2. Hengistbury Head

Continuity of settlement over centuries was a feature of growing importance in Ancient Britain but some sites have evidence of settlement over thousands of years. Hengistbury Head is a headland jutting into the English Channel between Bournemouth and Milford on Sea in Dorset. The promontory has witnessed a long sequence of human occupation but is most famous as a fortified Iron Age mercantile centre playing an important role in cross-Channel trade between Britain and Gaul.

The site was occupied during the Upper Palaeolithic and may have been on the route taken by migrating animals moving south from Britain to the Continent. There is evidence of an open settlement of the Creswellian culture on the hill in the middle of the headland dating to around 10,500 BC. At the time, this hill would have overlooked a large river valley that was to become the English Channel. Later, once the sea had inundated the surrounding valley, Mesolithic hunter gatherers exploited the site and Neolithic stone tools have been found in the campy at Warren Hill but it was not until the Bronze Age that visible traces of the site’s occupation are apparent.

There are eleven Bronze Age round barrows on the promontory with two more a little further inland that were first excavated by J. P. Bushe-Fox between 1911 and 1912 and then by Harold St George Gray immediately after the First World War. Numerous finds including Early Bronze Age axes, along with amber and gold jewelry were recovered from these monuments. Pottery found nearby to the barrows also indicates visitation during 1700-1400BC. In around 700 BC, a small settlement to the very north of the headland was established; also around this time, the headland was cut off from the mainland by the construction of two banks and ditches. These earthworks turned Hengistbury Head into a fortified settlement area that appears to have grown over succeeding centuries until it became an important port and promontory fort and some historians have argued that this was Britain’s first town. Most of our knowledge of the site comes from Barry Cunliffe’s work there between 1979 and 1984.

One side of the Head is defended by large earthworks, called the ‘double dykes’, similar to those found at Maiden Castle. These date to approximately 700BC. Due to the high concentration of iron ore in the area, this location became a significant trading port, trading worked metal especially iron, silver and bronze with Gaul and the Mediterranean in exchange for wine, tools and pottery. Many coins have been found from this period and it one of the few areas in pre-Roman Britain to use coins, including examples of what seem to be ancient forgeries, with a bronze core dipped in silver. The port had several advantages. It was protected by the headland but also had convenient access by the rivers Avon and Stour into the densely occupied and rich farmland of Wessex. It also lay at the centre of a highly productive region close to high-grade ironstone, salt from the Isle of Purbeck, Kimmeridge shale favoured for armlets and good potting clay.

Under the Romans, Hengistbury Head was initially left alone, possibly as a result of its distance from Roman centres of power. However, as Roman rule expanded, trade was moved away from the Head to other Roman ports, a process of decline that predates the Roman occupation and may be linked to local power struggles and political readjustments following Caesar’s interventions and by declining trade with Roman-controlled Gaul. By about the time the Roman administration left in the early fifth century, the area was abandoned.

Causing poverty

The causes of poverty revealed by the early poverty surveys were as surprising and disturbing to most contemporaries as the calculations of its extent. The common belief was that poverty was caused by idleness, drinking and other personal shortcomings, a belief that was used to justify the stigmatic nature of the Poor Law. Booth found that only a quarter of his ‘submerged one-tenth’ was impoverished chiefly by drink, idleness and ‘excessive children’. More than half were in poverty as a result of insufficient earnings and a further 10% due to sickness and infirmity. The crucial point was that a very considerable part of poverty was not ‘self-inflicted’ but derived from low wages and other circumstances over which the poor had little control.[1]

Low wage rates and unemployment must have both been serious causes of poverty earlier in the century when real wages were lower, when more men and women were engaged in declining domestic industries, in arable farming with its erratic labour requirements, and at casual work and occupations liable to be disrupted by poor weather, by uncertain transport or loss of power. In these circumstances slumps were accompanied by high food prices and few workers had the resources to make provisions against unemployment. However, the working of the trade cycle was still a major source of poverty in 1900. School medical reports show significant variety in the height and health of school children that reflect the amount of work available in their vulnerable early years.[2] The only unemployment figures historians have for the second half of the nineteenth century are those for trade unionists and they show a long-term average rate of between 4.5 and 5.5%. These figures hide localised slumps such as the Lancashire ‘cotton famine’ during the American Civil War and that which impoverished Coventry when the silk trade was opened to foreign competition in 1860 and the effects of major strikes and lock-outs after 1890.

Newspaper illustration of people in line for food and coal tickets at a district Provident Society office during the cotton famine

Old age was not as important a cause of poverty as low wages in 1900 but it was much more important than Booth and Rowntree at first suggested.[3] Booth did not pay sufficient attention to families in which the chief wage earner was elderly and as a result ascribed only 10% of poverty to illness or infirmity. Rowntree said that only 5% of primary poverty resulted from old age or illness but he omitted the numerous elderly inmates of workhouses and poor law infirmaries.[4] In 1890, well over a third of the working-class population aged 65 or over were paupers and in 1906, almost half of all paupers were aged 60 and above. This is not surprising since state pensions were not paid until 1909.[5]

Sickness was still among the important causes of poverty in 1900 and was probably even more important earlier in the century. Chadwick and early public health campaigners pointed to the enormous economic cost of preventable disease and emphasised how poor rates were swollen by the deaths of working men and by the vicious circle of sickness, loss of strength and reduced earnings that delayed economic recovery. Rising wages after 1850 reduced the amount of poverty directly attributable to ill-health. This was aided by the increasing number of working men who joined friendly societies that provided sickness insurance.

Women were the chief sufferers from most of the causes of poverty.[6] They were prominent by a ratio of two to one among elderly paupers largely because of their outliving their husbands. Widows and spinsters also suffered from wage rates that reflected the assumption that all females were dependent. Working-class wives deserted by their husbands and the majority of unmarried mothers almost invariably became paupers. Women were also affected by hardships often hidden from investigators. The male breadwinner was almost always also the meat eater and there is ample evidence of the uneven distribution of income within the family that was to the detriment to the health of wives and children. Uncertain and fluctuating earnings made budgeting difficult and led too easily to dependence on pawnbrokers and retail credit to smooth economic fluctuations.

Drinking was the greatest single cause of secondary poverty in York in 1899 and an average working-class family spent a sum equivalent to a third of a labourer’s earnings on it.[7] Heavy drinkers claimed that beer was necessary to their strength but drink was an extremely expensive way of obtaining nutrition. Some men could not easily avoid drinking especially as wages were often paid in public houses.

Drinking was obviously a consequence of poverty as well as one of its causes. The public house was often warm and cheerful and full of friends and was certainly more attractive that squalid and overcrowded homes. One sign of the importance of drink among the causes of working-class poverty was extensive temperance activity.[8] The temperance movement has been characterised as overwhelmingly middle-class concerned to impose bourgeois value on a degenerate workforce. However, the middle-class did not have a monopoly of the Victorian virtues and temperance was as much a working-class trait as drunkenness.

Large families were also shown by Booth and Rowntree to be less important as a cause of poverty than many had believed. Nevertheless they were important and, like drink, were indirectly responsible for some of the poverty ascribed to low wages and other causes. Rowntree calculated that almost a quarter of those in primary poverty in York would have escaped had they not been burdened by five or more children.[9]

Low earnings, irregular employment, large families, sickness and old age were the root causes of poverty in the nineteenth century rather than intemperance or idleness. By 1900 new levels of poverty were discovered showing clearly that official statistics for pauperism revealed only the tip of the iceberg and that comfortable assumptions based on the belief that poverty would melt away in the warm climate of economic prosperity must be considerably modified.

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[1] In some respects, the recognition that poverty had different causes harked back to the distinction made in the 1601 Poor Law legislation (itself echoing the distinction made by JPs in 1563) between the able-bodied poor and the impotent poor both regarded as ‘deserving poor’ and the idle or ‘undeserving’ poor.

[2] Floud, Roderick, ‘The dimensions of inequality: height and weight variation in Britain, 1700-2000’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 16, (2002), pp. 13-26 and Jordon, T.E., ‘Linearity, gender and social class in economic influences on heights of Victorian youths’, Historical Methods, Vol. 24, (1991), pp. 116-123.

[3] Thane, Pat, Old age in English history: past experiences, present issues, (Oxford University Press), 2000, pp. 147-193.

