex reality). If you were to place French-Canadian nationalists in general into a pigeon hole of politics in the mère-patrie, then I would collectively place Québec politics as a whole on the Right, even if the Liberals had tendencies which would also place them in the Centre to moderate Left. As an over-simplification, I'd collectively place a considerable portion of French-Canadian nationalists in with the Legitimists (considering their nostalgia of the French colonial period), while both the moderates among the Right and conservatives among the Liberals would find common ground with the Orleanists. Unlike in France, though, our *Legitimists were fully in control of the historical narrative of Québec history. As one can imagine, this stasis would clearly lead it to disaster were it to remain unchecked. Canada really didn't "keep on developing" - a very Whiggish POV if there ever was one - when the same government and its lackeys still held back the development and modernization of French-Canadian society by constantly reminding them of their second-class citizenship status.
However, by the standards of the historiography of the British Empire, 1837 was comparatively mild (as much as I hate using that phrase) - it wasn't like, for example, the Sepoy Rebellion or the Opium Wars. 1837 was basically a blip on the radar, one which did have some eventual effect (though benefiting Ontario more than it ever did Québec, and even today the general historical narrative of 1837-8 tends to focus more on the simultaneous rebellions in Upper Canada, now Ontario, than what was going on in Lower Canada). Furthermore, 1837 was also a one-time thing which sticks out in Canadian history because it's atypical of how modern Canadians view themselves. It's an uncomfortable part of their own history which was crucial in the long term, but only in hindsight.
So, back to the OP and Québec joining the American Revolution. We've seen some of the context which French Canada emerges into that would need to be addressed if the US were to really make its case to French-Canadians - in effect, by not assuming that they are not like the French from France and furthermore by assuming the same conditions in the Thirteen Colonies also apply to Quebec (while adding on things like "setting the Papists loose" in a post-George Whitfield Evangelical Protestant Garden of Eden - even if the Catholic Church, or at least elements of it, could be used to its benefit). It was, and still is, much different than just simply lumping all as "the French", as it was a peculiar sui generis response to a situation at a certain place and time. What would work on the French ancien régime to get them on board to support the Revolution, not to mention the other American colonies, would
not work in Canada. That, to me, is the main underlying flaw in how the US tried to rope Canada in - and also the main fallacies for any attempt, both in real life and in fiction, to bring Canada (however one defines it and no matter the time period) into the US, as well as among supporters and opponents of this concept. All throughout the history of the United States IOTL, when it comes to acquiring and administering new territory the US prefers a standard, cookie-cutter solution - I'll call it the "what can you do for your country" attitude to things (thank you, JFK). The genesis of this attitude can be found in the Revolution itself as well as among other English-speaking British colonies that tried and failed to sign up (cf. the Bahamas, Nova Scotia, et. al.), which makes sense as - regional cultures and the rivalries between regions, i.e. between New England and everyone else, notwithstanding - there were similarities and common ground that could be made where they could be presumably integrated into a generic American society, American culture, American attitudes, etc. that make up the United States of today. Even when the cookie-cutter "what can you do for your country" solution doesn't really work (cf. the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican Cession - heck, even Puerto Rico) the general tendency is to make it "fit" the standard narrative, even if inconvenient facts had to be swept under the carpet. That approach failed when the Continental Army arrived in Canada, because the facts were
too inconvenient - not to mention the arrogance of the military hierarchy and the incompetence of their administration of Canada. They were lured into a fake world by the foreigners and Anglophone minority and without any understanding of what was really going on and hence they blundered, and turned a generally neutral Francophone majority against them. Therefore, up to a point, those who would say that Canada could not join the US because of this reason or that reason and would stay in the good graces of the British Empire have a point - and in that case I'm willing to concede that. I would say, however, that the reason why that was so IOTL was because early on the British "got" (French-)Canadian culture and what makes it tick, and because of the fluid nature of the British Constitution and the equally pragmatic nature of Britain itself at this early stage. If the Continental Army and Continental Congress want to get Canada on board, they would have to do the same and break out of the comfortable bubble of the minority in Montréal who just happen to speak the same language as them or, if they spoke French, were yes men to everything the Continental Congress wanted. They would actually have to get out and go among the Canadiens - in effect giving them the same treatment the British Army gave during the Conquest - and realize that the concessions the British made in Canada were for a very good reason. The seeds of what would become pre-1840 liberal French-Canadian nationalism were already there - they just need to be planted if the Americans want to do so.
