Allan Greer From elementary school books to encyclopedia entries to scholarly treatises, no work on New France is complete without a section on the “seigneurial system,” a phenomenon that supposedly shaped the agrarian society of this colony and set it apart from other colonial settlements.[1] Imposed upon Canada by absolutist France, so the story goes,… Continue Reading
Monthly Archive: September 2018
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Peter H. Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey is a sweeping reconsideration of the foundations of Canada’s constitutional order that has garnered considerable attention and praise. This essay is the third in a three-part series assessing the book’s significance. Nicole C. O’Byrne Question: Do you think history is actually too important to be left to the professional historians… Continue Reading
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Peter H. Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey is a sweeping reconsideration of the foundations of Canada’s constitutional order that has garnered considerable attention and praise. This essay is the second in a three-part series assessing the book’s significance. Donald Fyson My comments focus on the pre-Confederation chapters of Peter Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey. I’ll concentrate on Quebec and… Continue Reading
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Peter H. Russell’s Canada’s Odyssey is a sweeping reconsideration of the foundations of Canada’s constitutional order that has garnered considerable attention and praise. This essay is the first in a three-part series assessing the book’s significance. Elizabeth Mancke Upon first inspection of Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests, I recoiled. The main title… Continue Reading
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Ann Little’s The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright (Yale University Press, 2016; paper, 2018) traces the remarkable story of a woman from her New England childhood to Wabanaki captivity and adoption to adulthood as an Ursuline nun in eighteenth-century Quebec. The book’s innovative use of sources and narrative provokes conversation about what a biography could be.… Continue Reading
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Gregory Kennedy Note: This is the fourth in a series on environmental history and early modern history cross-posted with NiCHE, the Network in Canadian History & Environment. Life as an academic often feels like constant movement between hope and despair. Hope that our research will have an impact, and be accepted our peers … despair at the latest… Continue Reading