[4] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, p. 121.

[5] Pugh, Martin, ‘Working-class experience and state social welfare, 1908-1914: old age pensions reconsidered’, Historical Journal, Vol. 45, (2002), pp. 775-796.

[6] See, Levine-Clark, Marjorie, Beyond the reproductive body: the politics of women’s health and work in early Victorian England, (Ohio State University Press), 2004, especially pp. 116-130.

[7] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 323-331. See, Dingle, A.E., ‘Drink and working class living standards in Britain, 1870-1914’, Economic History Review, 2^nd ser., Vol. 25, (1972), pp. 608-622.

[8] Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians, (Faber), 1971, revised edition, (Keele University Press), 1995 is a work of major importance on the ‘drink question’ between the 1830s and the 1870s. It should be supplemented with the study by Lambert, W.R., Drink and Sobriety in Victorian Wales, (University of Wales Press), 1984.

[9] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 121-122, 129-135.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Lower Canada

In 1831-1832, Alexis de Tocqueville spent time in America during which he wrote his De la démocratie en Amérique, a critique of the socio-political nature of American civilisation that is widely regarded as a classic work of political theory. While touring northern New York State with his companion Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville learned to his surprise that a French enclave survived on the banks of the St. Lawrence and at the end of August 1831 he and Beaumont visited. They spent twelve days in Lower Canada at the end of the summer of 1831 notably in Quebec and Montreal where Tocqueville had discussions with the Lower Canadian elite including the deputies John Neilson and Dominique Mondelet. [1] Although he did not write up his experiences, Tocqueville left valuable notes about Lower Canadian society scattered in his work and correspondence that show considerable insight and analytical clarity.

Tocqueville, deeply Catholic and French in his loyalties, was impressed by Lower Canada, both on the spot and later in reflection. It seemed to him like a museum. On the one hand, as aristocrat and landowner, he was charmed by the warmth, hospitality, and morality of the peasantry. On the other hand, the colony served him in his published work as the mirror image of American democracy. As he would later write in Democracy in America, ‘the habit of thinking and governing for oneself is indispensable in a new colony,’ but there seemed to be little of this in Lower Canada, where the mass of the French population was subordinated to curé, seigneur, and agricultural routine. The presence of local, electorally managed institutions in New England seemed to him to account for much of the striking difference in economic and commercial development between Lower Canada and the American states. Yet he would continue to reflect on the relations between ‘civilization’ (the growth of commerce and the division of labour) and morality in the rest of his travels.[2]

Believing that nothing remained of the French presence in America, Tocqueville was agreeably surprised to discover in Lower Canada a ‘race forte’, largely French, peaceful, agricultural, prosperous, hospitable, whose customs were well-established, not excessively religious and with a strong sense of their heritage. He recognised that the difference between the French Canadians and the British lay in their different values. If the ‘race canadienne’ appeared somewhat ignorant to him compared to the Americans, for Tocqueville they seemed ‘supérieure quant aux qualités du cœur’.[3] He appreciated that although French Canadians rejected the utilitarianism and mercantile spirit evident in Anglo-American values they were influenced by the egalitarianism of American democracy.

It is with emotion and astonishment that Tocqueville noticed the extent of the similarities between the French and the ‘Français du Canada’: merry, undertaking, sharp, talkative, scoffer, open, avid of glory, sociable, obliging, proud of their origins and more instinctive than reasoned. [4] Attached to their religion and their traditions, the Canadians were xenophobic and unwilling to move away their land to colonise other areas whatever their possibilities. Fearing a possible cultural fusion with the ‘English’, Tocqueville was delighted by the fact that religion represented ‘un obstacle aux mariages entre les deux races’. Those who feared the French Canadians most were the British and Canadian elites who were profoundly ‘English in manners and ideas’.[5] Tocqueville also feared the submission of the Canadian elite to the colonial authorities, the massive influx of immigrant and the general apathy of the Canadians.

Tocqueville considered that the Conquest was a tragic event for the Canadian people but was convinced that it had the ability ‘one day to establish a great French nation in America’.[6] It seemed easy for him to note that ‘les Français sont le peuple vaincu’ because, although they were in the majority, many of Lower Canadian elite were primarily ‘British’ in attitude. Even if French was almost universally spoken, Tocqueville recognised that

...the majority of the newspapers, the posters and signs of the French merchants were in English. Commercial enterprises are almost all in their hands. It is beyond doubt the leading class in Canada and I expect that this has long been the case.’[7]

Several other things demonstrate that Tocqueville noticed the latent animosity between the two people and had a premonition of the deep upheavals to come: ‘Tout annonce que le réveil de ce peuple approche’. [8] He also noticed the enthusiasm with which some within the Lower Canadian elite had become ‘enlightened’ and deeply opposed to the ‘Anglais’. However, he noted that the hatred of the Canadians ‘se dirige plus encore contre le gouvernement que contre la race anglaise en général’.[9]

Tocqueville left America shortly after his Lower Canadian visit, but continued his enquiries into its government, culture and politics as he thought through what he had seen in America. He was in England in 1833 and again in 1835; in the latter year he also toured Ireland, still making notes and preparing the second volume of Democracy.[10] His appreciation of the simple morality and material comfort of the French Canadian peasantry contrasted sharply with his reactions to the moral degradation, loose sexual morality and widespread illegitimacy caused by the operation of the English Poor Laws and by the astonishing contrasts of wealth and misery in industrial Manchester. Tocqueville was also struck by the popular enthusiasm for schooling among the Irish Catholic peasant population, despite its miserable poverty, something that contrasted sharply with the indifference of the French-Canadian peasantry. He visited schools and in County Tuam had a long conversation with a priest who supported the English government’s new educational system, even though it excluded sectarian religious instruction from the schoolroom. This system, which liberals in England had promoted, but whose adoption there was blocked by sectarian struggles, was suggested both by the Gosford Commission and by the Durham Mission for Canada and it formed the basis of much of the Canadian school legislation in the 1840s. Wasn’t the priest worried about Protestant conversion, Tocqueville wondered? Education first, the priest argued, Ireland desperately needed education and, anyway, he got the children as soon as they came outside class.

The Whigs and Radicals whom Tocqueville visited and corresponded with in England were not limited to J.S. Mill and J.A. Roebuck, although Lower Canadian Patriote politicians might have profited from Tocqueville’s comments on the latter. As Lower Canadian politics dissolved into attrition over the Civil List and the question of an elective Legislative Council, the Patriote Parti’s analysis of the stance of the British government was said to be that of the Assembly’s agent, Roebuck.[11] While Tocqueville commented on Roebuck’s commitment to reform, and his respect for property and religion, he also noted his marginal social status and the fact that his political position depended on ‘continually keeping the people’s passions in motion.’ Those passions failed in the 1837 elections when he lost his seat in Bath and well before that he had only limited success in arousing much interest in Lower Canadian grievances in the Commons.

Tocqueville corresponded at length with the political economist Nassau Senior and Mill served as an intermediary between Tocqueville and Edward ‘Bear’ Ellice (although it seems they did not manage to meet when Ellice was in Paris).[12] Ellice was the seigneur of Beauharnois, south-west of Montreal, and for much of the 1820s and 1830s a leading voice in governing circles on Canadian questions. He was an intimate of Lord Durham and it was likely that Ellice’s urging convinced Durham to undertake his mission to Canada in the wake of the 1837 Rebellion. In Canada in 1836, Ellice was in frequent contact with Pierre-Dominique Debartzch, seigneur for St. Charles and through him with others disaffected with the radical politics of the Papineau faction. Ellice reported his meetings with Debartzch to Melbourne’s cabinet, discussing how best to manage Lower Canadian politics and urging the creation of a form of ministerial government with ‘a discreet division of the loaves and fishes’ to include the appointment of Louis-Joseph Papineau to the office of President of the Executive Council or as Attorney-General.

In a letter dated 3 January 1838, Tocqueville commented on the rebellions that occurred in Lower Canada the previous year. [13] With limited information about events, he limited his comments to general conclusions but seems to have understood the reasons behind the rebellions

À l’époque de mon passage, les Canadiens étaient pleins de préjugés contre les Anglais qui habitaient au milieu d’eux, mais ils semblaient singulièrement attachés au gouvernement anglais qu’ils regardaient comme un arbitre désintéressé placé entre eux et cette population anglaise qu`ils redoutaient.

