1 Gilles Paquet and Jean-Pierre Wallot have been studying the modernization of the Lower Canadian economy between 1792-1812 since 1967. They have identified this period as the second of four major discontinuities in the socioeconomic history of Lower-Canada.2 One of the major goals in this research is to combine data on stocks (asset holdings) with interrelated data series of flows in the international, domestic and public sectors of Lower Canada's socio-economy (imports and exports, maritime traffic, prices, incomes, coinage, public revenues and expenditures, patronage, etc.) in order to identify the most important processes in the structure and evolution of society. The following processes were identified: demography; production and trade; finance; ecology and motivations of social groups; the State; and the system of distribution.3 Given the lack of reliable, detailed and comparable census data for the years between 1792 and 1835, they were obliged to use various notarial sources, the richest and most continuous of which is the post-mortem inventory.

2 Jean-Pierre Hardy and David-Thiery Ruddel, meanwhile, had been studying the life of workers in the Quebec City region. After completing a study of Quebec City's craftsmen, they developed a research project at the Museum of Man on the evolution of trades and on the social and economic conditions of Quebec City's social groups.4 In addition to providing background material for a permanent Museum exhibit, this project provided information for travelling exhibits on workers, and for several monographs on social history.5 While continuing to study other sources such as censuses, assessment rolls, marriage contracts, rental leases, marchés, court documents, etc., Hardy and Ruddel have focussed increasingly on inventories after death. Jean-Pierre Hardy is using these documents to determine the social and economic circumstances of the residents of a Quebec working district (Saint-Roch); David-Thiery Ruddel is using them to pursue his study of the characteristics of the colonial town between 1760 and 1840.6 The post mortem inventory is also useful in providing a context for artifacts, a primary task for museum personnel. Since this document contains information on the goods of most social and ethnic groups, they permit the museum researcher to place artifacts in their socio-cultural and economic context, while making possible a study of the relationship between consumer items and practices, symbols, and the values of the members of society who owned them. These interests, which were rather disparate at the outset, led the four members of the team to unite their efforts and complementary expertise in a study of Lower Canada's society and economy from 1792 to 1840.

3 The first part of this general introduction outlines briefly the overall objectives of the survey; the second outlines its methodological aspects; the third, what we have called "logistics". The final section presents the themes developed in this issue of the Bulletin.

4 A basic discontinuity occured in the economic, social and political history of Lower Canada at the beginning of the 19th century: a society based largely on a subsistence economy, with a weak business sector was integrated quite suddenly into the Atlantic market and entered the "commercial capitalism" phase.7

5 Because they overemphasize the fluid aspect of a system, an analysis of flows (price, production and income indexes, import and export series, etc.), can provide only a partial picture of the changes which occurred. Use of post-mortem inventories is therefore of prime importance as they allow better demarcation of transitional phenomena, by reconstructing the stocks which provide the continuity of socioeconomic systems. Stocks and flows must be integrated to approximate a system's equilibrium or lack of it while responding to market influences.

6 An analysis of post-mortem inventories allows one to obtain a more concrete grasp of the economic and social factors, which have been described as being so many abstractions pushed and pulled by various "anxieties", but whose true material conditions are incompletely known.

7 Since the historian's task is to explain what has happened, and why it happened in one way rather than in another, at a specific place and time, rather than to indulge in the blissful contemplation of antiques, he seeks to reconstitute, by the means of artifact systems, the "carnal" history (A. Faucher) of men and their customary institutions. This is the history of a society which is "instituted" within the tributary constraints of the ecumene, technical, economic, social and political pressures, values, and finally, within a wider outside world.10

8 Our project is intended not only to bring out a spectrograph of the principal social groups of Lower Canada, and to track their relative evolution from 1792 to 1835, but also to portray them in their daily life, their lifestyles, to structure their assets and debts, to discover the asymmetry between individuals and groups, and to identify credit networks and the material organization of daily life — all expressions which evoke automatisms, atavisms, repetitions of familiar gestures, the habitual, low-profile life of the real, "twenty-four-hours-a-day man" (Bachelard), but also the ruptures, the transgressions, the transitory effects of fashion, etc., in short, the rules of the game regulating the social code.11

9 We have given this research the title "Material conditions and society...". The term "material conditions" generally refers to the elements of ordinary daily life: food and clothing, housing and transportation, techniques and coinage, work and leisure, etc.:12 factors which combine together in a way which is not disordered or attributable to mere chance, but fit within internal and external constraints which define socio-economic situations.