So, what would that mean?
>Well, instead of relying on Fleury Mesplet et cie. to translate the Letters to the Inhabitants of Canada - among other things - they should rely on actual
Canadiens to do the translation and cross-cultural communication with the Continental Congress. In other words, Congress and the Continental Army should be talking in the language of the people they're trying to actually address, given their different cultural context and how inappropriate many of the grievances that led to the Revolution are to the case of Canada. In particular, the
Quebec Act, 1774 should be dropped from being lumped together with all the other Intolerable Acts - because they will have to do the same thing anyway that the British did to win the hearts and minds of Canadiens. It would be quite a back-tracking should it remained lumped together and then having to back down in the face of reality.
>Keep Boston's Committee of Correspondence out of doing the intelligence-gathering - there are other Committees of Correspondence which (per Colin Woodard's and David Hackett Fischer's line of thinking) are in regions more open to and tolerant of cultural diversity and which don't have the same level of feeling the menace of a "French threat". Even in Pennsylvania - which was important in its own right IOTL as many of the settlers in post-1791 Upper Canada were from this state - there could be people willing to make the trek north without making too much of a fuss to the colonial administrators. Whatever intelligence that comes out should not only gauge sentiment and indicate who would support the Revolution, but should also provide to the rebels the cultural vocabulary and intelligence of the Canadien people that could be exploited should Congress want to address the Canadien people further. That alone would be priceless beyond any measure - and not just to TTL's later historians and future *Marcel Trudels - since it would show the reality of Canada behind the stereotypes of "the papist French" living there.
>In particular, Congress should be made aware that appeals to "the danger of being sent to fight against France" does not work one bit in Canada.
Les maudits Français were widely loathed in Canada, among ordinary people and the élites alike. Which leads to this:
And when French people saw that the people of Quebec could work well under a Republic, perhaps they would have come to deposing Louis XVI earlier.
France was always going to overthrow its monarchy regardless of whatever external events were going on (correlation does not equal causation works here as elsewhere); they didn't need a bunch of provincials to lead the way (and after the Conquest, both France and Canada parted ways, according to France because it was a money-losing sinkhole inhabited by a bunch of ingrates). As much as people would like a closer connection between France and Canada during the late 18th into the 19th centuries, that's not going to happen.
I think that would be underestimating the power of France over their former colonies in New France. The simple fact of the matter is that after 1763 France no longer had interest to continue any operations in Canada, in Acadia, etc. - even more so since even during the colonial era the colonial élites had a big tendency to look down on their Canadien population as mere provincials who had a strong tendency to not cooperate with whatever projects Versailles was thinking of. The French were perfectly content to leave the Canadiens to their fate; what mattered more to them at this point is access to the Grand Banks - hence the continued existence of the French territory of Saint Pierre-et-Miquelon and until the early 20th century (or thereabouts) the continued existence of the French Shore, irritating Newfoundlanders to no end.
[T]here are huge cultural differences (which were definitely more pronounced before WW2) which would make it hard to translate [...] influences from France into a French-Canadian context.
Therefore, within the attempt of propagating the message in French to Canada, the messaging given to the Canadiens should be very different from the messaging in general (i.e. to get France on board the Revolutionary cause). Appeals to defending France do not work in a Canada that knows all too well what really was going on when the French ran the territory, and who felt themselves to be different to and even much superior to their Continental cousins. Instead, the invocation of France as far as the Canadiens are concerned should be turned on its head, making it clear from the outset that the Continental Congress is fully aware of how the Canadiens were treated under French (not British) rule and that if the Canadiens joined the Revolutionary cause not only would they be free from British rule, but that they would be promised better governance than what they had ever experienced under the French ancien régime. If the Founding Fathers knew their French well enough to quote from, say, Michel de Montaigne (despite the supreme ironies that would bring), then they should feel free to do so in an attempt to clarify their point. (Hence my point about separate messaging in French - the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing, a point I'll mention again with the next point.) Don't rely on France as a crutch to rely on in a positive sense, but rather as the ultimate absolute to which Congress would promise to the Canadiens that it would avoid imitating.
