Deux siecles d'esclavage au Quebec (review)

For the past half-century, Marcel Trudel's Esclavage au Canada français has remained the only scholarly study of Amerindian and African slavery in early Canada. A growing interest in slavery and indigenous history has spurred a newfound demand for Trudel's work, prompting the author to reissue his monograph for a new generation of readers. Although dressed up for the new millennium with a revised title and a spiffy new cover, the book's text remains virtually unchanged, making this a reprint rather than a revised edition of the earlier work.

Trudel's primary objective in this book is simply to document the existence of slavery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New France. If that seems like a rather limited aim, we should remember that this was a bold proposition in the 1950s, when nationalist historians (both francophone and anglophone) often contrasted slaveless Canada with its corrupt North and South American counterparts. Before Trudel's meticulous research, we knew almost nothing about who owned these slaves, where and when they lived, or how many there were. Trudel was the first to compile the foundational ordinances, court decisions, and royal decrees that governed the practice of slavery in New France. Trudel also established, for the first time, the demographic and geographic distribution of known slaves, as well as the identity and social profile of their masters. In short, this book provides the only available outline of the contours of this slave system. Thus, as a handbook, research guide, or data set meant to show the existence of slavery in early French Canada, this text succeeds admirably.

But if Trudel's basic facts have stood the test of time, his interpretations belong much more to the 1950s than the 2000s. Despite his accurate assessment of slaves' tragically high mortality rates, for example, he nevertheless describes slavery in early Canada as a 'very humane' system [du caractère tout humain de notre esclavage], existing within a distinctly 'familial atmosphere' [atmosphère familiale], that created 'mutual affection between masters and slaves' [l'affection réciproque des maîtres et des esclaves] (175, 179, 180). In a curious, but characteristic, statement, Trudel concludes, 'Their servitude aside, the slaves of French Canada lived under conditions that differed very little from those of their masters' [Leur servitude mise à part, les esclaves du Canada français sont soumis à des conditions de vie qui ne diffèrent pas tellement de celles de leurs maîtres] (227). He evaluates slaves' intimate relationships not in terms of slave communities, families, or friendships, but merely as a measure of 'the slave's moral or immoral behavior' [le comportement moral ou immoral de l'esclave] (255). And if slaves were immoral, their masters rarely were. They cared for slaves' bodies, and especially their souls, with true Christian sentiment. Even while he acknowledges that masters and mistresses often delayed their slaves' baptisms until the last possible moment before death, Trudel still asserts, 'At the same time, one cannot even speak of the indifference of these masters regarding the Christian education of their Amerindians and Blacks' [On ne peut tout de même pas parler de l'indifférence de ces maîtres à l'égard de l'éducation chrétienne de leurs Amérindiennes et Noirs] (187). Instead, slaves had a difficult time understanding even their masters' best efforts to teach them about Christianity.

Perhaps as telling as Trudel's now jarring assertions are his omissions. In this book we learn nothing about the indigenous context of the slave trade. Trudel declares that 'the Amerindians of America were themselves slavers' [les Amérindiens d'Amérique étaient eux-mêmes esclavagistes] (17), but he never explains the practice of indigenous slavery or evaluates its significance. Nor does he address many of the questions that have driven recent scholarship on slavery, including any analysis of race or gender.

Because his basic data on individual slaves and slaveholders are so reliable, though, Trudel's biographical dictionary, Dictionnaire des...