James Patterson Smith, "The Riel Rebellion of 1869: New light on British liberals and the use of force on the Canadian frontier," Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1995.

Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3683/is_199507/ai_n8721294/

Within the larger context of the colonial policy of the first Gladstone government in Great Britain, the Riel Rebellion on the Manitoba frontier in 1869 offers an interesting case study in the historiographic debate over the nature of mid-Victorian British imperialism. The first Riel Rebellion has usually been treated within the context of Canadian history as a part of the story of Canada's expansion and the general western resistance to Ottawa's and Ontario's impositions, or as an example of the continuous thread of Anglo-French, Protestant-Catholic tension within the Canadian union. Louis Riel and most of his followers saw themselves as loyal subjects of the British Crown(f.1) who were merely rejecting unsatisfactory terms for union with Canada.(f.2) Moreover, a wide range of English as well as French-speaking residents at Red River shared Riel's objectives. However, in London the Red River resistance movement of 1869 was seen as a French Metis "half-breed" revolt. This "revolt" raised strategic imperial considerations and issues of race and social control to which London authorities felt compelled to respond.

Late in 1868 William Ewart Gladstone and the Liberal Party took office in Great Britain after winning a sizeable mandate in the first elections following the enfranchisement of Britain's urban working class. The slogan "peace, retrenchment, and reform" summarized the intended Liberal program for the country.(f.3) In colonial policy this translated into money-saving recalls of imperial troops from Britain's self-governing colonies, including the newly federated Dominion of Canada. Peace and retrenchment also were presumed to mean a decided Liberal predisposition against frontier engagements that might lead to costly colonial wars or expensive extensions of London's responsibilities in the far corners of her empire.

Writing before World War II, established scholars including R.L. Schuyler, C.A. Bodelsen, and A.P. Newton accepted the nineteenth-century public perception that the Liberals were at best reluctant imperialists, if not out-and-out empire-dismantling "little Englanders" as their contemporary critics charged. For these historians little Englandism reached its high water mark during the first Gladstone government and only later gave way to new imperial enthusiasm under Disraeli.(f.4) Even C.P. Stacey's classic 1936 study of Canada and the British Army tended to give credence to this view, with the argument that costly defense burdens made empire unpopular in Britain before 1870, while Gladstone's withdrawal of British garrisons from Canada and the self-governing colonies in 1870 ended the sense of financial grievance and contributed to the revival of popular imperialism under Disraeli.(f.5)

However, the vigor of the Liberal response to the 1869 Riel Rebellion on the Manitoba frontier contradicts the old notion that anti-imperial little Englandism reached its zenith during the first Gladstone government. The older studies earlier cited focused on public opinion and obscured the difference between public opinion and policy. Existing works on the Riel Rebellion itself tend to neglect British sources and give uncritical acceptance to the idea that British cabinets, like the British public, cared little about the Canadian West. Whatever the status of British public opinion, careful review of British cabinet sources reveals that the little England rhetoric of some prominent Liberals had little or no impact on policy. In their actual use of power in this and other episodes, the Gladstone Liberals showed a consistent commitment to empire and a continuing belief in the empire's strategic and prestige value to Britain in world politics.(f.6) Moreover, in the case of the first Riel Rebellion, Liberal policy-makers were early, active and ready accomplices in a show of force on the frontier.

The view advanced here is derived from a reading of British as opposed to Canadian sources.(f.7) It offers a distinct contrast to the earlier standard studies of George F.G. Stanley, R.E. Lamb, and Joseph Kinsey Howard, and more recent surveys by Stanley, D.N. Sprague, Doug Owram, and Gerald Friesen, all of which picture the Red River military expedition of 1870 as essentially a Canadian initiative, with unwilling London authorities drawn into acquiescence only after long and persistent Canadian nagging.(f.8)

In the broader sweep of British Empire historiography, post-World War II interpretions from Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher to Bruce Knox, Colin Eldridge, and Susan Farnsworth reveal mid-Victorian imperialism as much more vigorous and complicated than the little Englandism hypothesis would have it. There was, in short, a continuity in the British imperial impulse throughout the nineteenth century.(f.9) Yet even recent accounts of the first Riel Rebellion accept uncritically the discredited anti-imperial little England model of Schuyler, Bodelsen, and Newton. Stanley's most recent (1989) book still contains stereotypical assertions that "most British politicians were not yet imperially minded" because Disraeli's new imperialism had yet "to fire the British imagination or that of M.P.'s who followed rather than led public opinion."(f.10) By implication, these recent works support J.S. Galbraith's contention that the "turbulent frontier" and over-reactive "men on the spot" drove unwilling and hesitant London officials to grudging acceptance of aggressive measures they thought unwise.(f.11) This pressure from the periphery, it is argued, propelled expansion in an era of official non-expansion. The tail wagged the imperial dog, so to speak, in British colonial policy.

