1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«Many North American cities trace their population booms to the nineteenth century when people flooded into emerging industrializing urban centres in search of better lives. Peopling the North American City examines this phenomenon in Montreal, using information from a thousand couples to construct both an intimate portrait and a compelling overview of life in a nineteenth-century metropolis.» (quatrième de couverture)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Les auteures utilisent plusieurs sources premières comme des fonds d’archives de la ville, des recensements, des registres d’actes notariés, des registres judiciaires, des cartes, etc. De plus, les auteurs dialoguent avec l’historiographie sur le sujet.

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

The authors use a «[…] sampling of twelve surnames to track the comings and goings, births, deaths, and marriages of the city’s inhabitants. The book demonstrates the importance of individual decisions by outlining the circumstances in which people decided where to move, when to marry, and what work to do. Integrating social and spatial analysis, the authors provide insights into the relationships among the city’s three cultural communities; show how inequalities of voice, purchasing power, and access to real property were maintained; and provide first-hand evidence of the impact of city living and poverty on families, health, and futures. Their findings [...] challenge presumptions about the cultural ‘assimilation’ of migrants as well as our understanding of urban life in nineteenth-century North America.» (quatrième de couverture)