History of Montreal - Surrender of The Colony

Surrender of The Colony

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War and Conquest of Canada

Ville-Marie remained French settlement until 1760, when Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered it to the British army under Jeffrey Amherst. With Great Britain's victory in the Seven Years War, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 marked its end, with the French being forced to cede Canada and all its dependencies to the other nation.

As a British colony, and with immigration no longer limited to members of the Roman Catholic religion, the city began to grow from British immigration. American Revolutionists under General Richard Montgomery briefly captured the city during the 1775 invasion of Canada but left when it became obvious they could not hold Canada. Often having suffered loss of property and personal attacks during hostilities, thousands of English-speaking Loyalists migrated to Canada from the American colonies during and after the American Revolution. The government provided most with land, settling them in what became Upper Canada (Ontario) to the west, as well as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to the east. With 19th-century immigration, more and more English-speaking merchants and residents continued to arrive in what had by then become known as Montreal. Soon the main language of commerce in the city was English. The golden era of fur trading began in the city with the advent of the locally owned North West Company, the main rival to the primarily British Hudson's Bay Company.

The town's population was majority Francophones until around the 1830s. From the 1830s, to about 1865, it was inhabited by a majority of Anglophones, most of recent immigration from the British Isles or other parts of British North America. Fire destroyed one quarter of the town on May 18, 1765.