Denis McKim Thomas Paine likened the American Revolution to the deluge. In much the same way that God had hit the “reset button” on history itself through the flood recounted in Genesis, the United States had initiated a new epoch by revolting against British rule and launching what Paine hoped would become an egalitarian republic.… Continue Reading
Latest in: Historiography
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Robert W. Passfield What has been termed ‘Whig History’ is a Liberal historiography that views history teleologically in terms of the progress of humanity towards enlightenment, rationalism, scientism, secularism, and the freedom of the individual. As attested by Herbert Butterfield (The Whig Interpretation of History, 1931) Whig history is characterized by presentism, a distinct historical… Continue Reading
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Anne Marie Lane Jonah [Welcome to our summer series on Acadian history! We are very excited to be presenting this special four-week series, cross-posting on Unwritten Histories, Borealia, and Acadiensis, and in collaboration with the Fredericton Regional Museum, the York Sunbury Historical Society, an Open Academy grant from the Royal Society, the UNB Departments of… Continue Reading
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Stephanie Pettigrew [This essay first appeared at UnwrittenHistories on August 21, 2018, and is re-posted here through collaboration with editors Andrea Eidinger and Stephanie Pettigrew.] French Canadian history has always been locked in a struggle to define its history and separate it from its nationalism. Even when discussing the origins of French settlers in New… Continue Reading
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Daniel Samson In my introductory colonial Canadian survey course, students sometimes complain that I spend “all” of my time on Nova Scotia. That’s not actually true, but I understand their point. It may be true that I talk about Nova Scotia more than others might, but for the most part I follow the broad conventions… Continue Reading
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Gregory Kennedy Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge University Press, 2018). This ambitious book considers “the ways in which Europeans and their Euro-American descendants remade New World space as they laid claim to the continent’s resources, extended the reach of empire and established polities and jurisdictions… Continue Reading
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Allan Greer I am grateful to Benoît Grenier and Alain Laberge for having taken the trouble to read my book and comment on my short polemic, “There was no Seigneurial System.” Indeed, I’m doubly grateful since I relied heavily on the extensive and rigorous research of these two historians in preparing Property and Dispossession. Why… Continue Reading
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Benoît Grenier and Alain Laberge Following the release of Allan Greer’s latest book,[1] a colossal work of comparative history that we would like to salute from the outset, our distinguished colleague from McGill University has declared the inexistence of the seigneurial “system” (a declaration more pronounced in the original English version of his text[2]). Over… Continue Reading
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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
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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
