London Photo Gallery - Art Exhibitions & Special Events

Enemies and Rascals by Terence Gower

Maughan Library at King's College is hosting an exhibition with sensory and artifact components about the invasion of Quebec during the US War of Independence. Terence Gower researched scattered information about this little-known historic event from public and university archives on both sides of the pond.

The sensory exhibition takes place at the Original Cell, where the country's public records were once stored. Visitors explore the bare shelves in the claustrophobic environment as you hear visual descriptions of the event from different people.

The Quebec Act exhibition accompanies this, with rare books and historical documents at the nearby Weston Room providing background information about the 1775 invasion. They are part of the Foyle Special Collections Library, which had over 100,000 volumes from the Foreign Office, and branches that administered overseas territories.

The Quebec Act was signed in 1774, which allowed practicing the Catholic faith and providing a dual legal structure with British criminal law and French civil law. The legal, religious, and territorial exceptions granted to Quebec stirred controversy at home, fearing these could also be replicated in Britain.

It also sparked debate in North America that was believed to have been a cause of the US War of Independence. The Act broadened Canada's borders to include land west of the 13 colonies, where settlers and speculators had already started to make claims. Their response was to urge Canadians to reject the Act and join them as the 14th colony, and finally to invade to force a union. This was the first major military operation of the new Continental Army under George Washington's command.

Before the 13 colonies became a newly independent country, they launched a campaign in 1775 to occupy Montreal and siege Quebec City. British Army ships arrived in 1776 to quell the invasion. The invaders left by summer several weeks before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

The first European colonists here were the French, who had alliances with the St. Lawrence River indigenous communities through trade, religious mission, and intermarriage. When France ceded the colony to the British in 1763, the managers in London that oversaw the colony was dubbed the "Ministry of Bears and Beavers". Quebec was a remote place at the time, but the British came with a business mind to seek a profit from timber, wheat, fish, and fur.

This is a map of Quebec dated 1709.

This 1762 publication from William Burke compared the profitability of Guadeloupe with Canada, both British colonies, and indicated Canada would likely cost Britain more than it yielded. At the time, the Caribbean colonies produced sugar and had slave labour.

After US independence, major population movements occured between the newly-created US and Canada. This 1829 outlines the expense of settling the first set of 20 families in Quebec.

Exhibition Website