However, Tocqueville appeared unaware of how the situation could have degenerated but that it was ‘peine à croire que l’administration coloniale n’a pas quelques reproches à se faire’.

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[1] Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, (Editions du Jour), 1973, pp. 86-88, 93-99.

[2] De Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, (Knopf), 1994, p. 430n.

[3] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 100.

[4] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 109.

[5] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, pp. 101-102.

[6] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 114.

[7] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 88.

[8] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 101.

[9] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 104.

[10] De Tocqueville, Alexis, Memoir on Pauperism, Paris, 1835, (Institute of Economic Affairs), 1998 and Mayer, J.P., (ed.), Journeys to England and Ireland, (Arno), 1987 provide Tocqueville’s reflections. Zemach, Ada, ‘Alexis de Tocqueville on England’, Review of Politics, Vol. 13, (3), (1951), pp. 329-343 and Welch, Cheryl B., (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, (Cambridge University Press), 2006 provide analysis.

[11] Knowles, E. C., The English Philosophical Radicals and Lower Canada, 1820-1830, London, 1929, provides the context. Thomas, William, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841, (Oxford University Press), 1979, is the best examination of this amorphous and highly ambiguous political ‘party’. See also Turner, Michael J., Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain, (Praeger), 2004, pp. 207-215, and in his ‘Radical agitation and the Canada question in British politics, 1837-41’, Historical Research, Vol. 79, (2006), pp. 90-114.

[12] Colthart, James, ‘Edward Ellice’, DCB, Vol. 10, 1861-1800, 1976, pp. 233-239 is a useful study.

[13] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 168-170.

The meaning of poverty

Between 1830 and 1914, there were two period when state intervention in British social policy significantly increased. The first of these was in the 1830s and 1840s and the second in the Edwardian years at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fundamental in the first burst of reforming activity was the New Poor Law of 1834, which centred round the workhouse system. It gave conditional welfare for a minority, with public assistance at the price of social stigma and loss of voting rights.

Some Edwardian reforms still retained conditions on take-up, as in the first old-age pensions in 1908, where tests of means and character eligibility were reminiscent of the Poor Law. Three years later, in 1911, there was a radical departure in the national scheme for insurance against ill-health and unemployment that conferred benefits as a result of contributions. It was still a selective scheme, limited to a section of the male population and entirely left out dependent women and children.

The nineteenth century had inherited the attitude that such a state of affairs was both right and proper. Many contemporary writers regarded poverty as a necessary element in society, since only by feeling its pinch could the labouring poor be inspired to work. Thus it was not poverty by pauperism or destitution that was regarded as a social problem. [1] Many early Victorians adopted the attitude that combined fatalism, ‘For ye have the poor always with you’[2] and moralism, destitution was the result of individual weakness of character. Fraser’s Magazine in 1849 commented that

So far from rags and filth being the indications of poverty, they are in the large majority of cases, signs of gin drinking, carelessness and recklessness.[3]

Such cases if congregated together in sufficient numbers seemed to constitute a social menace.[4] It was thinking of this sort that provided the impetus to poor law reform in 1834. Relief continued to be offered but only in the workhouse where the paupers would be regulated and made less comfortable than those who chose to stay outside and fend for themselves, the principle of ‘less-eligibility’. Those who were genuinely in dire need would accept the workhouse rather than starve. Those who were not would prefer to remain independent and thus avoid the morally wasting disease of pauperism. The Poor Law of 1834 provided an important administrative model for future generations with central policy-making and supervision and local administration but the workings of this model were often profoundly disappointing to the advocates of ‘less-eligibility’ as a final solution to the problem of pauperism. But the issue was not pauperism, the issue on which contemporaries focused, but the debilitating effects of poverty itself.

Poverty is a term that is notoriously difficult to define. In simple terms, the failure to provide the basic necessities of life, food, clothes and shelter results in a state of poverty.[5] British society in the nineteenth century was poor by modern standards. The net national income per head at 1900 prices has been estimated as £18 in 1855 and £42 in 1900. Even the higher paid artisan might find himself at a time of depression unable to get work even if willing and anxious to do so. Most members of the working-class experienced poverty at some time in their lives and, compared to the middle-classes, their experience of poverty was likely to be a far more frequent, if not permanent one.

It was not until near the end of the nineteenth century that poverty was first measured in any systematic fashion and most of the evidence of the extent and causes of poverty is from around 1900.[6] The number of paupers had long been known: they amounted to about 9% of the population in the 1830s and this fell to less than 3% by 1900. Far more suffered from poverty than ever applied for workhouse relief. In 1883, Andrew Mearns in his Bitter Cry of Outcast London claimed than as much as a quarter of the population of London received insufficient income to maintain physical health.[7] Impressionistic claims like this led Charles Booth to begin his scientific investigation of the London poor in 1886. He found that as much as 30% of the population of London and 38% of the working-class lived below the poverty line.[8]

Booth‘s conclusions were criticised by some who pointed to the unique position of London. However, B. Seebohm Rowntree[9] did a similar survey of his native York and in 1899 published conclusions that mirrored those of Booth. [10] He distinguished between ‘primary poverty’ and ‘secondary poverty‘.[11] Primary poverty was a condition where income was insufficient even if every penny was spent wisely. Secondary poverty occurred when those whose incomes were theoretically sufficient to maintain physical efficiency suffered poverty as a consequence of ‘insufficient spending’. 10% of York’s population and 15% of its working-classes were found to be in primary poverty. A further 18% of the whole population and 28% of the working-classes were living in secondary poverty. Rowntree also emphasised the changing incidence of poverty at different stages of working-class life, the ‘poverty cycle’ with its alternating periods of want and comparative plenty.[12]

Other surveys followed the work of Booth and Rowntree.[13] The most notable was the investigation in 1912-1913 of poverty in Stanley (County Durham), Northampton, Warrington and Reading by A.L. Bowley and A.R. Burnett-Hurst.[14] They found that the levels of poverty reflected different economic conditions and that among the working-class population primary poverty accounted for 6%, 9%, 15% and 29% in the respective towns. These conclusions questioned the assumption made by both Booth and Rowntree that similar levels of poverty might be found in most British towns. In fact, the diversity of labour market conditions was reflected in considerable variation in the levels and causes of poverty.

It is important to examine the reliance that can be placed on the results of early poverty surveys as few of their results can be accepted with complete confidence. Booth relied heavily on data from school attendance officers and families with children of school age, itself a cause of poverty were over-represented in what he supposed to be a cross section of the population. Rowntree‘s estimates of food requirements were later regarded as over-generous by nutritionists and he later conceded after a second survey in 1936 that his 1899 poverty lines were ‘too rough to give reliable results’.[15] Working-class respondents, confronted by middle-class investigators were notoriously liable to underestimate income. Most poor law and charity assistance was means tested and the poorer respondents, suspecting that investigators might have some influence in the disposal of relief, took steps not to jeopardise this. Income acquired illegally was likely to remain hidden. It is difficult to compare these levels with poverty at other times. Recent attempts by historians to assess approximate numbers that lived below Rowntree‘s poverty line in mid-nineteenth century Preston, York and Oldham all suggest poverty levels higher than those at the time of the 1899 survey. This is not surprising as between 1850 and 1900 money wages rose considerably and many more insured themselves against sickness and other contingencies.

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[1] A ‘pauper’ can simply be defined as an individual who was in receipt of benefits from the state. A labourer who was out of work was termed an able-bodied pauper, whereas the sick and elderly were called impotent paupers. Relief was given in a variety of ways. Outdoor relief was when the poor received help either in money or in kind. Indoor relief was when the poor entered a workhouse or house of correction to receive help. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 said that paupers should all receive indoor relief.

[2] St Matthew, 26: 8-11.

[3] ‘Work and Wages’, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, Vol. xl, (1849), p. 528.

[4] It is important to remember the ‘revolutionary psychosis’ that afflicted many within the ruling elite during the first half of the nineteenth century. Poverty was seen in this revolutionary light.

[5] On this subject the briefest introduction is Rose, M.E., The Relief of Poverty 1834-1914, (Macmillan), 2^nd ed., 1986.