However, notwithstanding the fact that there would have been no British troops sent to the West in 1870 without a frontier crisis, a re-examination of British sources shows that in this matter London needed little prodding. Rather, a network of common ideas about strategic interests, race, and social control predisposed London's acquiescence in this and other expansionist initiatives. As Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher have shown concerning other cases later in the century, if London was not out actively looking for troublesome new burdens, neither was "the official mind" disposed to flinch when British interests were challenged. From London's vantage point, the first Riel Rebellion presented just such a challenge.

Riel's Frontier Challenge

The Riel Rebellion of 1869 began in the Red River Colony south of Lake Winnipeg and just across the United States border from present day Pembina, North Dakota. In the 1860s few white settlers had penetrated British North America west of Lake Superior. The Hudson's Bay Company held dominion over the vast reaches of the Northwest, and in the interests of profitable fur trading with the Indians the company gave little or no encouragement to white settlement for over 150 years. The one exception was Lord Selkirk's 1811 Red River settlement, which struggled for survival and had little effect on the basic hunting and trapping economy of the country. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, isolated Scottish, English, and French trappers, company functionaries, and scattered white settlers intermarried with the Indians and populated the colony with their half-breed French and English-speaking descendants. The French-speaking or Metis population dominated. The Hudson's Bay Company ruled its largely Metis Red River Colony through an autocratic company governor and an appointed legislative council until determined resistance to Canadian union broke out in 1869.(f.12)

Administrative bungling, specifically the failure to engage in dialogue with the Metis or any other inhabitants about major policy changes affecting their future, produced this crisis. After the formation of the Canadian federation in 1867, the Canadian government began urging the Hudson's Bay Company to surrender its great western lands and governing rights to the new dominion. London authorities actively promoted this project as a deterrent to US expansionism and in the spring of 1869 helped negotiate the details of a transfer to which the London-based company and Canadian officials agreed. Formal cession of authority to Canada was scheduled for 1 December 1869. Unfortunately, no one bothered to consult the 10,000 mostly Metis people of the company's Red River Colony. As a result, armed resistance erupted before the transfer agreement could be implemented -- events soon associated with the Metis leadership of Louis Riel.

The crisis began in October of 1869 when the Canadians sent a surveying party to prepare for annexation, large-scale land sales and white settlement. Ignoring traditional land claims and boundaries, the Canadian government surveyors ran lines as they saw fit across existing farms, leaving the impression that traditional land titles and rights were in danger.(f.13) A Metis insurgency immediately flared up. Louis Riel's notoriety began when he assembled and led a group of Metis in physically blocking the surveyors' work. Metis resistance spread quickly. Local Hudson's Bay Company officials soon lost control to a self-constituted Metis National Committee formed by Riel and John Bruce to prevent John McDougall, the new Canadian governor designate, from entering the territory. To give force to these claims, Riel established an armed blockade on the only access road into the territory, running from Pembina, North Dakota to the main Red River Colony settlement know as Fort Garry (now Winnipeg).(f.14)

Apprised of the situation upon his arrival at Pembina on 30 October, governor-designate McDougall determined to force the Metis blockade. In his first attempt McDougall crossed the border to a company outpost and sent two aides to test the barricade at St. Norbert's Church. One hundred armed Metis stood their ground and turned back the governor's advance party. Their initial success in checkmating Canadian officialdom emboldened the Metis leaders, who now took further steps to strengthen their hand for the negotiations they hoped to force upon the Canadians as the means of guaranteeing Metis property rights and obtaining provincial rather than territorial status in the Canadian dominion. Without dislodging Hudson's Bay Company officials, but with his own armed supporters physically in control of Fort Garry itself, on 2 November Riel sent an ultimatum to McDougall demanding that the governor-designate leave the territory immediately.(f.15)

McDougall withdrew to Pembina, but decided to force the confrontation with a loyalist call to arms authorizing the recruitment of 200 volunteers, including Indians, to confirm his authority in the Red River Colony. Matters now escalated at Fort Garry, where agents of the Hudson's Bay Company lost their remaining influence with the Metis. Against company pleas, Riel called a convention of English and French Metis delegates to consider the future of the Metis nation and its negotiating stance vis-a-vis the Canadians. The confrontation came to its full crescendo between 24 November and 8 December, when Riel and his armed leaders seized all public offices in Fort Garry, placed Hudson's Bay Company functionaries under house arrest, confiscated the company treasury, raised an additional 500-man army, and proclaimed a de facto provisional government of the Metis nation.(f.16)

