Dominique Marshall

The Language of Childen's Rights, the Formation of the Welfare State, and the Democratic Experience of Poor Families in Quebec, 1940-55

In the mid-twentieth century, the poorest Quebec families, who couldn’t provide their children with an education and welfare at minimal levels set by the state, contributed to the development of the first universal social policies. When interpreted using the action and language philosophy, the vestiges of meetings with civil servants about family allowances in 1945 and compulsory education in 1943 show that by sometimes supporting and sometimes resisting, the least affluent fathers, mothers, and children markedly altered the fate of new institutions. The increase in the number of exchanges between these families and state employees encouraged access of both women and girls to the public domain, new forms of financial credit facilitating consumption, and the persistence, in political speeches, of a certain human rights rhetoric. Their actions, however, did not go so far as to prevent the development of more insidious ways of marginalizing the poor, notably the strengthening of incentives for them to conform to the homogeneity of a growing majority.

Children's Rights and Children's Action in International Relief and Domestic Welfare: The Work of Herbert Hoover Between 1914 and 1950

Herbert Hoover authored three charters of rights for children. They protected a distinct place for children in society and allowed them to express their spirit and, more broadly, the renewal of democratic institutions and a world where international relations would be the responsibility of many. This article investigates the international and domestic contexts of the charters and of their uses, in order to retrieve the meanings associated with this rhetoric in its time, as well as the actual limits the promises made in the three lists contained and encountered. It is especially interested in the public role of children associated with the three charters, and with the tensions between ideas of neutrality and autonomy. Finally, it suggests some parallels with current humanitarian institutions and debates on children’s entitlements. Contemporary debates and uses are discussed around four main themes: children as bodies to be fed and cured, as emotional beings to be loved, as politically neutral citizens, and as future citizens.

La liberte du pauvre: Crime et pauvrete au XIXe siecle quebecois (review)

conflict beyond North America. Fowler’s study rightly stresses the contingency of the eventual British victory, even if the majority of his discussion rests on the Anglo-American side of the hill. The level of detail provided to the expeditions of Washington, Braddock, and Wolfe exceeds that accorded to their French counterparts. Canadian scholars will also note that the author’s opinion of the value of the French colonial militia as well as the Troupes de la Marine is at variance with the classic and more favourable assessment of William Eccles. In his epilogue, Fowler asserts that the 1760 surrender of Montreal to Great Britain marked a fatal turn in the history of North America’s Native peoples. While this is a debatable point, the author’s effort to validate his opinion by citing the absence of Native people from a 2001 ceremony in Quebec City pertaining to the reburial of Montcalm’s body is not persuasive. More convincing is the picture of the precarious post1763 British Empire that the author paints, one in which Great Britain committed itself to maintaining a North American empire very much like the one it had just conquered – territorially extensive, officially committed to peaceful relations with numerous and distant Native peoples, and strapped for revenue. Both of these works have significant classroom potential insofar as they provide excellent syntheses of research to date on the war. Even more significantly, both studies point out some fertile areas of future inquiry into the Seven Years’ War, most notably the problems of logistics and human intelligence, the role of Native peoples in the conflict, and its relationship to the subsequent American Revolution. As examples of the recent “narrative turn” in historical writing, they are less successful in offering original perspectives on the conflict as a whole. One suspects that a greater departure from the longstanding Anglo-centric tradition of writing on the Seven Years’ War than even these two scholars attain will be necessary to achieve that goal. JON PARMENTER Cornell University

Book review: Les enfants, la société et l’État au Québec, 1608-1989: Jalons

(p. 363), Colón claims that the 1861 census in Britain showed that one-third of boys and 50 percent of girls ages five to nine worked full-time. In fact, Rose argues that “about a third” of boys and “a slightly higher proportion” of girls ages five to nine were “employed.” On three other occasions, Colón miscites Rose, on each occasion making things worse than Rose’s text warrants; for example, George Smith’s claim in 1871, accurately reported by Rose, that “up to 30,000 children under 16” were employed in brickworks becomes, for Colón, “At one point in the late eighteenth century [accurate dating is not a strong point of the book], more than 30,000 children worked . . . in brickyards” (p. 371). It may seem a quibble to draw attention to these relatively minor errors, but they suggest a cast of mind that, at an unconscious level, has an agenda that wants to make the reader outraged at the cruelties inflicted on children and does so by unnecessarily exaggerating them. Such an interpretation is reinforced by the way the book ends. The last chapter is titled “Modern Times: The Adolescent.” In fact, there is less than a page on adolescence, a brief and not wholly accurate outline of G. Stanley Hall’s 1904 Adolescence. By contrast, there are ten good pages on the appalling conditions and frequent death suffered by children in World War II, followed by two pages assembling statistics of war deaths, illegal child labor, HIV/AIDS deaths, abandonment, and ill health of children in the past half century, a theme to which Colón reverts in the final paragraph of his Conclusion—the book ends by inviting us to think of the “one million cachectic, fly-ridden, marasmic children who stare vacantly at death in the eastern horn of Africa” (p. 506). Colón strives to be optimistic about the human condition and can write with some enthusiasm of progress, not least, unsurprisingly, in the field of pediatrics, but ultimately the evils of war, plague, and greed seem to outgun the advocates of progress and the basically good intentions of parents. If this is the overriding theme of the book, it has to be dragged out of it, for much of what Colón writes is “one damned thing after another”—and not all the “things,” as we have seen, can be relied on as accurate. And yet it would be a pity if the immense labor that has gone into its compilation were set aside as of no use. There are many fine descriptive passages, drawn from primary sources, giving accounts of childhood or views about it. And there is an excellent subject index that will help readers at any level to pursue matters that might interest them. Take, as an example, the treatment of twins. There are nineteen references to twins in the index, a majority of societies seeing them as in some ways a blessing and a minority killing both or one twin at birth. Here is information, not otherwise easily available, that could lead to further inquiry. Perhaps this is how this book is best used, as a compendium of information. Certainly no one could read it without encountering some arresting facts entirely new to them.