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Do different environments lead to different attitudes regarding non-human animals?

Reducing energy use is a key imperative for Western societies. However, it is hard to envision how this might come about and what changes are entailed. This article proposes that studying energy history helps understand flexibility in energy systems. It uses the case of Montréal to analyze the fluctuation of electricity and gas supply and demand during an eventful historical period that stretches from the First World War to the Great Depression, marked both by capacity expansion and stagnation. By studying the activities of the city’s monopolistic energy utility and the practices of energy consumers, this article proposes a typology of four different kinds of energy flexibility: upwards supplier-led flexibility, downwards supplier-led flexibility, upwards consumer-led flexibility, and downwards consumer-led flexibility. This analysis has important implications for future energy megaprojects and the shaping of energy consumption. It also shows how energy history can reveal the implications of past patterns for future decisions.

Résumé d'une proposition de communication orale acceptée dans le cadre de la thématique "Enseignement et formation à la recherche" du colloque Humanistica 2020, 12-14 mai 2020 (annulée à cause de la situation sanitaire liée au Covid19).

What worked and what didn't work as I pursued a History PhD later in life than would have been wise. Distilled into seven lessons.

Dès qu'il s'agit de missionnaires français en Chine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, on ne manque pas de parler de leurs missions religieuses, de leurs talents scientifiques et de leurs activités dans les échanges culturels sino-français. Il ne faudrait cependant pas oublier leur importante contribution au rapprochement économique entre la Chine et la France qui était pratiquement inexistant avant la fin du XVIIe siècle. En effet, le projet de faire du commerce en Chine fut initié et promu par les missionnaires français au milieu du XVIIe siècle, et c'était grâce à eux que le premier voyage commercial français vers la Chine fut organisé et effectué en 1698 par un vaisseau baptisé Amphitrite de la Compagnie de Jourdan. Basé sur des récits des marchands et des missionnaires ainsi que des documents officiels en français et en chinois qui constituent de très riches sources primaires, le présent travail consiste d'une part à examiner de manière diachronique l'ensemble de l'histoire de l'ouverture commerciale sino-française tout en l'encadrant dans les contextes politique, social et économique de ces deux pays ; et d'autre part, synchroniquement, notre thèse vise à déterminer l'état et le rôle des missionnaires français et surtout des jésuites dans le commerce français en Chine depuis la genèse du projet et pendant les deux allers-retours de l'Amphitrite entre 1698 et 1703. A cet effet, composée de huit chapitres, notre thèse vise à bien cerner, du point de vue du sinocentrisme et de l'inculturation, les multiples apports des missionnaires français dans cette rencontre historique et à expliquer pourquoi l'évangélisation et la commercialisation sont toujours indissociables l'une de l'autre lors de la présence française en Chine au tournant du XVIIIe siècle.

The city of Seleucia on the Tigris was founded in the 4th century BCE by Seleucos I, one of Alexander’s empire’s Successors. According to the size of it’s original dwelling-blocks, it was designed from the start to be a large and important city. It flourished for some time and became an administrative center and royal residence. In 129 BCE, it was conquered by the Arsacids, a rival dynasty. Seleucia’s development continued unbroken, but the city eventually declined and disappeared around 200 CE. To explain this change, historians underlined the importance of the perceived culture of its old and new sovereigns. Ruled by the Macedonian Seleucids, the city prospered. Under the Iranian Arsacids’ hostile administration, it was ill-treated until it got abandoned. Such analyses have been based on some passages of ancient texts insisting on the Greek character of Seleucia and its inhabitants. Those also influenced the interpretation of the results of the first archaeological digs conducted on the site. This thesis comes back on the relations between the city and both its Seleucid and Arsacid kings in order to evaluate the importance of this supposed cultural rivalry in the development of Seleucia. It compares the written tradition, essential but biased by political imperatives, and the buildings, coins, seals and figurines discovered by American, German and Italian archaeologists between 1927 and 1989. Our results suggest that the city and its population were of a mixed cultural backround and that its supposed Greek character did not play much of a role in its decline. We therefore suggest that other factors explain the disappearance of Seleucia, such as the Tigris changing bed and an evolution in the geopolitical situation of the Near East around 200.

