Foods, Foodways and <i>Francisation</i> in Seventeenth-Century Québec

As powerful markers of cultural identity and ideology, food and foodways played an important part in francisation.While food was regarded by the French as a useful and persuasive tool for francisation, it also reveals to the historian the precarious situation of Québec as a small French settlement whose very survival depended on cooperation with Indigenous neighbours.Food culture at the Ursuline convent school continued French practices, but also adapted to North American traditions.Attitudes towards food -like attitudes towards francisation more broadly -were negotiated on the ground in response to the realities of daily life in early modern North America. Retention of French food practices at the Ursuline conventSara Melzer (2013, pp.96, 104-107) argues that the French colonial strategy was a particular brand of 'soft colonialism' based on imitation: the French expected to provide a model of civilization that the Indigenous people would strive to imitate and adopt.The large-scale retention of French food and foodways at the Ursuline convent fits with a desire to maintain and model French culture.By educating Indigenous girls through example, the Ursulines were preparing their charges for potential marriage with French partners, and, especially towards the end of the century, for bringing French culture to their native communities (Belmessous 2005, p. 334).As the Ursulines' records show, the French model was dominant at the convent in terms of what types of foods were being produced, purchased, and consumed.Production was based on the growing of grain and the raising of domestic livestock, as was the case in France, and the vast majority of fruits and vegetables consumed at the convent were familiar French crops.Furthermore, large quantities of fish found in convent expenditure and inventory records suggest an adherence to Catholic rules about fasting and food abstinence, which may in turn have contributed to the transmission of deeply held cultural beliefs about food. Wheat and other millable grainsMillable grain that could be transformed into bread was at the heart of the agricultural system of seventeenth-century France and Europe more generally.Wheat, and to a lesser extent rye and millet, were grown on the best plots of land and constituted a staple of the diet.In this 'civilisation du blé' ('civilization of wheat'), bread was both an essential food and a culturally-charged symbol.It was closely linked to Christian doctrine through its connection to the Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between food and power in a colonial context by focusing on foodways at the Ursuline community of Québec in the seventeenth century.In particular, it considers the role played by food in the larger strategy of francisation, the policy of assimilation designed by the French Crown with the goals of convincing the Indigenous inhabitants of Canada to convert to Catholicism and adopt French cultural norms.Drawing upon archival sources, this paper explores to what extent the food culture at the convent school continued French practices or adapted to North American traditions, and it argues that attitudes towards food -like attitudes towards francisation more broadly -could be negotiated on the ground in response to the realities of daily life in early modern North America.In the year 1654, the Ursuline nuns at Québec received from their sister community in Paris some quince jam, apricot marmalade, and several containers of candied fruit paste.The gift came with a condition, or at least a direction: the Parisian donors indicated that these foods (along with the books of religious devotion, candles, and other small items in the package) were destined specifically for the Indigenous schoolgirls.1As perhaps they knew, the Ursuline convent in Québec was a key site for the implementation of French colonial policy in seventeenthcentury New France.One of the main goals of this policy was assimilation of Indigenous peoples, and both Church and Crown perceived the Ursulines as well placed to contribute to French colonial efforts.In particular, they thought this teaching order of nuns could advance francisation, or 'frenchification', a process that was centred on Indigenous peoples' religious conversion to Catholicism and adoption of French cultural norms.French colonists had a marked sense of confidence about the superiority of French culture: even though they represented only a tiny proportion of the total population in seventeenth-century North America, they were optimistic that cultural and political domination could be achieved without force (Belmessous 2005, pp.325, 330).This hope was founded on belief in a linear trajectory of human development, with French civilization at the pinnacle of cultural achievement.According to what they thought of as the 'natural' progression of human development, Indigenous peoples exposed to French culture would immediately be drawn to, and would ultimately embrace, French customs (Imbruglia 2014, pp.29-30;Caulier 2005).

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