Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes 1740-1840 (Social History of Canada, 39) [Paperback]

Allan Greer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1985 | Series: Social History of Canada, 39

Rural life in pre-industrial Quebec was essentially organized around a feudal society. Allan Greer takes a close look at the at society and its economy in three parishes in Lower Richelieu valley – Sorel, St Ours, and St Denis – from 1740 to 1840. He finds a pronounced pattern of household self-sufficiency; as in other peasant societies, the habitants lived mainly from produce grown throught their own efforts on their own lands. How the family-based economy operated and how the household was reproduced over the generations through marriage, birth, inheritance, and colonization, together form a major focus of this study.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'An excellent example of how local histories can challenge the traditional interpretations of this country's past.' (Canadian Historical review )

'Greer [writes with passion, ingenuity, and force.' (American Historical Review )

About the Author

Allan Greer is a Professor in the Department of History at McGill University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division; 1 edition (October 1, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802065783
• ISBN-13: 978-0802065780
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but narrow in scope, December 19, 2008

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This review is from: Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes 1740-1840 (Social History of Canada, 39) (Paperback)

The title of this work infers a broad examination of Québec society, but the subtitle ("Rural Society in Three Québec Parishes 1740-1840") is more representative of the text. The parishes described are Sorel, St-Ours, and St-Denis adjoining the Rivière Richelieu. The work is organized in eight sections:

1. Introduction: seventeenth-century beginnings
2. The peasant family household
3. Generations of peasants
4. Aristocratic ascendancy
5. The feudal burden
6. The country merchant
7. Habitant-voyageurs
8. Turning the nineteenth century: development or crisis?

The author delivers a 231-page analysis of the local interrelation between habitants (`peasants'), seigneurs (`lords'), and one merchant, with brief glimpses of clergy and tradesmen, all augmented by valuable statistics (marriages, births, deaths, infant mortality, farm size and composition, crop production, etc.) for the specified century, so I'm not complaining (though the text at times seems overly burdened with 20C economic jargon).

The absence of wider context is lamentable. Seigneurs Pierre de St-Ours L'Échaillon, Pierre de Sorel (Saurel), and Claude de Ramezay de La Gesse are only briefly profiled. Post-conquest merchant Samuel Jacobs (an interesting figure who arrived in 1759 with Wolfe) is analyzed, but not compared with pre-conquest merchants like Charles Aubert de LaChesnaye, Charles Bazire, Jacques Le Ber Larose, the Gamelins (Louis, Laurent-Eustache, Ignace), the Babies (Babys), Antoine-Pierre Trottier Desauniers, Louis-Charles Charly St-Ange, etc. `Habitant-voyageurs' traces parish participation in the fur-trade from 1784, but fails to provide any real history (however brief) of the trade itself (by then over 170 years old). Finally, the author doesn't explore why these `lords, peasants, and merchants' emigrated in the first place and stayed despite decades of war with the Iroquois and England.

If the reader seeks facts about three Canadian parishes 1740-1840, this is a valuable study. If a wider portrait of Québec society is desired, this work is helpful but limited.