INUIT, AMERINDIANS AND EUROPEANS: A STUDY OF INTERETHNIC ECONOMIC RELATIONS ON THE CANADIAN SOUTHEASTERN SEABOARD (1500-1800)

• Main Author: TRUDEL, FRANCOIS
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: OpenCommons@UConn 1981
• Subjects: Anthropology; Cultural; Newfoundland; Beothuk; inuit; montagnais; naskapi
• Online Access: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/AAI8125463; http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:8125463

This thesis presents a study of the effects of the development of early European commercial activity on the native groups of the northeastern section of the American continent, namely the Micmac, Montagnais-Naskapi, Beothuk and southern Labrador Inuit found along the coastal region from Nova Scotia to Labrador. The study, based on material drawn from archives and the published data, begins with a survey and critique of the scientific literature on the subject and proceeds to the elaboration of an analytical framework which is methodologically ethnohistorical and theoretically historical materialist in orientation. Nevertheless, because there was no capitalist production and no significant articulation to speak of for the area and the time and because of the poor qualitative and quantitative quality of the data available, this framework is used only implicitly and the basic concepts of "relational process between social-economies" are preferred to the more classical ones of "articulation between modes of production".^ Following the description of the physical environment (geography and resources), a synchronic reconstruction of the four preeuropean social-economies is made and the fundamental characteristics of these social-economies are outlined from the point of view of their productive forces, which were weakly developed, and relationships of production, which were largely communal but not necessarily egalitarian.^ The next five chapters are made up of a chronological study of the beginnings, growth and development of European commercial expansion in the various sectors of the Canadian southeastern seaboard, that is in Acadia, Newfoundland, the North Shore of the St. Lawrence and southeastern Labrador. The relational process which was established by the various agents of this expansion (explorers, fishermen, settlers, missionaries, colonial and metropolitan authorities) with the various preeuropean social-economies of these different areas is studied and a particular emphasis is placed on Acadia, since it was ...