La construction des inégalités au Canada (17e – 19e siècles) : reproduction familiale, mobilité sociale et parcours élitaires au sein de la famille Drapeau

This thesis offers an analysis of the relationships between mechanisms of family reproduction, upward and downward social mobility, the formation of elites, and ultimately the construction of inequality in Canada from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Based on a longitudinal study of five generations of the Drapeau family, established in the St. Lawrence Valley, and structured around a prosopographical investigation involving a corpus of over 630 individuals, this research sheds light on the differentiated dynamics that shape individual and family trajectories in a predominantly agrarian colonial society, one undergoing major legal, economic, and political transformations, particularly in the aftermath of the 1763 regime change. This study follows on from the work of the joint project on the history of French and Quebec rural societies by focusing on the construction of internal inequalities within the same lineage from an intergenerational and intragenerational perspective. It uses a multi-scale approach by articulating the micro (individuals), meso (family units) and macro (branches, lineages, lineage and society) scales. The demographic, geographic, economic, social, legal and cultural dimensions are at the heart of this longitudinal analysis, and serve as a basis for detecting permanences, gaps and ruptures. At the origin of this inquiry lies a fundamental observation : while Joseph Drapeau (1752-1810), a wealthy merchant, owner of the largest seigneurial estate ever held by a Canadian layperson, politician, and elite figure, represents a remarkable upward trajectory, he cannot be studied in isolation. His path, like that of his daughters, the so-called "Dames Drapeau", or his many collateral relatives, only makes sense through a comparative analysis of individual and family trajectories. Indeed, within this same lineage descending from Antoine Drapeau and Charlotte Joly - two commoner settlers of French origin who established themselves in the St. Lawrence Valley in the 1660s and formed the founding couple of the Drapeau lineage in Canada - the vast majority of descendants perpetuated, generation after generation, a lifestyle rooted in rurality and agricultural labor. While a few individuals reached the upper echelons of the social hierarchy, most reproduced a position within the Canadian peasantry. It is this fundamental divergence that constitutes one of the central concerns of this thesis : to understand how, within a single family lineage, such contrasted trajectories could emerge, and what reproductive dynamics account for these profound differentiations. Rather than tracing the rise of a single individual or family unit, this study focuses on a complete family group over more than two and a half centuries, thus contributing to the social history of preindustrial Quebec and Canada, to our understanding of the evolution of colonial elites, and to the study of stratification within rural communities. Keywords : Quebec, Canada, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, family, inequality, elites, bourgeoisie, nobility, merchants, seigneurial regime, seigneurs, female seigneurs, female power, social mobility, family reproduction, inheritance, peasantry, Coutume de Paris, feudalism, capitalism, colonial society, education, distinction, alliances, strategies.

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