Book ID: CBB702364721

Power and Subsistence: The Political Economy of Grain in New France (2018)

unapi

Dechêne, Louise (Author)


McGill-Queen's University Press


Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 288
Language: English

Subsistence crops ? the grains and other food items necessary to a people's survival ? were a central preoccupation of the early modern state. In New France, the principal crop in question was wheat, and its production, consumption, exchange, and regulation were matters to which the government devoted sustained attention. Power and Subsistence examines the official measures taken to regulate the grain economy in New France, the frequency and nature of state interventions in the system, and the responses these actions provoked. Drawing on social and political perspectives and methodologies, this book brings rural and agricultural history into conversation with colonial political economy. Louise Dechêne shows that unlike in early eighteenth-century France, where the marketplace dominated and trade was transparent, the grain economy in New France was hypercentralized and government measures were increasingly harsh. Attentive to the conflicts arising between producers, merchants, consumers, and colonial administrators over the allocation of the harvest, Dechêne offers a revealing perspective on the operation of political power in a colonial setting. Lively, elegant, and wry, Power and Subsistence provides insight into the last era of French rule in North America ? and, in part, how that era came to an end.

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Reviewed By

Review Christopher M. Church (2019) Review of "Power and Subsistence: The Political Economy of Grain in New France". Agricultural History (pp. 759-761). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB702364721/

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Authors & Contributors
Roberto Lorenzetti
Varty, John F.
Otter, Christopher (Chris) James
McDonald, Bryan L.
Hay, Travis
Chambers, Lori
Concepts
Agriculture
Grain crops; Cereals; Grasses
Food industry and trade
Food supply
Food and foods
Economic botany; plant cultivation; horticulture
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
20th century, early
17th century
Enlightenment
Places
Canada
United States
Great Britain
Italy
France
Missouri (U.S.)
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