Peasant, Lord, and Merchant

Download or read book Peasant, Lord, and Merchant written by Allan Greer and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1985-01-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rural life in pre-industrial Quebec was essentially organized around a feudal society. Allan Greer takes a close look at the at society and its economy in three parishes in Lower Richelieu valley – Sorel, St Ours, and St Denis – from 1740 to 1840. He finds a pronounced pattern of household self-sufficiency; as in other peasant societies, the habitants lived mainly from produce grown throught their own efforts on their own lands. 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.