WI the British expulsed French Canadians?

Just like they expulsed the Acadians, ok, it happened during the 7 years war, but still. WI instead of being relatively meek&mild, Quebec Act & everything, the British just went the 'hard' way and orchestrated an expulsion big enough to permanently disrupt the structure of the French Canadian Community? There weren't more than 80-90 thousand Frenchmen around mid 18th century, perhaps even less, and over 10 thousand Acadians were expulsed without much fuss, so I guess logistically it would have been quite doable. Not wanting a strong French community in a British colony seems reason enough too.

Why was this never considered?(not that I approve, obviously) And IF it had been carried out, how would that affect the future of Canada?
 

katchen

Banned
The St. Lawrence Valley likely would have had the same culture as the Thirteen Colonies and likely WOULD have joined the Revolution and the USA. And Louisiana and Alabama would likely have been much more strongly French with Alabama and Mississippi possibly having parishes and the Code Napoleon like Louisiana. Maybe a more French Missouri too.
 
On the other hand, this might have butterflied away the American Revolution - if Americans are given the opportunity to replace the Quebecois, that might serve as a safety value for the Thirteen Colonies. Plus, no French Canada might influence British attitudes towards settlement over the Appalachians, another potential safety value for dissent.
 
Most of the french colonists die like most of the indians died. Or most of them are expelled west of the Mississipi and remain alive. And you have a much more french populated Louisiana who may never be sold nor conquered by the USA.

What puzzles me is this question : why do you think the english canadians would not have remained loyalist ?

What defined and separated the canadians from the US americans is that the canadians were the colonists who wanted to remain loyal to the english crown. Expulsing the french is not going to change much about this.
You still have many many people in the 13 colonies who vere loyalists, who did not want to break-up with the motherland and who leave to Canada when the insurgents secure their independance.
You still have (if my memory is not wrong) more loyalists who fight as soldiers in the british army than in the insurgent army.
 

katchen

Banned
Possibly because like Johnny Canuck implied, once French Canada was vacated, it would be a lot quicker and easier for New Yorkers and Vermonters via the Champlain Valley and New Englanders via the Connecticut Valley to take over those vacated farms than it would be for people to come in from England. And a lot of the people emigrating from Great Britain at that time are going to be Scots and Scots-Irish with no love for the English Crown. OTL they mostly disembark in Philadelphia but ITTL a lot of them might disembark in Quebec or Montreal and head up the St Lawrence Valley to settle on either side of Lake Ontario.
 
Virtually all white Canadians where Francophones at this point and the fur trade, for which controling the St. Lawrence was critical, was crazy profitable. Depopulating and resettling the area would have destroyed British fur companies and related industries.
Also there would have been an armed insurrection and, depending on how close the removal is to the ITL Quebec acts, it would have coincided with the ARW.
Also it may piss of the colonists, 'First we can't settle the Northwest, now you give the Indians Canada too?' or it could have been a pressure valve 'yay taking abandoned farms is way easier than settling the frontier'
In either case you are going to be Quebec as the 14th colony.
 
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I think they did expel some, the Acadian genocide as some call it. I think the Queen sort of apologised for it (or at least expressed regret) but I'm not sure.
 
I think they did expel some, the Acadian genocide as some call it. I think the Queen sort of apologised for it (or at least expressed regret) but I'm not sure.

"The Acadian genocide" would be a little hyperbolic, since it was an ethnic cleansing.

You still have (if my memory is not wrong) more loyalists who fight as soldiers in the british army than in the insurgent army.

Where do you come at that figure? If that were true, the British couldn't possibly have lost. Wikipedia lists a total of about 250,000 for the rebel army over the entire course of the war and 25,000 Loyalists for the same, in addition to at least 60,000 British and German forces at any one time.
 
[QUOTE

Where do you come at that figure? If that were true, the British couldn't possibly have lost. Wikipedia lists a total of about 250,000 for the rebel army over the entire course of the war and 25,000 Loyalists for the same, in addition to at least 60,000 British and German forces at any one time.[/QUOTE]

The Continental Army recruited soldiers for short term enlistments, someone could join up, go home to harvest their crop and join up again after planting the next crop, the same person could be counted many times over.
 
The Peace of Paris in 1763 gave protections to the Canadiens. If the British had expelled them, it would have trashed their reputation internationally.
 

katchen

Banned
How then did the British get by with expellling the Acadians? And how would Nova Scotia be different if they hadn't?
 
The Peace of Paris in 1763 gave protections to the Canadiens. If the British had expelled them, it would have trashed their reputation internationally.

It was also a stipulation of the peace treaty with France that they wouldn't remove the Canadiens or force them to convert. Breaking either of those would have given France a casus belli, for what that was worth.

How then did the British get by with expellling the Acadians? And how would Nova Scotia be different if they hadn't?

There were significantly less of them than the Canadiens, I believe. At any rate, they expelled the Acadians because they saw them as a security risk with New France nearby. Once all of New France had been conquered, they no longer had that issue. If the Acadians hadn't been expelled, then Nova Scotia would today be majority French speaking and French descended like Quebec instead of the minority it is now, or at least half and half.
 
Remember, we are talking about a population that had been intermittently fighting the British since 1689, and British control after 1763 was fragile. It would not have taken much to provoke a French-Canadian rebellion in any event (which the British recognized, and passed the Quebec Act to pacify them). Trying to expel them certainly would have led to armed insurrection. Even if they only numbered 80,000, they were concentrated in a fairly small area and had numerous tribal allies. That would not have been an easy war to win.
 
How then did the British get by with expellling the Acadians? And how would Nova Scotia be different if they hadn't?

Acadia (the coastal part of it anyway) had been ceded to Britain back in 1713, so by 1755 they were in firm control of the colony. They had also recently opened it up to British (mostly Scottish) settlement so it was now ethnically mixed. There were only about 12,000 Acadians, and even so, the expulsion was not that neat and tidy - about half of them escaped to the French-controlled areas. Trying to duplicate that on a considerably larger scale would have seemed foolish.

In any event, the expulsion of the Acadians seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision made during wartime. Britain would not have done this during peacetime.
 
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