The Imperial Response

Understandably these developments greatly alarmed both Ottawa and London. Although Riel and his followers disclaimed any inclination to revolution and declared their continued allegiance to the Queen, London authorities interpreted the Metis' actions as, in effect, a declaration of independence.(f.17) For their part, the Canadians opted in late November not to accept the transfer of the Red River Colony so long as the insurgency remained active, and they ordered McDougall to return to the East.(f.18) London was left to decide whether to govern the colony independently of Canada and risk gradual American penetration and Oregon-style absorption, or to suppress the rebellion and revive the transfer project.

Their supposed little Englandism notwithstanding, the Gladstone Liberals decided to make every effort to block any American annexation of the Northwest, since this might threaten the new dominion's chances of survival. From London, the American dangers seemed all too real. Despite heavy US customs duties, economic ties between the Red River Colony and Minnesota were being strengthened each year with increased schooner and steamboat traffic flowing north and south along the Red River.(f.19)

However, economic absorption was not the only concern. McDougall's dispatches from the scene made clear the sense of an American political menace. American adventurers and Irish Fenian sympathizers from south of the border had, according to McDougall, "stirred up and kept alive" Metis discontent with intent to steer the Metis toward annexation to the United States.(f.20) At Pembina, McDougall observed gatherings of mercenaries apparently anticipating employment in raids to the north, for which private Minnesota citizens were rumoured to have pledged from one-half to four million dollars.(f.21) McDougall also reported the complicity of Pembina's US postmaster, Charles Cavalier, in Riel's efforts to censor the mails in and out of the Red River, and worried about the movements of Enos A. Stutsman, the newly retired US customs agent at Pembina, who was granted free passage through Metis lines and who stayed on intimate terms with Riel and his advisers. Unknown to McDougall, however, Stutsman made regular reports to St. Paul attorney James Wickes Taylor, a US treasury agent and secret agent of the American State Department, who in turn supplied Washington with better information during the crisis than was available to either Ottawa or London.(f.22)

News of this link struck a sensitive nerve in the Colonial Office, but it was the resonance of the American threat that predisposed Whitehall to action. A whole series of acts -- the recent history of Irish Fenian attacks directed at Canada from American soil; the example of American penetration and expansion in Texas and Oregon; the 1867 US acquisition of Alaska together with repeated American inquiries as to the terms of purchase for Hudson's Bay Company lands; the recurring tensions and American blustering over the Alabama claims; the American senate's overwhelming rejection of the 1869 Anglo-American arbitration treaty following Senator Charles Sumner's fiery claim that cession of British North America would be due recompense for the Alabama damages; President Grant's endorsement of the Sumner tack;(f.23) additional threats by the American senate to link any new Canadian reciprocal trade treaty with cession of northwestern lands;(f.24) continual American diplomatic contacts urging separation of Canada from Britain(f.25) -- all of this made the possibility of American filibustering at the Red River seem serious indeed.

Moreover, just as the Red River crisis broke, a 100-member faction from British Columbia petitioned President Grant for US annexation;(f.26) in response, Grant's Secretary of State urged a British pull-out from the entire Northwest. British officials understandably viewed with cynicism an American senate resolution calling for Grant's mediation at the Red River, the spirit of which Ambassador Sir Edward Thornton characterized as betraying "a much greater desire ... that any difficulties which may exist should lead to the annexation of Canada than that the President should be successful in reconciling the people of the Red River settlement to the rule of the Dominion."(f.27) Thus, while the Colonial Office staff in London believed that Canada's failure to consult the Metis about terms of union had caused the outbreak, they gave credence to the many passages in McDougall's dispatches charging American annexationists at Pembina with exacerbating the problem in hopes of gaining the Red River Colony for the United States.(f.28) London was correct in this.

While Riel's armed confrontation had prompted the Canadians to refuse the transfer of the Red River Colony, both Gladstone's Liberal cabinet in London and Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in Ottawa still wanted the territory secured for future Canadian expansion. To this end, in late December of 1869, Macdonald proposed a three-pronged strategy to block American expansion and save the West for Canada. The first was negotiation with the Metis to remove their fears of land-grabbing Canadian settlers. The second, a military expedition, would make plain to both the Metis and the Americans the Queen's authority and imperial determination. Finally, Macdonald urged speedy construction of an all-Canadian, Atlantic-to-Pacific railroad to dislodge evolving north-south trade patterns and tie the West economically to the Canadian dominion.(f.29)

