Who ruled Quebec City?

Quebec City stands on Cap Diamant, a high promontory on the north shore of the St Lawrence River at the point where the river suddenly narrows; the city's name comes from an Algonquian word for "where the river narrows". Whoever held this rock could control shipping into the heart of North America, and it became the capital of New France and one of the most heavily fortified cities on the continent. Its history is defined by the long contest between France and Britain for that position, and by the survival of a French-speaking society after the British conquest.

When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence in 1535, he found an Iroquoian village called Stadacona near the site of the future city and wintered nearby. By the time the French returned to stay, the St Lawrence Iroquoians had disappeared from the valley, probably through war and disease, and the region was frequented by Innu, Algonquin and other Algonquian-speaking peoples who traded furs. On 3 July 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded a trading post called the Habitation at the foot of the cliff. Twenty of its 28 settlers died during the first winter, and growth was slow. English privateers under the Kirke brothers forced the starving post to surrender in 1629, but it was returned to France in 1632.

Quebec became the capital of New France, the seat of its governor, its bishop (from 1674) and its seminary, and the port through which settlers, soldiers and goods arrived from France. Its Upper Town on the cliff held the church and government, while merchants and artisans crowded into the Lower Town by the river. Fortifications grew steadily, and in 1690 the governor, Frontenac, beat off an English colonial fleet under Sir William Phips.

During the Seven Years' War a British force under James Wolfe besieged the city through the summer of 1759, bombarding much of it into ruins. On 13 September Wolfe's troops climbed the cliffs west of the walls and defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham in a battle that lasted less than an hour; both Wolfe and the French commander, Montcalm, were mortally wounded. The city surrendered five days later, and in 1763 France ceded Canada to the British Empire. The British allowed the French-speaking Catholic population to keep its religion and civil law under the Quebec Act of 1774.

During the American Revolution, American forces under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold attacked the city in a snowstorm on 31 December 1775 and were thrown back, with Montgomery killed. In the following decades the British strengthened the defences further, building the star-shaped Citadel between 1820 and 1831. Quebec was the capital of Lower Canada from 1791 and, at times, of the united Province of Canada, and in 1864 it hosted the conference that drew up the plan for Canadian confederation.

When Canada was formed in 1867, Quebec City became the capital of the new province of Quebec. In the nineteenth century timber exports and shipbuilding made its port busy, but as ocean ships began to sail further upriver and the railways favoured Montreal, it was overtaken in size and trade. It remained a political and religious centre of French Canada, and the seat of the provincial governments that led the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, which transformed Quebec society. In 1985 its walled old town, the only remaining fortified city walls in North America north of Mexico, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city today has about 550,000 inhabitants and remains the seat of the Quebec government.