Upper Canada Rebellion

Date	December 1837
Location	Toronto, Upper Canada
Result	Decisive Government victory

Belligerents

United Kingdom

Upper Canada

Reform Movement

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) that emboldened rebels in Upper Canada to openly revolt soon after. The Upper Canada Rebellion was largely defeated shortly after it began, although resistance lingered until 1838 (and became more violent) - mainly through the support of the Hunters' Lodges, a secret anti-British, US-based militia that emerged around the Great Lakes. They launched the Patriot War in 1838-39. The rebellion 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. Some historians argue that the rebellions in 1837 should be viewed in the wider context of the late 18th and early 19th century Atlantic revolutions. The American Revolutionary war in 1776, the French Revolution of 1789–1799, the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the independence struggles of Spanish America (1810–1825) were inspired by similar democratic ideals, although they were tinged with republicanism as well. The United Kingdom's Chartists sought similar democratic goals.

The Upper Canada Rebellion is sometimes dismissed as a "farmers' revolt," an opportunistic action by misled backwoodsmen. The rebellion was, rather, the unintended consequence of a sophisticated political movement that copied the organizational forms of the British reform movement. The British Reform movement, organized as "Political Unions," had achieved the Great Reform Bill of 1832 which broadened the electoral franchise and helped eliminate political corruption.

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