Group G
History 411-01
October 6, 2009
Book: The People of New France
Author: Allan Greer
The literary approach that Allan Greer presented in his book “The People
of New France” was a narrative style, composed by facts and stories. Greer did
a brief overview of New France, when looking at the book in general, the
problem comes up in the attempt to generalize a lot of material into a relatively
short chapters. Greer does admit right away in the Introduction that the
detailed presentation of the political history is not what Greer was aiming for,
instead he wishes to concentrate on the social history and give a decent
overview of the different aspects of the social life in New France. However, there
is always a limit to how far into generalizations one can go without having the
content of the book suffer. It seems from chapter to chapter that Greer wants
to go into more details but then wants to avoid the detail and remains with just
general information. Greer seems to want the book to remain general and not
slow the pace of the book down with details. It could be argued that these
details would in fact benefit the book and having that additional information
that would complete and answer some of the questions that come up due to
Greer’s way of writing would not make the book any longer. Greer still brings a
great general overview of the social history and does give a decent overview of
the different aspects of the social life of New France, Canada.
This book is one in a series that Allan Greer has written about the social
aspects of New France, Canada. The population from immigration from France
was a back and forth process, “about 27,000 French people came to Canada”
(p. 12) but many were soldiers that returned back to France when their duty
was over, leaving no wife or children in Canada. This left few emigrants that
stayed to populate whites in Canada and kept the white people growth slow but
steady through-out New France, Canada. New France was thought of as the
end of the world, a place where the winters were extremely cold and hard to get
through if you were not use to them and the wars with the Native Americans
happened often.
Greer briefly addresses the transplanting of ancient regime ideals to New
France and the impact of this in the development of the colony. Although only
addressed in part, Greer’s thesis provides an introduction to the issues of how
and whether French settlers interacted with native tribes, in addition to how
New France grew and developed. Greer therefore provides an insight into
French colonial mentality, not only in the attempt to ‘Frenchify’ (p.82) the
native Indians but in highlighting that the process was also reversed, with
some French settlers adopting and integrating into native society. However,
Greer identifies this as a result of an urban/rural divide, with the urban areas
more structured socially along ancient regime ideals. Overall Greer presents a
brief introduction to an arguably vast subject area, providing a basis from
which to further investigate.
Greer focuses mainly on white French colonists. He often makes comparisons
between the rural and urban colonists, lower and upper class. Occasionally,
Greer adds facts about the Native Americans, servants, Protestants,
Europeans, or English and Spanish colonists to contrast a point. Comparing
and contrasting these ideas enable the reader to grasp the effects of New
France’s colonists.
Greer states that historians often forget to include “Native people, the African
slaves, the English-American prisoners, the French Protestants, and other
minorities…” (76). Greer does mention Native Americans throughout the book,
however not as much as there could be. Greer does not give this minority group
the credit it deserves considering they are “crucial to the history of colonial
Canada” (76). Also, very little is mentioned about the other minorities except in
the small “French and Others” chapter. It would be helpful for the reader if
there were more facts on the non-French colonists. Greer does mention that
there has been little research done on the ethnic groups in Canada, perhaps
that is why he did not include as much detail in his book.
Allan Greer uses many stories and anecdotes to illustrate colonial life, all of
which help the reader focus and most importantly remember the main points
he is trying to make. These short stories also serve as a reference point, for
example Greer uses the life of newlyweds Pierre and Marie to illustrate rural
life. Not only does this help describe an accurate picture of the agrarian rural
lifestyle, Greer consistently refers back to the couple in order to make a
comparison or elaboration. In the chapter ‘Women of New France’ Greer makes
reference to Pierre and Marie in order to help describe how married couples
shared ownership of land. While this may not be a traditional textbook format,
for a student who does not have an extensive colonial background it is helpful
to have a verbal picture of colonial life.