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Written by two of Quebec's most respected historians, "A Short History of Quebec" offers a concise yet comprehensive overview of the province from the pre-contact native period to the present-day. John A. Dickinson and Brian Young bring a refreshing perspective to the history of Quebec, focusing on the social and economic development of the region as well as the identity issues of its diverse peoples.This revised fourth edition covers Quebec's recent political history and includes an updated bibliography and chronology and new illustrations. A Canadian classic, "A Short History of Quebec" now takes into account such issues as the 1995 referendum, recent ideological shifts and societal changes, considers Quebec's place in North America in the light of NAFTA, and offers reflections on the Gerard Bouchard-Charles Taylor Commission on Accommodation and Cultural Differences in 2008. Engagingly written, this expanded and updated fourth edition is an ideal place to learn about the dynamic history of Quebec. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Not bad, but not definitive either.
This is a relatively well-written, thoroughly competent overview of Quebec history from a predominantly socio-economic perspective. As another review notes, there are shades of Marxism; unlike this other reviewer I understand that Marx was an originary figure in socio-economic history and so ANY book written with an economic basis will show the influence of the author of Das Kapital, and to me that's not necessarily a bad thing. These writers don't ignore the role of the Catholic church, the Seigneurial system, or artistic production in Quebec history; they start from the position that all these institutions are given structure by economic relationships, a fairly widely accepted historiographical position. If they're a little dry and schematic about it, well, introductory historical texts have a tendency to be a little dry and schematic.

My slight beef with this tome is that it generally presupposes a familiarity with Canadian history that readers looking for an introductory text on Quebec might not have. For example, the October Crisis is mentioned early in a chapter and never especially well explained. This surely has something to do with the writers' determination to resist a "great men and events" method of historiography and to explicate a narrative of change based on socio-economic conditions, but it can leave the U.S. educated reader scratching his or her head or running off to wikipedia to get up to speed. Combined with the tendency of this kind of introductory history to read as an thick blur of names, dates, and locales, the constant need to look outside the text makes for a book that, while not especially challenging in its terminology or style, can nevertheless be difficult to get through.

Commendable as the best general history of Quebec I've seen that's addressed to an English audience, Dickinson and Young's work nevertheless leaves the field wide open for other writers.

Good Overview
Good history on this facinating region of North America. As an American, it made me want to visit this region.

Better than advertised
It's called "A Short History" but it's a big thick book with a lot more detail than I bargained for.

A little bit dry at times but generally very readable and informative. ... Read more

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Between Confederation and the Great Depression Quebec underwent a tremendous upheaval, transforming it from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one.

Widely acclaimed in its original French-language edition, this book is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the period. The authors take an ecclectic approach, examining changes in the economic, social, political and cultural realms. They vividly portray the central conflicts of the period: the struggle between business and the Catholic church to determine economic and social development; the development of public welfare schemes in the face of growing urban squalour; the fight to maintain French language and culture in a society dominated by English-speaking businessmen and political leaders.

Illustrated with 15 maps and 190 photographs, Quebec: A History 1867-1929 offers a full examination of Quebec society during this period of rapid and deep change. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lots of Information -- Irritating Tone
Lots of detailed information on an unusual piece of history. The smug Francomarxist tone is really annoying. Part of this results from the unfortunate fact that standard French historical writing often sounds smarmy in English translation. But most of the problem is the usual result of writing a history in which living people are replaced by icons representing their class and ethnicity. These icons interact -- like those in a primitive video game -- through a limited set of predetermined moves described in the monotonous vocabulary of liberation socialism. It's fun to drag out the old Nintendo and resurrect the Mario Brothers now and again. But, nostalgia value aside, the current state of the art in both video games and historical analysis is several generations past that sort of thing. ... Read more

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Robert Bothwell describes the lead-up to the October 1995 referendum and traces political developments from its immediate aftermath to the present.A new preface, expanded chronology, and an entirely new chapter covering the past two years of the troubled relationship between Quebec and 'the rest of Canada' . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

history live!
This book helps me to get a first a view of Canada-Quebec relations history in a very lively way which never bored me although I was discovering the subject. It shows the "problematique" of thesubject and by presenting the different point of views it enables thereader to appreciate its complexity. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting but narrow in scope
The title of this work infers a broad examination of Québec society, but the subtitle ("Rural Society in Three Québec Parishes 1740-1840") is more representative of the text. The parishes described are Sorel, St-Ours, and St-Denis adjoining the Rivière Richelieu. The work is organized in eight sections:

1. Introduction: seventeenth-century beginnings
2. The peasant family household
3. Generations of peasants
4. Aristocratic ascendancy
5. The feudal burden
6. The country merchant
7. Habitant-voyageurs
8. Turning the nineteenth century: development or crisis?