[6] Englander, David and O’Day, Rosemary, (eds.), Retrieved Riches: Social Investigation in Britain, 1840-1914, (Scolar Press), 1995 examines the nature of social investigation.

[7] Ibid, Mearns, Andrew, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor, pp. 15-18.

[8] Booth, Charles, Life and Labour of the People in London, 17 Vols. (Macmillan), 1889-1903. Norman-Butler, Belinda, Victorian Aspirations: the Life and Labour of Charles and Mary Booth, (Allen and Unwin), 1972 and Simey, T.S. and M.B., Charles Booth: Social Scientist, (Liverpool University Press), 1960 are sound biographies and Fried, A. and Elman, R., (eds.), Charles Booth’s London: a Portrait of the Poor at the Turn of the Century. Drawn from His ‘Life and Labour of the People in London’, (Harmondsworth), 1969 a useful collection of sources. O’Day, Rosemary and Englander, David, Mr Charles Booth’s Inquiry: Life and Labour of the People in London Reconsidered, (Hambledon), 1993, Gillie, Alan, ‘Identifying the poor in the 1870s and 1880s’, Economic History Review, Vol. 61, (2008), pp. 302-325 and Spicker, P., ‘Charles Booth: the examination of poverty’, Social Policy and Administration, Vol. 24, (1990), pp. 21-38 examine Booth’s ideas. .

[9] On Rowntree see, Bradshaw, Jonathan and Sainsbury, Roy, (eds.), Getting the measure of poverty: the early legacy of Seebohm Rowntree, (Ashgate), 2000 and Briggs, Asa, Social Thought and Social Action: A study of the work of Seebohm Rowntree, 1871-1954, (Longman), 1961.

[10] Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, (Macmillan), 1899, reprinted, (Policy Press), 2000, 2^nd ed., (Macmillan), 1901.

[11] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 119-145.

[12] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 86-118.

[13] Hennock, E.P., ‘Concepts of poverty in the British social surveys from Charles Booth to Arthur Bowley’, in Bulmer, Martin, Bales, Kevin and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940, (Cambridge University Press), 1991 and Hennock, E.P., ‘The measurement of urban poverty: from the metropolis to the nation, 1880-1920’, Economic History Review, Vol. 40, (1987), pp. 208-227.

[14] Bowley, A.L. and Burnett-Hurst, A.R., Livelihood and Poverty: A Study in the Economic Conditions of Working-Class Households in Northampton, Warrington, Stanley and Reading, 1915; see also, Carré, Jacques, ‘A.L. Bowley et A.R. Burnett-Hurst étudient les familles ouvrières à Reading en 1915’, in Carré, Jacques, (ed.), Les visiteurs du pauvre: Anthologie d’enquêtes britanniques sur la pauvreté urbaine, 19e-20e siècle, (Karthala), 2000, pp. 158-173.

[15] Rowntree, Seebohm, Poverty and Progress: A Second Social Survey of York, (Longman, Green and Co.), 1941, p. 461.

The Militia and French Canada 1760-1855

The militia has an important role in Canada’s military history and was grounded in the principle that all citizens within the community had responsibility for its defence. [1] Associated with Quebec but particularly with New France, from the outset the militia was a defensive local organisation that compensated for the lack of professional soldiers sent from France and sought to counter the threat from the native Amerindian population.[2] The first military organisation took place in the province of Quebec in 1649, and in 1665 the militia was founded, and fought with the French Cavignon regiment against the Indians. Ten years later that Count Frontenac re-organised the militia in a way that remained in force until 1760. After the conquest of Canada by the British the Canadian militia was initially disbanded, but with the rising of Pontiac an urgent call was made that led to the militia under its French officers acting as the backbone of the British attack and defence. As a result, the militia became a military institution parallel to the French army and, after the Conquest in 1760, to British troops but largely remained loyal to the authorities in power. The militia became an instrument supporting the cohesion of the French Canadian social fabric.[3]

In September 1760, after the fall of Montreal, Lord Amherst and his officers were faced with a new challenge, that of governing Canada.  This was a major undertaking, because the country was in ruins, there was a threat of famine and many families were without shelter.  It was also essential that public order be kept.  But the British troops were unable to express themselves in the language of the country. Amherst therefore called on the Canadian militia.  On 22 September 1760, he decreed that the militia officers were to maintain order and act as the police in the parishes and cities, as they had under the French regime, and that they were to serve as intermediaries between the government and the people.  Under the terms of surrender, all Canadians were to be disarmed.  But two weeks later the British authorities reversed their decision, authorising militia officers to keep their weapons and extending this permission to all militiamen who asked to keep them.  In addition, militia officers were to serve as justices of the peace for minor cases, because the magistrates had returned to France, taking with them their knowledge of the laws and customs.  This was what lay behind the creation of the ‘militia courts’.  Although the new judges were unfamiliar with jurisprudence, the militia court system was far preferable to the people to the British court-martial system.  Having the French Canadian militia take over some civilian government functions was a key event.  The militia were a credible intermediary between a confused populace and a foreign army that could well have fallen into certain excesses during this troubled period. Of the 18,000 Canadians able to bear arms, most had already fought and were more familiar with guerrilla tactics than the regular soldiers.  A population as militarised as this was unprecedented, in both Europe and the other colonies.  

Under the Lower Canada Militia Act of 1803 and the Upper Canada Militia Act of 1808, the militia was composed of all able-bodied men (except Quakers and others whose religious convictions forbade military service) between the ages of 18 and 60 years. An annual muster of the militia was held, at which attendance was compulsory, under penalty of a heavy fine. In case of emergency, a levée en masse might be ordered; if this were not necessary, provision was made for the drafting of militiamen by ballot or lot. There was, however, no provision for the training of the militia; the period of active service was limited to six months; and there was an absence of any higher organisation for war. In order to obviate the disadvantages arising from the six months’ period of service, various devices were adopted. ‘Select Embodied’ battalions were formed, which were kept permanently on foot, but were composed of successive drafts of six-months men; ‘flank companies’ were organised, in which the men served continuously, but were at liberty to attend to their farms and businesses when not urgently needed; and regular provincial corps were authorised, composed of men who volunteered to serve continuously and without intermission. The ‘brave York volunteers’ whom Brock is said to have urged to ‘push on’ at Queenston Heights in 1812 were not volunteers in the modern sense of the word; they were men who had waived their right of discharge at the end of six months and who might have been described as provincial regulars. But defective though the application of the principle of universal military service was in 1812, the principle itself was in force.

In the aftermath of the War of 1812 and the end of the French wars in Europe, there was a substantial reduction in military and naval spending. In Britain, the Royal Navy was reduced from 140,000 to 17,000 men.  Army personnel were cut to 110,000, the minimum required to maintain British garrisons in Great Britain and the colonies.  There remained many sources of animosity between the United States and Great Britain and a new war was still possible.  In London, after the signing of the peace treaty, the military staff considered the problem of how to defend British North America. The War of 1812 had taken place to a considerable extent in accordance with the rules of European war. This meant that future battles would likely occur increasingly on open land as in Europe, rather than in the woods where French Canadians excelled. The American army was reduced to 10,000 men and reformed from top to bottom to become a truly professional force. European-style war gave the Americans an advantage.  In fact, they would likely be the first to favour an invasion of British North America to satisfy their ambitions of hegemony, because neither the Canadians nor the British had anything to gain from attacking them.  The regular American army, although modest, did have an enormous number of volunteers and militiamen they could call on, all of whom would be more at ease in a conventional campaign.  The British garrison, supported by Canadian militiamen, could hold out for a while but would probably eventually collapse simply because of the difference in numbers.

