Marital Conflict, Ethnicity, and Legal Hybridity in Postconquest Quebec

This article explores the terrain of marital conflict in Quebec between 1763 and 1830, focusing on a variety of strategies employed by husbands and wives, ranging from elopement, criminal prosecution for marital violence, and separation. Based on an intensive analysis of the colonial newspapers and a large judicial archive of both criminal and civil proceedings, it seeks to discern patterns of ethnic inflection among men and women using these strategies, and seeks to postulate a growing legal hybridity, one that particularly affected the assumptions and practice of French customary law in the first six decades following the British conquest.

Marital Conflict, Ethnicity, and Legal Hybridity in Postconquest Quebec Journal Articles