Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage
Canada's Forgotten Slaves is a ground-breaking work by one of French Canada's leading historians, available for the first time in English. This book reveals that slavery was not just something that happened in the United States. Quite the contrary! Slavery was very much a part of everyday life in colonial Canada under the French regime starting in 1629, and then under the British regime right up to its official abolition throughout the British empire in 1834.

By painstakingly combing through unpublished archival records of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Marcel Trudel gives a human face to the over 4,000 Aboriginal and Black slaves bought, sold and exploited in colonial Canada. He reveals the identities of the slave owners, who ranged from governors, seigneurs, and military officers to bishops, priests, nuns, judges, and merchants. Trudel describes the plight of slaves-the joys and sorrows of their daily existence. Trudel also recounts how some slaves struggled to gain their liberty. He documents Canadian politicians, historians and ecclesiastics who deliberately falsified the record, glorifying their own colonial-era heroes, in order to remove any trace of the thousands of Aboriginal and Black slaves held in bondage for two centuries in Canada.

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Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage
Canada's Forgotten Slaves is a ground-breaking work by one of French Canada's leading historians, available for the first time in English. This book reveals that slavery was not just something that happened in the United States. Quite the contrary! Slavery was very much a part of everyday life in colonial Canada under the French regime starting in 1629, and then under the British regime right up to its official abolition throughout the British empire in 1834.

By painstakingly combing through unpublished archival records of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Marcel Trudel gives a human face to the over 4,000 Aboriginal and Black slaves bought, sold and exploited in colonial Canada. He reveals the identities of the slave owners, who ranged from governors, seigneurs, and military officers to bishops, priests, nuns, judges, and merchants. Trudel describes the plight of slaves-the joys and sorrows of their daily existence. Trudel also recounts how some slaves struggled to gain their liberty. He documents Canadian politicians, historians and ecclesiastics who deliberately falsified the record, glorifying their own colonial-era heroes, in order to remove any trace of the thousands of Aboriginal and Black slaves held in bondage for two centuries in Canada.

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Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage

Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage

Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage

Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage

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Overview

Canada's Forgotten Slaves is a ground-breaking work by one of French Canada's leading historians, available for the first time in English. This book reveals that slavery was not just something that happened in the United States. Quite the contrary! Slavery was very much a part of everyday life in colonial Canada under the French regime starting in 1629, and then under the British regime right up to its official abolition throughout the British empire in 1834.

By painstakingly combing through unpublished archival records of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Marcel Trudel gives a human face to the over 4,000 Aboriginal and Black slaves bought, sold and exploited in colonial Canada. He reveals the identities of the slave owners, who ranged from governors, seigneurs, and military officers to bishops, priests, nuns, judges, and merchants. Trudel describes the plight of slaves-the joys and sorrows of their daily existence. Trudel also recounts how some slaves struggled to gain their liberty. He documents Canadian politicians, historians and ecclesiastics who deliberately falsified the record, glorifying their own colonial-era heroes, in order to remove any trace of the thousands of Aboriginal and Black slaves held in bondage for two centuries in Canada.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781550653274
Publisher: Vehicule Press
Publication date: 05/20/2013
Series: Dossier Quebec
Pages: 398
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Marcel Trudel was an eminent Canadian historian and a respected authority on the history of New France. A fervent advocate of the secular society, he was blacklisted by the Catholic Church from teaching at Laval University in the early 1960s, then taught for several decades at the University of Ottawa. He was an award-winning author of more than 40 books, many of them translated into other languages. Trudel died in 2011.
George Tombs is a Montreal-based author, film-maker, award-winning journalist and translator.

Table of Contents

Translator's Preface 7

Preface to the 2009 Edition 13

Introduction 15

Chapter 1 "Give Us Negroes!" 29

Chapter 2 The Legalization of Slavery 43

Chapter 3 Nearly 4200 slaves in Quebec 58

Chapter 4 The Slave Market 85

Chapter 5 Owners at All Levels of Society 102

Chapter 6 The Living Conditions of Slaves 119

Chapter 7 Slaves and the Sacraments 147

Chapter 8 Crime and Punishment 161

Chapter 9 Did Slaves Have the Same Rights as Freemen? 179

Chapter 10 Debauchery and Marriage 201

Chapter 11 Do Canadians Have Slave Blood? 220

Chapter 12 Slaves Disappeared One by One 233

Conclusion 254

End Notes 273

Bibliography 285

Index 299

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book provides the only available outline of the contours of the slave system . . . in 17th- and 18th-century New France."  —Canadian Historical Review on the original French edition, Deux Siecles D'Esclavage au Quebec

"Trudel's work on slavery in French Canada is a major and controversial work."  —Le Devoir

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