Customer Reviews

A Short History of Quebec

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This is a relatively well-written, thoroughly competent overview of Quebec history from a predominantly socio-economic perspective. As another review notes, there are shades of Marxism; unlike this other reviewer I understand that Marx was an originary figure in socio-economic history and so ANY book written with an economic basis will show the influence of the author of Das Kapital, and to me that's not necessarily a bad thing. These writers don't ignore the role of the Catholic church, the Seigneurial system, or artistic production in Quebec history; they start from the position that all these institutions are given structure by economic relationships, a fairly widely accepted historiographical position. If they're a little dry and schematic about it, well, introductory historical texts have a tendency to be a little dry and schematic.

My slight beef with this tome is that it generally presupposes a familiarity with Canadian history that readers looking for an introductory text on Quebec might not have. For example, the October Crisis is mentioned early in a chapter and never especially well explained. This surely has something to do with the writers' determination to resist a "great men and events" method of historiography and to explicate a narrative of change based on socio-economic conditions, but it can leave the U.S. educated reader scratching his or her head or running off to wikipedia to get up to speed. Combined with the tendency of this kind of introductory history to read as an thick blur of names, dates, and locales, the constant need to look outside the text makes for a book that, while not especially challenging in its terminology or style, can nevertheless be difficult to get through.

Commendable as the best general history of Quebec I've seen that's addressed to an English audience, Dickinson and Young's work nevertheless leaves the field wide open for other writers.

It's called "A Short History" but it's a big thick book with a lot more detail than I bargained for.

A little bit dry at times but generally very readable and informative.

Good history on this facinating region of North America. As an American, it made me want to visit this region.