Votre recherche

The objective of this research is to measure the impact of the Spanish Civil War on the attitude of the French Popular Front about the collaboration with Soviet Union from 1936 to 1937. It takes shape in a political and journalistic opinion study based on a survey of three French daily newspapers attached to the Popular Front during the 1930s, namely L’Humanité, Le Populaire and L’Œuvre. The analysis is articulated through the events of 1936 to 1937 such as the ratification of the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact, the election of the Popular Front and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The impact of the conflict in Spain is in fact measured in the intensification of the political polarization in France which influence the attitude of de Popular Front about the collaboration with Soviet Union. Despite the advent of a new Popular Front government, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War elevated the political polarization between the left and the right in France, which started in 1934, at its peak. Without a strong coalition between the left and the center right, collective security led by the USSR could not succeed. While some journalists are tempted by the appeasement policy, others develop a more clear-sighted and realistic vision of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and the importance of a close Franco-Soviet relationship.

The main purpose of this text is to study the practices, the issues and the modalities of the animal diplomatic gift in the 13th century, especially during the reign of Frederick II, Henry III and Louis IX. The analysis is based on the presentation of the sociological and anthropological conceptualizations of the gift, particularly those of Marcel Mauss. They are used to understand the peculiarities of the animal diplomatic gift in the 13th century. Then, a research on animal descriptions of medieval bestiaries and encyclopedias is conducted to show the symbolic power and the physical and behavioral characteristics of the offered wildlife. Finally, several modalities of the donation are developed, such as the selection criteria and the wildlife preferences of the kings, the context and rules of the elaboration of a present and the movement of given animals. In addition, it is shown how the beasts and birds had a real use for the kings. Indeed, they staged their animals in order to appropriate their symbolism and show off their prestige and their greatness, at events or in the menageries.

In the 6th century, in the kingdom of the Burgundians, Avitus of Vienne composes a letter for his sister, the nun Fuscina. This consoling and eulogistic artwork is called De consolatoria castitatis laude. This text generates in us an understanding of the particular context of the virgo in the Christian society of Late Antiquity. Regarding the text, the purpose of the book is to show to the monacha that the virginal choice represents a way of escape and freedom, a reality that the spouse is unaware of. The duties of marriage, the dangers of motherhood, the troubles of the century, the widowhood and the mourning are all unknown to the virgin because she excludes herself to worldly obligations. The use of the Bible and several patristic references shape the legacy of religious mentalities which inspires Avitus in making an oriented speech on the virgo’s socio-religious distinctness.