The author delivers a 231-page analysis of the local interrelation between habitants (`peasants'), seigneurs (`lords'), and one merchant, with brief glimpses of clergy and tradesmen, all augmented by valuable statistics (marriages, births, deaths, infant mortality, farm size and composition, crop production, etc.) for the specified century, so I'm not complaining (though the text at times seems overly burdened with 20C economic jargon).

The absence of wider context is lamentable. Seigneurs Pierre de St-Ours L'Échaillon, Pierre de Sorel (Saurel), and Claude de Ramezay de La Gesse are only briefly profiled. Post-conquest merchant Samuel Jacobs (an interesting figure who arrived in 1759 with Wolfe) is analyzed, but not compared with pre-conquest merchants like Charles Aubert de LaChesnaye, Charles Bazire, Jacques Le Ber Larose, the Gamelins (Louis, Laurent-Eustache, Ignace), the Babies (Babys), Antoine-Pierre Trottier Desauniers, Louis-Charles Charly St-Ange, etc. `Habitant-voyageurs' traces parish participation in the fur-trade from 1784, but fails to provide any real history (however brief) of the trade itself (by then over 170 years old). Finally, the author doesn't explore why these `lords, peasants, and merchants' emigrated in the first place and stayed despite decades of war with the Iroquois and England.

If the reader seeks facts about three Canadian parishes 1740-1840, this is a valuable study. If a wider portrait of Québec society is desired, this work is helpful but limited. ... Read more

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How did a First World urban population come to imagine itself as part of a global anti-colonial movement? "The Empire Within" tackles this and other paradoxes created by the surprising power and influence of Third World decolonisation on the political activism in 1960s Montreal. In a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place, Mills pulls back the curtain on the decade's activists and intellectuals, showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonisation to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex, race, and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. The temporary unity forged around ideas of decolonisation came undone in the 1970s, however, as many were forced to come to terms with the contradictions and ambiguities of applying ideas of decolonisation in Quebec.From linguistic debates to labour unions, and from the political activities of citizens in the city's poorest neighbourhoods to its Caribbean intellectuals, "The Empire Within" is a political tour of Montreal that reconsiders the meaning and legacy of the city's dissident traditions. It is also a fascinating chapter in the history of postcolonial thought. ... Read more

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"On one level, Peter Moogk's latest book, La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada--A Cultural History, is a candid exploration ofthe troubled historical relationship that exists between the inhabitants of French- and English-speaking Canada. At the same time, it is a long-overdue study ofthe colonial social institutions, values, and experiences that shaped modern French Canada. Moogk draws on a rich body of evidence--literature; statistical studies; government, legal, and private documents in France, Britain, and North America--and traces the roots of the Anglo-French cultural struggle to the seventeenth century. In so doing, he discovered a New France vastly different from the one portrayed in popular mythology. French relations with Native Peoples, for instance, were strained. The colony of New France was really no single entity, but rather a chain of loosely aligned outposts stretching from Newfoundland in the east to the Illinois Country in the west.

Moogk also found that many early immigrants to New France were reluctant exiles from their homeland and that a high percentage returned to Europe. Those who stayed, the Acadians and Canadians, were politically conservative and retained Old Regime values: feudal social hierarchies remained strong; one's individualism tended to be familial, not personal; Roman Catholicism molded attitudes and was as important as language in defining Acadian and Canadian identities. It was, Moogk concludes, the pre-French Revolution Bourbon monarchy and its institutions that shaped modern French Canada, in particular the Province of Quebec, and set its people apart from the rest of the nation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Franco-Americans may not identify withNouvelle France
Non-Traditional View of Francos: An Author Speaks

By Juliana L'Heureux

A recent telephone interview with author Peter N. Moogk, 60, a Canadian professor currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia, brought out a surprisingly non-traditional point of view on Franco-American culture.

