Painful modernization? productivity and Quebec’s agricultural crisis during the nineteenth century

Quebec (formerly Lower Canada) has long been thought to have suffered declining agricultural productivity—induced by soil erosion and local overpopulation—from the 1790s to the early 1850s, leading to a “painful modernization” as farming declined, while other sectors grew only modestly. Painful modernization is often invoked to explain the political crises of the era that led to Confederation in 1867. This paper shows that the painful modernization thesis has no empirical support. We show (a) agriculture’s decline was not driven by soil exhaustion, (b) total factor productivity (TFP) in farming consistently rose after the 1790s, and (c) TFP growth was even stronger in industries like timber, shipbuilding, and potash. Rather than stagnation, Quebec experienced economic restructuring, reshaping interpretations of Canadian economic and political history.