The ethics of farming-out: ideology, the state, and the asylum in nineteenth-century Quebec.

This article traces the development of the farming-out system of asylum provision which emerged in Quebec for the treatment and care of those who were considered to be insane. The kind of asylum provision that developed in Quebec was met with strong criticism by alienists elsewhere in Ontario, Britain and the United States who considered farming-out to be highly unethical. These criticisms were not lost on the state which tried to exercise increased control over the daily affairs of the asylum. But for much of the nineteenth century the state largely failed in these efforts. The community response to the rise of the farming-out system further complicated the role of the state in the management and control of insanity. I argue that the farming-out system is best considered as the product of complex relations between the state officials, alienists, and community members. This understanding of asylum development in Quebec has important implications for the study of the nineteenth-century state formation.