The Rebellions of 1837 are a pair of Canadian armed uprisings that occur in 1837 and 1838 in response to frustrations in political reform and ethnic conflict.
A key shared goal is the allowance of responsible government.The rebellions occur in two Canadian colonies.
The Lower Canada Rebellion is a larger and more sustained conflict by French Canadian and English Canadian rebels against the British colonial government.
The Upper Canada Rebellion is an abortive uprising in Upper Canada against Upper Canada oligarchy, the Family Compact, followed by a series of raids, skirmishes, and other small actions over the next year, many of them launched from the United States.The rebellion in Lower Canada begins first, in November of 1837, and is led by Robert Nelson and Louis-Joseph Papineau.The Lower-Canada rebellion probably inspires the much shorter rebellion in Upper Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie in December, but there are other grievances in Upper Canada, particularly the gifts of land and official status to the Church of England to the exclusion of Roman Catholics, Methodists, and other religions, and tensions caused by mass immigration from the United States, particularly in the western areas.While the initial rebellion in Upper Canada ends quickly with the Battle of Montgomery's Tavern, many of the rebels (including Mackenzie) flee to the United States, using it as a base for launching further raids into Canada in cooperation with American Hunter Lodges.
The raids do not end until the rebels and Hunters are defeated at the decisive Battle of the Windmill, nearly a year after the first defeat near Montgomery's Tavern.
