With interest, until the final settlement, the sum paid amounts in all to $27,267,622 - or thirty-three dollars a square mile.Ĭoincidentally preparations have recently been made in Washington for an expedition which will reveal, with a degree of scientific accuracy, just what is being purchased for the nation. The price for 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the previous size of the United States, is $15 million dollars. The Louisiana Purchase has often and rightly been described as the greatest bargain in American history. Needing money for a renewal of war against Britain, and fearing perhaps that the British might seize Lousiana for their own empire, Napoleon sells the entire region in 1803 to Thomas Jefferson's envoys in Paris. At the same time the fragile peace of Amiens looks like breaking down. In two years yellow fever reduces the French army in Haiti from 25,000 to 3000 men. But by 1803 circumstances have diminished his appetite for western adventures. In 1801 he takes a similarly resolute stance against the rebellion of Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti, sending out an army to restore order in this valuable French suguar-exporting colony. In 1800 Napoleon forces an abject Spain to return Louisiana to France. Though only half of the original French territory, it retains the name Louisiana. At the same time the unexplored and seemingly less valuable territory to the west of the river has been ceded by France to Spain. The land to the east of the great river has been lost to Britain (and therefore subsequently to the United States) in the treaty of Paris in 1763. The immediate reason is Napoleon's half-hearted efforts to re-establish a French empire in the west, remembering the heady times half a century earlier when France laid claim to the entire vast region either side of the Mississippi. It soon becomes, and remains, the centre of French political aspirations within British North America.ĭuring the Napoleonic wars, and as an indirect result of them, the territory of the United States is doubled. Lower Canada is the province with by far the highest proportion of French inhabitants. These two provinces are at the same time given a new constitution, with power shared between the governor (representing the crown), an appointed legislative council and an elected legislative assembly. This divides the province of Quebec into two halves - Upper Canada (equivalent to modern Ontario) and Lower Canada (modern Quebec). More significant are the changes brought about by the Canadian Constitutional Act of 1791. Because of the sudden influx of Loyalists, Nova Scotia is divided into three separate colonies by the formation of New Brunswick and Cape Breton (the latter is reunited with Nova Scotia in 1820). About 10,000 choose the province of Quebec.įrom 1784 Britain reorganizes her remaining north American colonies on a more practical basis. The majority (among them 1000 freed slaves) go to Nova Scotia, where there has been a British presence for several decades. In the years up to 1783 about 40,000 flee north into Canada. The Loyalists, who have taken Britain's side in the war, have no future in the newly independent United States. The first major immigration of British people into Canada occurs as a result of the American Revolution. However a more neutral name, Canada, also comes into informal use during the 18th century. Known previously as New France, the official name for this region now becomes British North America - even though the population is predominantly French. The territory along the St Lawrence, from Nova Scotia in the east to the Great Lakes, has been won by Britain from France at various stages during the 18th century. Under the terms agreed in Paris in 1783, the regions historically settled by the French now become the only remaining part of the British empire in America.
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