Theodore Roosevelt's term in the White House (1901-1909) was marked by many efforts in the conservation of natural resources. This was a doubly important theme for Roosevelt, because not only did he see the negative effects of industrialization on the future of resources, but nature had been one of his passions since his childhood. Thus, he wanted to continue to father a conservationist movement that had existed since the 1870s. Ultimately, his objective was to consolidate all natural resources under the authority of the federal government, through numerous policies for the development of forests, agricultural lands, rivers, pastures, ranges and mineral lands. This thesis presents the many perspectives from which conservation developed under Roosevelt, as well as the role of important individuals in the conservation community during the Roosevelt era. Although conservation is generally associated with the economic benefits of natural resources and their actual uses, we explore what other issues conservation could address. Theodore Roosevelt was very attached to his idea of a typically American nation and to what he saw as the essential values of the United States. Thus, we examine the link that might have existed between this ideal of the nation and the efforts to protect natural resources. Our study shows that, by putting his conservation project into practice, Roosevelt was able to remain true to some of the ideals he believed were essential to the proper functioning of American society.

In this master’s thesis, we sought to showcase the permutations of the colours of textile products bought during the sixty-two years under the Avignon papacy (1316-1378). The objective of this research is to develop a systematic and synthetic database that lists the permutations of coloured fabrics purchased by the Avignon papacy in the 14th century that are listed and compiled in the Introitus and Exitus. Our study also aims to explain the trends in the occurrence of these permutations using studies on the symbolism of colours in the 14th century. To be able to analyze the data that we collected and systematized, we called upon additional studies regarding the administration of the papacy, the symbolism of colours in the 14th century, the art of dyeing and the use of clothing. At the end of this study, we can maintain that the Avignon papacy allocates an important role to colours, hence the presence of many colours in the analyzed registers. The manifestations of these various colours are influenced by their symbolism in the 14th century, their dyeing techniques, and the intended use of coloured fabrics. Thus, red, white, green and brown are the most mentioned colours of textile products, these colours being in great demand because of their symbolism and their intended use with the Curia and Panhota. The appearances of gold, orange, violet, silver, purple, gray, black and blue are rarer, because of their price and the difficulties of obtaining fabrics of these colors.

Since the arrival of social history in the 1960s, the military history of Canada under the French Regime has been enriched by several studies of soldiers. Historians of justice have also investigated the rank and file as a social group. These studies – which were not exclusively devoted to soldiers – adopted a quantitative approach. Though historians have viewed various aspects of soldiers’ lives, none have singled out criminality. That is precisely what this thesis attempts to do, by exploiting principally the judicial archives. More precisely, it analyzes criminal trials involving soldiers, relying as well on Ancien Regime jurisprudence to help place soldiers’ criminality in perspective. The trials offer a view of the different forms of this criminality and of some of the contributing factors. Lastly, several trials in addition to the colonial correspondence show that the army, not just a war machine, also played role in the rehabilitation of soldiers inclined to criminal behavior.

This study examines the history of the physical education of Montreal’s young French Canadian girls from 1860 to 1920; from the first manifestations of corporal education in the private education network to the so-called « golden age » of women’s sports in Canada. Firstly, the discourses of French Canadian scientists are analyzed in such a way as to capture their theoretical reflections on the female body in movement and the prescriptions they formulated. Subsequently, this study presents the evolution of sport and gymnastic practices in the Catholic female boarding schools of Montreal held by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Proponents of women’s physical education faced certain challenges: how to promote exercise for young women without exposing them to the public space? How to reconcile physical training with the aesthetic ideal of femininity? Finally, how to promote more movement for the juvenile female body without risking its reproductive capacity? Doctors and educators, faced with this dilemma, defined the contours of an acceptable female physical and sports education. However, although the norms disseminated by the predominantly male prescriptive literature were restrictive, innovative practices that met specific objectives started to appear in Montreal’s boarding schools in the 1860s. These practices diversified in the first decades of the twentieth century under the impetus of historical actresses – teaching sisters, gymnastic professors and students.