With such prospects, the staff saw only one way to safeguard British North America: to build impressive fortifications. Defending a strip of land from the Atlantic to the west of the Great Lakes involved difficult choices.  What areas should be given priority and where should the great forts be located?  From the very first, Quebec City, Kingston and Montreal were identified as strategic points for safeguarding the country and it was imperative that these cities be made virtually impregnable.  Citadels were therefore built in Quebec City and Kingston.  Montreal was to be defended by forts to the south and an army in the field. The estimated cost of this ambitious programme caused the authorities to scale it down to the essentials.  At the insistence of the Duke of Wellington, funds were immediately made available to the army and in 1819 several works were begun: construction of Fort Lennox on Île-aux Noix and another fort on Île Sainte-Hélène, facing the port of Montreal. In 1820, work was begun on the Quebec Citadel but was not completed until 1831, after which there were still many additional expenses.  Instead of the projected £70,000, it cost £236,000.  Work on the Halifax Citadel, which began in 1828, was to total £116,000 and to be completed in 1834; instead it took 28 years to build and cost £242,000.  Work on the Kingston Citadel, called Fort Henry, began in 1832.  It took the form of an enormous redoubt, and the plan called for five similar redoubts around the city.  Work went smoothly, and it was almost complete in 1837 at a cost of £73,000.  However, the final touches were not completed until 1848, raising the total to £88,000.  The British government then decided that it had spent enough and the other redoubts were never built. However, Britain provided Canada with a formidable chain of fortifications that undoubtedly had the desired effect on the Americans.  To take these fortresses would have required resources that their army simply did not have. 

Within its hierarchical structure, the captain of militia had a strategic role within the overall chain of command. Captains responded to instructions from the superior military staff of major, lieutenant-colonel and colonel who, in turn, obtained their orders from the Intendant or Governor-General and in this was they contributed to the central administration of the colony. Although captains acted as local military leaders in times of emergency, in normal circumstances they acted as the link between habitants and the government. They enforced local municipal rules and were largely responsible for public works through a system of corvées.[4]

Being a captain of militia gave individuals considerable prestige and influence in the community. In the church, for example, the captain of militia sat just behind the seigneur and received communion immediately after him. Like seigneurs and the clergy, he did not pay royal taxes.[5] Exempted from billeting troops in his own home, he was responsible for deciding where and with whom soldiers were billeted in his community. Individuals who became captains were already popular within their communities, could read and write and would have had a degree of financial independence since the post was unpaid. [6] The post required a certain degree of military competence since the captain was responsible for establishing and maintaining the militia, military training and ‘drill’. For his part, a member of the militia devoted a week a year to the captain as well as taking part in local and regional militia gatherings. In general, the captain of militia was closely attached to all features of the municipal businesses and local government and was expected to be an effective agent for central government.

During the 1820s, militia exercises and tasks could be no more than tedious duties like those performed in the other colonies.  But the militia gatherings still resembled shooting competitions and were generally held on 1 May, as they had been under the French regime.  The gatherings ended with a proper party given by the captain.  On St. Peter’s Day, the militiamen assembled after Mass at the doors of the church.  The captain then had them shout, ‘Vive le roi!’ and ‘Le pays était sauf, la paix assurée.’ Many French Canadian militiamen thus continued to practise their shooting and relations with officers were cordial.  The organisation was relatively egalitarian and did not really have volunteers in the British or American sense of the word; being a part of the militia was considered a community duty.  Except in some staffs and a few city companies, French Canadian militiamen, officers and soldiers were all considered equal and did not see the need to wear the uniform.

Lord Dalhousie thought the militia ‘in truth, more of a police force similar to the Gendarmerie in France than a Militia of British formation.’ He was thinking of the uniformed volunteers of the English Yeomanry and therefore encouraged the training of volunteer militia companies in Quebec City and Montreal. However, his error was to admit only young people from the anglophone bourgeoisie.  Thus the Royal Montreal Cavalry was to be a military version of the Montreal Hunt Club, a club for riding to the hounds.  While the Gregorys and the Molsons were asked to form their companies, Dalhousie found it preferable not to accept the offers of the French Canadian bourgeois to form companies of volunteer riflemen and artillerymen.  How would these bourgeois distinguish themselves in the new militia when they were not even authorised to establish their own companies of volunteers?  Dalhousie then decided to replace French county names with English ones; for example, the Terrebonne Militia became the Effingham Militia.  In addition, in 1828 Dalhousie ordered that the city militias be divided by district, which in many instances meant that officer positions would go to English Canadians while most of the militiamen were French Canadian.  This decision once again raised the sensitive issue of French as a language of command.  Worst of all, the governor-in-chief, in a fit of anger against the Legislative Assembly, removed militia commissions for many of the members of the Opposition.  Perhaps he was hoping to discredit them in the eyes of the voters, but it was the militia itself that suffered.  The result was deep discontent, confirmed in a special investigative committee in a report dated 1829.

By the late 1820s, French Canadians were seriously questioning the values of the militia.  Control over this institution was being lost.  In the end, French Canadians turned away from an organisation that no longer represented them.  Because they were being assimilated and humiliated, they would isolate themselves socially in order to keep their identity and to truly belong only to the institutions they could control: their Church and their political parties.  The militia, and more generally the very idea of military service, became a matter ‘for others’ from then on and their only concern being to defend their immediate territory.  In 1830, the French Canadian militia organisation, although it continued to subsist, was virtually wiped out.  This situation, aggravated by a political landscape resembling a minefield, encouraged the rebellions of 1837 and 1838.

There was little involvement by the French Canadian militia though not the loyalist militia during the Rebellions of 1837-1838. According to Dion and Legault, this occurred because of policies that transformed it before violence broke out in 1837. From 1826 to the early 1830s, the development of demands for political reform increased and the political instability of these years prevented the development of a clear policy for the militia. The 1830 Militia Act is an example of social and political consensus but two years before the Rebellions loyalist volunteers were already active in Lower Canada. They had the unconditional political and financial support of the executive and this reduced the role of the militia as a military force. [7] From 1832-1833, loyalists saw the situation in Lower Canada as more and more complex and took the initiative to form ‘clubs’ that had sufficient military ability to challenge the growing political power of the Parti Patriote in the Assembly. As most militia captains were French Canadians, they were from a loyalist perspective suspect and this was reinforced in the autumn of 1837 when, especially in the Deux-Montagnes, justices of the peace were replaced by captains of militia. This had considerable symbolic significance: JPs represented the corrupt institutions of the British colonial state while the captains of militia were seen as expressions of popular or democratic justice that had been developed in French Canadian thinking.

The union of Lower and Upper Canada in 1841 resulted in a Sedentary Militia of 426 battalions with over 250,000 men. This was, however, an army on paper based on universal service and the battalions generally only mustered for one day a year. This situation was less than ideal and led to the formation of volunteer corps by more patriotically-minded citizens. These volunteers received no support from the government and provided their own equipment and uniform. The 1846 Militia Act, in part the result of tensions between Britain and the United States over the Oregon territory, did little to change this situation and men between the ages of 18 and 60 were still liable to be called out. The Act also provided for an emergency force of 30,000 men from the Sedentary Militia through volunteer enlistment or ballot if the quota was not met. The Governor-General could authorise the formation of volunteer cavalry, infantry and artillery corps that would be funded by government. The Act officially recognised the existence of the volunteer corps legalising a de facto situation and enshrining the principle of voluntarism for the universal requirement to bear arms.  It is in effect a reasonably sound principle to count on men who wish to serve their community to be citizen soldiers.

An effort was made to revive the militia, particularly in Canada East that had not organised a review since 1837.  Because French asserted itself as an official language on a par with English in the Legislative Assembly, the Deputy Adjutant-General of the militia for Canada East now had two clerks ‘sufficiently familiar in the knowledge of French’ to be able to correspond in French with the battalion officers.  In September 1846 the militia staff began to allocate the approximately 246,000 militiamen to 57 regiments with 334 battalions and to appoint senior officers who would in turn recommend officers for their battalions. To make French Canadians in the cities less hostile to the militia, the measures introduced by Lord Dalhousie were reversed and the battalions could again reflect each language group and the number of officers was to be equitable within joint regiments. However, the 1840s saw a considerable increase in the population of Canada West by immigrants, mainly from Ireland and Scotland leading to a shift in the demographic politics of the United Province.  In 1851 there were 534,000 men aged 18 to 60 years, 317,000 of them in Canada West.  French Canadians were no longer the majority. The 1846 statute represented an attempt at reconciliation but was, unsurprisingly given a rather cool reception in French Canada.  French Canadians, who had been excluded for a quarter century, remained distrustful.

