Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists PDF Download

Author: Béatrice Craig
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802093175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Craig examines and describes the local economy of the Madawaska Territory from its origins in the native fur trade, the growth of exportable wheat, the selling of food to new settlers, and of ton timbre to Britain.

Author: Beatrice Craig
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442691883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a local economy made up of settlers, loggers, and business people from Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and New England was established on the banks of the Upper St. John River in an area known as the Madawaska Territory. This newly created economy was visibly part of the Atlantic capitalist system yet different in several major ways. In Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists, Béatrice Craig examines and describes this economy from its origins in the native fur trade, the growth of exportable wheat, the selling of food to new settlers, and of ton timbre to Britain. Craig vividly portrays the role of wives who sold homespun fabric and clothing to farmers, loggers, and river drivers, helping to bolster the community. The construction of saw, grist, and carding mills, and the establishment of stores, boarding houses, and taverns are all viewed as steps in the development of what the author calls "homespun capitalists." The territory also participated in the Atlantic economy as a consumer of Canadian, British, European, west and east Indian and American goods. This case study offers a unique examination of the emergence of capitalism and of a consumer society in a small, relatively remote community in the backwoods of New Brunswick.

Author: Douglas McCalla
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773597107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
General stores are essential to the image of a colonial village. Many historians, however, still base their stories of settlement on the notion of rural self-sufficiency, begging the question: if general stores were so common, who were their customers? To answer this, Consumers in the Bush draws on the account books of country stores, rich evidence that has rarely been used. Douglas McCalla considers more than 30,000 transactions on the accounts of 750 families at seven Upper Canadian stores between 1808 and 1861. These customers were typical of rural society - farmers, artisans, labourers, and often women. At village stores they found a wide variety of products, most imported from Britain, a few from the United States, and a surprising number that were produced locally. Three chapters focus on the major product categories of dry goods, groceries, and hardware; a fourth considers local products, and a fifth addresses a variety of items - from household goods to footwear to school books. In telling us about the goods colonists bought, this book explores what they were used for and the stories they allow us to tell about rural lives and experience. By seeing rural Upper Canadians as consumers, Consumers in the Bush reveals them as full participants in the rapidly changing nineteenth-century global world of goods.

Author: James Murton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773598782
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
The complex relationship between subsistence practices and formal markets should be a growing matter of concern for those uneasy with the stark contrast between commercial and local food systems, especially since self-provisioning has never been limited to the margins. In fact, subsistence occupies a central space in local and global economies and networks. Bringing together essays from diverse disciplines to reflect on the meaning of subsistence in theory and in practice, in historical and contemporary contexts, in Canada and beyond, Subsistence under Capitalism is a collective study of the ways in which local food systems have been relegated to the shadows by the drive to establish and expand capitalist markets. Considering fishing, farming, and other forms of subsistence provisioning, the essays in this volume document the persistence of these practices despite capitalist government policies that actively seek to subsume them. Presenting viable alternatives to capitalist production and exchange, the contributors explain the critical interplay between politics, local provisioning, and the ultimate survival of society. Illuminating new kinds of engagements with nature and community, Subsistence under Capitalism looks behind the scenes of subsistence food provisioning to challenge the dominant economic paradigm of the modern world.

Author: Frank A. Abbott
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773599177
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In the two centuries before the Quiet Revolution, the people of Quebec exercised a higher degree of independence from the Catholic Church than is often presumed. Investigating rural Quebec from the mid-eighteenth century to the turn of the twentieth, Frank Abbott argues convincingly that the obligations and priorities of the Church did not unswervingly rule the lives of its parishioners. The Body or the Soul? is a history of religious and cultural life in the parish of St-Joseph-de-Beauce. Drawing from their pastors' detailed annual reports to the archbishops of Quebec, St-Joseph’s parish registers, contemporary accounts, government censuses, and the largely unexplored oral testimony on rural life and culture found in the Archives de folklore et ethnologie at Université Laval, Abbott assesses the nature and degree of influence and control that the church exerted over the everyday lives of a rural Quebec community. He examines the telling details found in church building projects, the relationships between clergy and parishioners, attendance at Sunday mass and catechism classes, reception of communion, the persistence of what the Church termed “superstition,” traditional customs of sociability, and the degree of control that the Church exerted over the community’s social and sexual behaviour. Rich with primary sources, The Body or the Soul? reveals the tensions between Catholicism’s place in people’s lives and the independent spirit of a vigorous popular culture.

Author: Jon Stobart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317199502
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
Retail history is a rich, cross-disciplinary field that demonstrates the centrality of retailing to many aspects of human experience, from the provisioning of everyday goods to the shaping of urban environments; from earning a living to the construction of identity. Over the last few decades, interest in the history of retail has increased greatly, spanning centuries, extending to all areas of the globe, and drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives. By offering an up-to-date, comprehensive thematic, spatial and chronological coverage of the history of retailing, this Companion goes beyond traditional narratives that are too simplistic and Euro-centric and offers a vibrant survey of this field. It is divided into four broad sections: 1) Contexts, 2) Spaces and places, 3) People, processes and practices and 4) Geographical variations. Chapters are written in an analytical and synthetic manner, accessible to the general reader as well as challenging for specialists, and with an international perspective. This volume is an important resource to a wide range of readers, including marketing and management specialists, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists and urban planners.

Author: Jodey Nurse
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228009995
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
For close to two hundred years, families and individuals across Ontario have travelled down country roads and gathered to enjoy seasonal agricultural fairs. Though some features of township and county fairs have endured for generations, these community events have also undergone significant transformations since 1850, especially in terms of women’s participation. Cultivating Community tells the story of how women’s involvement became critical to agricultural fairs’ growth and prosperity. By examining women’s diverse roles as agricultural society members, fair exhibitors, performers, volunteers, and fairgoers, Jodey Nurse shows that women used fairs’ manifold nature to present different versions of rural womanhood. Although traditional domestic skills and handicrafts, such as baking, needlework, and flower arrangement, remained the domain of women throughout this period, women steadily enlarged their sphere of influence on the fairgrounds. By the mid-twentieth century they had staked out a place in venues previously closed to them, including the livestock show ring, the athletic field, and the boardroom. Through a wealth of fascinating stories and colourful detail, Cultivating Communities adds a new dimension to the social and cultural history of rural women, placing their activities at the centre of the agricultural fair.

Author: Ian Mosby
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774827637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Ian Mosby explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent as the Canadian state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, changing the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for a new peacetime social order.

Author: Jonathan Daniel Wells
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766549X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 741

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Book Description
The Routledge History of Nineteenth-Century America provides an important overview of the main themes within the study of the long nineteenth century. The book explores major currents of research over the past few decades to give an up-to-date synthesis of nineteenth-century history. It shows how the century defined much of our modern world, focusing on themes including: immigration, slavery and racism, women's rights, literature and culture, and urbanization. This collection reflects the state of the field and will be essential reading for all those interested in the development of the modern United States.

Author: Michael Dawson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487521863
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Selling Out or Buying In? is the first work to illuminate the process by which consumers' access to goods and services was liberalized and deregulated in Canada in the second half of the twentieth century.