This study compares methods of information gathering in two territories that became part of the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War. We bring these two extremely different regions into the same frame by asking: how did the British gather information about the populations of Canada and Bengal? Our study is part of several historiographical currents that offer a rereading of the history of Great Britain and its colonies, which is the subject of our first chapter. In the next chapter, we explore the post-conquest era in Canada. After the conquest of this territory (1759-1760), British authorities faced the task of administering the Canadian population. At first, they tried to implement a new governmental regime deemed suitable for the Canadian context. However, since the majority of the population they governed was of different religious denomination (Catholics) and of French origin, they had to modify the regime ten years later. In the third chapter, we look at the British presence in Bengal after the battle of Plassey in 1757. The British, through the East India Company, acquired a certain influence over local authorities, which allowed them to govern indirectly via the Mogul Empire’s governors, the nabobs. Nevertheless, cultural differences were much more significant than with the Canadian population of European origin: the Mogul Empire was a Muslim polity, with a Persian administration, and much of the population was Hindu. From our reading of the official correspondence, between the colonial administrators and the metropolitan government in the first case, and between the agents of the company and its directors in the second, we affirm that in both situations the British tried to gather more information. However, important institutional and cultural differences distinguish the types of information sought as well as the approaches to collecting information. The results of our research ultimately converge on one point: the search for information passed through a whole range of local intermediaries. In the last chapter, after having explored the “information order” implemented or adapted by the British in each colonial context, the study considers how colonial information was received and shaped by the metropolitan authorities. To this end, the efforts of officials and parliamentarians to learn about colonial conditions during the drafting of two laws, the Quebec Act (1774) and the Regulating Act (1773) are highlighted through a reading of the Parliamentary debates. Here also, many differences are visible. To become informed about Canada, British authorities relied heavily on the help of the colonial administrators who stayed in Canada after the regime change. However, in the Indian case, they depended mostly on documentary sources, namely the books of the EIC.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, historians’ attention was turned towards the disappearance of a bourgeoisie canadienne which should have made the transition from commercial to industrial capitalism. These studies began, so to speak, with the end, in attempting to define the long-term historical consequences of the Conquest on an as-yet ill-defined group that in principle included some merchants. This thesis follows new investigations in both Europe and the USA which have permitted to look anew, often with a cultural history approach, at merchants of the Early Modern period. Focusing on a Montreal merchant outfitter (marchand équipeur) and his family, the investigation first seeks to determine if the Canadian merchants’ culture (broadly defined) was similar to that of their French counterparts who worked on the same business level. A second aim is to evaluate the leeway available to individuals in face of the general conditions of the trade and the role of networks in the merchants’ career. Finally, the thesis attempts to define the self-conception of these men while looking at their lifestyle and the various roles they played in their community. To complete such a study, we have chosen to look « wide and deep » like micro-historians have before us. The study examines the long life of the équipeur, Jean Alexis Lemoine dit Monière, who chose to settle in Montreal in 1715 and whose career Louise Dechêne had followed until 1725. After her, historians have since pictured Monière as a typical marchand équipeur. But he might not have been typical, he might even have been a « limiting case ». The thesis follows him to the end of his life and looking for all the opportunities that were offered to him along the way. It accords considerable importance to the material and immaterial legacy of his father, Jean Lemoine, and to what Monière passed on to this son, Pierre Alexis and a few nephews. Situating Monière between his father who emigrated from Rouen, his brothers and his own son, permits us to see the emergence of a profession, that of équipeur. We look at how Monière, who died in 1754, was prepared to embrace the merchant’s profession and how he perceived the way he should work as an équipeur. This study affords a better understanding of merchants’ culture, broadly conceived, in early French Canada. Exploring a variety of sources and using a micro-historical approach, we hope to have followed Dale Miquelon’s suggestion to look (again) at the merchants’ world with the eyes of the people of the times in order to answer today’s questions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Between 1876 and 1982, Métis were excluded from federal Indian policy, as they were not recognized as indigenous owing to the discriminatory and assimilationist clauses within the Indian Act. However, numerous spaces emerged for the recognition of the indigenous nature of the rights and identities of Métis and non-status Indians (MNSI) amid the creation of the Native Council of Canada in 1971 and the repatriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982. Among these were the creation of MNSI representative organizations across the country, the funding of historical and legal research for land claims, and lastly, the recognition of Métis rights as an Aboriginal people within the constitution. Within the scope of these spaces and the pressing context of land claims and constitutional repatriation, the NCC and the Laurentian Alliance of Metis and non-status Indians (LAMNSI) highlighted different ideas and definitions on the rights and identities of MNSI people in Canada in order to be recognized by the state. For this reason, the CNAC valued an ethno-national concept of Métis that was centered around the Red River community. Consequently, LAMNSI argued that there was no such thing as a Métis Nation in Quebec or in eastern Canada. Instead, LAMNSI affirmed that its members belonged to the historical, cultural and familial realities of the First Nations.

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 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.

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 thesis analyses the influence of intersectional power dynamics – inter and intra sex, ethnicity and social category, seen as articulated identity categories – within the eighteenth-century Montreal judiciary system. Murder trial archives serve as the basis for this analysis, the crime of murder in and of itself implying the exercise of total power by one person over another, by taking away his or her life. On one hand, the proposed analysis will focus on power dynamics between individuals, according a special attention to the agency of the principal actors. On the other hand, it will focus on power dynamics between the individuals and the State, in other words between subjects and their king, dispenser of justice. The crime of murder of course suggests an act of power, but also implies a disruption of social order, which justice must restore by punishing the guilty party. We then ask: do the identity categories of gender, race and social category influence the course of justice, and if so, how? Inversely, is justice applied differently according to the intersectionality of the suspect or the victim’s sex, ethnicity and social category? We will answer those questions by analyzing power dynamics in the murder trials of the jurisdiction of Montreal in the eighteenth century; first, from the angle of gender in chapter 1, from that of ethnic groups in the second chapter and finally, from that of social categories in the third chapter.

