Bibliographie complète

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.