Peasant accumulation in a context of colonization : Rivière-du-Sud, Canada, 1720-1775

Recent research has shown the Canadian peasantry of the eighteenth century to be less homogeneous than was once thought. Beyond the ebb and flow of the family cycle, the striking differences in productive resources from one household to the next can only have furthered accumulation among the peasants. Set in Riviere-du-Sud, a seigneury fifty kilometres downstream from Quebec on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, the present study is concerned with the forms and limits of that process. By 1720, the seigneury had entered what might be called the second phase of colonization; the population had taken root, but throughout the period land for the children who departed would continue to be available farther afield. In this setting, it is suggested, both production and markets were too uncertain to permit even the largest producers to lose their subsistence orientation and break through the traditional limits to scale. At the same time, such peasants had no choice but to invest most of their appreciable surplus in land, which they eventually distributed to their children. A muted differentiation process, in which the most prosperous continually pushed the vulnerable off their valuable land to inferior holdings elsewhere, resulted