>Above all, use the Catholic Church to its advantage, both during the intelligence gathering and the eventual occupation. Even if a good portion of Francophones are non-believers, they will still be defined under the box of being Catholics, which does not gel well in a United States that has had a long history of anti-Catholicism and of relocating to the New World from Britain because The Established Church (TM/MC) was getting too "Popish" for the liking of the Dissenters. Just like how in the late 19th century into the mid-20th century Franco-Americans in New England and elsewhere demonstrated that it was possible to be both a good American citizen and a native Francophone, so too can their ancestors demonstrate that it can be possible to be both a good Catholic and a good Patriot. To do that, however, means that the rebels, the Continental Army, and Congress will have to drop the stereotypes and prejudices and re-evaluate the Catholic Church in a different light.
[I.]n order to make the invasion work we'll have to make sure that within the Catholic Church the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. If the Bishop of Quebec, one of the highest-ranking members of the Catholic Church in North America - even if representing a small part of North America, relatively speaking - contradicts the French Catholic hierarchy (which is possible; all the Catholic Church in Quebec is concerned about is its survival, whether it remains under a British colonial régime or becomes part of the US), the shitstorm that would result would be a sight to behold.
>And above everything else, once
les américains come, they should not expect it to be smooth sailing (and hence avoid the same mistakes they made IOTL).
I would argue that here the reaction of French-Canadians [to the US invasion and occupation] would be not so much fears of anti-Catholicism (there were similar fears in British North America as well) as it was acquiescence to the status quo. As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". They would be mildly annoyed (as was the case IOTL) that they were rudely awaken from their slumber, but there would be neither any push nor pull factors for French-Canadians, and thus in a wider sense Lower Canada, to go against the British just yet.
The cookie-cutter "ask what you can do for your country" attitude does not work. Rather, it should be a more pragmatic "ask what your country can do for you" attitude - just like what the British Army found out in the aftermath of the Conquest.
Le Canada, c'est spécial - and the Continental Army should treat it accordingly. If they do so, then ITTL it will have important repercussions later on - I'm thinking of Louisiana here - where the US will not respond as it did IOTL but rather be more sensitive to what already exists and use that to its advantage. One example of this - money. In an age where specie is considered the main medium of exchange for commercial transactions, the fact that the Continental Army paid in worthless paper currency was a big insult to the intelligence of Canada's inhabitants. Rather, Spanish dollars - the de facto currency of Britain's North American colonies - should be used for payment (in French,
les piastres). The administration of justice, for example - even if "substitutes" were used for propaganda purposes, the existing judicial system should be maintained as much as possible, at least in terms of private law. If the Quebec Act was not dropped from the Intolerable Acts, then the Continental Army would be in for a rude awakening and thus many of the Act's provisions would quietly be reinstated/maintained (particularly once it gets explained to them that the Quebec Act did not confirm all the worst fears of the American press) - a peculiar warped variation of the whole "para Inglés ver" concept aimed at the Continental Congress and Britain alike. Though even here I would not be surprised if there was a particular American interpretation of the whole thing, if they did their homework, which
did take into account the cultural context of the Canadiens - if one believes the Wiki article, internal communications within the British government suggest that even in Canada the Quebec Act was seen as a failure by Whitehall (and hence "improved" in 1791).
So what happens in Quebec City would happen to be just as important as translating the goals and aspirations of the American Revolution into something that Canadiens can understand and not stoke inflation of the Continental currency, since it was payment in the latter, which was essentially worthless, which was a big irritant.
>As a corollary, don't pump up expectations among the Canadiens that become too unrealistic in which case the US has to back down. If the goal of the exercise of having Canada join the Revolution is to have it join the United States, then efforts should be made where this is clear - and hence change the nature of the US to accommodate Canada's distinctive society. The language of the Constitution, and American legal language by extension per the OP, will not be French in style (as in French from France), but will be peculiarly French-Canadian to take into account the distinctions, even if it to some degree it sounds too feudalistic for the liking of some (since it would draw from the same thinking as the Coutume de Paris).