London approved of this approach and encouraged conciliatory gestures toward the Metis in hopes that this would atone for the early Canadian bungling that created the crisis. As a first step, Macdonald issued a public statement disavowing McDougall's call to arms; to treat with the Metis, he dispatched a three-man team of Canadian negotiators which included the Catholic Vicar General, Father J. B. Thibault, a man the French Metis much loved and respected. British prodding helped keep the talks on track, if only out of fear that failure might bring bloodshed and create an ineradicable Metis hatred for the proposed union with Canada.(f.30)

Negotiation did not, however, preempt military preparations. Weeks earlier, in late November, members of the Gladstone government in London had begun considering military measures. On 25 November the British Colonial Secretary Lord Granville directed Canadian Governor-General Sir John Young to stand ready to "repress with the [Queen's] authority ... any unlawful disturbance" at the Red River.(f.31) The 25 November date is an important marker, establishing London's early readiness to sanction, if necessary, the use of force in this crisis. The tone and the timing of this and other British documents contradict the spirit of both R.E. Lamb's conclusion that there is no real evidence for any commitment to include imperial troops in a Red River military expedition prior to February of 1870, and George F.G. Stanley's argument that from the beginning the British government was reluctant to become militarily involved in the Northwest.(f.32) Stanley, Lamb, and Howard are correct in saying that the Canadian "men on the spot," especially Macdonald, initiated the discussion of armed force through Sir John Rose, their official agent in London. However, the American threat, together with Rose's contention that any appearance of a lack of British resolve would tempt the Metis leaders to further lawlessness, found sympathetic ears in Whitehall. Stanley, Lamb, and Howard overlook London's obvious sensitivity and receptiveness in these matters, as do the more broadly drawn studies by Owram and Friesen.

Again, recall that it was on 25 November that Granville first sanctioned Governor-General Young's use of repressive measures. This was two days before Young communicated Canada's refusal to accept transfer of the territory.(f.33) British documents show no London resistance to the idea of force at this stage. In fact, by 29 November, behind-the-scenes discussions had settled on a preliminary military plan of action which the colonial secretary put before Gladstone for approval. Granville proposed promising the Canadians a one-year reprieve from the planned imperial troop withdrawals, during which time they might "use the Queen's name, which is all powerful with the natives, and ... one Company of Colonial Rifles, belonging to the Regiment about to be disbanded on terms of payment to be settled between Canada, Hudson Bay Co. & us...." In return the Canadians were to agree to accept transfer of the wayward Red River Colony to Canadian control.(f.34)

This 29 November letter from Granville to Gladstone is completely overlooked in the standard studies of the Riel Rebellion. Granville's almost immediate readiness to commit British troops stands in stark contrast to his supposed radical anti-imperial sentiments about which government critics complained at the time. The passivity which Stanley, Lamb, and Howard attribute to London in this crisis is no doubt due to the preponderance of Canadian sources in their studies. Granville's behaviour also brings into question the extent to which little Englandism as an ideology held sway in Gladstone's cabinet.

The prime minister's exact response to Granville's 29 November military proposal is not known, but circumstantial evidence points to Gladstone's early preliminary approval for the project. On 1 December, treating British approval of a military expedition as a foregone conclusion, the Ottawa government telegraphed their plans and considerations related to moving troops west with the coming spring thaw. This telegram closed with a short but significant clause: "Proposed arrangements as to troops and expense otherwise satisfactory."(f.35) Thus, as early as 1 December, the Canadians assumed London was committed to a military expedition to the Red River with imperial troops as the nucleus. Acting under this assumption, Sir Garnet Wolseley, a career army officer, requested command of the expedition.(f.36) Furthermore, if force were in fact a foregone conclusion in Whitehall, this would explain why Governor Young's 14 December summary of a Canadian Privy Council discussion of the use of force drew no comments or minutes pro or con from the Colonial Office staff.(f.37) Truly controversial matters almost always drew such in-house reactions for the secretary's consideration. In short, these communications show that by early December, before McDougall had even withdrawn from Pembina, London had already agreed in principle to send imperial troops to deal with the Red River insurgents. Liberal qualms, if any, had been quickly laid aside in favor of a more resolute approach.

