Historiography of Quebec

In contemporary scholarship, the historiography of Quebec has been a study of great vitality, though tremendous controversy. This is particularly evident in the examination of the origins and implications of the Quiet Revolution, a period in Quebec history that is not only arguably marked by a large-scale rejection of past values and rapid modernization, but also by a subsequent paradigm shift in Quebec’s historiography, one that moved from a traditional understanding of Quebec as a distinct entity to a more contemporary perception of Quebec that attempts to “normalize” Quebec’s past by describing its provincial development as being in conjunction with the rest of Western society.
In the traditional historiography of post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, it is suggested that the Quiet Revolution triggered a substantial and distinguishable break from a “backward” and “dark” past into a triumphant modernity. More recently however, has there been shift in the historiographical understanding of the Quiet Revolution – and Quebec’s identity in general – as many historians have essentially abandoned the fixation on Quebec distinctness from a historical perspective, citing that Quebec’s modernity had always existed, and that the provincial development was one of normalcy and mirrored that of other Western societies. The Quiet Revolution, then, was reinforcing and bringing to the forefront ideas and practices that were already existent. These historians, known as “revisionist” historians, have essentially replaced the traditional discourse of Quebec’s difference, a discourse that had dominated Quebec’s historical data for over a century, which emphasized survival through oppression and stressed the normality of Quebec history, culture and society.
There has been a great deal of contention surrounding the revisionist perception of Quebec’s normalcy and the traditional understanding of Quebec as a distinct entity. The former attempts to substantiate the shift away from traditional