The defence of Canada was, in practice, the responsibility of British regular troops. However, the growing cost of colonial defence and the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 led to a change in attitude. With great political responsibility by the colonies, it was argued that there should be greater responsibility of their defence. In November 1854, the Canadian government appointed a commission to investigate ways of improving the militia.  In French Canada some even favoured the establishment of a permanent Canadian corps ‘to replace the regular troops that the English government had to bring home’, according to Montreal’s La Patrie.  The editor added that

...it would open a new career to Canadian youth.  We are sure that many of our young compatriots would prefer a captain’s epaulettes, even with all the dangers involved, to the gown [of a lawyer] or the cassock [of a notary] that are so highly prized these days.[8]

The result was the Militia Act of 1855 that made the Governor-General commander-in-chief of the militia and divided the United Province to eighteen military districts, nine each for Canada East and Canada West. The Sedentary Militia was retained but was joined by an Active Militia of not more than 5,000 volunteers who could be called on to defend the province in the absence of British regulars.

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[1] Chambers, E.J., The Canadian militia, (L/M. Fresco), 1907, Tricoche, G., Les milices françaises et anglaises au Canada, Paris, 1902 and Sulte, B., Histoire de la milice canadienne française, 1760-1897, (Desbarats), 1899, remain useful studies.

[2] Dion, Dominique and Legault, Roch, ‘L’organisation de la milice de la région montréalaise de 1792 à 1837: de la paroisse au comté’, Bulletin d’histoire politique, Vol. 8, (2000), pp. 108-117. See also Ouellet, Fernand, Éléments d’histoire sociale du Bas-Canada, (Hurtubise HMH), 1972, pp. 351-378.

[3] Chartrand, René, Le patrimoine militaire canadien: D’hier à aujourd’hui, Tome1, (1000-1754), (Art Global), 1993, p. 156.

[4] Ibid, Chartrand, René, Le patrimoine militaire canadien: D’hier à aujourd’hui, p. 155.

[5] Ibid, Chartrand, René, Le patrimoine militaire canadien: D’hier à aujourd’hui, p. 155.

[6] Ibid, Chartrand, René, Le patrimoine militaire canadien: D’hier à aujourd’hui, p. 153.

[7] Ibid, Dion, Dominique and Legault, Roch, ‘L’organisation de la milice de la région montréalaise de 1792 à 1837: de la paroisse au comté’, p. 116.

[8] La Patrie, 10 November 1854

1. Skara Brae

The Neolithic village of Skara Brae was revealed during the winter of 1850 when a particularly ferocious storm battered Orkney. The combination of wind and extremely high tides stripped the grass from the top of a mound then known as Skerrabra. This revealed the outline of a number of stone buildings that, until 1868, the local laird William Watt of Skaill, excavated uncovering the remains of four ancient houses. After this further work was abandoned and the site remained undisturbed until 1925 when a further storm damaged the remains. Further excavations occurred between 1925 and 1930 revealing the site much as it is today.

Originally, the village was thought to date from around 500BC, during the Iron Age but radiocarbon dating during the early 1970s confirmed that it was a late Neolithic settlement that was inhabited for about 600 years between 3200BC to 2200BC. The site survives as ten dwellings linked together by a series of low, covered passages. Each house has the same basic design: a large square room with a central fireplace, a bed on either side and a shelved dresser on the wall opposite the doorway. They were not sunk into the ground but built into mounds of pre-existing rubbish that provided some stability to the dwellings but more importantly acted as a layer of insulation to counter the severities of Orkney’s climate. Roof material has not survived largely because it was probably organic and perishable material: a roof perhaps of turf, skins, thatched straw or thatched seaweed (until recently a roofing material in Orkney). Access to the houses is gained through a small doorway which would have been blocked by a slab of stone and possibly barred as well. This shows that security was important to the dwellers, but that privacy for the family unit was also very important. The layout of Skara Brae, whilst being very much geared towards a community settlement, makes this type of privacy possible.

The site probably did not extend beyond the eight dwellings excavated and this suggests a population of between 50 and 80 villagers at any one time. The standardised nature of the dwellings led Gordon Childe, the site’s excavator, to suggest that it was a communal settlement where one family or individual held power over the others though this may reflect his own communist leanings. In reality, in Neolithic society, communal leadership would have been the result of learned experience that would have benefited others in the community and would not necessarily have been passed on to any children. A more plausible explanation of the structure of the settlement is that it followed tried and tested design following a plan that may have been used for generations and that was known to both work and be relatively simple to construct.

By Neolithic standards, life at Skara Brae was probably quite comfortable despite the climate. The villagers, known as the Grooved Ware people, were settled farmers who subsisted on cattle and sheep and drew barley and wheat in the surrounding fields. Fish, largely shore caught, and shellfish also formed an important part of people’s diet and red deer and boar were hunted for meat and skins. It is also highly likely that, like subsequent islanders, the villagers collected seabird eggs as well as harvesting the birds themselves. Animal bones also provided the raw material for tools such as needles, shovels, pins, knives and picks with cutting edges provided by flints found on the shore or imported from other communities or chert, a local flint substitute. There is no evidence of textiles being used for clothing and it seems probable that animal skins were generally used.

In 1928, Professor Childe suggested that Skara Brae was the Pompeii of the North abandoned overnight in the face of a cataclysmic storm that caused its inhabitants to flee and never return. Though an appealing and popular hypothesis, it is highly improbable. More likely was the continued struggle against the elements that made working the land increasingly difficult leading to a gradual drift to more productive land elsewhere. There were also important changes in the nature of Neolithic society away from enclosed village communities to larger, geographically spread territories controlled by power tribal or spiritual leaders.

Development of Lower Canadian nationalism

Four issues contributed to the rise of nationalism in Lower Canada after 1791. [1] The first was the emergence of the French Canadian professional class, which forcefully embraced French revolutionary ideas and their role as leaders in their communities.[2] In 1791, there were 55 notaries, 17 lawyers and 50 doctors; by 1836, this had risen to 373, 208 and 260 respectively. They were opposed by the largely conservative seigneurs and Catholic clergy allied to colonial government though it is important not to polarise this situation. There is ample evidence of involvement by seigneurs and the Catholic Church in innovative economic activity. However, economic liberalism did not mean political liberalism and seigneurs and clergy viewed with increasing suspicion professionals elected to the Assembly where they noisily voiced the increasing discontent of their communities.

Secondly, adjustments in agriculture from the early nineteenth century contributed to growing social and political unrest.[3] In the 1790s, Lower Canada emerged as a significant exporter of grain but by the 1830s, Lower Canada was reliant on imported wheat. The failure to maintain earlier patterns of growth has led historians to link economic stagnation with rebellion. Ouellet argued that the agricultural crisis dated from 1802 as crop yields declined and Lower Canada moved from surplus to subsistence to deficiency in grains. He also suggested that although the agricultural crisis occurred after the appearance of nationalism, deteriorating economic conditions after 1815 fuelled its development. There was an increasing shortage of land in the seigneurial system while the colonial authorities distributed the remaining land to speculators or British immigrants. The poverty in the St. Lawrence Valley among habitants was in stark contrast to the relative prosperity of the British and American settlers in the Eastern Townships and this was exploited by the Parti Patriote. [4]

Ouellet is not without his critics. The reduction in wheat output was not unique to Lower Canada and from New York to Nova Scotia farmers reduced acreage sown in wheat because they could not compete with less expensive wheat from the Midwest. However, between 1800 and 1840, output on a seigneurial holding was about two-thirds of a similar sized farm in Ontario and slightly less on farms in Vermont. The generally lower agricultural productivity in francophone Canada can be explained by the division of farms (though not to the extent as originally believed), crop disease (for example, a series of blights hit the wheat crop in the 1830s), insect infestations (wheat midge, in particular devastated crops in several years) and soil exhaustion that reduced productivity in the older seigneurial settlements. Lower Canada mirrored the situation south of the border and the ‘crisis’ was associated with the adjustment to market forces across North America.