10 Such a survey cannot be limited to simply inventorying and listing objects and actions. Above all, these must be "read", questioned as "wholes", as Braudel said, only the wholes reveal social fabric. Indeed, one may believe that an individual (and a fortiori a social group) projects an image through lifestyle. "Perhaps the most important part of the symbolic structure particular to each social class consists of the symbols, linked to status, through which material wealth is expressed".13

11 It is appropriate to decode, through the description of the arrangement or system of objects, the social code which it symbolizes and reproduces. Fernand Braudel for the modern world,14 Henry Glassie for Virginia,15 and J. Baudrillard for the contemporary world,16 have attempted to develop a "grammar" of objects which gives the key to decoding the history of material circumstances. The theory of open systems is particularly well adapted to this type of study.17 What is of prime importance to us is that the objects do not exist, or rather do not convey their significance individually, but rather represent texts in which one may "read" the context made up of the six overall processes mentioned earlier, which institute a concrete socio-economy in one way rather than another, in a particular place and moment in time.

12 Finally, such a study makes the link between material circumstances and the socio-economic situation, between the concrete and the abstract. Therefore, it interests historians, economists, ethnologists, and the personnel of museums and other institutions involved in preparing exhibits, evaluating collections, publishing specialized studies on trades, clothing, furniture, etc..

13 In the final analysis, this survey is intended to realize in Canada what is being done elsewhere, notably in France: the reading of the "production record" and the "consumption record" (Baudrillard) through the use of a privileged source, the port-mortem inventory. Such a study, which is unique in America on such a large scale, is in the same tradition as many works on socio-cultural and economic history on both sides of the Atlantic. In Canada, a few researchers, Louise Dechêne18 in particular, have shown the richness and importance of the use of inventories in order to recreate the social fabric of the past. But it is true to say that no one has yet carried out a systematic study of inventories for a given period in order to trace the social structure and material organisation of social groups, particularly in a period of rapid transformation. In France, however, in addition to the well-known work of Adeline Daumard, François Furet, etc.19, an interdisciplinary team grouped under Micheline Baulant at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Centre for Historical Research of the Social Sciences Institute) is using this material in a systematic way with the aid of computers.20 Another team, that of Nicole Pellegrin and Jacques Péret at the University of Poitiers, is researching the history of the Poitou region using the same source.21 We are part of this current. In addition, through systematic use of sample inventories after death over a period of 45 years, we hope to capture not only an image of the social structure, but also the moments and forms of rupture which these structures may have experienced.

14 Gilles Paquet and Jean-Pierre Wallot originally intended to concentrate their efforts on the Montreal and Quebec regions at the actual point of "take-off", that is, between 1792-1796 and 1807-1812, in order to avoid the undoubted distortions brought about by the War of 1812. Then their growing interest in what had happened before and after this period, and the interesting results of the studies by Jean-Pierre Hardy and David Thiery Ruddel on the craftsmen and life in Quebec City between 1810 and 1840, led to an expansion of the survey to cover the entire first third of the 19th century.

15 The methods of data analysis have already been described in a previous article.22 However, their essence will be summarized briefly here, along with the important additions of both data and analysis which have come into play since 1976. Using this relatively representative sampling from the communities of Lower Canada,23 the material conditions of the various social groups can be reconstructed: thus detailing the furnishings of a community, their quality, and even their arrangement, their estimated value, active and passive debts (and the credit network which is profiled in these lists of creditors and debtors), property (land, houses, buildings), not evaluated but frequently very well described. In sum, the different material contexts in which these social groups operated may be reconstructed.

16 Taking account of the abundance, length and complexity of inventories, and of the high cost of gathering data and systematically exploiting them,24 the team proceeded using samples which were both socio-professional, geographic and chronological.

17 First, we selected five (5) main social groups: merchants (merchants, dealers, businessmen, etc.), members of the liberal professions (lawyers, notaries, doctors, surveyors), two groups of craftsmen—wood-workers and blacksmiths, and finally "habitants" (farmers, small farmers, and farm labourers). "Habitants" account for at least 80% of the population. The artisanal groups chosen worked in two of the most representative crafts of the period.25 Merchants and members of the liberal professions represent the rising classes, in the forefront of the socio-economic and political and ideological debates which were stirring the colony. The inventories after death of seigniors were too rare to form a separate category which would have been useful for comparison purposes.26

18 Once these groups were identified, we proceeded to select samples of inventories after death in the Montreal region, subdividing it into three sub-regions: north shore, city, south shore.27 In order to do so, it was necessary to index all inventories after death of notaries who had practised in the sub-regions, and whose registries are now almost all available in the Quebec National Archives in Montreal (QNAM). After having set aside documents which were incomplete, illegible or unclear (as to the professions of heads of household, or relating to deaths prior to age 30 or after age 60 (age is rarely given), a random sample was drawn of about 15% of habitant inventories (which are plentiful) and of half of all inventories for the other social groups, given their lesser number. Naturally, because of a growing population and consequently an increase in the inventories, the size of the sample tends to grow with each new chronological segment.

