'He is the master of his house': Families and Political Authority in Counterrevolutionary Montreal

The author argues that in post-revolutionary Montreal between 1783 and 1820, a reassertion of patriarchal rule was integral to reaffirming a hierarchical society, a counterrevolutionary bulwark against the republican United States. She claims that this reassertion of patriarchy was thus fundamental to the sociopolitical project underpinning the new British Empire, which had to contend with unstable ethnic and plebeian social groups, including potentially rebellious peoples such as French Canadians and people of color, including black slaves, panis or Indian slaves, and mulattoes. Reasserting the government of the family elided differences between the family and the household, which included kin, apprentices, and servants. She maintains that the political ideology represented by patriarchalism thus forestalled the emergence of the "modern" private family form. She points out that evidence from the criminal courts of Quebec shows the ways in which patriarchal masculinity was policed by both patrician and plebeian men and how it was employed to defuse challenges from rival concepts of masculinity, especially those proclaimed by turbulent youth and the omnipresent military.

The William and Mary Quarterly

Vol. 70

no. 2

341-370

April 2013

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