Editing History of Canada (section)

==Historiography==
{{main|Historiography of Canada}}
[[Conquest of 1760|The Conquest of New France]] has always been a central and contested theme of Canadian memory. Cornelius Jaenen argues:
:The Conquest has remained a difficult subject for French-Canadian historians because it can be viewed either as economically and ideologically disastrous or as a providential intervention to enable Canadians to maintain their language and religion under British rule. For virtually all Anglophone historians it was a victory for British military, political, and economic superiority which would eventually only benefit the conquered.<ref>Cornelius J. Jaenen, "Canada during the French regime", in D. A. Muise, ed. ''A Reader's Guide to Canadian History: 1: Beginnings to Confederation'' (1982), p.40.</ref>

Historians of the 1950s tried to explain the economic inferiority of the French Canadians by arguing that the Conquest:

{{blockquote|text=destroyed an integral society and decapitated the commercial class; leadership of the conquered people fell to the Church; and, because commercial activity came to be monopolized by British merchants, national survival concentrated on agriculture.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Carl |last1=Berger |title=The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing Since 1900 |url=https://archive.org/details/writingofcanadia0000berg |url-access=registration |year=1986 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/writingofcanadia0000berg/page/185 185]–186 |isbn=978-0-8020-6568-1}}</ref>}}

At the other pole, are those Francophone historians who see the positive benefit of enabling the preservation of language, religion, and traditional customs under British rule. French-Canadian debates have escalated since the 1960s, as the Conquest is seen as a pivotal moment in the history of Quebec's nationalism. Historian Jocelyn Létourneau suggested in the 21st century, "1759 does not belong primarily to a past that we might wish to study and understand, but, rather, to a present and a future that we might wish to shape and control."<ref>{{cite book |first1=Jocelyn |last1=Letourneau |chapter=What is to be done with 1759? |editor-first1=Phillip |editor-last1=Buckner |editor-first2=John G. |editor-last2=Reid |title=Remembering 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Memory |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=2012 |page=279 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yiOOuORbGpAC&pg=PA279 |isbn=978-1-4426-4411-3}}</ref>

Anglophone historians, on the other hand, portray the Conquest as a victory for British military, political and economic superiority that was a permanent benefit to the French.<ref>Jaenen, "Canada during the French regime"  (1982), p. 40.</ref>

Allan Greer argues that [[Whig history]] was once the dominant style of scholars. He says the:
:interpretive schemes that dominated Canadian historical writing through the middle decades of the twentieth century were built on the assumption that history had a discernible direction and flow. Canada was moving towards a goal in the nineteenth century; whether this endpoint was the construction of a transcontinental, commercial, and political union, the development of parliamentary government, or the preservation and resurrection of French Canada, it was certainly a Good Thing. Thus the rebels of 1837 were quite literally on the wrong track. They lost because they ''had'' to lose; they were not simply overwhelmed by superior force, they were justly chastised by the God of History.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Allan |last1=Greer |title=1837–38: Rebellion reconsidered |journal=Canadian Historical Review |issue=(1995) 76#1 |pages=1–18, quotation on page 3}}</ref>