19 Finally, two further sub-periods were added to the initial chronological periods of 1792-96 and 1807-12: 1820-1825, years sufficiently removed from the war years to reflect the new economic situation better (lumber economy, immigration which had grown substantially, problems caused by the Corn Laws and markets, etc.) and 1830-1835, a period at the heart of what some have called the agricultural crisis, and just prior to the insurrections of 1837-1838.

20 The same sampling parameters were applied for Quebec City, in terms of social groups, sub-regions (north shore, city, south shore28 and chronological periods. However, the smaller area covered in the case of the Montreal plain, the concentration of judicial archives at the QNAM, the enormous cost of developing a sample using an index of all the documents of all notaries,29 and experience acquired in Montreal, all combined to cause a more rapid and less systematic definition of the sample. Gaps which might result from this are compensated for by taking into account a larger proportion of inventories. The overall profile of inventories examined is shown in Table 1.

21 The total sample involved 924 inventories, to which must be added a good number of inventories for other sub-groups or sub-periods which served to enrich our analysis. It is not impossible that later searches will allow us to complete certain gaps in the socio-professional categories.

22 Our analysis will be able, in part, to take the factor of ethnic origin into account: for the years 1792-1796 and 1807-1812, the small number of anglophone inventories in the Montreal area does not permit a comparative study. For the two later chronological segments, the number of people of British origin increased. In Quebec City, there are inventories involving those of British origin for all the periods.

23 Other documents which complete the inventories after death include court records of sale after the termination of the inventory (which allow weighting of the estimates of inventories, and, less frequently, evaluation of properties); sales contracts allowing construction of a plausible price grid for properties, and other notarial documents such as sales and gifts.

24 Once sample inventories were selected, all the data had to be recorded on five different analytical lists. The first list (see Appendix I) concerns the identification of the document and of the persons involved (judicial district, number of the document in our own files; date, notary, number in his register, number of pages; residence, profession, name, sex and age of the deceased— information which was often traced through registers of births, marriages and deaths; petitioners, witnesses, estimators, notarial witness; signatures or "marks"; second or third marriage, etc.). A box reserved for coding, needed in case computers are used, is opposite each item of information. A great amount of information of a demographic and socio-cultural nature can already be drawn from this single sheet.

25 A second type of list serves to enter information concerning goods (Appendix III). All information is recorded: location of the object (in the house, courtyard, outbuildings or elsewhere), number of objects, identification (there are about 1,000 different types), their use (e.g. "pepper" mill, "plating" iron, candle mould), their state of repair (worn, new, etc.), their material composition, colour(s), relative or exact dimensions, unit of measure, price per unit, and total price. For purposes of a general analysis, of the type found in the current issue (see, for example, "Structures sociales et niveau de richesse dans les campagnes du Québec: 1792-1812 [Social structures and level of wealth in the Quebec countryside: 1792—1812]), we have grouped goods into nine (9) categories instead of the ten (10) used in 1976.30 However, the illustrative listing of goods in each category still uses the 10 categories.

1. Furnishings, fabrics and personal items:furniture (armoires, buffets, chairs, chests, beds, tables, benches,etc.); stoves and accessories; wearing apparel and clothes (shirts, breeches, vests, suits, capes, shawls, shoes, etc.); fabrics (such as quilts, blankets, sheets, tablecloths, curtains, serviettes); personal items and miscellaneous such as razors, umbrellas, suitcases, birdcages.
2. Utensils and items serving in the upkeep of the house:lighting (candles, candleholders, lamps, snuffers,etc.); kitchen equipement (coffeepots, vats, grills, cooking pots, frying pans, pails, pie plates, etc.); tableware (such as plates, bowls, goblets, platters, jugs, cups and saucers, utensils); receptacles (basins, bottles, pitchers, washbasins, buckets,etc.); household items (brooms, brushes, andirons, plating and pressing irons, fire shovels and tongs, etc.).
3. Miscellaneous:musical instruments; firearms; games; books (religious, literature, professional, dictionaries, etc.) and miscellaneous items such as ink, barometers, and syringes.
4. Tools and work instruments:For the "habitants" (spade, carding brushes, wheel-barrow, plough, chisel, sieve, reel, sickle, scythe, scraper, ax, harrow, loom, pick, spinning wheel, auger, cart, etc); for blacksmiths (two-horned anvil, shears, nail-box, anvil, square, rock, file, mandrel, millstone, pliers, bellows, tongs, etc.) and for joiners and carpenters (mortise, plane, chisel, handsaw, workbench, crosscut saw, gouge, ax, mallet, hammer, moulding, folding ruler, saws, adze, cantle, jointer, gimlet, etc.).
5. Means of transportation:berlin, cabriolet, carriage, canoe, horsedrawn sleign, toboggan, sleigh.
6. Work and Transportation accessories:Transportation accessories (bridles, chains, collars, hobble, harness, yoke, sled robe, wheels, saddles, traces); receptacles (barrels, bottles, copper boilers, demi-minots, small barrels, pouches, casks, etc.); measuring instruments (scales and weights).
7. Livestock:horse, mare, colt, filly, ox, cow, calf, pig, sow, piglet, sheep and lambs, ram, goat.
8. Poultry:hen, chick, rooster, turkey, turkey-cock, goose, gander, duck, drake.
9. Stocks:For the "habitants": farm produce (oats, wheat, peas, hay, etc.) processed products (butter, flour, lard, leather, wool, soap, etc.), wood, plus work done at harvest or seeding time when estimated; for the craftsmen: raw materials (wood, iron), materials serving in production (coal for the blacksmith), and products of the trade; for the merchants: merchandise in the store (fabrics, clothing, foodstuffs, spirits, tools, hardware, wood, leather and skins, etc.).
10. Consumer goods:Supplies of food, beverages, candles, soap, tobacco, lime, paint, etc.

