State of Failure: Bankruptcy and Imprisonment for Debt in Montreal, 1839–1899

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
State of Failure: Bankruptcy and Imprisonment for Debt in Montreal, 1839–1899
Abstract
The author explores bankruptcy and imprisonment for debt in nineteenth-century Quebec. He argues that bankruptcy procedures were attempts by the state to regulate. He explores the nature of the nineteenth-century state and its attempts to build regulatory capacity. These state attempts occurred against the backdrop of changes in understandings of the individual, liberalism, and ultramontanism. Imprisonment for debt is situated as compatible with liberal modernity as a mediator of credit relations. Using prison records, the author then explores the uneven application of debt imprisonment along ethno-religious lines (English, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jew). He notes that bankruptcy law, changes to it, its implementation, and the intermingling of the legal cultures of the common law and the civil law in Lower Canada and Quebec makes evident Canadian bijuralism. The author concludes that the operation of the bankruptcy process, by official assignees, provides a new perspective into the nature of the politics and practice of patronage in nineteenth century Quebec.
Type
PhD dissertation
University
McGill University
Place
Montreal
Date
2018
# of Pages
xviii-358p.
Language
en
URL
Citation
Simeone, Daniel. “State of Failure: Bankruptcy and Imprisonment for Debt in Montreal, 1839–1899.” PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2018. https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/9019s482x.
Find in a library
Permalink