Peasant, lord, and merchant : rural society in three Quebec parishes, 1740-1840 / Allan Greer.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

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CHOICE Review

Greer provides a study of the society and economy of three lower Richelieu Valley seigneuries from the early 18th century to the 1840s. Combining thorough analysis of legal documents and other records with vivid individual detail, he recreates a society that was more feudal in its relations between peasant and seigneurial lord than has been commonly held. Greer also finds little evidence that an agricultural crisis in the early 19th century caused an accelerating market economy in Quebec. Instead, he discovers a stable, regular, subsistence peasant economy tied only marginally to the expanding markets of the merchants of Montreal and Quebec. Highly recommended for any basic collection in Canadian history. Upper-division undergraduate readership.-W.E. Eagan, Moorhead State University