Several factors attracted French Canadians to overseas service in the 19th-century British Empire: a military tradition going back to the French regime; the lure of adventure; and Quebec's conservative-religious dominant ideology, which encouraged sympathyjor the imperialist notion of the civilising mission. Seen as champions of Christianity, protectors of the weak, and guardians of order, colonial empires were good things. Between the 1850s and the 1880s the British Empire was generally represented in Quebec not only as protector of Christian civilisation but also as defender oJ French Canada's distinct nationality, against both American annexationism and English-Canadian assimilationism. British tolerance was contrasted with English-Canadian fanaticism, and the empire portrayed as an association o/nationalities, each contributing in its own jashion to a common cause. This image changed after the Riel affair, as English-Canadian nationalism pressed or assimilation oj French Canada, seizing on imperialism as a pretext Jor doing so. Claims that French Canadians were disloyal, demands that they speak English because theyNw ere British subjects, insistence that they serve the empire on English Canada's terms, turned Britain into a symbol of bullying assimilationism and made French Canadians hostile tojurther imperial service.