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
Latest in: Historiography
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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
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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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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
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Bradley Miller The Supreme Court declined this month to radically change the way that Canada works. In R v Comeau, lawyers for a New Brunswick man ticketed for bringing too many bottles of beer into the province from Quebec urged the justices to use the history of the Canadian federation to improve its future, at… Continue Reading
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Christopher C. Jones Harvey Amani Whitfield, North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016). The lone Canadian student enrolled in my course on “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa and the Atlantic World” this semester expressed some surprise last week when I mentioned that the class would cover the history… Continue Reading
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Jeffers Lennox Having a first-time author give advice about publishing a book is kind of like having a new parent offer tips on surviving an infant. In both cases, the person is likely sleep-deprived, the process was a blur, and it’s too early to tell if the book/child will be any good. And yet, I… Continue Reading
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Joseph Gagné [For any reader who will not understand my French text, I apologize. This barrier illustrates exactly the problem I describe in the following.] Il y a un an, je publiais mon tout premier livre. J’ai récemment eu le plaisir à la fois de découvrir que le Journal de Montréal le classait parmi les… Continue Reading
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This essay is the final installment in a three-part series on Confederation that provides critical historical context for Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The first two parts were posted on the 26th and 28th of June. Bradley Miller In 1882, during oral arguments at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for one of the first court… Continue Reading