Events in December and January only reinforced London's resolve. Granville was personally distressed by General Banks's "alarming account" to Lord Clarendon of the likely future of complications in the Red River dispute if it were not quickly resolved.(f.38) The American threat loomed larger. From Washington arrived news of Secretary Fish's proposal that Britain pull out of the Northwest altogether, which with fresh intelligence from the Red River reinforced the Colonial Office staff's insistence that American adventurers were aggravating the discontent.(f.39) Granville therefore warned Governor Young to take care "that nothing is done in connection with these disturbances which would give any plausibility to a charge of violation of the territory of the United States."(f.40)

Both Gladstone and Granville shared Prime Minister Macdonald's view that the Americans would do all they could short of war to get possession of the West, and that vigorous counter measures were required.(f.41) By 19 January Gladstone had circulated secretly to several cabinet members a set of policy guidelines related to dealings between Britain and the United States on matters pertaining to Canada. As Gladstone saw it, Canada and every person in Canada should have freedom to choose their political destiny, and as long as connection with Britain was desired, "that connection should be upheld with the whole power of the Empire."(f.42) There could be no clearer statement of the determined attitude prevailing at Whitehall.

Of the major works on the Red River revolt, only Stanley attempts to use primary sources to support the common assertion that the "British Government was not prepared to authorize the use of Imperial troops to suppress a rather nebulous disturbance in the far off North-West."(f.43) Stanley, however, bases his entire judgment on only three British documents, and each of these can reasonably be interpreted to suggest an opposite view. First, Stanley quotes a short minute of 25 December inscribed by Granville on another document, stating "the more I think of it the more I doubt the expediency of sending troops to the Red River."(f.44) Far from establishing British reluctance, in light of other documents, these words may be seen as the anxious second thoughts of a man who in fact has already entered into an implicit commitment to send troops. Second, Stanley quotes retiring Commander Sir John Michel, whose report to the War Office emphasized the obvious military vulnerabilities attached to moving troops long distances overland, given American hostility.(f.45) This, however, is military troubleshooting typical of a difficult mission, and not a judgement about its political value.

Oddly enough, the last source Stanley uses is the final British authorization of 5 March 1870 to Governor Young, instructing him to proceed with the expedition provided "reasonable terms" were given to the Metis.(f.46) By reasonable terms Whitehall intended not to block the force, but to ensure that the territory would be permanently pacified and welded to the British Empire -- not the United States. London sources make plain the Liberals' obsession with American expansion. Private correspondence between Gladstone and Granville at the time these final instructions were drafted shows that both men were convinced there was no alternative to "a prompt assertion of authority."(f.47)

Understandably focused as they are on Canadian sources, none of the standard works on this episode explain the mind-set dominant in London. That an all powerful United States republic in full control of North America ran counter to British interests was a core assumption of British policy throughout most of the nineteenth century. The Gladstone Liberals held this assumption just as dearly as the earlier British policy-makers who had attempted to forestall American expansion in Texas and Oregon. Gladstone's recorded personal concerns in the Red River crisis were almost wholly centred in countering the American threat.(f.48)

Beyond strategic concerns, though, racial thinking and aristocratic beliefs about the nature of authority predisposed some in Whitehall to a show of force at the Red River. Men like Lord Granville in the Colonial Office, or Edward Cardwell in the War Office, or Lord Kimberley, who in July 1870 succeeded Granville as colonial secretary, reckoned military power and the prestige that came from its possession to be an important source of authority amongst dependent peoples in the empire. If this authority was challenged, then effective demonstrations of power were required to recover lost prestige. Furthermore, a swift rather than delayed show of force was thought most humane and less costly in lives and money, since delay in punishment would only embolden challengers.(f.49)

As a corollary, racial stereotyping reinforced these notions as held by London authorities. Especially after the Sepoy Revolt of 1857, peoples of colour generally, all Aboriginal peoples in particular, and even the Irish were stigmatized racially in official thinking as excitable and impulsive, such that rebellious acts amongst them in any quarter inevitably would spread to encompass the majority if not quickly checked. Administrators feared that a "lack of moral stamina" in primitive peoples, including American Indians and the Metis, made them peculiarly subject to the evil effects of mob psychology, panic, riot, and revolt.(f.50) Even John Bright, a moralistic Quaker and the most squeamish Liberal in Gladstone's cabinet, held that demonstrations of force among such people might be mercy to them.(f.51) "Retrenchment-minded" or not, military force thus held a certain appeal to the Liberals despite the expense involved.