Following their colonization of America in the 17th and 18th centuries, the French drew up inventories for the resources of the occupied or coveted territory. Being able to describe all this wealth, natural history thus became the ultimate colonial knowledge and one of the central cogs of the French Colonial Machine. Also, the textual legacy of this activity is considerable and various points of view are taken into account: an enterprising settler, for example, will not see Louisiana’s resources in the same way as a travelling metropolitan official or a botanist on assignment. However, the colonial perspective is widely spread and all these texts, or almost all of them, are evidence of the appropriation of American plants, minerals and animals. The position of indigenous people and slaves – whether of indigenous or African-American origin – as actors in the process of knowledge creation depends on the context and the author’s stance. This thesis focuses on a small number of compelling texts from the natural history corpus of the French mainland colonies in America. Four authors who worked in or visited Canada (Kalm), French Guiana (Barrère) and Louisiana (Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny) are studied in depth. We first examine the different contexts of knowledge acquisition. Subsequently, we analyze the colonial resources inventories available at that time and how the sources are managed. Lastly, we conclude by looking at how these naturalist writers transmit to their European readers their newly acquired knowledge and the impact that their work will have.

This mémoire aims to show that media space, in times of commemoration, is a privileged place for historians who want to capture the dynamics of a community’s memory. Our case study is the media coverage of the centenary of the First World War through the lens of The Guardian, Le Monde and Die Süeddeutsche Zeitung. We analysed in these newspapers the press coverage from June 2014 to July 2017 in the online sections First world war, Centenaire 14-18 and Erster Weltkrieg. This study uses an operative definition of collective memory that allows us to understand the necessity, in the history of memory field, to study journalism not simply as an archive, but also as a discursive space where various complex representations of the past meet and communicate in order to redefine themselves. This discursive space has two points of junction: Practiced history and “mythistory”. The dynamics of this space have been studied for each publication in this research. First, we identify the major historical configurations of the Great War, the role of historians in the coverage, and try to see to which extent these configurations are expressed in the three newspapers studied. Finally, the commemorative intentions of the newspapers are identified and then tested through a study of news-flow and an analysis of the lexical fields of the respective media coverage.

This thesis presents representations of the traditional ritual practices of the Iroquoians and Algonquians that the French Jesuit missionaries have revealed in their writings. Sometimes in spite of themselves, the missionaries describe Indigenous people endowed with religious powers, descriptions which we will examine. The territory analyzed is therefore mainly that of the missions, namely the St. Lawrence Valley, the surrounding country and the Great Lakes region, a slice of America that remained largely Indigenous during the period of interest to us, namely from 1632, date of the first Relations with the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune, until 1724, the date of publication of the book Mœurs des Sauvages by Joseph-François Lafitau. This careful examination of the Jesuit works reveals, from a perspective of gender history, excerpts relating to rituals and spheres of activity of Aboriginal men and women. These results are confronted with numerous studies on First Nations or on the Jesuits and their North American missions. This multidisciplinary convergence then leads us to ask: what do missionaries see, or do not see, in the role of men, women, and to some extent, “men-women” and “women-men” within Aboriginal rituals, and in what circumstances?

