Upper Canada Rebellion

Upper Canada Rebellion
Part of the Rebellions of 1837–1838

Battle of Montgomery's Tavern
DateDecember 1837
Location
Toronto, Upper Canada
Result British Canadian victory
Belligerents
Commanders and leaders

The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the oligarchic government of the British colony of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) in December 1837. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), which started the previous month, that emboldened rebels in Upper Canada to revolt.

The Upper Canada Rebellion was largely defeated shortly after it began, although resistance lingered until 1838. While it shrank, it became more violent, mainly through the support of the Hunters' Lodges, a secret United States–based militia that emerged around the Great Lakes, and launched the Patriot War in 1838.

Some historians suggest that although they were not directly successful or large, the rebellions in 1837 should be viewed in the wider context of the late-18th- and early-19th-century Atlantic Revolutions including the American Revolutionary War in 1776, the French Revolution of 1789–99, the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the independence struggles of Spanish America (1810–1825). While these rebellions differed in that they also struggled for republicanism, they were inspired by similar social problems stemming from poorly regulated oligarchies, and sought the same democratic ideals, which were also shared by the United Kingdom's Chartists.[1][2][3]

The rebellion in Lower Canada, followed by its Upper Canada counterpart, led directly to Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America, and to The British North America Act, 1840, which partially reformed the British provinces into a unitary system, leading to the formation of Canada as a nation in 1867.

  1. ^ Ducharme, Michel (2010) Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques (1776–1838) McGill/Queens University Press: Montreal/Kingston. The book was awarded the John A. MacDonald award for best book 2010 by the Canadian Historical Association
  2. ^ Ducharme, Michel (2006). "Closing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: The 1837–38 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. 116 (2): 413–430.
  3. ^ Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (2009)