This thesis proposes to analyze the French representations of the role of women in the Wendat cerermonial universe at the time of New France. Divided into two parts, it first explores the representations of women in France’s Ancien Régime period, focusing on symbolic represen-tations on the one hand and, on the other hand, on the social perceptions of Ancien Régime women. To do this, we consult a vast repertoire of works of socioreligious history which makes it possible to penetrate the French episteme of Ancien Régime regarding the representation of women. The second part is devoted to the ethno-historical analysis of French representations of the role of women in the Wendat ceremonial universe during the New France era. All the French writings constituting Franco-Native contact literature are used to study these representations of rituals re-lated to “fertility”, “healing” and finally “funeral”. In the end, the analysis reveals that, while French observers attest to the “complementary” and “egalitarian” aspect of the gendered interac-tional dynamics governing the Wendat ceremonial universe, they were unable to capture the full extent and value of integration because they assessed the value of ceremonial wendat behaviors according to their degree of adequacy or inadequacy to the project of French colonization and Christian evangelization.

The inter-war period began at the end of the First World War and was part of a desire for change, lasting peace and a new international order. However, the reality of a return to peace is complicated by the scale of the conflict. The public space is transformed: monuments to the dead, destruction, widows and orphans. There is also a reflection on the sustainability of Western civilization: its limits, its models and its dangers. This paper examines the vision of an artist, Hermann-Paul, in order to know contemporary representations of inter-war France and the models of Western civilization. The study focuses here on Hermann-Paul’s work in the press, particularly in the weekly magazine Je suis partout, which offers the advantage of being able to follow the artist every week over a decade from December 1930 to February 1940. Several questions guide this research. What is Hermann-Paul's France? Why does it seem to be in crisis and what are the models and counter-models? Peace activists, who defend the idea of a lasting peace, are major actors of the period. Through their desire for change, they also participate in this civilizational anguish. How does the caricaturist integrate them into his French vision? The paper also focuses on the instrumentalization of gender, and subset that is masculinity. There is still a lack of Francophone studies in this area. The objective of this study is to participate in the historical analysis of the field of virility, with the case of Hermann-Paul. The caricature is an opportunity since this format instrumentalizes the codes of drawing and virility in order to construct, justify and divert representations.

The dissertation represents the first attempt to construct a narrative about the Young Communist League of Canada (founded in 1923) during the inter-war period, so far absent in existing research on Canadian communism or socialism. The thesis focuses on the evolution of the relationship between the Young Communist League (YCL) and the Communist International and Young Communist International where Soviet Communists played a predominant role. It sheds light on numerous minor and major changes of policy shaped by the national and international contexts in which these organisations had to act. The dissertation argues that despite genuine enthusiasm toward the International’s line and the Soviet experience, Young Canadian Communists often found it difficult to implement the International’s directives in Canada. Neither the International nor the communist movement in Canada was monolithic. On the contrary, there appear to have been numerous conflicts on three levels: between the International and the League; between the League and the Communist Party of Canada; and between local or linguistic groups in the League and its national leadership. The state repression of the left during the whole inter-war period, derisory level of funding and membership numbers also impeded the implementation of the International’s policies. At the same time, the International’s weaker levels of control allowed for a certain degree of flexibility and autonomy in the Canadian League’s policies. Following the position of the Young Communist International, the Canadian communist youth placed special emphasis on anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, and later anti-fascist and anti-Nazi, militancy. However, the League appeared to have acted independently as far as immediate demands of the youth and cultural policies were concerned, especially during the Great Depression era. The League engaged in joint activism with other youth organisations, even when Moscow did not encourage such strategy. The initiatives often came from local grassroots organizers, although Canadian authorities were convinced that Moscow was behind each and every action of the League. In the 1930s in particular the YCL, through a network of social and cultural organisations, gained access to youth of different political orientations – the socialist left, centre-left and even “bourgeois forces.” The YCL’s impact and outreach were further increased by the fact that the organisation’s sympathizers, if not members, belonged to diverse social backgrounds and included not only young workers and farmers but also High School and University students, artists, sportsmen, young white collars, many of them belonging to religious youth groups. For these young people, the YCL was the place that provided Marxist solutions to burning questions of the time such as youth unemployment and absence of welfare, social injustice, growth of fascism and imperialism in Canada and abroad.

