Silver and Hotcakes and Beer: Irish Montreal in the 1840s

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Silver and Hotcakes and Beer: Irish Montreal in the 1840s
Abstract
The papers of Bartholomew O'Brien, innkeeper and broker of silver, offer a fresh look at Montreal's Irish Catholic community in the 1840s. According to the author, his interventions illustrate the way an individual navigated an "ethnicized" social network and circulated resources between the market economy and the gift economy, spheres that Ferdinand Tönnies termed the "Gesellschaft" and the "Gemeinschaft" (1887). She points out that in a city embarked on the revolution of steam power, the two circuits were braided together, and, despite the obsolescence of Tönnies' original formulation, the distinction reveals some persistent features of the invasive nature of capital and human responses to its perennial re-structuring of the urban economy. When the market faltered, each of the several ethnic communities worked to buffer its members through a personal web of trust. The evidence used by the author is based on archival sources: O'Brien's own correspondence and daybook, parish registers, and leases and loans conserved in notaries' repertories.
Publication
Canadian Ethnic Studies/Études ethniques au Canada
Volume
Vol. 45
Issue
no. 1-2
Pages
179-201
Date
2013
Language
en
Citation
Olson, Sherry. “Silver and Hotcakes and Beer: Irish Montreal in the 1840s.” Canadian Ethnic Studies/Études ethniques au Canada Vol. 45, no. 1–2 (2013): 179–201.
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