About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
This innovative interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the French, Dutch and English colonization of northeastern North America during the early and middle decades of the seventeenth century. It is the first book to pay serious attention to the European economic and political factors which promoted colonization, and it argues that the prime determinant was the uneven development of agricultural systems in western Europe.
Contributor Notes
Denys Delage is a professor in the departments of Sociology and History at Laval University in Quebec City. In 1986, he was awarded the Prix Lionel-Groulx for the French edition of this book. Jane Brierley (translator) is a Montreal literary translator who won the 1990 Governor General's award for her translation of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspe's Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence.
Awards
- Winner, Prix Lionel-Groulx
Editorial Reviews
Bitter Feast is a welcome and important contribution to 17th-century studies. All serious students of Canadian history should regard it as essential.
— Canadian Book Review Annual
It is engrossing, enlightening and even lively reading. It is easy to see why the book was a prize winner when it first appeared in 1985. It will be a long time before a more comprehensive and readable work on the fur trade appears.
— Anthropologica
Delage's arguments are diverse, elegantly constructed, and based on a wide range of respectable interpretative concepts ... The originality of his work lies in the diversity of material that he synthesizes and the structure that he gives to his subject matter.
— Culture
