What difference does a mode make? A comparison of two seventeenth-century colonies: Canada and Newfoundland

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 63, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 281-304

  Sweeny, Robert C H ^a  

^a MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949749487     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. In her survey of the economy of the British Atlantic world, Nuala Zahadieh ignores Newfoundland completely. She presents John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard's figures for the fishery of the continental colonies asrepresenting the whole fishery of British North America and then compounds theproblem by using Phyllis Deane and William A. Cole's figures for British importsto establish the relative significance of colonies. Newfoundland salted cod wassold on international rather than British markets (see Zahedieh, "Economy, " in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick [Basingstoke, Eng., 2002], 58, 60).
2. In stressing the ecological character of the concept, I am following Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who wrote in The German Ideology: "The firstpremise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living humanindividuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisationof these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature"(Collected Works, Volume 5: Marx and Engels: 1845-47 [New York, 1976], 31).
3. The best historical introduction to feudalism remains Guy Bois, Crise du Féodalisme (Paris, France, 1976), 351-62.
4. Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec is the principal venuefor this ongoing discussion, but key texts include Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada's "Heroic Age" Reconsidered (Kingston, Ontario, 1985);
5. Georges E. Sioui, For an Amerindian Autohistory: An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic, trans. Sheila Fischman (Montreal, Quebec, 1992);
6. Denis Vaugeois, La Fin des alliances franco-indiennes, Enquête surun sauf-conduit de 1760 devenu un traité en 1990 (Montreal, Quebec, 1995).
7. For more on the Beothuk experience, see Ralph T. Pastore, "The Beothuk Florescence: Newfoundland's Aboriginal People in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" (paper delivered at the Atlantic Canada Studies Conference, May 1992, Saint John's, Newfoundland).
8. The splitting apart of the peasantry into distinct social groups withopposing interests, which Vladimir Lenin first termed éclatement, hasbeen a central concept in European discussions of the transition from feudalismto capitalism (Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Collected Works, vol. 3 [Moscow, Russia, 1960]).
9. For more on this debate, see Rodney Hilton, introduction to Paul Sweezyet al., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1978),
10. Marcel Trudel, Le régime seigneurial (Ottawa, Ontario, 1956);
11. Richard Colebrook Harris, The Seigneurial System in Early Canada: AGeographical Study (Sainte-Foy, Quebec, 1968);
12. Fernand Ouellet, Histoire économique et sociale du Québec, 1760-1850: Structures et conjoncture (Montreal, Quebec, 1966);
13. Ouellet, Éléments d'histoire sociale du Bas-Canada(Montreal, Quebec, 1972);
14. Ouellet, Le Bas-Canada, 1791-1840: Changement structuraux et crise(Ottawa, Ontario, 1976);
15. Ouellet, Economy, Class, and Nation in Quebec: Interpretive Essays(Toronto, Ontario, 1991).
16. Louise Dechêne, Habitants et Marchands de Montréal au XVIIesiècle (Paris, France, 1974), 258
17. (for the English translation of the quotation, see Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal, trans. Liana Vardi[Montreal, Quebec, 1992], 143);
18. Sylvie Dépatie, Mario Lalancette, and Christian Dessureault, Contributions à l'étude du régime seigneurial canadien(LaSalle, Quebec, 1987);
19. Thomas William Wien, "Peasant Accumulation in a Context of Colonization: Rivière-du-Sud, Canada, 1720-1775" (Ph.D. diss., McGill Unversity, 1988);
20. Dépatie, "L'évolution d'une société rurale: l'Île Jésus au XVIIIe siècle" (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1989);
21. Dechêne, Le Partage des Subsistances au Canada sous le Régime Français (Montreal, Quebec, 1994);
22. Dépatie et al., eds., Vingt ans après Habitants etmarchands: Lectures de l'histoire des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles canadiens(Montreal, Quebec, 1998).
23. Mario Lalancette, "Description et analyse du rapportpêche/ seigneurie à l'Ile-aux-Coudres au XVIIIe siècle, "in Évolution et Éclatement du Monde Rural: Structures, Fonctionnement et Évolution Différentielle des Sociétés Rurales Françaises et Québécoises XVIIe-XXe siècles, ed. Joseph Goy and Jean-Pierre Wallot (Paris, France, 1986), 203-15.
24. Estimates of the severity of these constraints vary considerably. For Saint Ours in the fertile Richelieu Valley, Allan Greer estimates feudal duesconsumed 45 percent of the peasant's available surplus in wheat (Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740-1840 [Toronto, Ontario, 1985], 122-39).