So much of Franco-American culture is embellished in nostalgia about the past, but Moogk cuts through the heroic veneer presented by some earlier writers like Francis Parkman.

Moogk's most recent book was published in the United States in 2001, titled "La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada- A Cultural History". It's an ambitious historical effort.

To his credit, Moogk provides extensive research covering the entire 400 year scope of the French experience in North America, not just a little slice of it.In a nutshell, Moogk avoids all prevailing points of view about French-Canadian culture. There's no embellishments or cultural nostalgia.

Instead, Moogk's research drives home the difficult circumstances of French history in North America.

Moogk teaches early French North American history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.He's a citizen of both England and Canada.He's not a French-Canadian but he attended McGill University in Montreal for a brief time and he speaks French.

One reason he wrote La Nouvelle France was because he wasn't happy with what his students were learning about French-Canada.Popular Canadian histories assume that New France has no influence upon the present.The French Regime is presented as colorful but not serious. It's a sequential era of heroic missionaries, valiant warriors, explorers and hardy fur traders.

But the French-Canadian culture is more complex and impressive than what's currently portrayed, he says.

Not surprising, La Nouvelle France generated some criticism from French-Canadian history reviewers, he says.

"Reviewers are critical of my analysis of the French separatist movement in the last chapter," he says.In fact, reviewers prefer talking about the last chapter and thereby tend to dismiss the exhaustive historic research throughout the rest of the text, he says.

From a Franco-American point of view, the second chapter is most interesting. Moogk describes the special relationship during the colonial period between the French and Aboriginal people (i.e., Native Americans).In Canada, the Native Americans are now called "First Nations".

In French, the original common word for First Nations was les Sauvages, meaning "Wild People of the Forests".

"The word `Sauvages' was an old interpretation and wasn't a hostile word during the 17th and 18th centuries," says Moogk.

"I observed a healthy relationship between the French colonists and the Aboriginal peoples," says Moogk."The nature of the relationship couldn't be ignored," he says. Moreover, the special relationship was learned fromEuropean attitudes towards primitive people.Colonial French settlers accepted Aboriginal people, says Moogk, because the European aristocracy readers of Greek, and Roman classics and the Holy Bible believed in a lost world of innocence, like the Biblical Eden.

Colonial era Europeans believed les Sauvages lived a romanticized life in a golden and mythical world free to do as they pleased. They were supposedly relieved from the necessity of labor because they were surrounded by abundant food.

To 17th century Europeans, the Amerindians confirmed the classic beliefs that primitive people lost their innocence when they were corrupted by luxury and artificiality.

"I was struck by the number of stories about French children who were raised by the native people.It's nearly impossible to track, but the sprinkling of French children in the native culture is interesting", he says.

On a positive note, Moogk likes the compassionate nature of the French culture and the strong family ties.

La Nouvelle France is certainly a different perspective on the culture, sure to stir debate, as well it should. Juliana@MaineWriter.com ... Read more

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"Peter Gossage uses family-reconstitution analysis, drawing on local parish registers and manuscript-census schedules, to focus on marriage, household organization, and family size in the context of social and economic change in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. His interpretation of the data is that family formation in Saint-Hyacinthe was profoundly affected as couples adjusted to the new urban, industrial setting. Gossage demonstrates that demographic behaviour was increasingly differentiated by social class, with distinct marriage and fertility patterns emerging among bourgeois and proletarian families."--BOOK JACKET. ... Read more

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The Bridge at Québec

William D. Middleton

The seven-decades-long struggle to build a bridge at Québec over the St. Lawrence River. Completed in 1919, it still stands as the greatest of its kind.

