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Habitants
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Habitants is the name used to refer to both the French settlers and the America-born inhabitants of French origin who farmed the land along the two shores of the St. Lawrence waterway in what is the present-day Province of Quebec in Canada. The term was used by the inhabitants themselves and the other classes of French Canadian society from 17th century up until the early 20th century when the usage of the word declined in favor of the modern agriculteur (farmer) or producteur agricole (agricultural producer).
Unwilling to accept subordination to anyone but the Governor of New France himself, the inhabitants refused to be called censitaire, a designation they judged equivalent to paysan, who were the servile peasants in France's feudal system.
The communities of habitants were largely agricultural until the beginning of the 19th Century when the trend towards urban living escalated rapidly as a result of industrialization. Seigneurs would give long, narrow strips of land to these habitants in exchange for produce, money, in rare cases, unpaid labour (also known as corvée).
- Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal by Professor Louise Dechêne, McGill-Queen's University Press 1993 (ISBN 0-7735-0658-6)
- Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy, and Culture in a Quebec Township 1848-1881, by Professor John I. Little, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991, (ISBN 0-7735-0807-4)