25. On the other hand, Louis Michel suggests in his survey that the level wasmuch closer to one-fifth of the available grain surplus (Michel, "L'économie et société rurale dans la vallée du Saint-Laurent aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: bilan historiographique, " in Dépatie et al., Vingt ans après, 76-77).
26. Jacques Mathieu, "Mobilité et sédentarité: stratégies familiales en Nouvelle-France, " Recherchessociographiques 28, nos. 2-3 (1987): 211-27;
27. Serge Courville, "Le marché des 'subsistances': L'exemple dela plaine de Montréal au début des années 1830: uneperspective géographique, " Revue d'histoire de l'Amériquefrançaise 42, no. 2 (Autumn 1988): 193-239;
28. Courville, Entre ville et campagne: L'essor du village dans lesseigneuries du Bas-Canada (Sainte-Foy, Quebec, 1990);
29. Courville, Jean-Claude Robert, and Normand Séguin, Atlashistorique du Québec: Le pays laurentien au XIXe siècle: lesmorphologies de base (Sainte-Foy, Quebec, 1995);
30. Gérard Bouchard, Quelques arpents d'Amérique: Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838-1971 (Montreal, Quebec, 1996).
31. See also Robert C. H. Sweeny, "Recenser la modernité, "Cahiers du Géographie du Québec 41, no. 114 (December1997):423-29;
32. Courville, Robert, and Séguin, "Replique, " Cahiers du Géographie du Québec 41, no. 114 (December 1997): 431-40.
33. For a general statement, see Gerald Bouchard with Serge Courville, eds., La Construction d'une culture: Le Québec et l'Amériquefranç aise (Sainte-Foy, Quebec, 1993). Bouchard's play on words refers to Voltaire's description of Canada as "quelques arpents de neige"(several acres of snow).
34. See Voltaire, Candide (Geneva, Switzerland, 1759), chap. 23.
35. The pioneering articulation of this interpretive school is Jean-Caude Robert, "Un seigneur entrepreneur, Barthélemy Joliette, et lafondation du village d'Industrie (Joliette), 1822-1850, " Revue d'histoirede l'Amérique française 26, no. 3 (December 1972): 375-95.
36. Hubert Denis, "Mobilité spatiale des unions en Nouvelle-France" (master's thesis, University of Montreal, 2002), xix-177.
37. John A. Dickinson, "Destins familiaux dans le gouvernement de Montréal sous le régime français: les brunet, " in Les Exclus de la Terre en France et au Québec XVIIe-XXe siècles: Lareproduction familiale dans la différence, ed. Gérard Bouchard, Dickinson, and Joseph Goy (Sillery, Quebec, 1998), 175-89;
38. Louise Dechêne, "L'évolution du ré gimeseigneurial au Canada: le cas de Montréal aux XVIIe et XVIIIesiècles, " Recherches sociographiques 17, no. 3 (1971): 143-83.
39. Christian Dessureault, "Reproduction sociale dans le Québecpréindustriel: les 'élus' et les 'exclus, '" in Bouchard, Dickinson, and Goy, Les Exclus de la Terre, 51-72.
40. Sylvie Dépatie, "La transmission du patrimoine dans lesterroirs en expansion: un exemple canadien au XVIIIe siècle, " Revued'histoire de l'Amérique française 44, no. 2 (Autumn 1990):171-98;
41. Dépatie, "La transmission du patrimoine au Canada(XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle): qui sont les défavorisés? "Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française 54, no. 4 (Spring 2001):557-70.
42. Louis Michel, "Héritage et établissement dans despopulations rurales en croissance: Premier aperçu de la situation dansles deux paroisses de Varennes et Verchères en 1700, 1720 et 1740, "in Famille et marché XVIe-XXe siècles, ed. Christian Dessureault, John A. Dickinson, and Joseph Goy (Sillery, Quebec, 2003), 299-321.
43. Christian Dessureault, "L'égalitarisme paysan de l'anciennesociété rurale dans la vallée du Saint-Laurent:éléments pour une ré-interprétation, " Revued'histoire de l'Amérique française 40, no. 3 (Winter 1987):373-407;
44. Thomas Wien, "'Les travaux pressants': Calendrier agrirole, assolement et productivité au Canada au XVIIIe siècle, " Revued'histoire de l'Amérique frauçaise 43, no. 4 (Spring 1990):535-58;
45. Jacques Mathieu and Alain Laberge, eds., L'occupation des terres dans lavallée du Saint-Laurent: Les aveux et dénombrements, 1723-1745(Sillery, Quebec, 1991);
46. Brian D. Murphy, "The Size of the Labour Force in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1675-1790: A Critical Evaluation" (master's thesis, University of Ottawa, 1986), 153;
47. Claude Berrardelli, "Les rapports entre le commerce des fourrures etl'agriculture dans une paroisse canadienne au XVIIIe siècle" (master's thesis, University of Quebec at Montreal, 1996);
48. Françoise Noël, The Christie Seigneuries: Estate Managementand Settlement in the Upper Richelieu Valley, 1760-1854 (Montreal, Quebec, 1992), 163.
49. Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant, 20-47;
50. Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Women's Work, Markets and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario [Toronto, Ontario, 1988]).
51. For a critique of this literature, see Robert C. H. Sweeny, "The Staples as the Significant Past: A Case Study in Historical Theory and Method, " in Canada: Theoretical Discourse, ed. Terry Goldie, Carmen Lambert, and Roland Lorimer (Montreal, Quebec, 1994), 338-41.
52. Stanley B. Ryerson, Unequal Union: The Roots of Conflict in the Canadas, 1815-1873 (Toronto, Ontario, 1975), 77-78.
53. Brian Young, In Its Corporate Capacity: The Seminary of Montreal as a Business Institution, 1816-1876 (Montreal, Quebec, 1986);
54. Robert C. H. Sweeny with Grace Laing Hogg, "Land and People:Property Investment in Late Pre-Industrial Montréal, " Urban History Review 24, no. 1 (October 1995): 44-53;
55. Young, The Politics of Codification: The Lower Canadian Civil Code of1866 (Montreal, Quebec, 1994);
56. Robert C. H. Sweeny, "Paysan et ouvrier: du fé odalismelaurentien au capitalisme québécois, " Sociologie etsociétés 22, no. 1 (April 1990): 143-61;
57. Sweeny, "Paysans et propriété: La commutation àMontréal 1840-1859, " in Dessureault, Dickinson, and Goy, Famille etle marché, 161-66;
58. Sweeny, "Un effort collectif québécois: Lacréation, au début du XXe siècle, d'un marchéprivé et institutionnalisé de capitaux, " Revue d'histoire del'Amérique française 49, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 35-72.
59. The best historical introduction to the Newfoundland fishery is James E.Candow and Carol Corbin, eds., How Deep Is the Ocean? Historical Essays on Canada's Atlantic Fishery (Sydney, Nova Scotia, 1997).
60. W. Gordon Handcock, "So longe as there comes noe women":Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland (Saint John's, Newfoundland, 1989).
61. For a highly detailed and pathbreaking study of the role of merchants, see Alan Cass, "A History of the Conception Bay Fishery, 1780-1825"(unpublished manuscript, 2001).
62. The archaeological evidence is admirably discussed in Peter E. Pope, Fishinto Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004). An important part of Pope's research has been carried out as acooperative program linking academics with community groups, coordinated by Pope: http://www.mun.ca/archaeology/outreach/index.html.
63. Daniel Vickers, "The Price of Fish: A Price Index for Cod, 1505-1892, " Acadiensis 25, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 92-104 (quotation, 100).
64. For a prizewinning liberal legal study of this system, see Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832 (Toronto, Ontario, 2003). King William's Act offeredstatutory recognition of these informal practices (Statute 10/11, William III, C.25).
65. A fine study of these customary practices that challenges Bannister is Andrew Rolfson, "Land Tenure, Landowners and Servitude on the Early Eighteenth-Century English Shore" (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005).
66. Gender and inheritance practices are ably discussed by Trudi Johnson, "Women and Inheritance in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland, " Journal ofthe Canadian Historical Association, new ser., 13 (2002): 1-22.
67. For a popular application of liberal theory to solve these problems, see Jeff A. Webb, "Leaving the State of Nature: A Locke-Inspired Political Community in St John's, Newfoundland, 1723, " Acadiensis 21, no. 1 (Autumn1991): 156-65.
68. Details of the state's punitive role are discussed in Jerry Bannister, "Convict Transportation and the Colonial State in Newfoundland, 1789, "Acadiensis 27, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 95-123.
69. The dominant historiographical position has evolved and these three textssupply a sense of that process: John J. Mannion, ed., The Peopling of Newfoundland: Essays in Historical Geography (Toronto, Ontario, 1977);
70. Shannon Ryan, "Fishery to Colony: A Newfoundland Watershed, 1793-1815, " in The Acadiensis Reader, vol. 1, Atlantic Canada before Confederation, comp. and ed. P. A. Buckner and David Frank (Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1985), 130-48;
71. Sean T. Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay: Merchant-Settler Relations in Newfoundland, 1785-1855 (Toronto, Ontario, 1995).