26 A third list provides detail on properties. However, this information varies considerably from one inventory to another, and almost never provides values. They may include, or omit, data on dimensions, locations, boundaries, land conditions (treed, cleared, fenced, ditches, ploughed lands, etc.), dimensions, construction materials and methods (e.g. stone, "pièces sur pièces"), and the state of houses and outbuildings. Consequently, it is only possible to estimate the value of most properties by gathering average values from a large number of bills of sale in each of the sub-regions and parishes in question. This work is presently under way.

27 A fourth list (Appendix III) includes coins, silverware and gold by volume. Finally, a fifth list (Appendix IV) serves for entering debts and credits, as well as various titles to property and documents. Most notaries used the French pound of "20 sols", or old exchange (rarely the tournois pound), and at times the British pound at the Halifax exchange rate (£= 20 shillings = 24 pounds of 20 sols = $4 Spanish).

28 Once data has been entered on the cards, errors are eliminated. Then, large summary tables are drawn up by region and by sub-period.31 Only after this last step do team members analyse the categories and sub-categories, situating them always in relation to the whole. Appendices V and VI illustrate these large analytical tables and the type of detailed study to which they may lead. This is true for each category, and those concerning coins, active and passive debts, properties, etc. must be handled in the same way. This ambitious program will culminate in a monograph and a multitude of specialized research projects. Researchers both at the Museum of Man and at the University of Montreal will have access to this data in a few years.

29 The presentation of a summary of the results from the various studies under way in various areas of this field is out of the question at this point. As suggested earlier, it will be some time before the various projects are woven into a single canvas, portraying the socio-material reality of Quebec during the first third of the 19th century.

30 Meanwhile, it is useful to present the project, to take stock, and to draw preliminary conclusions from the work being done. Obviously, only preliminary observations are possible.

31 The article by Gilles Paquet and Jean-Pierre Wallot has used this material to draw a comparison between the Quebec and Montreal regions between the first two periods (1792-1796 and 1807-1812), by placing particular emphasis on the situation of the "habitants" during this period of social restructuring. Changes can already be detected, both in levels of wealth and in social differentiation and in the "messages" from production and consumption between the two periods.

32 Jean-Pierre Hardy has focussed on an examination of the levels of wealth and domestic furnishings of labourers, merchants, and certain groups of craftsmen in the Saint-Roch district of Quebec City between 1820 and 1840. David-Thiery Ruddel has studied the domestic production of textiles, the role of the importation of fabrics, and clothing as a symbol of ethnicity and class.

33 Lorraine Gadoury, research assistant in Montreal, is investigating "habitants" stocks, their nature and seasonal variations. George Bervin, research assistant in Quebec City, is focussing on part of the elite, made up of legislative and executive councillors, whose housing and economic situations are superior to that of most residents. Christian Dessureault, a doctoral student at the University of Montreal who has participated in the survey, is comparing two seigneuries, that of Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes, the subject of his Master's thesis, and that of Saint-Hyacinthe, the subject of his doctoral dissertation.

34 These studies, varied in their inspiration and approaches, but which are all based on post-mortem inventories provide an idea of the richness of the source, and of the varied analyses to which it lends itself. We are still far from having developed a theoretical apparatus which does justice to the abundance of questions and interpretations contained in the inventories; but we have begun to read the forms of "material inscriptions" of the various social groups and to identify the fabrics which structured and furnished their living spaces. In our view, the post-mortem inventory promises to provide access to a decoding of these groups' living spaces — and space, as we know, is the "tangible material" of life32.