This thesis examines French and English trade voyages and trade colonies in North American during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and French and English relations with Native Americans. The colonies of Port Royal, Jamestown, and Sagadahoc included members of previous French and English trade voyages and depended on the experience and information gained during trade voyages to formulate their economic objectives and colonial policies. French and English North American activity was intrinsically connected in this era through a plethora of amiable and competitive associations. National, transnational, and regional frameworks are all necessary in explaining Port Royal, Jamestown, and Sagadahoc. French and English interaction with Native American groups during these voyages and colonies was distinctly similar, and the diverse cultures of the native Mi’kmaq, Eastern Abenaki, Powhatans, and Armouchiquois, rather than the divisions between French and English culture, were central in shaping colonist-Native relations in the seventeenth century.

The Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (1609, 1611, 1612, 1617, 1618) by Marc Lescarbot (v. 1570--1641) is read as a symbolic foundation for the young colony of Port-Royal, Acadia (Annapolis, Nova Scotia), a construct which functions as a valid genesis for French America (thus, "New France" in the title refers specifically to this habitation as well as to the men who contributed to its making). Chapter I is devoted to a reading of the work's abundant paratext and identifies the topics at stake in the unfavourable rumours about the Acadian expeditions as well as about the lieutenant of Port-Royal, Jean de Biencourt, sieur de Poutrincourt. Moreover, this chapter explores the subjective marks, disseminated in the paratext, that build up the historian's ethos, which works as a proof of the validity of his object. This chapter investigates as well the metadiscursive comments on the writing of history and their incidence on the referentiality of the work. Chapter II compares the compilation of travel accounts contained in the Histoire with its sources. This comparison shows how the alteration of these accounts of travellers---who recorded themselves the result of their American expeditions---strengthens the division of the stereotyped dichotomy between the man of letters and the man of action, two functions respectively assigned to Lescarbot and Poutrincourt in the Histoire. The order of this compilation as well as the organisation of its various parts according to a diegetical logic shape specific places where a tension emerges between a reliable discourse, intended to a readership interested in the actual conditions of a colonial establishment, and the production of a textual "coating" aiming at attracting a courtly readership, to which the Jesuits, who challenged Poutrincourt's colonial project, addressed their requests. In chapter III, where are confronted the written and mapped representations of Port-Royal, this tension is even more manifest.

Le Grand Tintamarre Acadien est célébré depuis plus de 40 ans par les Acadiens. Il s’agit d’un événement politisé se voulant un véhicule identitaire, où les participants déambulent dans les rues en faisant le plus de bruit possible grâce à l’utilisation d’objets du quotidien comme des casseroles et des cuillères de bois. Le bruit, pourtant souvent perçu comme nuisance dans l’opinion publique, semble contribuer à donner du sens à l’événement. En effectuant une analyse thématique d’articles de quatre journaux importants en Acadie sur une période de cinq ans, ce mémoire explore dans quelle mesure le bruit créé lors du Grand Tintamarre offre un cadre d’action collective, permettant aux participants d’exprimer leur identité au sein de l’espace public, transformant les spectateurs en citoyens engagés, le temps d’une déambulation en ville. Le Grand Tintamarre acadien offre ainsi un terrain de recherche intéressant pour comprendre l’usage du bruit lors d’une manifestation publique. / The Grand Acadian Tintamarre has been celebrated for over 40 years by Acadians. It is a politicized event intended to be a cacophonous identity vehicle, during which participants roam the streets making as much noise as possible through the use of everyday objects such as pots and wooden spoons. The noise, although perceived as a nuisance in public opinion, seems to help give meaning to the event. By carrying out a thematic analysis of articles from four major newspapers in Acadia over a period of five years, this thesis will attempt to elucidate whether the noise created during the Grand Tintamarre can offer a framework for collective action, powerful and unique, allowing participants to express their identity, to claim public space, thereby transforming spectators into committed activists, if only for the duration of the demonstration. The Grand Acadian Tintamarre thus offers an interesting field of research in order to understand the use of noise during a public event.

No description available.