In the middle of the 19th century the leaders of the City of Québec dreamed of a great bridge across the St. Lawrence River. It would link their city to the new railway lines developing along the south shore, giving Québec a competitive edge in its long struggle with Montréal for commercial dominance.The width and depth of the St. Lawrence necessitated a bridge of unprecedented scale, and many of the best engineers of the time turned their attention to the problem. Three serious proposals for a bridge never materialized. A fourth plan finally moved ahead at the beginning of the 20th century, only to end in of one of the greatest construction failures of all time. In 1907 the incomplete structure collapsed into the river with a loss of 75 lives. From the ruins of this first attempt emerged still another plan. In 1916, when the great bridge was nearing completion, tragedy struck again. As the huge center span was being lifted into place, it fell into the river, taking another 11 lives. It was not until a year later that a replacement was installed, and the great bridge was finally complete. Today the Québec Bridge stands firmly astride the St. Lawrence, safely carrying the commerce of Canada across its broad waters. No one has yet built a longer cantilever span, so the bridge still ranks as the greatest of its kind.The Bridge at Québec provides a full account of the long effort to build a bridge at this difficult site, with particular emphasis on the extraordinary story of the failure of the first one, the human tragedies that accompanied it, and the lessons that its story holds today for engineers and builders as they continue to extend the boundaries of technology. Fully illustrated, the book makes clear to the general reader and technical audiences alike the engineering issues involved in constructing one of the world's greatest bridges.

Civil engineer William D. Middleton has been active as a transportation historian and journalist for almost 50 years. His books include Landmarks on the Iron Road; Yet There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take: Railway Journeys; the second edition of South Shore: The Last Interurban; and the forthcoming second edition of When the Steam Railroads Electrified (all Indiana University Press).

Railroads Past and Present series -- George M. Smerk, editor

May 2001216 pages, 135 b&w photos, 8 1/2 x 11, index, append. cloth 0-253-33761-5 $39.95 t / £30.50

ContentsPrologue: The Great RiverBook One: The First Bridge A Bridge at the Narrowing A Project at Last The Engineers and the Bridge Builders The Great Bridge Under Way Countdown to Disaster AftermathBook Two: The Second Bridge Starting Over Under Way Again Again, Disaster Triumph at Last

Customer Reviews (1)

TheBridge At Quebec
In spite of the subject matter: the story of the bridge's construction, it is a book very difficult to put down. It is so engrossing. ... Read more

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In this richly documented work, Serge Courville tells the geographical history of Quebec, from the appearance of the first human groups through to the present day. This detailed and erudite book maps the major stages of Quebec's collective development, providing a geographical record of the many social relationships that over time created a sense of place. Landscape, Courville shows, is the keeper of memory, the record of successive changes, and a witness to the genesis of the new. Places that were once agricultural, then left to waste and ruin, are today revivified by tourism. Areas that now house office buildings were long ago open playgrounds where children ruled. Drawing on vast research, Courville shows how, in spite of the turbulence Quebec often endures - or perhaps because of it - the land itself may be seen as an important participant in the history of its peoples. Quebec: A Historical Geography was originally published by Les Presses de l'Universite Laval as Le Quebec: Geneses et mutation du territoire. ... Read more

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‘What a scene!’ wrote Horace Walpole. ‘An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers!’ In one short sharp exchange of fire Major-General James Wolfe’s men tumbled the Marquis de Montcalm’s French army into bloody ruin. Sir John Fortescue famously described it as the ‘most perfect volley ever fired on a battlefield’. In this book Stuart Reid details how one of the British Army’s consummate professionals literally beat the King’s enemies before breakfast and in so doing decided the fate of a continent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Interesting account but
While I was reading the book, I was suprised at how little the French side was covered. It was as though the French didn`t even fight, and just let the British bow them over. I felt that a bit more balanced coverage of the campaign would have been better. Having only the colors of the French metropolitian regiments shown as a representation of the French forces was too little. Of all of the Osprey books that I have bought, this one is probobly the one that I am most disappointed in. It was a fair account of the British side, but even that, I found it annoying that the depection of a member of the 13th Regt as a stand in for other regiments in the campaign was a bit off. There are plenty of North American British reenactors of regiments in that campaign which could have been used. I`m currently a Masters student and if I had submitted something like this for a paper, I would probobly fail.

Disappointing
While credible in basics, this work does little to fully explore the battle. It is sadly deficient in enumerating the activities and names of French regulars and militia. It does bless the reader withphotographs of the fix-bayonet sequence of period British regulars (whatever that has to do with anything).

Not equal with other Osprey volumes (René Chartrand's Monongahela for example).

Not as Good as Chartrand's Volume
Four years ago, the very capable historian Rene Chartrand wrote Osprey's Quebec 1759 in the Order of Battle series.Now, Osprey has decided to publish a campaign title on the same subject by author Stuart Reid.Chartrand's earlier volume was so comprehensive that it seems a waste of time to recover this same ground, and the only value added in this new volume are the 3-D maps and the battle scenes (which frankly, are not very good).Indeed, Reid's Quebec 1759 accomplishes much less in the same 96-page format than Chartrand.

