A survey of the history of French Canada from Louis Joseph Papineau to Wilfrid Laurier. The focus is on French-Canadian society in Quebec; its struggle to survive and adapt in the face of fundamental socio-economic changes and its constant search for greater political equality within the British Empire and then through Confederation. The question of the rights of francophone minorities outside Quebec is dealt with in as much as they related to the problems of the French-Canadian majority in Quebec.