Persistances Seigneuriales: Histoire et mémoire de la seigneurie au Québec depuis son abolition by Benoît Grenier (review)

Reviewed by: Persistances Seigneuriales: Histoire et mémoire de la seigneurie au Québec depuis son abolition by Benoît Grenier J.I. Little Grenier, Benoît – Persistances Seigneuriales: Histoire et mémoire de la seigneurie au Québec depuis son abolition. Québec: Septentrion, 2023. 264 p. This generously illustrated and engagingly written book marks a significant step away from the generation of French-language Quebec historians that emerged in the 1970s, preoccupied as they have been with the theme of the province's modernity. Grenier stresses that, contrary to the common assumption that the "régime seigneurial" ended in 1854, it survived in certain respects until 1940 or even 1970. The commonly used English-language term, seigneurial "system," has [End Page 188] been challenged by historian Allan Greer on the grounds that seigneurial tenure was, in his words, a process rather than a structure (see his online article, "There Was No Seigneurial System," Borealia [September 2018], http://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2018/09/24/there-was-no-seigneurial-system), but the important point is that it involved more than the granting and holding of land. In fact, Grenier goes as far as to claim that the "fait seigneuriale" contributed as much as the Catholic religion, the French language, and the Civil Code to the emergence of the French Canadian identity (p. 19). But that contribution was clearly not in the positive sense described by historian Marcel Trudel and earlier historians, who denied that seigneurial tenure was essentially feudal: the longer the seigneurial residuals survived, the more anachronistic they became. What the 1854 legislation did was to terminate the seigneurs' feudal privileges, such as the grist mill monopoly (banalité) and sales tax (lods et ventes), as well as the annual rents (cens et rentes), converting the latter into what was referred to as a constituted rent that could be paid off in a lump sum, though few censitaires (the term was preserved after 1854) chose to do so. In addition to collecting those rents and being fully compensated for the loss of their feudal privileges, the seigneurs gained full title to all the land not inhabited by censitaires. (Prior to 1854 they were required by law to grant lots outside the land set aside as their personal "domain" to whoever wished to clear and inhabit them.) To take the Lotbinière seigneurie as an example, the Joly family gained freehold title to an extensive and largely forested property assessed by the municipality at $800,000. In short, Grenier writes, "Le mode de vie seigneuriale ne s'éteint pas en 1854, bien au contraire, comme en témoignent les nombreux manoirs seigneuraux qui sont érigés ou reconstruits apès cette date" (p. 28). Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière's local influence as a seigneur is illustrated by his victory in every provincial election (sometimes unopposed) between 1862 and 1885, when he resigned temporarily from politics. The history of the former Lotbinière seigneurie also offers examples not mentioned by Grenier of how the seigneurial system survived in more subtle ways. Thus, even though the "censitaires" had actually become tenants in a freehold property regime known as "franc-alleu roturier," sales contracts prior to 1967—when the Lotbinière seigneurie was expropriated by the province—dictated that the purchaser could not sell or mortgage the property without the seigneur's permission. Furthermore, the contracts specified areas within the property that had to be preserved as woodlots as well as restricting the species of trees that could be cut. Grenier's documentary research was based largely on 337 reports drafted by two government-appointed notaries following the 1940 creation of the Syndicat national du rachat des rentes seigneuriales. The role of this body was to pay off the constituted rents owed to 550 seigneurs, including corporate bodies such as the Crédit foncier franco-canadien, approximately half of whom had purchased their properties after the so-called abolition in 1854. The remaining constituted rents were valued at nearly $3.2 million, and payment of this debt was imposed upon the municipal councils which then added it to their ratepayers' tax bills. It was only then (1940) that the title of "seigneur...

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