The purpose of this paper is two-fold - to trace the development of Russian American Company relations with foreigners in Alaska and to assess the effects of foreign trade there on the competitive position of the company. The closing year for this study, 1839, is the year in which the Russian American Company made definite arrangements to receive much of its provisions from the Hudson's Bay Company in order to resolve its long-standing problem of supply. As to the first aspect of this theme, this account of Russian American Company foreign relations follows in broad outline the existing works dealing with the history of the company. However, some corrections and new material based on a careful study of unpublished sources in America and the Soviet Union have been added concerning the details of foreign visits to Alaska. Various subject relevant to the development of foreign trade are considered: its beginnings, the evolution of company and government attitudes to relations with foreigners, and the development of Hudson's Bay Company trade in the area. The financial prosperity of the Russian American Company is reassessed and revised downwards on the basis of some relatively unexploited archival material, with the inflationary decrease in the value of the paper ruble being taken into account. Particular attention is paid to the events leading up to the lease of the Alaska panhandle (lisière) in 1839 in order to determine the essential significance of the agreement in terms of the foreign trade and further development of the Russian American Company. The main conclusions of the thesis can be stated briefly as follows. Although small in comparison with the total income and expenditure in the colony, foreign trade was absolutely necessary to the survival of the company in Alaska unless and until some reliable alternative source of vital provisions and supplies could be devised. The final decision to regularize and perpetuate the Russian American Company's dependence on foreign trade signified a final acceptance of the view that there was no feasible alternative. Whether this view was completely valid cannot be answered definitely on the basis of the available evidence. It seems clear that the decision was not made on the basis of economic feasibility or political considerations alone. In any case the principal result of the lease agreement was that the Russian American Company's prospects for economic progress or even for holding its own financially practically disappeared. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

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Candidates for the Ph.D. degree are required to justify their addition of still another thesis to the infinitude already in existence. It is, therefore, in obedience to law, and not in the spirit of vainglory, that l claim to have made a contribution to knowledge. As far as l have been able to discover, no work exists which describes the economic life of New France, in all its aspects during any period of its history. There are a number of monographs. J.N. Fauteux has written an excellent book on industry, M. Salone has dealt with colonization, H.A. Innis includes the French period in his book on the fur trade, W.B. Munro is the authority on the seigneurial system, Adam Shortt gives an account of finance in the introduction to his collection of financial documents and in a series of papers published in the journal of the Canadian Bankers Association. This thesis, however, is not merely a compilation of the work of others with new chapters on agriculture and trade. It is based on a comprehensive examination of original sources, some of which have not before been consulted with a view to Canadian history, notably those in France which have not yet been transcribed. With the exception of colonization and the seigneurial system, it describes economic activity in the colony in greater detail than has ever before been attempted. In brief, the parts have been drawn together to form a whole and fresh information has been added. This is my apologia.

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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.

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