Frenchmen into peasants : modernity and tradition in the peopling of French Canada / Leslie Choquette.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Choquette, Leslie.

Series:

Harvard historical studies ; v. 123.

Harvard historical studies ; 123

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immigrants--New France--History.

Immigrants.

New France--Emigration and immigration--History.

New France.

France--Emigration and immigration--History--17th century.

France.

France--Emigration and immigration--History--18th century.

Canada--History--To 1763 (New France).

Canada.

France--History--Bourbons, 1589-1789.

Physical Description:

viii, 397 p.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In unprecedented detail, Leslie Choquette narrates the peopling of French Canada across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the lesser known colonial phase of French migration. Drawing on French and Canadian archives, she carefully traces the precise origins of individual immigrants, describing them by gender, class, occupation, region, religion, age, and date of departure. Her archival work is impressive: of the more than 30,000 emigrants who embarked for Quebec and the Maritimes during the French Regime, nearly 16,000 are chronicled here. In considering the pattern of emigration in the context of migration history, Choquette shows that, in many ways, the movement toward Canada occurred as a byproduct of other, perennial movements, such as the rural exodus or interurban labor migrations. Overall, emigrants to Canada belonged to an outwardly turned and mobile sector of French society, and their migration took place during a phase of vigorous Atlantic expansion. They crossed the ocean to establish a subsistence economy and peasant society, traces of which lingered on into the twentieth century. Because Choquette looks at the entire history of French migration to Canada—its social and economic aspects as well as its place in the larger history of migration—her work makes a remarkable contribution in the field of immigration history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction: The Peopling of French Canada

Part I Modernity

Chapter 1 Regional Origins: Peasants or Frenchmen?

Chapter 2 A Geography of Modernity: The Northwest

Chapter 3 A Geography of Modernity: Non-Northwesterners and Women

Chapter 4 An Urban Society: Class Structure and Occupational Distribution

Chapter 5 Religious Diversity: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics

Chapter 6 The Age of Adventure in an Age of Expansion

Part II Tradition

Chapter 7 Traditional Patterns of Mobility

Chapter 8 A Traditional Movement: Northwestern Emigration to Canada

Chapter 9 A Traditional Movement: Emigration Outside the Northwest

Chapter 10 The Canadian System of Recruitment

Conclusion: Frenchmen into Peasants

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [307]-388) and index.

ISBN:

9780674029545

0674029542

OCLC:

923115992