Deprived of his land inheritance like many youngest-born of peasant descent, Martin Bertrand (1915-2008) eventually fled life as a seminarian in the French High-Alps by enlisting in the Mobile Guard and then being stationed in Casablanca, Morocco in 1941. Following the Anglo–American invasion of French North Africa, he was drafted in 1943 to lead a Moroccan colonial recruit unit. With “his” tirailleurs, he took part in the Italian campaign, the Provence landing, the liberation of Alsace, and the occupation of Germany. After the War, he returned to Morocco only to be deployed 3 years later with the same battalion to Tourane, Indochina where the French colonial administration attempted to retake control of the region. During each one of his long absences, Martin Bertrand wrote almost daily to his wife Hélène, descendent of Spanish settlers established in Algeria. By analyzing these letters, this master’s thesis proposes to integrate Martin Bertrand’s experiences, in his functions as a non-commissioned officer in a colonial regiment, into a broader imperial story where France led her armies through her last colonial wars and destabilized the colonial order under which each soldier was governed. Furthermore, this study compares Martin Bertrand’s private letters with more official sources like troop morale reports which allows for an analysis of the complex social and ethnic hierarchies between French non-commissioned officers and “indigenous” troops. At the same time, it explores the deeper questionings of a military intermediary’s self-identity.

This thesis focuses on the social roles of popular celebrations in rural French-speaking communities of North America between 1770 and 1870. It approaches the subject of festivals by looking more precisely at the festivity. The main objective is to highlight how the festivities, which we call popular celebrations, influence the functioning of North American francophone societies. What roles do popular celebrations play in the social life of the inhabitants of these societies? What impacts do they have on individual and collective identities? Do they retain the same characteristics from one society to another or do they adapt to different environments and contexts? How do they develop and evolve over time? What are the elements that influence their evolution? In order to answer these questions, the focus is on studying certain popular celebrations among four rural populations of French origin, namely the inhabitants of the St. Lawrence Valley, the Detroit region, the Illinois Country and Louisiana (more specifically, the inhabitants of Acadian origin). Based on published monographs, personal manuscripts, church correspondence, fictional literature and the work of folklorists, each of the five chapters represents a case study that shows how popular celebrations are influenced by the context in which people live and how festive sociability is involved in the construction of different social identities, such as those relating to race, gender and class. In the first chapter, a look at the weddings of Canadians and Louisianans of Acadian origin in the late 18th and mid-19th centuries reveals that food, drink, music and dance are very much in evidence, but above all that these festivities are the scene of many rites of passage for the new couple, and often more particularly for the wife, allowing the community to control the recognition and formalization of their social and sexual union. In the second and third chapters, the analysis of the guignolée, Epiphany and especially the carnival in Canada, Detroit and the villages of the Illinois Country shows that this festive period is influenced by the winter climate of the northern colonies and that it remains a key moment in the social life of the inhabitants. Among other things, it is synonymous in all three regions with meetings, dinners and balls during which residents determine who has the right to court with whom, that is, young people of the same social rank, and those who are an integral part of their community and those who are excluded from it, that is, poorer residents (St. Lawrence Valley) or Blacks and Indigenous people (Illinois Country). In the fourth chapter, the study of the evolution of the Sunday culture of Louisianans of Acadian origin highlights how, despite the success, over time, of the Catholic Church in its attempts to impose the sanctification of this day, house balls persist, being transferred to Saturdays, and contribute to the construction of this population’s racial identity. In the last chapter, an examination of the evolution of the May Day celebrations shows the effectiveness of reciprocal relationships in reinforcing and strengthening the social hierarchy in rural Canada, that is, between country people and a member of the local elite (seigneur or militia captain). This thesis enriches the existing historiography of festival in French America, which hardly addresses the subject of rural popular celebrations from the perspective of festive sociability. It shows that these celebrations are closely linked to the contextual aspects of each of the four regions studied, i.e. the demography, the presence of other ethnic groups, the climate, the geography, the gender relations, the economy, the political situation and the social hierarchy. Francophone inhabitants of rural areas adapt their popular celebrations to the particularities of their society, but those celebrations still preserve, sometimes until the 1870s, their regulatory functions of reproducing social, economic, gender and racial hierarchies. In other words, they are a tool that allows these Francophones not only to affirm their identity of French origin, but also to clearly identify the people who can or cannot claim this identity and the inequalities that are produced within this process.

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.