This page will display the questions we will discuss for our seminar meetings. The questions will be posted one week prior to each seminar.
Discussion group 1: native-newcomer interaction.
1. Historians’ interpretations of the interaction between missionaries and Native peoples have changed dramatically over time. Discuss and evaluate the changing interpretations.
2. In trying to understand the relationship between Europeans and Native peoples in the 17th century, should we try to see whether one side succeeded in exercising power over the other? Is there a better framework for our understanding?
Readings: the first chapters in the “coursepack” and parts of a web site:
- James P. Ronda, “We Are Well As We Are”: An Indian Critique of Seventeenth-Century Christian Missions,” William and Mary Quarterly, XXXIV (January 1977), 66-82.
- Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 107-128, 282-289.
Also strongly recommended:
- excerpts from the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, translated by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows, 1896-1901): http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/19/h19-151-e.html. See especially:
Volume 10, pages 279-303 (Brébeuf’s description of the Huron feast of the dead).
Volume 16, pages 183-189 (Le Jeune’s Relation, beginning with “In regard to what I said about the excellence of their minds…”).Volume 20, pages 155-159 (Relation of 1640-41, beginning “This charity did not prevent…”).
Discussion group 2: society in New France.
Questions for discussion:
1. Jan Noel (p.13) refers to the picture by C.W.Jefferys which shows smiling, well-dressed filles du roi being greeted by gentlemen in embroidered coats, bowing to the women and raising feathered hats in greeting. How accurate is this image? Can you describe an image that reflects more accurately the experience of the filles du roi, at the time of their arrival and after?
2. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” (The quotation is from a novel by L.P.Hartley, The Go-Between). Apply this thought to the writings of Jan Noel and Peter Moogk in your coursepack. Comparing your society with that of the people of New France, what did they do differently then?
Readings: History 130 “coursepack”:
- Jan Noel, Women in New France (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association Booklet 59, 1998).
- - Peter Moogk, “The Sovereign Family,” chapter 8 in Peter Moogk, La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada – A Cultural History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000).
Discussion group 3: patterns of work in pre-industrial society.
Questions for discussion:
1. What were the main characteristics of “labour relations” in the pre-industrial workplaces described by Christopher Moore and Carolyn Podruchny?
2. The chapter by Christopher Moore and the article by Carolyn Podruchny are different in several ways. Discuss these differences (you may wish to refer, among other things, to style, method, interpretation, etc.)
Readings from the “coursepack”:
- Christopher Moore, “Charles Renaut’s Letter,” Louisbourg Portraits (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 118-44, 289-90.
- Carolyn Podruchny, “Unfair Masters or Rascally Servants? Labour Relations Among Bourgeois, Clerks and Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780-1821,” Labour/Le Travail, 43 (Spring 1999), 43-70.
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Discussion group 4: contact in the Pacific Northwest.
Questions for discussion:
1. The essay by John Lutz is a preliminary discussion of an on-going research project. How important is the project in your view? What advice would you have for the author?
2. Summarize Cole Harris’s interpretation of the fur trade era in the western cordillera. Does this interpretation change the way you think about British Columbia?
Readings from the “coursepack”:
- John Lutz, “What Connected at Contact? Comparing Aboriginal and European Contact Narratives on the Pacific Coast” (unpublished paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Conference, Quebec City, 2001).
- - Cole Harris, “Strategies of Power in the Cordilleran Fur Trade,” in The Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographic Change (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 31-39, 48-67.
Discussion group 5: the rebellions of 1837-8 in Lower Canada.
Questions for discussion:
1. What were the causes of the rebellions of 1837?
2. “They [habitants] were not trying to promote a democratic society by their action.” (F. Ouellet). Do you agree?
Readings from the “coursepack”:
- Fernand Ouellet, “The Insurrections,” chapter 19 in P.G.Thornell et al, eds., Canada: Unity in Diversity (Toronto: Holt Rinehart, 1967), reprinted in R.Douglas Francis and Donald Smith, Readings in Canadian History volume I (Toronto: Holt Rinehart, 1990), pp. 322-336.
- - Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 117-9, 120-7, 226-33, 256-7.
Discussion group 6: the origins and meaning of Confederation.
Questions for discussion:
1. What was “the French-Canadian idea of Confederation”?
2. Why was Confederation a “hard sell” in the Maritime provinces?
3. In his chapter on “Leonard Tilley and the Voters,” and in the book from which this chapter is drawn, Christopher Moore is presenting an argument about political process that connects the past and the present. What is this argument?
Readings from the “coursepack”:
- A.I. Silver, “Confederation and Quebec,” from A.I. Silver, The French-Canadian Idea of Confederation, 1864-1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp.33-50.
- Christopher Moore, “Leonard Tilley and the Voters,” in 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997), 164-98, 265-7.