Therefore, when the spring thaw approached in Canada, construction began on 60 boats to ferry troops across the lakes in an all-Canadian passage west.(f.52) There was no objection from London. At the same time, Canadian negotiators reached Fort Garry. American influence there caused the Canadians to doubt Riel's good faith. Fearing the Metis leader now favoured annexation to the United States, the Canadians insisted upon the election of new Metis negotiators. Riel acceded to this demand, and the long-overdue negotiations began.(f.53)

However, to London it began to appear that the Canadians might also be lacking good faith. Prime Minister Macdonald showed his hand, perhaps prematurely, to his London agent when on 23 February he wrote: "These impulsive half-breeds have got spoilt by their emeute, and must be kept down by a strong hand until they are swamped by the influx of settlers." Going on, he betrayed a personal animosity toward Louis Riel: "If we once get him here [Ottawa]," Macdonald threatened, "as you know pretty well by this time, he is one gone coon." London knew that the Ontario newspapers were filled with even more harsh appraisals to the effect that "either Riel or Canada must go down." The extremist Anglo-Protestant pressures on the Canadian cabinet were quite disturbing.(f.54)

The attitudes of Macdonald and the vengeful Ontario press throw a different light on London's 5 March conditions for proceeding with the military expedition. Despite their own racial stereotyping, metropolitan authorities maintained a special vigilance against the overt racial hatred and over-eagerness for vengeance of "men on the spot." Needless violence could be very costly both materially and politically in the long run. Thus, London's conditions can be read as due restraints on Macdonald rather than the shades of reluctance to act at all, in Stanley's attribution. Consequently, with military preparations already well underway, Granville telegraphed Young that "reasonable terms" for the Metis would be the quid pro quo for British military participation.(f.55) Without the technical legal standing to act on their own, and believing in any case that the prestige of imperial troops was essential to success, the Canadians now had no choice but to accept London's conditions.

By early March, when Granville asked for this final British cabinet approval for the military force, there was no dissent. Gladstone thought the expedition would be needed to restore order at Fort Garry regardless of whether the Metis accepted Canadian terms for annexation. The Liberal leader also gave much consideration to means of blocking American filibustering, in case the Red River Colony remained attached to Britain independently of Canada.(f.56) A special British representative, Sir Clinton Murdoch, was dispatched to Canada to make sure that Britain's conditions of participation were honoured. Britain wanted the Canadians to have in hand a "reasonable agreement" with the Metis before the force was sent west.(f.57)

Riel's behaviour made Canadian reasonableness difficult to come by, both politically and on a purely emotional level. On 17 February Riel had captured 48 armed Canadian loyalists near Fort Garry, court-martialed them, and sentenced to death one particularly defiant man named Thomas Scott. On 4 April news reached Ottawa that the execution threat had been carried out. This act set off a vindictive furor among English Canadians which in turn stirred a counter wave of French-Canadian sympathy for the Metis leader. Moreover, Scott's execution made Metis amnesty demands seem politically impossible to Governor-General Young, who now characterized the situation at the Red River as nothing short of a "reign of terror."(f.58)

These events raised an equal outrage in London. Gladstone immediately found new justification for the military expedition. "The murder of Scott," he wrote,"... gives a great advantage to the Canadian Govt., and enables them to move not by way of political invasion but as punishers of crime." He hoped that the Canadians would "turn this advantage fully to account."(f.59) Similarly, the Colonial Office staff concluded that "in the abstract," hanging Louis Riel would be fair retribution for the murder of Scott, but considering the future peace of the territory, it would be best if Riel were to run away at the approach of the troops. This would save both London and Ottawa from either inflaming French Canada by denying amnesty or English Canada by granting it.(f.60) The Manitoba Act of 1870, which laid out otherwise generous terms for Red River entry into the Canadian union, was therefore silent on the amnesty question. Within 10 days of the act's passage the long-planned military expedition set forth under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, a highly decorated Crimean War veteran who had seen service in the 1857 Sepoy Revolt. Wolseley, it will be recalled, had applied for this command the previous December.(f.61) It is also notable that Wolseley was "a strong Anglo-Irish Protestant and a Freemason."(f.62)

By the time he embarked, Wolseley's ranks had swollen to nearly 1,200 soldiers, including a nucleus of almost 400 British regulars augmented with 800 English-speaking Canadian volunteers. The latter were bent on punishment.(f.63) Privately, Wolseley acknowledged that he wanted to hang Riel "to the highest tree in the place." The commander wrote his wife that he had "such a horror of rebels and vermin of his [Riel's] kidney that my treatment of him might not be approved by the civil powers in these puling times of weak measures and timid policy."(f.64)

None the less, in keeping with London's objectives, Wolseley contrived to move on Fort Garry in such a way as to prompt Riel to bolt and run before the force arrived. As the expedition reached the Red River region, Riel sent scouts and messengers to talk. Wolseley arrested these emissaries. As hoped, this made Riel fear Wolseley's hostile intent. Likewise, Wolseley's abrupt unilateral decision to march the troops directly to Fort Garry several days ahead of the newly appointed civilian authorities, in contradiction to prior agreement with the Metis, further reinforced Riel's impression of hostile intentions. Riel and his closest advisers thus hastily fled just ahead of Wolseley's force, thereby saving imperial authorities from a very troublesome amnesty decision. Wolseley marched into Fort Garry unopposed "with all the honors of war ... drew up the troops in battle array ... hoisted the Union Jack, saluted it with twenty-one guns, presented arms and gave three cheers for the Queen."(f.65) With the Queen's authority vindicated, the nucleus of imperial troops quickly withdrew, and Manitoba entered the Canadian union on generous provincial rather than territorial terms.