Observers were critical of habitant farming methods though this reflected a failure to understand the peculiarities of colonial agriculture.[5] French Canadian farmers concentrated on cereal crops because of restricted markets for meat and hides. However, there was some diversification in the rural economy and far from ignoring market opportunities, as Ouellet suggested, shifts in production enabled farmers to exploit expanding local markets especially in the richer agricultural regions on the Montreal plain and near Quebec City. Diversification was also present among the marginal farming population that became increasingly dependent on cash income from forest work, a feature of the agro-forest economy of the Ottawa, Saint-Maurice and Saguenay valleys. [6] Family survival depended on men supplementing farm production with winter work in the forests. Not all regions had an agro-forest economy and in the Eastern Townships, for example, farmers had few links to forest industries and produced essentially for home consumption. [7] The position of the growing landless peasantry in Lower Canada was not dissimilar to the rural wage-labourers of South Wales. They had little choice but to emigrate in search of work. From the 1820s, some moved south to take advantage of the industrial economy developing in New England. Landless labourers also contributed to the development of rural industries and to the expansion of villages in the Montreal area especially between 1815 and 1831. For example, Saint-Charles and Saint-Jean in the Richelieu Valley became respectively centres for hat-making and pottery and for earthenware production. The appearance of coopers, tailors and carriage makers in other small centres emphasised the growing diversification of the rural economy.[8]

The seigneurial character of francophone agriculture helped limit its sensitivity to market forces. Equally, rationalisation of Lower Canadian agriculture was not a priority for the colonial élite that was preoccupied with the concerns of Montreal and its frontier in the west and leaving little room for considering the needs of the francophone economy. Nonetheless, we should not isolate agriculture from the broader economy. An absence of growth in farming did not mean absence of growth overall. The French Canadian bourgeoisie adapted effectively to the changing situation especially in merchandising where limited capital was outweighed by their language and by family and kinship networks in the smaller rural villages. The penetration of consumer goods into the countryside provided a new outlet that French Canadian wholesalers and retailers could exploit. This suggests that Lower Canada was more dynamic and entrepreneurial than Ouellet would have us believe.

The British believed that they had lost the American colonies because they had given the colonial assemblies too much power and in 1791 created a constitution where power was squarely in the hands of appointed British officials and their social allies who could be relied upon to resist radical demands. The French Revolution reinforced their fears though initially these proved unfounded as membership of the British Empire paid economic dividends. Economic prosperity blunted demands among habitants and the Francophile bourgeoisie to sever links with Britain but prosperity did not prevent conflict. The Legislative Assembly soon became a forum for deepening political disagreement that peaked in the first decade of the nineteenth century. It would be wrong to see this simply as a clash between a progressive Anglophone bourgeoisie and a retrograde francophone professional class as some Whig historians would have us believe. Beyond the ethnic confrontation lay more fundamental constitutional issues.

The final element that contributed to the nationalist cause was the pervasive belief among the French Canadians that they were no longer in control of ‘their province’. They were under social and economic pressure and even though they dominated the Assembly, they were in a minority on the Legislative and Executive Councils and in the bureaucracy where decisions were made. Only demographically did they continue to dominate. [9] Yet, increasing British immigration into the province and calls to reunite the Canadas so that the assimilation of French Canadians could be achieved threatened their heritage and led French Canadians to entrench further their defensive position [10]

Discontent increased after 1815 and had a distinctive nationalist nature. It shared features with similar movements in contemporary Europe and although largely political in character, its socio-economic overtones were also strong. Led by members of liberal professions, it forged alliances with many in the Irish community who shared French Canadian concerns and with Upper Canadian reformers. It was opposed by the traditional élites of clergy and seigneurs, Anglophone merchants, British officials and British-American settlers who were unwilling to live under the government of the French. Rebellion, when it finally came, was as much an expression of exasperation as a reflection of principle.

The Patriote role in the development of a distinctive ideology that questioned the structures of colonial rule is important, but Bernier and Salée[11] stress that the movement was one of emancipation, as opposed to separation. They do not dismiss the presence of the national question in Patriote debates surrounding the rebellion, but argue that the national question was not uniquely what stirred the Patriotes into taking up arms, but merely formed part of a number of contributing issues related to the wider social context. Instead of being viewed in terms of a narrow exclusive nationalism with an emphasis on their role in the development of an independent Quebec based on the exclusion of difference, the inclusive nature of their thought is emphasised. In contrast to later models of national identity from later in the nineteenth and early twentieth century that were founded on exclusion of others, the Patriote vision was not limited uniquely to the descendants of 1760. It is in direct opposition therefore to the claims of many commentators and historians who have pigeonholed the Patriotes within a narrow nationalist framework. The Patriote message was addressed to all citizens of Lower Canada, whatever their ethnic or linguistic background, ready to participate in the construction of a new society.

There is not as far as we know a French people in this province, but a Canadian people, a moral and religious people, a loyal people, who value freedom and are able to benefit from it; this people is neither French, nor English, nor Scottish, nor Irish, nor Yankee, they are Canadian…The Canadian people will never be either French or English.[12]

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[1] Reid, Philippe, ‘L’émergence du nationalisme French Canadian-français; l’idéologie du French Canadian (1806-1842)’, Recherches sociographiques, Vol. 21, (1980), pp. 11-53, provides a good summary of the major issues.

[2] On the role of notaries and doctors, see Mackay, Julien S., Notaires et patriotes 1837-1838, (Septentrion), 2006, and Aubin, Georges and Rheault, Marcel, Médecins et patriotes 1837-1838, (Septentrion), 2006.

[3] Ibid, Lower Canada, 1791-1840, pp. 117-135, contains his key arguments. These have been challenged in McCallum, John, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Quebec and Ontario until 1870, (University of Toronto Press), 1980, especially pp. 25-44; Greer, Allan, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740-1840, (University of Toronto Press), 1985, and in Paquet, Gilles and Wallot, Jean-Pierre, Lower Canada at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: Restructuring and Modernization, (The Canadian Historical Association), 1988, Jones, R. L., ‘French Canadian Agriculture in the St. Lawrence Valley, 1815-1850’, Agricultural History, Vol. 16, (1942), pp. 137-148, and Le Goff, T. J. A., ‘The Agricultural Crisis in Lower Canada, 1802-1812: a Review of a Controversy’, CHR, Vol. 55, (1974), pp. 1-31, remain valuable on this issue and the historical problems associated with it.

[4] Dessureault, Christian and Hudon, Christine, ‘Conflits sociaux et élites locales au Bas-Canada: Le clergé, les notables, la paysannerie et le contrôle de la fabrique’, CHR, Vol. 80, (1999), pp. 413-439.

[5] Lambert, John, Travels Through Lower Canada and the United States of North America in the Years 1806, 1807 and 1808, 3 vols. London, 1810, Vol. 1, pp. 133-145 and Laterrière, Pierre de Sales, and Taunton, Henry Labouchere, A Political and Historical Account of Lower Canada, London, 1830, pp. 123-125, gave a negative view of farming.

[6] Hardy, R., and Séguin, N., Forêt et societé en Mauricie, Montreal, 1984.

[7] Little, J. J., Nationalism, Capitalism and Colonization in Nineteenth-Century Quebec: The Upper Saint-Francis District, (McGill-Queen’s University Press), 1989.

[8] Courville Serge, Robert Jean-Claude and Séguin Normand, ‘The Spread of Rural Industry in Lower Canada, 1831-1851, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Vol. 2, (1), (1991), pp. 43-70.

[9] Ibid, Lower Canada, 1791-1840, pp. 136-157, examines demographic pressures.

[10] Bellavance, Marcel, ‘La rébellion de 1837 et les modèles théoriques de l’émergence de la nation et du nationalisme’, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, Vol. 53, (2000), pp. 367-400, and Le Quebec au siècle des nationalités: essai d’histoire compareé, (VLB Editeur), 2004.

[11] Bernier, Gérald and Salée, Daniel, ‘Les patriotes, la question nationale et les rebellions de 1837-1838 au Bas-Canada’, in Sarra-Bournet, Michel & Saint-Pierre, Jocelyn, (eds.), Les Nationalismes au Quebec du xix au xxi siècle, (Presses de l’Université Laval), 2001, pp. 26-36.

[12] Le Canadien, 21 May 1835.

What economic crisis?

Historians have long debated whether poor peasant farming methods in Lower Canada led to an agricultural crisis by the early nineteenth century and whether such this may have led to social and political unrest in the 1830s.[1] In the 1790s, Lower Canada emerged as a significant exporter of grain and the new product seemed about to assume the role played by furs in colonial New France. By the 1830s, it was clear this was not going to happen and production declined rapidly between 1831 and 1844 and Lower Canada became a net importer of wheat. The movement for reform, locally[2] and in the centre took shape at a time of economic disenfranchisement of the French-speaking majority and the failure of Lower Canada to maintain earlier patterns of growth has led many historians to link economic stagnation with rebellion.

