Do we still read the historians associated with this current known as the historical school of Quebec? In the 1950s and 1960s, more particularly, Marcel Trudel, Fernand Ouellet and Jean Hamelin, professors at Laval University, published works of great importance that upset our understanding of Quebec’s past.
All three from popular backgrounds, these historians have become remarkable scholars with the mission of scientifically modernizing the way of writing the history of Quebec. When I reread them today, I am always amazed by their genius.
In 1998, however, in his excellent Make history in Quebec (Septentrion), Ronald Rudin wrote that “it is almost impossible to find a single French speaker who admires Laval historians, despite their longevity, their methodological innovations and their laborious research”. This sulking towards them is mainly due to nationalist circles.
By revisiting the history of Quebec, Trudel and Ouellet turn the traditional national narrative upside down. For them, for example, the Conquest of 1760 is not the great trauma of our history and the failures of French Canadians and Quebec are more attributable to our collective mentality than to our colonization by the English.
In the intellectual arena of the 1960s, the two historians, whom their interpretation of history pushes towards federalism, therefore scrapped against the separatists, who hated them. Several years later, if I manage, for my part, to admire their methodological brilliance, their audacity as well as the style of Trudel, I continue to be wary of their theses to prefer those, called nationalists, of the historical school of Montreal, hosted by Guy Frégault, Maurice Séguin and Michel Brunet.
In The historical school of Quebec (Boréal, 2022, 496 pages), the young historian François-Olivier Dorais brilliantly examines the work of the pioneers of the Institute of History of Laval University, founded in 1947. Resulting from a doctoral thesis, this work of dazzling intelligence deserves all the praise.
That a 35-year-old young man demonstrates such fine analysis and interpretation, such a capacity for intellectual work — the corpus studied is as demanding as it is imposing — and such virtuosity in he art of elegant synthesis can only arouse admiration. The historical school of QuebecI say it without emphasis, is a great book, a major work of our historiography.
Since the 19the century, a question torments Quebec intellectuals: what are the causes of our economic, social and political inferiority in Canada? In the 1950s, historians of the Montreal school, led by Maurice Séguin, replied that it all started with the Conquest of 1760, which, by submitting New France to a foreign colonial authority, halted its normal development and disrupted its economic and political life. Conclusion: only the independence of Quebec, today as yesterday, can restore national normality.
The historians of the Quebec school do not agree with this thesis. If they share with their Montreal colleagues the concern for a history that finally uses scientific methods, they nevertheless come to the conclusion that the French-Canadian backwardness is essentially due to internal problems, such as the “excessive weight of the clergy and nationalist doctrines” in our history. In other words, it’s not the fault of the English, it’s ours.
Trudel, who will reveal the presence of slavery in New France, describes the latter as a disorganized, poor society, without economic dynamism. Under these conditions, the Conquest surprises her, of course, but has some good points in certain respects.
More controversial, Ouellet, admirer of Pierre E. Trudeau, pushes the cork further. Very learned, his work, focused on economic and social structures rather than on political and national life, concludes that the main obstacle to our development, before and after the Conquest, is in our archaic mentality.
In biasin 1967, Ouellet was referred to as a “colonized historian”, precisely explaining that this archaic mentality was not the cause of our economic backwardness, but the consequence of our marginalization after the Conquest.
Rebellious, the historians of the school of Quebec can annoy. This is less the case of Jean Hamelin, much more nuanced and converted to independence in the 1970s. However, it is important to recognize, beyond the ideological disagreements, that the works of these three historians remain masterful. The same must be said of the formidable critical analysis offered by François-Olivier Dorais, minus the irritation.