Patriotes

The Patriote movement was a political movement that existed in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) from the turning of the 19th century to the Patriote Rebellion of 1837 and 1838 and the subsequent Act of Union of 1840. The partisan embodiment of the movement was the Parti patriote, which held many seats in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada (the elected lower house of the Lower Canadian parliament ).

The movement was at once a liberal and republican reaction against colonial control of the government of Lower Canada, and a more general nationalistic reaction against British presence and domination over what had previously been an exclusively French territory It was inspired by the American Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, as well as the political philosophy of classical liberalism and republicanism. Among its leading figures were François Blanchet, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, John Neilson, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, James Stuart, Louis Bourdages, Denis-Benjamin Viger, Daniel Tracey, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Andrew Stuart, Wolfred Nelson, Robert Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, François Jalbert and Louis-Joseph Papineau. Its ideals were conveyed through the newspapers the Montreal Vindicator, Le Canadien, and La Minerve.