« C’est icy le pays du monde le plus propre a faire des chanvres... si on s’en vouloit donner la peine » : le discours officiel sur le chanvre au Canada, 1660-1840

The cultivation of hemp in Canada under the French and British Regimes has long attracted the attention of historians. Until recently, the focus has been on repeated attempts by administrators to develop this culture in Canada. Another element remained largely ignored: the discourse formulated by the colonial authorities on the subject of hemp, an agricultural product as unloved by the Canadian peasantry as it was cherished by the colonial administrators. Whether French or British, the official program, centred on naval supplies (hemp was used in particular for the manufacture of sails and ropes) and associated with mercantilist designs, aimed to replace with Canadian hemp that which successive metropolises import from abroad, mainly from Northern Europe. However, this policy responded only with difficulty to colonial conditions. Despite everything, from Quebec, the colonial administrators, both French and English, persisted for a long time in introducing it, devoting long passages to it in their correspondence with the various ministries in Paris or Versailles, and later in London. By listing the obstacles to hemp culture, they developed a fundamentally stereotyped discourse on the Canadian peasantry, and even on the Creole population in general. These images will have a long life, surviving then change of regime at the Conquest and influencing both contemporary authors and the historical narratives that would be produced until the middle of the 20th century. Nevertheless, there was a learning process. It manifested itself in two stages: in the more lucid formulations of the administrators of the late French Regime and, nearly half a century later, in the agronomic discourse emerging in the vicinity of the Colonial Assembly, more sensitive to the possibilities of local agriculture.

Accepted: 2023-06-14T19:45:03Z