This thesis is an exercise in historiography that deals with the ways French, Quebec and US researchers interested in the Pays d’en haut in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have referred, over the past 35 years, to the theme of Native agency. To represent the Native peoples as agents, as they really are, for what they do and not as bit players of a Europeo-centric narrative, this seems to be the rule of the language game ethnohistorian play. However, when we look at the production of the specialists of these Native societies, we rapidly come to the conclusion that the national question and, more broadly, the dynamics of identity inherent to the communities of researchers, still have a considerable impact on these narratives. In order to understand these dynamics, it is useful to develop a historiographic perspective that is rooted in the sociology of science. I will refer more specifically to the works of Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu on controversies among researchers. The idea is to see how researchers, by situating themselves in relation with their peers through alliance, avoidance or opposition, structure an ethnohistorical project. A project that is devoted to knowing better the Native other, but also a project that needs to pass the postcolonial test and hence refers to an area of postcolonial studies that is itself structured through contentions. By seeing how, through the generations, an ethnohistorical model of good practices is constructed and restructured, how collectives of researchers are built, one learns about the world of Native people, but also about the world of the researchers. It is in this perspective that I conduct the analysis of historiographic narratives produced by renowned practitioners of studies on the Pays d’en haut, ethnohistorians who, a few years after having published their main work on the subject, take stock of the situation in regards with Native agency. The historiographic propositions of Bruce Trigger, Richard White and Gilles Havard will allow us to cover the evolution of the field of ethnohistory since 1985.

At the end of the 17th century, in Europe, a new economic discourse emerged: mercantilism. The result was a growing control by the royal administration over the countries’ industries and economy. This economic system dominated the first half of the 18th century before gradually weakening in the face of the rise of economic liberalism. Among the major industries at the time was the wool industry, which was relatively dispersed throughout the country. There was still a certain industrial concentration in certain généralité mainly in the north of France and in the south with the Languedoc region. These two regions constitute the main points of our study. The goal then is to understand how the geographic factor influences the formation and success of lobbies in the wool industry in a century of evolution of economic thinking. The first case study relates to the study of the wool industry in the Languedoc which opposes the economic privileges obtained by Marseille from the royal administration. The latter had exclusive rights to trade with the Levant region, the main outlet for Languedoc wool production. Huge protests and oppositions ensued between the two protagonists in order to defend the economic interests of each other. Finally, our second case study leads us to analyze the economic consequences of the signing of the Franco-British trade treaty in 1786. The latter had a huge consequence on the wool industry in the north of France. It the follow the emergence of a lobby in the wool industry demanding for a modification of the treaty. In reality this agreement materialized an opposition between two different kinds of pressure groups: the first one coming from a rural environment living primarily from agriculture; the second one coming from a mainly industrialized urban environment.

From the 8th century BC onwards, Greek colonists established many colonies between the Thermaic Gulf and the Evros river. Often located on hostile territory where the land is a very important source of wealth, these new cities have ensured their safety and stability by quickly establishing defense systems around their settlements. Throughout the periods, several powers have also taken interest in the northern Aegean territories and marked the military landscape of the region by fortifying their own urban centers. This research project concerns the systematic study of these fortifications. If some researchers, mainly Yves Grandjean, Dimitrios Lazaridis and Alexander Cambitoglou, have shown interest in the fortifications of specific cities (Thasos, Amphipolis and Torone), no synthesis covering our region, yet very rich in military architecture, has been undertaken, hence the interest of this project. More specifically, we pursue the following objectives: 1) to study the geography and demography of the region in order to better understand the distribution of the territory and the way it was defended by the settlers; 2) to contextualize the defensive structures within the politico-military history of the region. Apart from the monumental work of N.G.L. Hammond (but focusing mainly on Macedonia), the one of Benjamin Isaac (whose chronological scope is relatively limited) or that of Angelos Zannis (which focuses only in the country between Strymon and Nestos) there is no real analysis of the military history of northern Greece. Therefore, our objective is to analyze the effects of political and military movements (Persian presence, Macedonian advance, Athenian interference, Thasian expansion, Thracian conflicts, etc.) on the development of the military architecture. 3) The aim is also to catalog, locate, describe, date and illustrate (photographically and topographically) all the defensive works of northern Greece. 4) Finally, we will analyze and argue on the different defense methods, the construction techniques and the stylistic features and forms of the fortifications. The objective here is to have a better appreciation of the cultural heritage and the regional influences in the establishment and construction of defense systems. The analysis of techniques and styles will provide a better understanding of the links between new settlements and mother-cities, it will also allow to address the question of artisanal mobility and the effects of migration on military architecture.

