Studies on the History of Quebec/Etudes d'histoire du Quebec
2 total works
Using a variety of documentary sources, including hundreds of petitions, letters, and reports to the government, Little traces the complex relationship between community life and government regulation. He reveals that at the same time development of responsible government was leading to increasingly centralized authority at the provincial level, a persistent sense of localism was forcing the state to decentralize its new institutions at the community level. The local population of this largely American-settled corner of Quebec, Little shows, clearly exerted an important influence on the evolution of the education, legal, social welfare, and municipal systems. State and Society in Transition makes a major contribution to the study of state formation in the recently unified province of Canada by taking into account not only the dialectical process between the centre and periphery but also the impact of institutional reform on social and economic development in general.
The two groups arrived in Winslow Township in the middle of the nineteenth century, when modern state bureaucracy was just developing in Lower Canada (Quebec). Little was therefore able to examine a wealth of material from the departments responsible for crown lands, public works, and education as well as comprehensive data from the registry offices and manuscript census reports. This state-generated material, as well as a rich collection of Catholic and Presbyterian church records and documents from Scotland, provides the basis for a detailed analysis of society, economy, and culture in one isolated pocket of colonization. Little focuses on settlement patterns, population expansion and mobility, family structure and inheritance, farm production and labour, the role played by local merchants and millers, and the cultural significance of religion and education. He documents the differences which can be traced to ethnic origin but emphasizes the many similarities which characterized the adjustment of the two groups.
Economic development in this geographical area was severely restricted by thin soil, rugged topography, and a brutally short growing season, coupled with the government's favouritism towards monopolistic lumber companies. Two viable communities did, nevertheless, take root, each drawing heavily on traditional cultural values and a history of economic resourcefulness in order to survive in an era of emerging industrial capitalism.
Economic development in this geographical area was severely restricted by thin soil, rugged topography, and a brutally short growing season, coupled with the government's favouritism towards monopolistic lumber companies. Two viable communities did, nevertheless, take root, each drawing heavily on traditional cultural values and a history of economic resourcefulness in order to survive in an era of emerging industrial capitalism.