"Three [Catholic] religious groups served the French stronghold of Louisbourg during the eighteenth century. They were the Récollets of Brittany, who acted as parish priests and chaplains; the Brothers of Charity of Saint John of God, who operated the King's Hospital; and the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, who conducted the local school for girls. [The author] establishes the secular and religious contexts of life in Louisbourg, and then traces the mixed fortunes of each of these groups.".

A.J.B. Johnston establishes the secular and religious contexts of life at Louisbourg and traces the mixed fortunes of three religious groups: the Récollets of Brittany, who acted as parish priests and chaplains; the Brothers of Charity of Saint John of God, who operated the King's Hospital; and the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, who ran the local school for girls. Drawing on the extensive material in the Archives of the Fortress of Louisbourg, Johnston notes the groups' remarkable persistence in the face of personnel shortages, financial burdens, and conflicts with secular authorities and rival religious bodies. Not the least of their problems was the profound parsimony of the Louisbourgeois who declined to build a parish church or pay a compulsory tithe. Yet despite this independent stance, the author demonstrates, religion was at the centre of family and community life. Life and Religion at Louisbourg contributes substantially to the social as well as the religious history of New France.

The July 1995 proceedings feature 64 papers presented by cereal chemists, geneticists, physiologists, and researchers working with pre-harvest germination, sprouting damage, and dormancy in order to help growers succeed in harvesting their crops before rain or fog induces pre-harvest sprouting and lowers the commercial value of their crops. The 1995 program develops more molecular approaches to sprouting problems than in previous years, and highlights international developments in gene location, plant processes at a molecular level, and new technologies to develop more efficient diagnostic and screening tests. Lacks an index. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

AJ.B. Johnston establishes the secular and religious contexts of life in Louisbourg, and then traces the mixed fortunes of the three religious groups that served the French stronghold of Louisbourg during the eighteenth century. These were the Recollets of Brittany, who acted as parish priests and chaplains; the Brothers of Charity of Saint John of God, who operated the King's Hospital; and the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, who conducted the local school for girls. Drawing on the extensive material in the Archives of the Fortress of Louisbourg, he notes the groups7 remarkable persistence in the face of personnel shortages, financial burdens, and conflicts with secular authorities and rival religious bodies. Not the least of their problems was the profound parsimony of the Louisbourgeois who declined to build a parish church or pay a compulsory tithe. Yet despite this independent stance, religion was at the centre of family and community life in Louisbourg, as the author demonstrates in a chapter devoted to the faith, morality, and popular beliefs of the town's inhabitants. The colourful military history of Louisbourg has been the subject of numerous books and articles, and the economy of He Royale has received close attention in recent years. This first comprehensive study of the religious aspects of life in this outpost of France's overseas empire contributes substantially to the social as well as the religious history of New France.

Elusive Empire is the first full account of how during 1670 and 1730 French settlers came to the Americas. It examines how they and thousands of African slaves together with Amerindians constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much new evidence, the author explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies, without precedent in France, interacted with the growing international violence in the Atlantic world in order to present a fresh perspective of the multifarious French colonizing experience in the Americas.

This study explores the shared history of the French empire from the perspective of material culture in order to re-evaluate the participation of colonial, Creole, and indigenous agency in the construction of imperial spaces. The decentred approach to a global history of the French colonial realm allows a new understanding of power relations in different locales. Providing case studies from four parts of the French empire, the book draws on illustrative evidence from the French archives in Aix-en-Provence and Paris as well as local archives in each colonial location. The case studies, in the Caribbean, Canada, Africa, and India, each examine building projects to show the mixed group of planners, experts, and workers, the composite nature of building materials, and elements of different ‘glocal’ styles that give the empire its concrete manifestation. Building the French empire gives a view of the French overseas empire in the early modern period not as a consequence or an outgrowth of Eurocentric state-building, but rather as the result of a globally interconnected process of empire-building.

Cape Breton Island has many claims to fame, yet far too few people are familiar with the rich and storied past of the coastal areas of Richmond County. For centuries the Mi'kmaq, and later the early European explorers and settlers, shortened their journeys between the Bras d'Or lake and the Atlantic Ocean by means of the narrow isthmus at St. Peter's. This portage area -eventually a canal - became a haul-over road in the mid-1650s. The portage area and the surrounding shores and waterways of Cape Breton were sites of early and prolonged interaction between the French and the Mi'kmaq during a time when dreams of expansion and empire among European nations, met head on with the realities of North America's aboriginal peoples. The busy corridor between Chapel Island, St. Peter's, and Isle Madame was the backdrop for a colourful and intriguing era of our shared histories. Storied Shores presents a history of that time and place - the story of the promise of prosperity and the hope for new lives and the story of the ravages of greed, rivalry, and war. A.J.B. (John) Johnston is a Canadian historian with many publications that deal with the histories of Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Acadia and Nova Scotia. He is a historian with Parks Canada, based in Halifax.