J. Little – författare

The settlements, economically based on lumber alone, were locked into poverty and dependency by Anglophone-monopoly control of the spruce forests. J.I. Little examines the ultimate failure of the British and Quebec settlement projects and argues that the stranglehold of the monopolies was broken only by the belated extension of the rail network into the Upper St Francis district. Canadians have only recently begun to question their model of company-leased Crown forest reserves and to become interested in the more efficient Scandinavian model of small-scale, privately owned woodlots. This book is one of the first to explore the ideological contradictions and social costs which followed from the entrenchment of large-scale lumber companies in a settled zone.

The two groups arrived in Winslow Township in the middle of the nineteenth century, when modern state bureaucracy was just developing in Lower Canada (Quebec). Little was therefore able to examine a wealth of material from the departments responsible for crown lands, public works, and education as well as comprehensive data from the registry offices and manuscript census reports. This state-generated material, as well as a rich collection of Catholic and Presbyterian church records and documents from Scotland, provides the basis for a detailed analysis of society, economy, and culture in one isolated pocket of colonization. Little 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 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.

Child came to Lower Canada from Massachussetts in 1812 and made his fortune as a smuggler during the War of 1812. He later became a merchant and druggist and then entered politics, serving as MLA for Stanstead County in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The letters provide the first detailed history of Eastern Township politics during the 1840s. They are also an excellent source of information for the social historian, reflecting the concerns of a nineteenth-century Canadian family who were not part of the small British-born élite. Issues discussed in the letters include religion and moral reform, daughter Elizabeth''s search for a husband, local life in Stanstead village, and vignettes of social life among MLAs in Kingston. The letters support recent findings that gender identities were not as strictly defined during this era as earlier historians have suggested. Breaking the public/private divide, The Child Letters shows how family and politics are linked and reveals the family support which underpinned the rise to political prominence of men such as Child.

Using a variety of documentary sources, including hundreds of petitions, letters, and reports to the government, Little traces the complex relationship between community life and government regulation. He reveals that at the same time development of responsible government was leading to increasingly centralized authority at the provincial level, a persistent sense of localism was forcing the state to decentralize its new institutions at the community level. The local population of this largely American-settled corner of Quebec, Little shows, clearly exerted an important influence on the evolution of the education, legal, social welfare, and municipal systems. State and Society in Transition makes a major contribution to the study of state formation in the recently unified province of Canada by taking into account not only the dialectical process between the centre and periphery but also the impact of institutional reform on social and economic development in general.