Quebec 1759: The Battle that Won Canada begins with a short introduction, a campaign chronology, and a very brief section on opposing commanders.The section on opposing armies borrows heavily from Chartrand's earlier volume, although the author neglected to discuss the Royal Navy's participation.The section on opposing plans is also rather brief.There are a total of five 2-D maps (the Canadian theater of operations, the river war in June-August 1759, the proposed St Michel Operation, the landing at Montmorency on 31 July 1759, and the landing at Foulon) and three 3-D Bird's Eye View maps (two of the Battle on the Plains of Abraham and one of the Battle of St Foy in April 1760).The three battle scenes are: the landing at Montmorency, the storming of the Foulon and the Battle on the Plains); however,the battle scenes in this volume, by artist Gerry Embleton, are not as good as in most other Osprey volumes.

Reid is a British re-enactor with considerable insight into the 18th Century British Army, which he showed to good effect in his earlier books on Culloden.However, Reid has a tendency toward a jingoistic, pro-British bias that can be annoying.In the introduction, Reid takes the time to criticize George Washington's "inept leadership" on the Monongahela four years earlier, while noting that the British General Braddock was merely "unfortunate."This biased opinion does not square with the facts.Reid also infers several times that Wolfe was fortunate in having virtually no colonial troops in his command at Quebec (although he could have mentioned that many British units were brought up to strength by men recruited in America).Reid's recurrent dismissal of French General Montcalm's military talents also seems overtly jaded; wasn't this the same Montcalm who defeated the British at Fort Ticonderoga?The subtitle, "the battle that won Canada" also betrays a narrow interpretation of that event; the French would see it as "the battle that lost Canada."Reid is certainly knowledgeable about the kit and tactics of British infantry in this period, but his objectivity - or lack of - is a cause for concern.

The only other noticeable difference between Reid and Chartrand is that the former bases much of his narrative on the letters of General Wolfe and other official British correspondence.There are virtually no sources quoted from the French perspective.Reid's discussion of the development of Wolfe's final battle plan is a bit tortuous, as most other attempts at analyzing the young general's decision-making process tend to wallow through a sea of assumptions and guesses.No matter whom you read, it is clear the Wolfe arrived at Quebec with only a hazy plan of action (based on ridiculously bad intelligence) and then decided to play it by ear.The landing at Montmorency was a disaster that demonstrated how effective Montcalm's area defense was, as well as the paucity of British tactical options.Wolfe's decision to land below the city was anticipated by the French and most British writers fail to mention just how narrow a margin of error the landing at Foulon was conducted. Wolfe got very lucky and got ashore in strength, but had the French been a bit more alert, the landing at Foulon would have been a replay of Montmorency.While the capture of Quebec in 1759 was certainly a great British victory, it was based far more on luck than good operational planning. ... Read more

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As the days and seasons goby... a stroll through old Québec. In Québec, the light changes everything. The urban landscape, the squares and streets, the stone walls and the array of bronze statues constantly change appearance under the play of light and shade. Inside the 400-year-old capital, architecture and city scenes speak with the voices of history, expressing the values that have shaped the land ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lovely book---get it for C$30 at Amazon.ca
If you're looking for an armchair travel book, this isn't it. Instead it's a (non-technical) book very particularly about light, photography, and Quebec City. Sort of a love letter to the city, from a photographer. If you're visiting QC and want to take great photos, this could help.

Can't fathom why these sellers are charging upwards of $100, when Amazon in Canada is selling for C$30. Outrageous! ... Read more

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A detailed examination of women's lives on Quebec from the early seventeenth century until the end of the '70's. ... Read more

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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1908Original Publisher: J. Lovell ... Read more

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The American attack on Quebec in 1775 was a key episode in the War of Independence. Capture of the city would give the Americans control of Canada – a disaster for the British. The subsequent campaign involved a 350-mile trek across uninhabited wilderness, a desperate American attack on the city of Quebec that left one American general dead and another wounded, and a British counterattack that culminated in a brutal naval battle off Valcour Island on Lake Champlain. In this book Brendan Morrissey details the events of this ferocious struggle whose results would have such momentous consequences at Saratoga in 1777. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Quebec 1775: The American Invasion of Canada (Campaign)
I was hoping to find anything on my ancestor, Timothy Conner, a rifleman from Pennsylvania who marched under Arnold to Quebec, but found nothing in the book.

