Born in Quebec City and living in France, Bernard Allaire is a socio-economic historian of European and North American urban and maritime civilizations. He is involved in many historical, archaeological and sociological research projects in connection with European and North-American specialists. He particularly enjoys historical topics which complete the expertise of other historians or archaeologists and also study north-american Indian societies, correspondence networks and history of crafts and sciences. He goes through the archives in public records, libraries and his data bases for governments, local authorities, academics, jurists and private individuals to identify, transcribe and digitalize relevant documents. Author of Pelleteries, manchons et chapeaux de castor: les fourrures nord-américaines à Paris 1500-1632 (Pelts, Muff and Beaver hats: the North American furs in Paris 1500-1632), Québec/Paris, Septentrion & PUPS, 1999 (Falardeau award) and Crépuscules ultramontains: marchands italiens et grand commerce à Bordeaux au XVIe siècle (Ultramontane Twilight: Italian merchants and Commerce in XVIth century Bordeaux), Bordeaux PUB, 2008 (Desgraves award); La Rumeur Dorée: Roberval et l'Amérique, Montréal, éd. de La Presse, 2013 and, more recently, a collective work with Maria Fusaro, Richard Blakemore and Tijl Vanneste Law, Labour and Empire, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 . He also writes in reviews, collective publications and gives conferences. The essential of his works is however made up of unpublished and often confidential research reports.
Qui était Jacques Cartier ? Le navigateur breton Jacques Cartier aurait fondé la première colonie dès le 16e Siècle. Mais qui était véritablement cet homme aux multiples visages, aux représentations imaginaires et folkloriques ? En 2005, la découverte d'un vaste site archéologique au Québec a bouleversé les connaissances établies sur l'histoire de la présence française.