page_title: New Brunswick
section_title: British colony
hierarchical_section_title: New Brunswick / History / European settlements / British colony
caption_attribution_description: Painting shows romanticised view of United Empire Loyalists arriving in New Brunswick, ca. 1783
context_page_description: New Brunswick is one of four Atlantic provinces on the east coast of Canada. According to the Constitution of Canada, New Brunswick is the only bilingual province. About two-thirds of the population declare themselves anglophones and one-third francophones. One-third of the population describes themselves as bilingual. Atypically for Canada, only about half of the population lives in urban areas, mostly in Greater Moncton, Greater Saint John and the capital Fredericton.
  Unlike the other Maritime provinces, New Brunswick's terrain is mostly forested uplands and much of the land is further from the coast, giving it a harsher climate. New Brunswick is 83% forested and less densely populated than the rest of the Maritimes.
  Being relatively close to Europe, New Brunswick was among the first places in North America to be explored and settled by Europeans. In 1784, after an influx of refugees from the American Revolutionary War settled in the area, the province was founded on territory from the partition of Nova Scotia. In 1785 Saint John became the first incorporated city in what is now Canada.
context_section_description: Continental Acadia was eventually incorporated into the British colony of Nova Scotia, with nearly all of New France being surrendered to the British with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Acadians that returned from exile discovered several thousand immigrants, mostly from New England, on their former lands. Some settled around Memramcook and along the Saint John River. In 1766, settlers from Pennsylvania founded Moncton, and English settlers from Yorkshire arrived in the Sackville area. However, settlement of the area remained slow in the mid 18th century.
  After the American Revolution, about 10,000 loyalist refugees settled along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, commemorated in the province's motto, Spem reduxit ("hope restored"). The number reached almost 14,000 by 1784, with about one in ten eventually returning to America. New Brunswick was founded in 1784 upon the partition of Nova Scotia into two areas which became the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In the same year New Brunswick formed its first elected assembly. The colony was named New Brunswick in honour of George III, King of Great Britain, King of Ireland, and Prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg in what is now Germany. In 1785, Saint John became Canada's first incorporated city. The population of the colony reached 26,000 in 1806 and 35,000 in 1812.
  The 1800s saw an age of prosperity based on wood export and shipbuilding, bolstered by The Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and demand from the American Civil War. St. Martins became the third most productive shipbuilding town in the Maritimes, producing over 500 vessels. In 1848, responsible home government was granted and the 1850s saw the emergence of political parties largely organised along religious and ethnic lines. The first half of the 1800s saw large-scale immigration from Ireland and Scotland, with the population reaching 252,047 by 1861.
  The notion of unifying the separate colonies of British North America was discussed increasingly in the 1860s. Many felt that the American Civil war was the result of weak central government and wished to avoid such violence and chaos. The 1864 Charlottetown Conference was intended to discuss a Maritime Union, but concerns over possible conquest by the Americans, coupled with a belief that Britain was unwilling to defend its colonies against American attack, led to a request from the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) to expand the meeting's scope. In 1866 the US cancelled the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty, leading to loss of trade with New England and prompting a desire to build trade within British North America, while Fenian raids increased support for union. On 1 July 1867, New Brunswick entered the Canadian Confederation along with Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada.
caption: A romanticized depiction of the arrival of the Loyalists in New Brunswick
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