Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada
Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada

Author: John Clarke

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 796

ISBN-13: 9780773521940

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Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada examines Ontario's formative years, focusing on Essex County in Ontario from 1788 to 1850. Upper Canadian attitudes to land and society are shown to have been built on contemporary visions of the cosmos. John Clarke examines the actions of individuals from the perspective of the political culture and its manifestations, doing so within the constraints of geography and the cultural baggage of the settlers. Placing human action in the context of economics and laissez-faire capitalism, Clarke shows how almost unbridled acquisitiveness, and its concomitant land speculation, could promote or hinder development.

Marketing the Frontier in the Northwest Territory
Marketing the Frontier in the Northwest Territory

Author: Robert E. Mitchell

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-05-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 147663906X

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Combining narrative history with data-rich social and economic analysis, this new institutional economics study examines the failure of frontier farms in the antebellum Northwest Territory, where legislatively-created imperfect markets and poor surveying resulted in massive investment losses for both individual farmers and the national economy. The history of farming and spatial settlement patterns in the Great Lakes region is described, with specific focus on the State of Michigan viewed through a case study of Midland County. Inter and intra-state differences in soil endowments, public and private promoters of site-specific investment opportunities, time trends in settled populations and the experiences of individual investors are covered in detail.

Improving Upper Canada
Improving Upper Canada

Author: Ross Fair

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2024-06-03

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1487553552

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Agricultural societies founded in the colony of Upper Canada were the institutional embodiment of the ideology of improvement, modelled on contemporary societies in Britain and the United States. In Improving Upper Canada, Ross Fair explores how the agricultural improvers who established and led these organizations were important agents of state formation. The book investigates the initial failed attempts to create a single agricultural society for Upper Canada. It examines the 1830 legislation that publicly funded the creation of agricultural societies across the colony to be semi-public agents of agricultural improvement, and analyses societies established in the Niagara, Home, and Midland Districts to understand how each attempted to introduce specific improvements to local farming practices. The book reveals how Upper Canada’s agricultural improvers formed a provincial association in the 1840s to ensure that the colonial government assumed a greater leadership role in agricultural improvement, resulting in the Bureau of Agriculture, forerunner of federal and provincial departments of agriculture in the post-Confederation era. In analysing an early example of state formation, Improving Upper Canada provides a comprehensive history of the foundations of Ontario’s agricultural societies today, which continue to promote agricultural improvement across the province.

Canada's Victorian Oil Town
Canada's Victorian Oil Town

Author: Christina Burr

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2014-06-22

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0773575901

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Departing from traditional historiography focused on the economic role of resource development, Canada's Victorian Oil Town incorporates an understanding of the connections between science and technology, nation and imperialism, and cultural nuances of community-building. Burr looks at the cultural importance of place and how collective identity was nurtured in the community. She also illustrates how the image of Petrolia as Canada's Victorian Oil Town has been used since the 1970s to develop a thriving tourist industry in the region. Interdisciplinary in scope, Canada's Victorian Oil Town draws from the history of imperialism, science, resource development, local history, gender studies, and cultural geography.

Transatlantic Subjects
Transatlantic Subjects

Author: Nancy Christie

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2014-06-22

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 0773574573

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Transatlantic Subjects dissents from four decades of scholarly writing on colonial Canada by taking the British imperial context - rather than the North American environment - as a conceptual framework for interpreting patterns of social and cultural life in the colonies prior to the 1850s. Anchored in "the new British history" advanced by J.G.A. Pocock, David Armitage, and Kathleen Wilson, this collective work explores ideas, institutions, and social practices that were adapted and changed through the process of migration from the British archipelago to the new settlement societies. Contributors discuss a broad range of institutional and social practices, including education, religion, radical politics, and family life. Transatlantic Subjects offers a new perspective for the writing of Canada's history. A self-conscious response to the plea for a broader British history that includes the overseas settlement colonies, it makes a significant contribution to the new cultural history of the British Empire. Contributors include Bruce Curtis (Carleton), Michael Eamon (Queen's), Darren Ferry (McMaster), Donald Fyson (Laval), Michael Gauvreau (McMaster), Jeffrey McNairn (Queen's), Bryan Palmer (Queen's), J.G.A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins), Michelle Vosburgh (Brock), Todd Webb (Laurentian), and Brian Young (McGill)."

Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism
Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism

Author: Xavier Lafrance

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-09-19

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 3319956574

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This edited volume builds and expands on the groundbreaking work of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood on the origins of capitalism. Whereas Brenner and Wood focused mostly on the emergence of capitalism in the English countryside (agrarian capitalism), this book utilizes their approach to offer original, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically informed accounts of transitions to capitalism – both agrarian and industrial – in a wide range of countries in order to provide within a single volume a diverse collection of relatively brief yet detailed case studies of the historical transition to capitalism distributed across three continents. Offering a new and highly original analysis of the global spread of capitalism, this book will be a unique contribution to the longstanding debate on the transition to capitalism.

Empire by Treaty
Empire by Treaty

Author: Saliha Belmessous

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0199391785

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Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600-1900 includes indigenous voices in the debate over European appropriation of overseas territories. It is concerned with European efforts to negotiate with indigenous peoples the cession of their sovereignty through treaties.