Even if the Church is discounted, there are huge cultural differences (which were definitely more pronounced before WW2) which would make it hard to translate [...] influences from France into a French-Canadian context. Now, [...] influences from the US would be a different story - even more so if it's from the Franco-American community (before the Sentinelle affair, the bonds between French Canada and French America were more tight-knit, so if anyone could [for example] transmit left-wing influences from one to the other, this would be the only way). This is due in large part to sharing the same continent and, to a degree, sharing a more-or-less common historical narrative. Remember that for a good part of the 19th century, French-Canadian nationalism was pretty liberal along American classical-liberal/Hamiltonian lines. Ironically, as much as the ultramontane strains influenced French-Canadian nationalism during a good part of the 20th century, the American liberalism still continued as economic policy, right down to Le Chef himself.
To make it work, the basic foundations of American society from the outset need to take Canada into account. To do this, I'd prefer to explain it in terms of a very old concept that some would find familiar in medieval Spanish and Portuguese histories - the
fuero/foro. While it could seem to be easily translated into English as a charter or feudal contract, the fuero was much more than that, as it applied to everything from universities to cities to professional guilds, and everything else besides. What the fuero did was to grant autonomy to a particular institution - a harkening back to the old Greco-Roman concept of
líbertás (ἐλευθερία in Ancient Greek, λευτεριά /lef.te.rjá/ in Modern Greek), as freedoms that were granted in reward for some beneficial deeds, as opposed to the Germanic concept of
Freiheit, as freedoms which are inherent and natural to humanity - and granted it a voice to access the centre so that its viewpoints could be heard in the Cortes, the medieval royal court (and as a precursor to the modern Spanish legislature, the Cortes Generales, well before the English Parliament) in exchange for obligations to the state on the latter's behalf. That, in and of itself, is an expression of a pragmatic approach that we see time and time again in random places all over the world, and Britain's approach to Canada IOTL is reflective of this to some degree - "ask what your country can do for you,
then you can ask what you can do for your country". This too should be the basis of how the US approaches Canada, on the plane of invoking líbertás, but then to take it to the next level one needs to link both líbertás (and hence Canada's foral relationship with the US) and Freiheit together. In effect, the US basically should go down a different evolution than what it did IOTL, and go towards basically emulating what Switzerland would later become in terms of the nature of its federalism and relationship between the different linguistic communities. If played right than one could make the US fit to Canada's needs and aspirations (rather than vice versa). After all:
AFAICT no one would be demanding extra French-speaking states and all that - after all, I would assume some among the élites would be well and truly aware that if they wanted to voluntarily join the Revolution and stay in the good graces of the Continental Congress, one can't get too far ahead of themselves.
One facet of US history over the years (and why some see US history as basically a low-lying civil war between variously shifting coalitions of regions, as well as why the US is what it is) is that it could be argued that the US has a complicated relationship with both líbertás and Freiheit (not helped by the fact that the English language treats both its linguistic descendants, "liberty" and "freedom", as synonymous when in fact their etymological ancestors express rather different concepts and approaches) and hence pit them into conflict with each other. If one wants to get Canada into the Union, one needs to make it so that one flows into the other - if Canada is kept out for some reason (say, if it retains the Articles of Confederation but does not adopt the Constitution, making it into a de facto independent state) then that would be seen by Canadiens as a huge betrayal of what they were led to believe would happen, as a violation of that trust which they were led to believe when it engaged in a foral relationship with the Revolution. Furthermore, líbertás and Freiheit would still remain in conflict in the US itself as well as in Canada, which means the US would still have a problematic relationship with itself similar to OTL - only now it would have exported that conflict to Canada as well. That would lead Canada into places which may or may not be conducive to a continued relationship with the US, all things considered. Therefore to avoid any potential disaster looming on its northern territories the US would need to act in a different, more responsible manner which would thus see líbertás and Freiheit as really synonymous and in complementary distribution with each other (as already exists linguistically in English), and hence makes the US into a more Swiss-like country. Which would have enormous repercussions for the US as to make it unrecognizable to us IOTL - towards other Aboriginal peoples (especially if the Trail of Tears could be butterflied away), towards the Francophones of Louisiana, towards African-Americans (bonus points if slavery gets abolished early on in US history), towards everyone in fact. And all because from a French-Canadian POV the US does the right thing early on and appreciate them for who they are in reality and not in caricature and stereotype.