La médiation toponymique est l’un des ensembles relationnels qui font une terre habitée, ici le Québec et l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick. Trois souches linguistiques principales y ont déployé les lieux : l’autochtone, la française, l’anglaise. Les motifs de dénomination reliés à la propriété et la fréquentation, l’appartenance et l’événement, l’expérience directe et l’honorifique fondent la résonance des noms et de la terre. Les noms de lieux constituent un héritage à vivre et à transmettre. Corps, cœur et esprit alimentent une toponymie affective et sensible qui ressortit aux visions et perceptions du milieu naturel, s’exprime par l’anthroponynie (possessive et honorifique) et la consécration culturelle, imprègne la dynamique des changements de noms. En est une illustration le débat identitaire dans le contexte des fusions municipales au Québec. La dimension spécifiquement sémantique de la toponymie affective et sensible a permis d’établir trois grandes classes thématiques : empreintes possessives et identitaires, sens et sensations, ambiances et sentiments. Des profils régionaux apparaissent au Québec et des profils de comtés en Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick ; une toponymie des bonheurs et des malheurs se dessine. De cette mise en parallèle du Québec et de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick, il ressort des types toponymiques fortement contrastés qui témoignent de leur histoire politique respective et du rôle des autorités institutionnelles en la matière. / The toponymic mediation is one of the systems of relationships, which compose an inhabited land, here Quebec and Acadia of New Brunswick. Three main linguistic stems have influenced the construction of places : the autochthonous one, the French one and the English one. Denomination in relationship with property and socializing, belonging and event, direct experience and honours make the names resound with the earth. The place names offer an inheritance to live with and transmit. Body, heart and mind nourish an affective and sensitive toponymy, which relies on visions and perceptions of the environment. It expresses itself through anthroponymy (possessive and honorary) and through cultural consecration ; it influences the dynamics of changing names. An illustration of that is the debate on identity in the context of municipal mergers in Quebec. The specifically semantic dimension of affective and sensitive toponymy establishes three great thematic categories : imprints of possession and identity, senses and sensations, atmospheres and feelings. Regional profiles appear in Quebec and profiles of counties in Acadia of New Brunswick : it outlines a toponymy of happiness and sorrow. Very contrasted toponymic types stand out from this comparison between Quebec and Acadia of New Brunswick ; they testify to the respective political history of both regions and to the role of institutional authorities.

This dissertation studies the intersection of knowledge, culture, and power in contested coastal and estuarine space in eighteenth-century northeastern North America. It examines the interdependence of vernacular pilot knowledge and directed hydrographic survey, their integration into practices of warfare and governance, and roles in assimilating American space to metropolitan scientific and aesthetic discourses. It argues that the embodied skill and local knowledge of colonial and Aboriginal peoples served vital and underappreciated roles in Great Britain’s extension of overseas activity and interest, of maritime empire. It examines the maritimicity of empire: empire as adaptation to marine environments through which it conducted political influence and commercial endeavour. The materiality of maritime empire—its reliance on patterns of wind and current, on climate and weather, on local relations of sea to land, on proximity of spaces and resources to oceanic circuits—framed and delimited transnational flows of commerce and state power. This was especially so in coastal and riverine littoral spaces of northeastern North America. In this local Atlantic, pilot knowledge—and its systematization in marine cartography through hydrographic survey—adapted processes of empire to the materiality of the maritime, and especially to the littoral, environment. Eighteenth-century British state agents acting in northeastern North America—in Mi’kmaqi/Acadia/Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, and New England—developed new means of adapting this knowledge to the tasks of maritime empire, creating potent tools with which to extend Britain’s imperial power and influence amphibiously in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the open Atlantic became a maritime highway in this period, traversed with increasing frequency and ease, inshore waters remained dangerous bypaths, subject to geographical and meteorological hazards that checked overseas commercial exchange and the military and administrative processes that constituted maritime empire. While patterns of oceanic circulation permitted extension of these activities globally in the early modern period, the complex interrelation of marine and terrestrial geography and climate in coastal and estuarine waters long set limits on maritime imperial activity. This dissertation examines the nature of these limits, and the means that eighteenth-century British commercial and imperial actors developed to overcome them.