The Practice of Portage in the Early Modern North Atlantic: Introduction to an Issue in Maritime Historical Anthropology
In some respects, we know more about the anthropology of Amerindian groups in the early modern period than we do about the working European seamen with whom they interacted. We do know that negotiated wages or shares were but part of the economic culture of early modern mariners. Portage, also known...
| Published in: | Journal of the Canadian Historical Association |
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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The Canadian Historical Association/La Société historique du Canada
1995
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.7202/031086ar http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/031086ar |
| Summary: | In some respects, we know more about the anthropology of Amerindian groups in the early modern period than we do about the working European seamen with whom they interacted. We do know that negotiated wages or shares were but part of the economic culture of early modern mariners. Portage, also known in specific forms as “privilege” or “venture”, was a right European mariners once had to carry cargo, on their own account, for private sale. This hardly made them “merchants in the forecastle” but the practice of portage does make it difficult to accept, entirely, early modern mariners as a maritime proletariat. An examination of portage, both in the records of specific legal cases and in the body of maritime law, sheds some light on the historical anthropology of maritime life. D'une certaine façon, l'anthropologie des groupes amérindiens des débuts de l'ère moderne est mieux connue que celle des marins européens avec lesquels ils sont entrés en contact. On sait mal, par exemple, que les salaires négociés et les parts dans l'entreprise ne constituaient qu'un aspect de la culture économique de ces hommes. En effet, en vertu du « portage », aussi connu sous la forme plus spécifique de « privilège », ou encore « venture », les matelots européens avaient le droit de transporter leur cargaison, pour leur propre compte, en vue de la vente privée. Sans en faire de véritables marchands, l'existence de cette pratique compromet toutefois leur stricte identification à un prolétariat maritime. L'examen de cette institution, à partir à la fois de cas judiciaires et du corpus des lois maritimes, jette un éclairage nouveau sur l'anthropologie de la vie de ces marins. |
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