On to Canada
The volume covers the 1775 military campaign that attempted to conquer Canada and make it the 14th American colony. The fact that a majority of the Canadians were French Catholics and that the Catholic religion was held in very low esteem by the American political establishment appeared to have been conveniently overlooked.

There are several characteristics of these books that I found quite admirable and would recommend to an individual considering a purchase. The authors make extensive use of double page drawings, full-page maps and numerous period illustration and photographs. In addition timelines, an index and a very helpful section titled "The Battlefield Today" make this a very useful volume for the student or the armchair general hidden within many of us.

I will add one caution, due to limited pages count, 96 for this volume, the text is compressed to detailing facts - dates, events, what happened, how many were killed, captured etc. Those generous author narrations that explore motives, personalities and detailed backgrounds are missing. In conclusion I found this book an excellent supplement to other books I have read on the American Revolution and Benedict Arnold and recommend it on that basis.

Outstanding Short History
Brendan Morrissey is an exceptional historian. He has the talent and scholarship to take the complex history of the battles of the American Revolution and summarize them into a compact, accurate, unbiased and immensely readable short format for the Osprey Campaign Series. His chose of artwork strongly supports the text and often includes uncommon artwork and illustrations. He consults with the major experts and keeps a neutral perspective concerning the combatants. I have all of his books in my collection.

Col. Kim R. Stacy, Savannah, GA, USA

His contribution to the Osprey Campaign Series includes:
Monmouth Courthouse 1778: The Last Great Battle in the North (Campaign)
Saratoga 1777: Turning Point of a Revolution (Campaign)
Quebec 1775: The American Invasion of Canada (Campaign)
Boston 1775: The Shot Heard Around the World (Campaign)
Yorktown 1781
The American Revolution: The Global Struggle for National Independence
On to Victory: Guilford Courthouse and Yorktown 1781 (The History Channel, American History Archives)

Excellent view of a little known war
Quebec 1775 does an excellent job as it explores a little known event in the American Revolution, the American invasion of Canada.

Following the fall of Ticonderoga to the Green Mountain Boys in the summer of 1775, Congress authorized a two pronged assault to push through the northern wilderness and seize the main cities of Quebec.

What followed was a campaign of guile, bluff, hard fighting and treacherous weather that resulted in the expulsion of the colonials from Canada and the resulting counter attack that would bring England to grief at Saratoga.

Morrissey not only details the logistics and combat problems which faced the leaders but also the cultural differences between Quebec and the other British colonies in North America, differences which the American Congress failed to understand and which the British used to full effect.

The book follows the usual format of Osprey publications and for once there are enough maps to follow the action easily. If anything is lacking, it is the usual details on the opposing commanders. The book lists three on each side but as the story progresses some of these drop by the wayside and the reader is left wondering who are the more aggressive Generals who's names get mentioned more and more.

Still that is my only complaint of this book which does excellent work in exploring a little known side of the American Revolution. Since the attack failed, some may see it as a needless sideshow of the war, but since the road that started in Quebec in 1775 ended at Saratoga in 1777 then the knowledge of the earlier campaign helps illuminate that more fateful campaign which followed.

Inaccurate, Poor Effort By A British Historian
The well-known British historian Brendan Morrissey throws his other books into question with this poor effort.

Several of the chapters are reasonably informative, if only in a superficial way and extensively illustrated, but in many respects the book seems to be intended for young readers, with fanciful illustrations and overly neat situations.

Then come the errors which are legion.For example, James Wilkerson was not on Arnold's expedition through Maine and only joined Arnold in 1776 in the group of reinforcements sent by General Schuyler after the battle was over.Another would be the illustration that shows Arnold wounded in front of a barricade (apparently the first one), but fails to show that it was still dark and the men were in a blinding snowstowm.Visibility was extremely limited.Nor were the soldiers so well-dressed as in the illustration, and the description of the situation is at odds with all other references.Another is that Hendricks did not fall wounded -- he took a musket ball in the chest and fell dead.Etc., etc.

