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Thursday 13 April 2023 14.00 - 16.00
P-7 MAT04 Negotiating and Exploiting Business Relationships: Face-to-face Credit in Quebec in the 19th and 20th Centuries
E44
Network: Material and Consumer Culture Chair: Jon Stobart
Organizer: Sylvie Taschereau Discussant: Jon Stobart
Isabelle Bouchard : Land and Credit Markets in the First Nations Community of Odanak (1830-1865)
The Abenaki of Odanak is a First Nations community established on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River (near Trois-Rivières, Quebec) in the early eighteenth century. In the first part of the nineteenth century, a market for Abenaki lands emerged. While these lands remained the collective property of the ... (Show more)
The Abenaki of Odanak is a First Nations community established on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River (near Trois-Rivières, Quebec) in the early eighteenth century. In the first part of the nineteenth century, a market for Abenaki lands emerged. While these lands remained the collective property of the First Nation, they were nevertheless subdivided among community members. From this point, the Abenaki relied on notaries to record land transfers between family and community members and to secure property rights. From the 1830s, Ignace Gill (1808-1865) and his commercial activities played a key role in introducing the Abenaki to the credit market. Tied to the community by the adoption of his great-grandfather, this merchant extended notarized loans that included security in the form of mortgages on parcels of Abenaki lands. Gill also used another credit instrument, the sale with right of redemption. This paper explores the relationship between land and credit markets in Odanak, especially the roles played by merchants and their financial intermediaries or brokers - the notaries - in the appropriation of this First Nation’s lands. The paper examines connections between debt and real estate before the passage of the Indian Act (1876), a law that created “Indian reserves” in Canada and formalized their inalienability. (Show less)

Brian Gettler : Underwriting Settler Colonialism: the Wendat of Wendake and Local Money Markets in the Long Nineteenth Century
This paper explores two intertwined phenomena in the context of settler colonialism. First, it analyzes real estate credit provided by Wendat to fellow community members and to settlers. Living in close proximity to Quebec City, the residents of Wendake encouraged market expansion and the regional economy’s transition towards industrial capitalism. ... (Show more)
This paper explores two intertwined phenomena in the context of settler colonialism. First, it analyzes real estate credit provided by Wendat to fellow community members and to settlers. Living in close proximity to Quebec City, the residents of Wendake encouraged market expansion and the regional economy’s transition towards industrial capitalism. Financial institutions such as banks were largely absent from the real estate market in nineteenth-century Quebec, with capital instead being loaned by local élites through notaries. The paper demonstrates that this provided members of an emerging Wendat bourgeoisie with a key method of consolidating their wealth and political influence, both on the reserve and in the surrounding area. Second, the paper explores the effects of state intervention within First Nations communities. Laws adopted by the state from the mid-nineteenth century fundamentally challenged the longstanding imbrication of Wendat and settler societies and economies by defining “Indian” for the first time and restraining First Nations’ market participation. Though targeting First Nations with less experience of daily interaction with settler society, these laws applied equally to Wendake where they further entrenched the socioeconomic status of the community’s leading families who were now the sole source of real estate credit available on reserve.

Since Wendake is located in Quebec, a jurisdiction operating under French rather than English civil law, it has a generated a wealth of sources in the form of notarial records that have no parallel in Indigenous communities elsewhere in North America. While also using the archives of the Department of Indian Affairs, the text of laws, and the field notes of visiting anthropologists, this paper focuses on notarial sources – especially sales, loans, and discharges – that testify to a remarkably active money market in which Wendat played a critical role over the course of the long nineteenth century. (Show less)

Mary Anne Poutanen : Serving Up Irish Hospitality on Credit: Women Publicans and Grocers’ Business Practices in Montreal, 1840-1870
Irish women were embedded in Montreal’s hospitality sector as wives and daughters of publicans and grocers and as keepers. From an assortment of pots, pans, dishware, and bedding, women publicans could make a living; a piece of real estate added borrowing power, security of location, control over maintenance, a stronger ... (Show more)
Irish women were embedded in Montreal’s hospitality sector as wives and daughters of publicans and grocers and as keepers. From an assortment of pots, pans, dishware, and bedding, women publicans could make a living; a piece of real estate added borrowing power, security of location, control over maintenance, a stronger claim on the tavern license, and opportunities for a wider range of income-producing activities. Not only was their labour critical to the effective functioning of public houses and retailing groceries and alcohol, but also the hospitality sector provided them with the means to raise a family, to seek social mobility, and to realize economic independence, autonomy, and security in the face of widowhood with children to support.
Women keepers and grocers required a good head for business to succeed because they had to extend credit to guests and customers and purchase goods on credit. This paper explores the role that credit played in the businesses of 96 Irish female publicans and grocers. Since they wrote promissory notes to pay creditors, was it easier for the women to purchase goods on credit from fellow compatriots? There is some evidence that networking related to ethnicity, kinship, and neighbouring, determined a publican or grocer’s access to credit. The paper considers which of the women owned property, what were the different ways they accessed credit, and how did they manage risk owing to fires, epidemics, and business failures. Consulting Dun’s Credit Report Volumes for Montreal, notarial documents and sheriff sales, the paper explores their business practices around credit and identifies any capital (moveable and immoveable) they acquired over their lifetime. (Show less)

Sylvie Taschereau : Negotiating Purchasing Power at the Corner Grocery: Store Credit in Interwar Montreal
This paper focuses on a crucial relationship that working-class households in Canada’s interwar metropolis maintained with local grocers. The relationship was based on the credit that shopkeepers offered to customers under certain conditions. Housewives, well aware of both the costs and the risks involved, entered into power relations defined by ... (Show more)
This paper focuses on a crucial relationship that working-class households in Canada’s interwar metropolis maintained with local grocers. The relationship was based on the credit that shopkeepers offered to customers under certain conditions. Housewives, well aware of both the costs and the risks involved, entered into power relations defined by familiarity, tension, and constant negotiation. The informal arrangements that made the economic relationship between housewives and grocers more flexible were by no means marginal. They were an essential determinant of the purchasing power of modest households. Indeed, during the period of study, store credit was among the practices that facilitated broader access to the consumer market, a development that drew the attention of political authorities and the business community alike.
My analysis draws on a wide range of sources, including a series of interviews conducted in the early 1990s. I will review the interview data in light of my recent work on legislative developments relating to personal debt and access to credit in the first half of the twentieth century. I also make use of government documents (parliamentary debates, ministerial correspondence, court records), trade journals and newspapers. (Show less)



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