Editing Kingdom of Great Britain (section)

====Canada====
{{Main|History of Canada}}
After a series of "French and Indian wars", the British took over most of France's North American operations in 1763. [[Canada (New France)|New France]] became [[Province of Quebec (1763–1791)|Quebec]]. Great Britain's policy was to respect Quebec's Catholic establishment as well as its semi-feudal legal, economic, and social systems. By the [[Quebec Act]] of 1774, the province of Quebec was enlarged to include the western holdings of the American colonies. In the [[American Revolutionary War]], [[Halifax, Nova Scotia]] became Britain's major base for naval action. They repulsed an American revolutionary invasion in 1776, but in 1777 a British invasion army was captured in New York, encouraging France to enter the war.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Reid |first1=John G. |title=Canada and the British Empire |last2=Mancke |first2=Elizabeth |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-927164-1 |editor-last=Buckner |editor-first=Phillip |chapter=From Global Processes to Continental Strategies: The Emergence of British North America to 1783 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KmXnLGX7FvEC&pg=PA22}}</ref>

After the American victory, between 40,000 and 60,000 [[United Empire Loyalist|defeated Loyalists]] migrated, some bringing their slaves.<ref>Maya Jasanoff, ''Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World'' (2012)</ref> Most families were given free land to compensate their losses. Several thousand free blacks also arrived; most of them later went to [[Sierra Leone]] in Africa.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Winks |first=Robin |title=The Blacks in Canada: A History |date=1997 |publisher=McGill-Queen's Press |isbn=978-0-7735-6668-2}}</ref> The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, were not welcomed by the locals. Therefore, in 1784 the British split off [[History of New Brunswick|New Brunswick]] as a separate colony. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and English-speaking communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Great Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morton |first=Desmond |title=A short history of Canada |date=2001 |publisher=McClelland & Stewart |isbn=978-0-7710-6508-8}}</ref>