Fernand Ouellet argued, first, that there was an agricultural crisis in the early part of the nineteenth century dating from 1802 as crop yields declined and Lower Canada moved from surplus to subsistence to deficiency in grains. Secondly, a group of professionals exploited French nationalism to gain support in their bid for political power in the elected assembly. Although the agricultural crisis occurred after the appearance of nationalism and did not cause it, it is clear that deteriorating economic conditions fuelled the spread of nationalism after 1815. There was increasing competition for agricultural markets from other more productive parts of the British Empire. There was an increasing shortage of land in the seigneurial system while the colonial authorities distributed the remaining land to speculators or British immigrants. The poverty in the St. Lawrence Valley among the French habitants as well as the Irish settlers was in stark contrast to the relative prosperity of the British settlers. By the 1830s, economic conditions were so bad that a revolutionary nationalist context had been created. Finally, these two events merged when the combination of declining economic conditions and a patriotic appeal proved irresistible. The Parti Patriote of Louis-Joseph Papineau drew support from devastated farmers and, instead of responding constructively to the situation, headed down the road to rebellion.

Ouellet’s view is not without its critics. First, the reduction in wheat output was not unique to Lower Canada. Along the Atlantic coast from New York to Nova Scotia, in the first half of the nineteenth century, farmers reduced acreage sown in wheat because they could not compete with less expensive wheat from the Midwest. However, between 1800 and 1840, output on a seigneurial holding was about two-thirds of a similar sized farm in Ontario and slightly less than a comparable farm in northern Vermont or New York. The generally lower agricultural productivity in early nineteenth century francophone Canada can be explained by the division of farms (though not to as great an extent as originally believed), crop disease (for example, a series of blights hit the wheat crop in the 1830s), insect infestations (wheat midge, in particular devastated crops in several years) and soil exhaustion that reduced the productivity of the older seigneurial settlements. Conditions in Charlevoix, for example, deteriorated as its limited arable land became densely occupied by expanding population and seigneurial concessions occurred at Malbaie in the 1820s. So, when, in the 1830s, Lower Canada became an importer of wheat from the Upper Canada, it was simply mirroring the situation south of the border. From this point of view, the ‘crisis’ was associated with the general process of adjustment to market forces across North America, not something unique to Lower Canada, although there the process of adjustment to market forces proved more challenging.

Secondly, foreign observers were highly critical of peasant farming methods though this reflected a failure to understand the peculiarities of colonial agriculture or the strategies used by peasants. [3] There was a restricted market for meat and hides and French Canadian farmers concentrated on cereal crops. There was also criticism of the Canadian plough generally pulled by oxen though it was well suited to the heavy soils of the St Lawrence valley. However, the swing plough, widely used in both England and the United States was only gradually adopted in Lower Canada; for example, in St Hyacinthe, a minority of farmers owned a swing plough by the 1830s. The situation in Lower Canadian farming led to diversification in the rural economy. Far from failing to take advantage of market opportunities, as Ouellet suggested, shifts in production enabled farmers to exploit expanding local urban markets and later in the century export markets for dairy products. Peasants in the richer agricultural regions on the Montreal plain and near Quebec City prospered and accumulated significant capital, as a result livestock improved and greater quantities of fodder crops such as clover and hay were grown. The marginal farming population became increasingly dependent on cash income from forest work and this characterised the agro-forest economy of the Ottawa, Saint-Maurice and Saguenay valleys. In Saint-Maurice[4], for example, families farmed in the short growing season to produce both their own food and cash crops such as firewood for Montreal and Trois-Rivières and hay, oats, potatoes and peas for local lumber shanties. Family survival was achieved by men supplementing farm production with winter work in the forests. Not all regions had an agro-forest economy and in the Eastern Townships, for example, farmers had few links to forest industries and produced essentially for home consumption. [5]

The situation for the growing landless peasantry in Lower Canada was not dissimilar to the rural wage-labourers of South Wales. They had little choice but to emigrate in search of work. From the 1820s, population moved south to the United States to take advantage of the embryonic industrial economy developing in New England. On the Ile d’Orléans near Quebec City, four out of ten heads of families in 1831 did not own land though in general, Lower Canadian farmers traditionally kept their farms a viable size rather than subdividing them among their heirs. Landless labourers also contributed to the development of rural industries and to the expansion of villages in the Montreal area especially between 1815 and 1831. There had always been artisans in villages and towns but now commodities were produced in smaller centres; for example, in the village of Saint-Charles in the Richelieu Valley, hat-making and pottery became important occupations and Saint-Jean became a centre for earthenware production. The appearance of coopers, tailors and carriage makers in other small centres emphasised the growing diversification of the rural economy. Francophones migrated to forested regions in the Eastern Townships, often as young married couples and tried to compete with the large timber companies as independent producers. However, the Anglophone minority remained the dominant economic power. [6]

The seigneurial character of francophone agriculture helped explain the lack of sensitivity to market forces, but nothing was done through public policy to remedy the situation. The colonial elite was preoccupied with the concerns of Montreal and its frontier in the west and with maintaining its political and social ascendancy and this left little room for considering the needs of the francophone economy. Rationalisation of Lower Canadian agriculture was not a priority largely as a result of the dysfunctional political structure produced by the Conquest. Some historians doubt whether there was a general crisis affecting all Quebec’s agriculture in this period but rather that the problems reflected growing regional diversity. Even so, they recognise that farming may not have been the rapid-growth sector it had been before 1800. However, we should not isolate agriculture from the broader economy. An absence of growth in farming did not mean an absence of growth overall. New areas of the economy developed and the French Canadian bourgeoisie adapted effectively to the changing situation. This was particularly evident in merchandising where disadvantages of capital were outweighed by a common language and by a network of ties through the smaller rural villages and the penetration of consumer goods into the countryside provided a new outlet for the wholesaler and retailer and especially in retailing the chief businessmen were largely French Canadian. By the 1840s, when this process was completed, a new market economy had emerged from the structure of the ancient regime. This interpretation suggests that Lower Canada was more dynamic and entrepreneurial than Ouellet would have us believe.

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[1] Fernand Ouellet argued this was in Le Bas-Canada, 1791-1840: Changements Structuraux et Crise, (Editions de l’Universite d’Ottawa), 1976, available in translation as Lower Canada, 1791-1840: Social Change and Nationalism, Patricia Claxton, trans., (McClelland and Stewart), 1983. The argument has been challenged in McCallum, John, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Quebec and Ontario until 1870, (University of Toronto Press), 1980, especially pages 25-44, ibid, Greer, Allan, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740-1840 and in ibid, Paquet, Gilles and Wallot, Jean-Pierre, Lower Canada at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: Restructuring and Modernization. Jones, R. L., ‘Canadien Agriculture in the St. Lawrence Valley, 1815-1850’, Agricultural History, Vol. 16, (1942), pages 137-148 and Le Goff, T.J.A., ‘The Agricultural Crisis in Lower Canada, 1802-1812: a Review of a Controversy’, Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 55, (1974), pages 1-31 remain valuable on this issue and the historical problems associated with it.

[2] Ibid, Dessureault, Christian and Hudon, Christine, ‘Conflits sociaux et élites locales au Bas-Canada: Le clergé, les notables, la paysannerie et le contrôle de la fabrique’.

[3] Ibid, Lambert, John, Travels Through Lower Canada and the United States of North America in the Years 1806, 1807 and 1808, Vol. 1, pp. 133-145 and Laterrière, Pierre de Sales, and Taunton, Henry Labouchere, A Political and Historical Account of Lower Canada, London, 1830, pp. 123-125, gave a negative view of farming.

[4] Ibid, Hardy, R. and Séguin, N., Forêt et societé en Mauricie.

[5] On this see, ibid, Little, J.I., Nationalism, Capitalism and Colonization in Nineteenth-Century Quebec: The Upper Saint-Francis District.

[6] Courville Serge, Robert Jean-Claude and Séguin Normand, ‘The Spread of Rural Industry in Lower Canada, 1831-1851, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Vol. 2, (1), (1991), pp. 43-70.