Recent research has shown the Canadian peasantry of the eighteenth century to be less homogeneous than was once thought. Beyond the ebb and flow of the family cycle, the striking differences in productive resources from one household to the next can only have furthered accumulation among the peasants. Set in Riviere-du-Sud, a seigneury fifty kilometres downstream from Quebec on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, the present study is concerned with the forms and limits of that process. By 1720, the seigneury had entered what might be called the second phase of colonization; the population had taken root, but throughout the period land for the children who departed would continue to be available farther afield. In this setting, it is suggested, both production and markets were too uncertain to permit even the largest producers to lose their subsistence orientation and break through the traditional limits to scale. At the same time, such peasants had no choice but to invest most of their appreciable surplus in land, which they eventually distributed to their children. A muted differentiation process, in which the most prosperous continually pushed the vulnerable off their valuable land to inferior holdings elsewhere, resulted.

Gabriel Christie (1722-1799), a British military officer, acquired a vast estate in Quebec after the Seven Years war, including five timber-rich seigneuries in the Upper Richelieu Valley, our study area. These were inherited by two of his sons in succession: Napier Christie Burton (1758-1835) and William Plenderleath Christie (1780-1845). An examination of the available deeds of concession for our study area shows the legal framework of the tenure and the seigneurs' survey and land granting policies. Seigneurial rents increased between 1785 and 1820, but it was the accumulation of seigneurial arrears, followed by strict collection practices after 1835, which contributed most to social stratification and unrest. A seigneurial monopoly on mill construction and the use of water power was decentralized after 1815 so that manufactures were established by entrepreneurs with capital who acquired a share of the seigneur's rights through patronage. The seigneur's role in regional development--the rise of villages, settlement, and industrial growth--was significant particularly as a system of clientage which helped shape the social structure.

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