From the very beginning of this crisis, the Liberals had shown themselves willing to resort to force to assert and defend imperial interests against the United States in the far off Northwest. Imperial troops succeeded in demonstrating to both the Metis and the American annexationists the extent of British determination, without the negative side effect of actual bloodshed. Retrenchment-minded Liberals invested [Symbol Not Transcribed]100,000 in this show of force and thereby virtually ended the danger that the Northwest would be lost to the United States.(f.66) The Gladstone government followed up with massive imperial loan guarantees to Canada for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which further tied the West to Canada and the empire.

There was a complexity to nineteenth-century British imperialism which pre-World War II scholarship failed to take into account. The timing of local crises, together with fiscal, economic, strategic, humanitarian, racial, social and political factors affected its course throughout the century, albeit in different combinations and strengths at different times and places. If, as Bodelsen and Schuyler argue, "little Englandism" reached its high water mark of influence during Gladstone's first government, and if the Red River expedition is any measure, then little Englandism's actual effect on policy was never that great. Strategic ideas and concepts of race and social control made the Liberals just as vigorous in action on the Canadian imperial frontier as their conservative counterparts were in Africa and Asia later in the century. As Colin Eldridge has suggested, the re-examination of the Riel Rebellion and scores of other similar episodes may further an understanding of the nature of imperialism itself and may lead to the construction of a unified theory that will account for the complexities of the expansionist impulse throughout the nineteenth century.(f.67) While many historians will doubt the possibility of a satisfactory, overarching theory of imperialism, British sources do show that Canadian events registered much greater concern in London than the little Englandism model can explain. Its persistent influence in studies of the Canadian West calls for re-examination. In the case of the first Riel Rebellion, London's early, active, and resolute support for Canadian expansion certainly counted for much more than the existing literature has hitherto acknowledged.

NOTES

(f.1) Thomas Flanagan, "Political Theory of the Red River Resistance: The Declaration of December 8, 1869," Canadian Journal of Political Science 11 (March 1978), 153-64.

(f.2) George F.G. Stanley's 1936 account, The Birth of Western Canada: A History of the Riel Rebellions (1936; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), while sympathetic to the tragedy of the Metis, labeled this episode a "rebellion." See also Stanley's Louis Riel (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1963). Overlooking Riel's non-Metis support, Donald Creighton's John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain (Toronto: MacMillan, 1955) followed the traditional Ottawa and London view that the events of 1869 at Red River constituted a half-breed "rebellion" based on military power which threatened to block the full development of the Canadian union. In 1956, W.L. Morton first advanced the argument that the 1869-70 Red River crisis was properly seen as part of a general pattern of western resistance to Ontario land-grabbing, rather than a revolt against legitimate authority. The idea of revolt fired imaginations in Ottawa and London, but "Revolt" was never the intent of the 1869 movement. Preferring the term "resistance" to describe the events of 1869-70, Morton shows the French Metis desired Roman Catholic and French-speaking settlement in their native land rather than settlement from Protestant Ontario. See Morton's lengthy introduction to Alexander Begg's Red River Journal and Other Papers Relative to the Red River Resistance of 1869-70 (Toronto, 1956, and facsimile reprint edition New York, 1969); W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1957 and 1967); W.L. Morton, The Critical Years: The Union of British North America, 1857-1873 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964); and W.L. Morton ed., Manitoba: Birth of a Province, vol. I (Altona, Man.: D.W. Friesen, 1965).

(f.3) The Times, [London], 17 Jan. 1873.

(f.4) Robert L. Schuyler, The Fall of the Old Colonial System: A Study in British Free Trade, 1770-1870 (New York: Archon Books, 1945), 245-59, 263-76; R.L. Schuyler, "The Climax of Anti-Imperialism in England," Political Science Quarterly 36 (1921), 537-60; C.A. Bodelsen, Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (New York: H. Fertig, 1924), 8, 88-91; and A.P. Newton, "International Colonial Rivalry: The New World, 1815-1870," The Cambridge History of the British Empire, ed. J.H. Rose, A.P. Newton, and E.A. Benians, vol. 2: The Growth of the New Empire 1783-1870 (Cambridge: University Press, 1940), 525-47.

