Petites gens, petites dettes : monétarisation de la vie sociale et rapports de domination dans le district judiciaire d’Arthabaska (Québec), 1880-1930

Abstract

How did the monetarization of social life unfold in rural Québec in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Analysis of several hundred cases heard by a lower civil court, the Circuit Court, indicates that the local money and debt markets were both very active at that time and clearly profitable to certain local elites—lawyers above all—who benefited from the indebtedness and poverty of their fellow citizens.