Martin Valerie I 201809 Phd.Pdf (2.587Mb)

The Honest Man/L’Homme Honnête: The Colonial Gentleman, the Development of the Press, and the Race and Gender Discourses of the Newspapers in the British “Province of Quebec,” 1764-1791 By Valérie Isabelle Martin A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in History in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada September, 2018 Copyright © Valérie Isabelle Martin, 2018 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the new public world of print that emerged and developed in the “Province of Quebec” from 1764 to 1791. Using discourse analysis, it argues that the press reflected, and contributed to producing the race and gender privileges of the White, respectable gentleman, also called the “honest man,” regardless of whether he was Canadien or of Anglo-descent. A British colony created by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Province of Quebec existed until 1791 when it was divided into the separate colonies of Upper and Lower Canada by the Constitutional Act. The colony’s development and dissolution corresponded with a growing population and changing demographics in the Saint Lawrence Valley, a brief increase in racial slavery in Montreal and Quebec City, and altered political and economic alliances between the White settler population and Native peoples of the North American interior after the defeat of the French in 1763 and following the emergence of the American Republic in 1783. Internally, changes brought about by the conclusion of the British Conquest in 1760, such as the introduction of British rule and English law in Quebec, were implemented alongside French ancien régime structures of legal and political governance that persisted mostly unhampered and fostered the preservation of an authoritarian-style government in the new “old” colony. At the same time, as of 1764, attempts by British authorities at cooperation with the Canadiens bred conflict between two groups of elites. This same conflict engendered cooperation across ethnic lines. Against this backdrop, the newly founded newspapers ii allowed for spaces where White gentlemen of diverging ethnic, political, and economic interests came together to engage in print sociability. This dissertation concludes that when Quebec’s only newspapers, the Quebec Gazette, the Gazette du commerce et littéraire, the Montreal Gazette, and the Quebec Herald and Universal Miscellany disseminated discourses that associated manhood with loyalty to the English king, fashionable women with male status and problematic womanhood, “Blackness” with enslavement, an infantile nature, and exotic origins, and Indigeneity with violence, they legitimized the dominance of loyal White gentlemen in society regardless of their ethnic, political, or economic interests. iii Acknowledgments I owe my graduate supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth Jane Errington, a great debt for her indispensable suggestions, advice and comments while I completed this project. Thank you, Dr. E., for being generous with your time and your knowledge. Your insight improved my project considerably. Thanks are due to Dr. Jeffrey McNairn for reading early versions of chapters and providing valuable feedback. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Gordon Barker at Bishop’s University for encouraging me to pursue my graduate studies, and for inviting me to share my doctoral research on his panel in Cambridge, Maryland. I would also like to thank my parents, Nathalie Lalumière and André Martin, for their unconditional support and confidence in me. Special thanks to my mother for accompanying me to Maryland. Appreciation is also due to my brother Nicholas Martin for always being my champion, and to my friends Tya McKelvey and Emma Beattie for their constant encouragement. To my partner, Nicholas Lefebvre, I would like to say thank you for moving to Kingston with me for my PhD. I also want to thank you for reading chapters, attending conferences, and for letting me use your computer indefinitely after our dog chewed up the power cord for mine. Mostly, thank you for patiently listening to me talk about researching and writing my dissertation – both what I found frustrating and what I enjoyed about the process - whenever I needed to. Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding my doctoral studies. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT II ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV LIST OF FIGURES VII INTRODUCTION 1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT 2 METHOD AND HISTORIOGRAPHY 26 CHAPTER ONE: NEWSPAPERS AND SUBSCRIBERS 36 THE QUEBEC NEWSPAPERS AND THEIR PRINTERS 36 NEWSPAPERS IN AN ATLANTIC WORLD 45 A FRENCH- AND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE “PRINT COMMUNITY” 47 CENSORSHIP, THE “FREEDOM OF THE PRESS,” AND A “PUBLIC SPHERE” IN QUEBEC 55 GENTLEMEN SUBSCRIBERS AND THE PATRIARCHAL HOUSEHOLD 62 AUTHORITATIVE LITERATES IN PUBLIC LIFE 70 CHAPTER TWO: LOYAL MEN 75 LOYALTY AND HONEST MANHOOD 75 THE MAKING OF THE LOYAL MAN IN THE NEWSPAPERS 79 LOYAL ADDRESSES 81 LOYAL CELEBRATIONS 87 VOLUNTARY SOCIETIES 90 NEW AND OLD SUBJECTS 97 WEALTH, STATUS, AND POSITION 105 WOMEN AND LOYALTY 115 CHAPTER THREE: FASHIONABLE WIVES 125 STATUS, GENDER, AND CLOTHES 127 DRESSING THE CANADIEN BOURGEOISIE: THE MACARONI AND THE DAME À LA MODE 131 BRITISH CONCEPTIONS OF THE WOMAN OF FASHION AS FOOLISH AND DECEITFUL 138 THE GAZETTE LITTÉRAIRE’S FASHION DEBATE AND THE GENDERED DISCOURSES OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD 143 GENDERED REPUBLICANISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 145 THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE QUERELLE DES FEMMES 149 THE FASHIONABLE WIFE AND THE GAZETTE LITTÉRAIRE’S GENDERED LIMITS 157 v CHAPTER FOUR: ENSLAVED AFRICANS & INDIGENOUS WARRIORS 168 ENSLAVED AFRICANS 170 SLAVERY, AFRICANS, AND THE QUEBEC PRESS 173 “WENCHES” AND IMAGES OF EXOTIC AND INFANTILE AFRICAN CHARACTERS 178 INDIGENOUS WARRIORS 186 NATIVE MEN IN THE NEWS 191 RACIALIZING AND GENDERING THE “INDIAN WARRIOR” 205 CONCLUSION 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Map of the Province of Quebec, 1763-1774 ………………………………...……5 Figure 2 Map of the Province of Quebec, 1774-1783 ……………………………….……12 Figure 3 Map of the Province of Quebec, 1783-1791 ………………………………….…15 Figure 4 English-language advertisement for the Montreal Society united for free debate published in the Montreal Gazette with some parts written in French, 1791 ………........104 Figure 5 Signed loyal address to Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hope from the male citizens of Quebec City, 1785 …………………………………………………………………...116 Figure 6 Fugitive slave notice with standing image …………………………………….184 Figure 7 Fugitive slave notice with running image ……………………………………..185 Figure 8 Fugitive slave notice with alternate standing image …………………………...185 vii INTRODUCTION With the arrival of the printing press and the founding of the Quebec Gazette/La Gazette de Quebec in 1764, a new public world of print began to emerge in the “Province of Quebec,” Britain’s newest colonial possession in North America as of 1763.1 The Quebec Gazette, along with the Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville & district de Montreal, the Montreal Gazette/La Gazete de Montreal, and the Quebec Herald and Universal Miscellany provided the colony’s French- and English-speaking residents with a new public forum for trade, commerce, communication, literary expression, and intellectual and political debate that had not existed under the former French regime.2 They also integrated Quebec in a new way into broader “Atlantic world” processes that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas to one another through an ongoing exchange in people, goods, and ideas. At the same time, as the press developed in the late eighteenth century, it emerged as a public forum where discourses empowering the loyal white gentleman, or the “honest man/l’homme honnête,” an ideal of manhood for French- and English-speaking men, were disseminated. 1 In this dissertation, “Quebec” and the “Province of Quebec” refer to the eighteenth-century British colony and not to the modern Canadian province, referred to as “Québec.” For the city, I write “Quebec City.” 2 The Quebec Gazette/La Gazette de Quebec is referred to in this dissertation as the Quebec Gazette. All material quoted from the Quebec Gazette was printed in both French and English unless indicated otherwise in an accompanying footnote. In 1778 September, the Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville & district de Montreal changed its name to the Gazette littéraire, pour la ville & district de Montreal. It will be referred to as the Gazette littéraire in this dissertation. The Montreal Gazette/La Gazete de Montreal is referred to as the Montreal Gazette in this dissertation. All material quoted from the Montreal Gazette was printed in both French and English unless indicated otherwise in an accompanying footnote. Beginning with its second issue the Quebec Herald and Universal Miscellany became the Herald and Universal Miscellany, and in November 1789 the title was changed to Herald, Miscellany & Advertiser. It is referred to as the Quebec Herald in this dissertation. 1 Through the gendered and racialized discourses they shared about loyal men, fashionable wives, enslaved Africans, and Indigenous warriors, the newspapers suggested that a gentleman’s honest manhood was reflected in part by his loyalty to the English king, and by his race and gender power over women and racialized minorities. But one marker of identity that did not define the honest man was his “ethnicity.”3 Respectable gentlemen were both Canadiens (French-speaking Catholics of Franco-European ancestry) and “Anglos” (English-speaking

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