72. The greedy merchants as historical agents are highlighted by D. W.Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from the English, Colonial, and Foreign Records (London, 1895);
73. A. H. McLintock, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Newfoundland, 1783-1832: A Study of Retarded Colonisation (London, 1941).
74. The case for environmental determinism is made by Rosemary E. Ommer, "What's Wrong with Canadian Fish?" Journal of Canadian Studies 20, no.3 (Fall 1985): 122-42;
75. Ommer, "Merchant Credit and the Informal Economy: Newfoundland, 1919-1929, " Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers: A Selectionfrom the Papers Presented at the Annual Meeting Held at Québec, 1989(Ottawa, Ontario, 1990), 167-89;
76. Sean Cadigan, "The Staple Model Reconsidered: The Case of Agricultural Policy in Northeast Newfoundland, 1785-1855, " Acadiensis 21, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 48-71;
77. Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay.
78. The vital role of the resident population is discussed by Peter E. Pope, "The English Shore: Transients and Residents in Newfoundland, 1660-1700" (paper presented at the Sixth Annual Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Conference, Toronto, Ontario, 2000), 74;
79. Pope, "The South Avalon Planters, 1630 to 1700: Residence, Labour, Demand and Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Newfoundland" (Ph.D. diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1992).
80. Environmental questions were first raised in Daniel Vickers, ed., Marine Resources and Human Societies in the North Atlantic since 1500 (Saint John's, Newfoundland, 1997). This book is part of a larger literature concerned with ourmisuse of the world's oceans.
81. See Poul Holm, Tim D. Smith, and David J. Starkey, eds., "The Exploited Seas: New Directions for Marine Environmental History, " Researchin Maritime History, no. 21 (2001).
82. The decline in the English fishery is discussed in Peter Pope, "Early Estimates: Assessment of Catches in the Newfoundland Cod Fishery, 1660-1690, " in Vickers, Marine Resources and Human Societies, 9-40.
83. For a discussion of the later expansion, see C. Grant Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland: A Geographer's Perspective (Toronto, Ontario, 1976), 62-66. I support Vickers's assessment, in Marine Resources and Human Societies, that a capitalist cod fishery at Newfoundland was never sustainable, but the codpopulations were initially so large that it has taken centuries to bring abouttheir extinction.
84. Linda Little, "Collective Action in Outport Newfoundland: A Case Study from the 1830s, " Labour/Le Travail 26 (Fall 1990): 7-35.
85. Willeen G. Keough, "The Slender Thread: Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001). Small-scale producers of goods for sale in the market are known in theeconomic literature as petty commodity producers. Prices are sociallydetermined, so the relative fluctuations in price series bear witness to theunderlying dynamics of production and reproduction. Put simply, prices for goodsproduced by independent petty producers are more resilient than prices forgoods produced by unfree labor, dependent producers, or wage labor.
86. Marilyn Porter, "'She Was Skipper of the Shore-Crew': Notes on the History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Newfoundland, " Labour/LeTravail 15 (Spring 1985): 105-23.
87. Robert C. H. Sweeny with Robert Hong and David Bradley, "Movement, Options and Costs: Indexes as Historical Evidence, a Newfoundland Example, "Acadiensis 22, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 111-21;
88. Sweeny, "Accounting for Change: Understanding Merchant Credit Strategies in Outport Newfoundland, " in Candow and Corbin, How Deep is the Ocean? 121-38;
89. Sweeny, "The Social Trap: Technological Change and the Inshore Fishery, " in Vickers, Marine Resources and Human Societies, 295-309.
90. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Newfoundland was, by Americanstandards, a highly urbanized society with half its population living inmoderately sized towns (Robert C. H. Sweeny, "The Costs of Modernity: The Role of the Human Sciences in the Newfoundland Crisis, " in Selected Proceedings: The Third Biennial Conference: Culture, Technology and Change inthe Americas, ed. Ward Stavig and Sonia Ramírez Wohlmuth [Tampa, Fla., 1996], 318-31).
91. A fine study of the state's role is Miriam Wright, A Fishery for Modern Times: The State and the Industrialization of the Newfoundland Fishery, 1934-1968 (Don Mills, Ontario, 2001).
92. For a sobering study of fishery science that merits a much largercirculation, see Alan Christopher Finlayson, Fishing for Truth: A Sociological Analysis of Northern Cod Stock Assessments from 1977-1990 (Saint John's, Newfoundland, 1994).
93. That it was already too late by the 1960s to save the cod fishery is oneof the key points in Jeffrey A. Hutchings, "Spatial and Temporal Variationin the Exploitation of Northern Cod, Gadus morhua: A Historical Perspective from1500 to Present, " in Vickers, Marine Resources and Human Societies, 41-67.