Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 1881-1890

Born in Quebec, Jean Hamelin obtained graduate training during the 1950s in Paris, where French scholars such as Fernand Braudel and Pierre Goubert had begun to redefine the historians' tasks. They composed "total" histories that analyzed long-term changes in social and economic structures, encompassed the lives of ordinary people, and recreated mentalities. In his doctoral thesis, Hamelin asked why New France lacked a powerful business class. Rather than employing a clerico-nationalist perspective, he applied the quantitative techniques of his Annales mentors and concluded that the entire economy of New France had been seriously flawed.

Hamelin's work failed to persuade some critics. Nonetheless, his emphasis on the primacy of socioeconomic questions and his use of quantitative data have been taken up by many historians in Quebec who challenge the nationalistic interpretations of Lionel Groulx and his disciples.

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