E-Book Overview
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 by-product 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.
E-Book Content
Harvard Historical Studies, 123 Published under the auspices of the Department of History from the income of the Paul Revere Frothingham Bequest Robert Louis Stroock Fund Henry Warren Torrey Fund F renchmen into Peasant s Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada Leslie Choquette Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1997 Copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choquette, Leslie. Frenchmen into peasants : modernity and tradition in the peopling of French Canada / Leslie Choquette. p. cm.—(Harvard historical studies ; 123) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-32315-7 (alk. paper) 1. New France—Emigration and immigration—History. 2. France— Emigration and immigration—History—17th century. 3. France— Emigration and immigration—History—18th century. 4. Immigrants— New France—History. 5. Canada—History—To 1763 (New France) 6. France—History—Bourbons, 1589–1789. I. Title. II. Series: Harvard historical studies ; v. 123. F1030.C57 1997 304.8′71044′09032—dc21 96-40089 For my parents, Phyllis and Walter Choquette, and in memory of my grandparents Acknowledgments This project was conceived two decades ago in a moment of curiosity. It occurred to me that I knew nothing of the French origins of the Quebecers and Acadians, and that they would make a good thesis topic for an aspiring French historian. I never dreamed that I would be at it for so long, but the rewards of investigating the francophone societies on both sides of the Atlantic have been more than adequate compensation. Needless to say, I have incurred many debts along the way. I would like to thank the following institutions for their financial support over the years: the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University; the Frederick R. Sheldon Traveling Fellowship; the University Consortium for Research on North America; the Department of History, Harvard University; the government of Québec; France ’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS); the government of Canada; the Charles Warren Center, Harvard University; and Assumption College. Permission to rework previously published material and include it here was generously granted by the University of California Press, for “Recruitment of French Emigrants to Canada, 1600–1