Decapitation Theory supporters



Expert Group #2

Decapitation Theory supporters

Maurice Seguin received his PhD in 1948 from the University of Montreal where he had studied under Lionel Groulx and where he would eventually teach. Seguin’s doctoral paper followed the role of the Habitant, or the agrarian French in Quebec prior to and after the conquest. He believed that a re- evaluation of the impact of conquest was needed. Seguin stated that the conquest in fact affected the Canadien negatively, that merchants were excluded from primary exportation because several fur trading companies were taken over by the British, and that the farmers were essentially cut off from trade altogether and were forced to survive on their farming alone. Seguin continues to argue that Mercantilism and its forced economic dependency on the mother land made Quebec easy to economically take over which in turn made it easy for a purely British higher class to form. What would later be known as the Decapitation Theory was founded, the idea that the French bourgeoisie was replaced by a British higher class. But what Seguins’ main argument is, is that even though the Canadien-who sided with its motherland during the war- was taken over by the British, the British could never assimilate the Canadien and their culture. This was because of the growing hostility from the 13 colonies and the fact that the Canadien vastly outnumbered the English in population. Seguin states that this is one of the reasons why the English never granted the French an assembly, such an act would give them to much power and make assimilation out of the question completely. Seguin argues that the American Revolution saved the French from assimilation by preventing British domination of North America. The ideas of Maurice Seguin were taken even further by his students, especially the Decapitation Theory. During the 1960s and the Quiet Revolution these ideas were brought to the forefront of the growing neo-nationalist movement, because Seguin argues that even though the British took over, and essentially dominated the higher trades the Agrarian French or the working class held onto to their traditions and culture.

Fregault

Guy Fregault was born on June 16, 1918 in Montreal and died in Quebec on December 13, 1977. He studied classical studies at Saint-Laurent and Jean-de-Brebeuf in Montreal and then eventually completed his PHD in History at the Loyola University, Chicago 1949. He was a professor of History at the University of Montreal, director of the Institut d'histoire and chairman of the department at the University of Ottawa. Fregault was also a director of cultural affairs for the Quebec government in 1960-1963 and 1970-75. He is also a contemporary French Canadian. In Fregaults’ Neo-Nationalist Interpretation written in 1962 he clearly writes about the tensions between the French and English during that time period because1960 was the start of the Quebecois finally taking a stand in their own homes and taking control of their own economy by many starting up their own businesses and companies as a response to the great need for change and renewal. Fregault argues that the conquest prevented the colony from becoming an independent state. He states that the conquest made the French Canadians suffer economic and politically damage. The English diminished Canada because the French Canadians were eliminated from politics in commerce, industry and the destruction of their ideas and were forced to be children of the soil. Canada also became socially destroyed as the Upper Class French Canadians went back to France. This was because they could not survive outside the political and economic framework of New France and the France empire. New France had all the elements that made up a normal society, it was more than a rustic civilization. The only reason the English defeated the French in Canada, was because of population the English had.

Michel Brunet – Born on July 24th 1917 in Montréal, and later died on September 4th, 1985, also in Montréal. He graduated from the Université de Montréal where he received his B.A and M.A as well as Clark University in Worcester Massachusetts in 1949 with a PhD in history. He took office at the Université de Montréal’s history department at the age of thirty-two. Seguin believed that the conquest unleashed the fight between survival and decapitation among the French Canadians. He supported and furthered his colleague Maurice Seguin’s decapitation theory. He believed that the Conquest cut off all fair competition and opportunity for the bourgeois class and the “normal” French society possessed no leadership class made of administrators, soldiers, and businessmen. According to Brunet, because of the Conquest the French Canadian populace was reducing and left to its own resources, it was destined to an “anaemic collective survival”. It would no longer benefit from an economically independent class of bourgeois. The Conquest resulted in a division of power along cultural lines.

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