Power and Subsistence

The Political Economy of Grain in New France

Louise Dechêne, Peter Feldstein

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780773554900
• eBook ISBN: 9780773555990
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Subsistence crops - the grains and other food items necessary to a people's survival - were a central preoccupation of the early modern state. In New France, the principal crop in question was wheat, and its production, consumption, exchange, and regulation were matters to which the government devoted sustained attention.

Power and Subsistence examines the official measures taken to regulate the grain economy in New France, the frequency and nature of state interventions in the system, and the responses these actions provoked. Drawing on social and political perspectives and methodologies, this book brings rural and agricultural history into conversation with colonial political economy. Louise Dechêne shows that unlike in early eighteenth-century France, where the marketplace dominated and trade was transparent, the grain economy in New France was hypercentralized and government measures were increasingly harsh. Attentive to the conflicts arising between producers, merchants, consumers, and colonial administrators over the allocation of the harvest, Dechêne offers a revealing perspective on the operation of political power in a colonial setting.

Lively, elegant, and wry, Power and Subsistence provides insight into the last era of French rule in North America - and, in part, how that era came to an end.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables
• Foreword to the English Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Grain Demand: An Overview
• 2 Local Grain Redistribution
• 3 Regulations
• 4 Grain Transportation to the City
• 5 The Grain Trade
• 6 Shortages and Controls, 1690–1744
• 7 The King’s Granaries
• 8 Grain during Wartime
• 9 Public Unrest and Official Discourse
• Conclusion
• APPENDICES
• APPENDIX A Note on Units of Measure
• APPENDIX B Transportation Costs for Wheat and Flour within the Colony
• APPENDIX C Annual Wheat Price Fluctuations in the Vicinity of Montreal, 1675–1759
• APPENDIX D Procurement of Grain, Peas, Flour, Biscuit, and Bread by the King’s Stores, 1732–47*
• APPENDIX E Years between 1702 and 1760 in which Canada Imported Flour and Approximate Volume of these Imports
• APPENDIX F Supply of Flour and Peas to the Île Royale and Martinique Garrisons by the Intendancy of Quebec, 1729–51 (in cwt)
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index