Charivari et justice populaire au Québec par René Hardy (review)

René Hardy has produced a stimulating and readable social history of charivari in Quebec from its European beginnings to its eventual disappearance in the mid-twentieth century. Drawing especially on the rich archives of the criminal courts, he explores the range of the custom's forms and meanings to examine what "les classes populaires ont utilisé comme moyens de se faire justice en marge des pouvoirs constitués" (p. 8). His volume is a welcome addition to the literature on popular justice and ably balances broad appeal with scholarly rigour.

Chapters 1 and 2 trace the French and British origins of charivari and related practices and follow their selective transplantation into North America. Certain forms, such as the French azouade, seem not to have reached Quebec at all; others, such as riding on a rail, were British practices, sometimes coming to Quebec via the United States; still others, notably the political charivari, took on forms peculiar to their new environments. Chapter 3 surveys varieties of popular justice in Quebec, situating charivari within the broader context of informal responses to social threats and deviance, including insulting and humiliating songs, hanging and burning of effigies, cutting the mane and tail of horses, and destruction of homes. A quibble: the inclusion of vexatious complaints before the courts fits awkwardly with the extra-judicial recourses on which the chapter focuses.

Chapters 4 and 5 introduce the Quebec charivari itself, drawing on Hardy's database of some 160 charivaris mainly from the archives of the criminal courts, supplemented by newspapers, oral histories, and other sources. Hardy's research covers most of Quebec (Gatineau is an unexplained omission) and turns up incidents (called 'charivaris' by contemporaries) ranging from playful to cruel (a taxonomy suggested by E.P. Thompson and Natalie Zemon Davis). As Hardy admits, however, his focus on criminal proceedings over-represents the cruel charivaris, with frequent examples of property damage, physical assault, even the death of participants or their targets. The criminal archives are a restrictive filter: only when the actions of the charivaristes went beyond accepted norms—particularly through actual violence or its threat—were criminal charges likely. Matrimonial charivaris, for example, are under-represented as a result, since they more often remained outside the institutions of formal justice. The filter of the archives also constricts the range of the custom's functions: reconciliation, such as demanding a "fine" to use to buy food and drink for participants, often took a back seat to driving offenders from the community.

Chapter 6 introduces the political charivari, which emerged during the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837, was frequently used during clashes protesting school taxation during the 1840s and 1850s, and arose sporadically later during contested elections. Hardy's definition of politics—"la manifestation des rapports de pouvoir au sein d'une société" (p. 188)—is so broad as to make almost any charivari political. Power was indeed central to the practice: even the merriest matrimonial charivaris, as much about partying as censure, still asserted the values of the community's dominant groups and made clear to the target who was in charge.

Finally, in Chapter 7 and a substantial Epilogue, Hardy traces the custom's gradual disappearance, from the 1890s to its last recorded examples in the 1960s. He links this decline to a move away from popular violence (echoing Norbert Elias's civilizing process), to increasingly effective social control by both church and state, as well as to a slow erosion of the community cohesion that upheld the normative homogeneity on which the charivari depended.

A key theme throughout is the charivari's elusiveness and ambiguity. Hardy avoids a restrictive definition or application of a rigid typology based on European models. The charivari, he points out, was always flexible enough to reflect the culture in which it operated. This leads to some blurring between the categories in the book's title: when does a charivari become a riot? how can historians distinguish between individual grievance or...