THIS BOOK is essentially an attempt to explain why the French
Canadians live, think, act, and react differently from English-
speaking North Americans. It is also an account of what
French Canadians call le fait français en Amérique--the French fact
in North America--for only by tracing the intellectual and cultural
history of French Canada from its beginnings can present-day Quebec
be understood. French-Canadian culture is an intricate amalgam
of the French heritage, the North American environment, and
Roman, British, and American influences. The unifying thread in
French-Canadian history is the spirit known as 'nationalism', which
is actually an intense provincialism mingled with ethnic and religious
factors. Therefore somewhat disproportionate attention will be
devoted to the extremists of a generally placid and easy-going people,
who possess a singular devotion to the golden mean as a rule of life;
for this is an attempt to explain differences, not to stress resemblances.

This book is also the story of the ceaseless struggle of a minority
group to maintain its cultural identity in the face of all manner of
conscious and unconscious pressures to conform to the dominant
civilization of other ethnic groups and another culture. The French
Canadians are the Sinn Feiners of North America, for their strong
group consciousness and cohesiveness arise from a basic loneliness
and insecurity. It is the sense of 'ourselves alone' that motivates
efforts at enhancement by stressing French Canada's peculiar ties
with France and Rome. The attitudes of minority groups can often
be explained only in psychological terms, and French Canada is no
exception to this rule. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of the most eminent
French Canadians, who had a profound understanding of both
French and English Canadians, ^* once formulated this fact in the
observation that ' Quebec does not have opinions, but only senti-
ments.' So this history will be in some measure a psychological
study, whose findings may have some general validity for other
minority groups.

Intellectual and cultural history is one of the broadest forms of
non-specialized science. This book will be based on constitutional
and political history, though by no means confined to it. It will use
economic history and sociology, which do much to explain intellec-
tual developments in this instance; it will employ literary and artistic

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