This study attempts to gain a better understanding of the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838, the nature of the conflict itself, as well as its social and economic antecedents, by examining the regional incidence of insurrection. Though they were widely supported throughout the province, the revolutionary Patriots were strongest in the western countryside of Lower Canada. This area, the District of Montréal, was rather more prosperous, more dynamic and more urbanized than other parts of rural Lower Canada. Contrary to traditional interpretations which tend to link the insurrection to agrarian distress, it was only in the quiescent Québec region thatfamine was a real threat. Rebellion occurred, not in impoverished sections of the countryside, but in areas where English- and French-speakers lived in close proximity and where seigneurial exactions were comparatively high.