French Connections examines how the movement of people, ideas, and social practices contributed to the complex processes and negotiations involved in being and becoming French in North America and the Atlantic World between the years 1600 and 1875. Engaging a wide range of topics, from religious and diplomatic performance to labor migration, racialization, and both imagined and real conceptualizations of “Frenchness” and “Frenchification,” this volume argues that cultural mobility...

The tumult of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions provided new opportunities for free communities of color in the Caribbean, yet the fact that much scholarship places an emphasis on a few remarkable individuals—who pursued their freedom and respectability in a high-profile manner—can mask as much as it reveals. Scholarship on these individuals focuses on themes of mobility and resilience, and can overlook more subversive motives, underrepresent individuals who remained in communities, and elid...

Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique’s story -- now supported by archival illustrations -- Cooper builds on 15 years of research to shed new light on a rebellious Portuguese-born black woman who refused to accept her indentured servitude. At the same time, Cooper co...

The entralling biography of the visionary adventurer—explorer, master mariner, soldier, artist, spy—who has straddled our history for 400 years. David Hackett Fischer, one of North America’s most acclaimed historians, brings to life, with rare immediacy and drama, the story of Samuel de Champlain. A remarkable leader in his time, he dreamed of humanity and peace in a world riven by violence, built the first European settlement in Canada founded on a dream of harmony and respect, and played...

This lively guide to Quebec history tells the fascinating story of the settlement of the St. Lawrence River Valley over nearly 500 years. But it also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who travelled, mapped, and inhabited most of North America, and embrothered the peoples they met. Combining vast research and great story telling, Jacques Lacoursière and Robin Philpot connect everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a peo...

This book surveys the social history of New France. For more than a century, until the British conquest of 1759-60, France held sway over a major portion of the North American continent. In this vast territory several unique colonial societies emerged, societies which in many respects mirrored ancien regime France, but which also incorporated a major Aboriginal component.Whereas earlier works in this field presented pre-conquest Canada as completely white and Catholic, The People o...

Late in 1755, an army of British regulars and Massachusetts volunteers completed one of the cruelest, most successful military campaigns in North American history, capturing and deporting seven thousand French-speaking Catholic Acadians from the province of Nova Scotia, and chasing an equal number into the wilderness of eastern Canada. Thousands of Acadians endured three decades of forced migrations and failed settlements that shuttled them to the coasts of South America, the plantations o...

Grasp the unique history of Quebec? Easy.Packing in equal parts fun and facts, History of Quebec For Dummies is an engaging and entertaining guide to the history of Canada's second-largest province, covering the conflicts, cultures, ideas, politics, and social changes that have shaped Quebec as we know it today."My country isn't a country, it is winter!" sings the poet Gilles Vigneault . . . Indeed, Quebec is winter, snow, cold, and freezing winds....

John A. Dickinson and Brian Young bring a refreshing perspective to the history of Quebec, focusing on the social and economic development of the region as well as the identity issues of its diverse peoples. This revised fourth edition covers Quebec's recent political history and includes an updated bibliography and chronology and new illustrations. A Canadian classic, A Short History of Quebec now takes into account such issues as the 1995 referendum, recent ideological shifts and societa...

French-Canadian explorers, traders, and soldiers feature prominently in this country's storytelling, but little has been written about their female counterparts. In Along a River, award-winning historian Jan Noel shines a light on the lives of remarkable French-Canadian women — immigrant brides, nuns, tradeswomen, farmers, governors' wives, and even smugglers — during the period between the settlement of the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Victorian era.Along a River

Long before the Davie Crockets, the Daniel Boones and Jim Bridgers, the French had pushed far west and north establishing trade and kin networks across the continent. They founded settlements that would become great cities such as Detroit, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, but their history has been largely buried or relegated to local lore or confined to Quebec. Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette scrutinize primary sources and uncover the alliances, organic links and métissage, or mixing, betwe...

Danna Agmon's gripping microhistory is a vivid guide to the "Nayiniyappa Affair" in the French colony of Pondicherry, India. The surprising and shifting fates of Nayiniyappa and his family form the basis of this story of global mobilization, which is replete with merchants, missionaries, local brokers, government administrators, and even the French royal family.Agmon's compelling account draws readers into the social, economic, religious, and political interactions...