This thesis sheds lights on collaborations and transfer of knowledge between Jewish and Christian scholars in France during the 13th and 14th centuries. We propose a comparative analysis of different exchanges, in three distinct areas: theological, philosophical and astronomical. Taking into account the Latin and Hebrew sources that testify this transmission of knowledge, we propose an in-depth study, dividing in two sections. The first part narrates the evolution of education in the Jewish communities and in Christian society. The second part analyses the context of the Extractiones de Talmut, the transmission of knowledge between Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, the close collaboration between Jacob ben Makhir and Armengaud Blaise, as well as the significant intellectual exchange between Gersonides and his fellow Christians. Our objective is to answer the following questions: did Christian and Jewish scholars receive information according to their own intellectual value, ignoring their source? And was there a direct influence from one scholar towards the other? Thus, this study demonstrates the different motives of these exchanges through a contextual field constituted by a specific intellectual event. We will perceive that these relations vacillate between mistrust and admiration.

Art history and cultural history in Quebec present many examples of “retours d’Europe” and of “French triumphs,” from the formative overseas stays of the “exotiques” in the 1910s to the stage success of Quebec “chansonniers” in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s. However, between the early 1930s and the mid-1950s, some of the most famous French-speaking artists based in Montréal preferred to go on tour in the United States. Many of them traveled New England year after year, sometimes going as far as New York City, to cheer the French-speaking public present along the way in the industrial cities of the region. Yet this episode of high mobility is almost absent from history, memory and cultural heritage in Quebec—and even more so in the United States. Beyond the impact of the Great Depression on Montréal’s cultural scene and of the Second World War on the possibility of visiting Europe, these artists have turned their eyes towards America because they participated in a transnational space, both geographical and symbolic, inherited from an era of great intracontinental migrations, then reactivated and reconfigured by the advent of sound and audiovisual media—discs, radio and cinema. By studying the history of the celebrity of Mary “La Bolduc” Travers, Rudy Vallée and Jean Grimaldi, this thesis attempts to access to the various layers of this phenomenon at the crossroads of cultural history, media history and migration history. Their intricate narratives therefore reveal the modality of mobility involved inside—and often times outside—of the French Canadian “imagined community.” By analyzing the heritagization process of these artists, it is possible to isolate some of the causes the oblivion of this transnational episode of francophone culture in North America, such as the rejection of mobility in the formation of national and ethnic identity narratives; the historical marginalization of popular arts; and the mistrust of the United States among cultural and political elites around the world at the time.

This master’s thesis focuses on the Sudanese crisis coverage within Montreal popular press at the end of the 19th century. This comparative study of the narrations of the Anglo-French rivalry produced by La Presse and the Montreal Daily Star shows that, in the Quebec context, two main political cultures coexist: imperialism and nationalism. This thesis coverts a period starting in 1885 with the first report, by La Presse, about British interventions in the Soudan, leading toward the Fashoda crisis in 1898. The study period ends with the signature of the Entente cordiale in 1904, which bring an end to the main colonial rivalries between the United Kingdom and France. This research concludes that, first, the Montreal Daily Star shows an Anglophone political culture tied to Canadian imperialism; the newspaper preserves and even reinforces this perspective during all the study period. Then, on the other hand, La Presse tends to draw away from this ideology and reveal Canadian nationalism.