Fyson on "Law, Justice and State Formation in colonial Quebec, 1760–1867"

Via the Canadian Legal History Blog, we have word of a new article by Donald Fyson (Université Laval). "Between the Ancien Régime and Liberal Modernity: Law, Justice and State Formation in colonial Quebec, 1760-1867"appears in the May issue of the History Compass. Here's the abstract:

This article surveys the historiography of state formation in colonial Quebec, from the British Conquest of 1759/1760 to Canadian Confederation in 1867, focussing on law and justice. It is structured around three key themes: the Conquest as a point of rupture, with the imposition of a British colonial state and English law on top of a largely French-origin society; the nature of the ancien-régime state over the 80 years that followed; and the historiographical debate over the creation of a new liberal order in Canada and Quebec from the 1840s onwards. The article ends with a discussion of six factors, both local and transnational, which help account for legal change and state formation in Quebec in the period.