Morrissey lists reasonable references, but one wonders if he read them.For some reason he considers Smith, "Arnold's March From Cambridge To Quebec" "... no longer the most accurate...".There is no indication as to which he considers the most accurate, but since he believes Wilkerson was on the march, I must submit that Morrissey went astray.Possibly his dependence on British sources is the cause.

The only other work that gives Wilkerson on Arnold's expedition that I have found is Mark Boatner's "Encyclopedia of the American Revolution."Perhaps Morrissey obtained his information there rather than searching the relatively few primary sources of the campaign.

In short, this is a pretty book with numerous maps and illustrations, but good production does not outweigh poor content and false information. ... Read more

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Essential reading for an understanding of contemporary Quebec, The Dream of Nation traces the changing nature of various "dreams of nation," from the imperial dream of New France to the separatist dream of the 1980 referendum. Susan Mann demonstrates that these dreams, fashioned by elites in response to the recurring question of how to be French in North America, proposed an ever-elusive unanimity. She discusses how social, economic, and political pressures, as well as changing populations, invariably thwarted one dream and provided the makings of another. A work of pioneering scholarship and remarkable synthesis, The Dream of Nation weaves together two of the dominant ideologies of the twentieth century: nationalism and feminism. A new preface contextualizes the 1982 edition and outlines the different contours of Quebec's latest thoughts on sovereignty. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting but incomplete
Dr. Mann Trofimenkoff's history of Quebec is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Quebec or French Canada.Her analysis of the underlying intellectual and social conditions that frame major historical moments makes the book a pleasurable read for all of its 300+ pages.Of particular interest is Mann's thorough and conscientious mapping of women's roles in the history of Quebec, a quality lacking in other popular and scholarly historical works on the province.Though no one book can do everything, the single greatest shortcoming of the book is the absence of a meaningful discussion of the profound antisemitism and clericly led fascist movements in Quebec of the early 20th century.The chapters on that period deal with several important themes but Mann, who is clearly well-versed in the region's history, seems to have chosen to ignore these phenomena, giving precedence to other spheres of social and intellectual history at the time. ... Read more

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This study examines the ways in which two highly distinct social groups - Gaelic-speaking crofters from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and French-speaking habitants from south of Quebec City - adapted to a common physical environment in the rugged Appalachian plateau of south-eastern Quebec. The author focuses on settlement patterns, population expansion and mobility, family structure and inheritance, farm production and labour, the role played by local merchants and millers, and the cultural significance of religion and education. He documents the differences which can be traced to ethnic origin, but also emphasizes the many similarities which characterized the adjustment of the two groups. Economic development in this geographical area was severely restricted by thin soil, rugged topography and a brutally short growing season, coupled with the government's favouritism towards monopolistic lumber companies. Two viable communities did, nevertheless, take root, each drawing heavily on traditional cultural values and a history of economic resourcefulness in order to survive in an era of emerging industrial capitalism. ... Read more

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At the turn of the century American industrialist J.B. Duke set his sights on one of North America's greatest and most spectacular rivers - the Saguenay. In "Amassing Power", David Massell chronicles thirty years of international intrigue as Duke manoeuvred to gain access to, develop, and sell the tremendous hydro-electric potential of a remote river in Quebec. The damming of the Saguenay brought industrialisation on a grand scale to rural Quebec in the form of newsprint and aluminum manufacture. Tapping into rich and diverse sources in Canada, the United States, and Europe, Massell provides an interdisciplinary, cross-border study of American capital and Canadian resources. He shows us how ever-larger amounts of capital yielded increasingly massive and sophisticated applications of hydroelectric technology. Grand industrial plans, in turn, encroached upon provincial water rights and farmers' lands, which drew the attention of the state.He examines the protracted power struggle between public and private interests - between American capitalists and the nascent bureaucracy of the province of Quebec - and describes the origins and evolution of the events that led to state control over hydraulic resources in the province. In doing so he provides vivid portraits of Duke and of Quebec politicians of the period and gives a dramatic account of the protracted battle of wits between Duke's chief engineer, William States Lee, and Quebec's chief of Hydraulic Service, Arthur Amos. "Amassing Power" speaks to the integration of North American economies, vividly illustrating the process by which American capital drew Canada's resource-rich North into the economic orbit of the United States. ... Read more