(f.5) Charles Perry Stacey, Canada and the British Army, 1846-1871: A Study in the Practice of Responsible Government, Revised edition (1936; Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1963).

(f.6) W.D. McIntyre, for example, has shown that several of the expansionist thrusts formerly attributed to the new imperialism of Disraeli were actually set in motion under Gladstone's Liberal cabinet of 1868-74. See W.D. McIntyre, The Imperial Frontier in the Tropics, 1865-75 (London: Macmillan, 1967).

(f.7) Documents from both C.O. 42, Canada, and C.O. 880, Confidential Prints: North America, in the Public Record Office at Kew are referenced in this paper. C.O. 42 contains staff minutes not printed. Those staff minutes from C.O. 42 which are pertinent to the argument are referenced. Unlike their Foreign Office counterparts, the Colonial Office Confidential Prints, C.O. 880, are generally complete runs of documents printed for interoffice circulation during crises such as the first Riel Rebellion. Beyond the Colonial Office files, the most critical sources for this reinterpretation include The Political Correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1868-1876, edited by Agatha Ramm, vols. 81-82, The Camden Miscellany, 3rd Ser. (London: Clarendon Press, 1952), The Gladstone Papers in the British Library, and The Gladstone Diaries edited by H.C.G. Matthew, Vol. VII, 1869-71 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982). Also consulted were the Cardwell Papers, the Granville Papers, and the Wolseley Papers in the Public Record Office at Kew.

(f.8) R.E. Lamb, Thunder in the North: Conflict Over the Riel Risings 1870-1885 (New York: Pageant Press, 1957), 35, 95; George F.G. Stanley, The Birth of Western Canada, 128-30; Joseph Kinsey Howard, Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest (New York: Morrow, 1952), 139; D.N. Sprague, Canada and the Metis 1869-1885 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1988); Doug Owram, Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West, 1856-1890 (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1980), 94; Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1984), 126-27; and George F.G. Stanley, Toil and Trouble: Military Expeditions to the Red River (Toronto: Dundurn, 1989), 44.

(f.9) John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Free Trade," Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., 6 (1953), 1-15; Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961); B.A. Knox, "Reconsidering Mid-Victorian Imperialism," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 1 (1973), 155-72; C.C. Eldridge, England's Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli, 1868-1880 (London: Macmillan, 1973); C.C. Eldridge, Victorian Imperialism (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978); Susan Farnsworth, The Evolution of British Imperial Policy During the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Peelite Contribution, 1846-74 (New York: Garland, 1992); and James Patterson Smith, "Retrenchment, Reform, and Empire: Lord Kimberley and the Liberal Imperial Dilemma, 1868-74," unpublished PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 1984.

(f.10) Stanley, Toil and Trouble, 44.

(f.11) John S. Galbraith, "The 'Turbulent Frontier' as a Factor in British Expansion," Comparative Studies in Society and History 2 (1960), 150-68; and see the similarity of this to views advanced in D.N. Sprague, Canada and the Metis 1869-1885, 50-52, and Stanley, Toil and Trouble, 75-76.

(f.12) W.D. Hussey, The British Empire and Commonwealth, 1500-1961 (Cambridge: University Press, 1963), 69, 91, 158-59; and Lamb, Thunder in the North, 1-14.

(f.13) Detailed treatments of the land issue from strikingly different viewpoints are found in Thomas Flanagan, Metis Lands in Manitoba (Calgary, 1991), and in D.N. Sprague, Canada and the Metis.

(f.14) "Colonial Office Confidential Memorandum Regarding Disturbances in the Red River Settlement," 31 Jan. 1870, Colonial Office Files in the Public Record Office, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, C.O. 880/4, 152-59; see also Lamb, Thunder in the North, 13-23.

(f.15) Ibid.; and Young to Granville, 27 Nov. 1869, C.O. 880/4, 189.

(f.16) Ibid.

(f.17) "Colonial Office Confidential Memorandum Regarding Disturbances in the Red River Settlement," 31 Jan. 1870, C.O. 880/4, 153-59.

(f.18) Thomas Flanagan, "Political Theory of the Red River Resistance: The Declaration of December 8,1869," 153-54.

(f.19) Heather Gilbert, Awakening Continent: The Life of Lord Mount Stephen, 2 vols. (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1965 and 1976), 1:21-22; Stanley, Louis Riel, 38-41; and Lamb, Thunder in the North, 7-8.

(f.20) "Colonial Office Confidential Memorandum